Artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI are changing the way process excellence professionals approach work. Leaders are leveraging AI to enhance automation and other basic business tasks. Recently, experts gathered for PEX Network's All Access: AI in PEX webinar series. Here are five important ideas that emerged.
1. The basic definitions
The first step to educating one's self on AI is to understand the difference between AI and generative AI. Another part of this is learning terms like large language models (LLMs). Even veterans who are quite knowledgeable on the subject can benefit from earmarking the basics to ensure they get all their teams on the same page and have simple ways to explain matters to those who are less experienced.
“Traditionally AI is all about decision tree and neural networks, and it is trained on small data sets to solve a narrow set of issues or use cases. It emulates human expertise, while LLMs, which are a big part of generative AI, are trained on massive data sets. They can solve a broad range of use cases. Generative AI can understand, summarize, generate and predict new content,” said Satish Shenoy, RVP, global technology alliances & AI strategy, SS&C Blueprism.
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2. Staying on the cutting edge
Humans have not fully realized the potential of either form of AI. They are on the cusp, but some things never change.
“The need to be able to respond quickly in an agile fashion are all things that [have been] challenges for a long time and will remain the same. What is different is technologies like generative AI. We have more technologies and tools at our disposal today than ever before, and they are really powerful technologies too. It's easier to access data and more of it,” said Shenoy.
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Even if some people are still skeptical of AI or worry about the ramifications of relying on a technology that can mimic a human, leaders are spreading the word about the importance of getting in the game. Stephen Cummings, SVP strategy at Fingent, suggests organizations ride the wave.
“You don't want to fall behind this,” warned Cummings. “Think of AI as a wave, a giant wave that's coming toward us and what you want to do is get in and start paddling because you don't want this wave to crash on you and you will have not prepared for all the changes that are coming.”
3. Recognize the current limitations
While leaders should experiment and include AI and generative AI in their plans and strategies moving forward, they must be clear eyed about the technology.
“AI in business is good,” said Cummings. “It's not perfect. It can be great as a helper.”
In fact, many are finding ways to use the transformative technology to help them be more efficient and productive. AI, however, relies on humans to train it.
“Generative AI is like any kind of system,” said Benoit Cayla, global technology alliance strategist at SS&C Blue Prism. “It's what you put inside the system that will give you an idea of what you're going to get at the output. So, it's garbage in and garbage out.”
4. Training the tech
Vishal Bhalla, a human resources thought leader, has suggested that organizations consider AI technologies like employees. They should manage the talent and that means providing continuous learning and development. Ananya Ojha, SVP, product management at MicroStrategy, agreed.
“When you build a bot or prepare the bot for answering the user's questions, you're almost onboarding the bot into the organization, letting them understand what the business definitions are and what sort of questions, what sort of languages and terms that business users might use,” said Ohja.
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Humans must teach the technology to perform in a way that suits their needs and is ethical and compliant at the same time. MicroStrategy's goal is “to transform AI from a non-deterministic tool into a reliable source for business critical decisions.”
“We're not looking for an answer. We're looking for the answer, right?...The challenge that we face currently with generative AI is that [it has] a non-deterministic nature. I mean it can lead to different outputs,” said Erika Moreno, VP, product management at MicroStrategy.
5. Keeping an eye on the future
The consensus is AI and generative AI are transformative technologies that enable a more productive workforce. They serve as a tool for employees, but as the technology advances, they will become more human like. As a result, organizations have an obligation to themselves and society to continuously train AI and generative AI to ensure the technology has the best results and performs at the highest level. The possibilities are endless. Today, people are already benefitting from its potential.
“AI can bring value by helping organizations by providing additional insights that help people address questions,” said Cummings, “and come up with decisions that are more closely grouped around an optional decision as well as get closer to the center point of the target.”