This famous Thomas Edison quote was on the wall yesterday as we held two group meetings in Edinburgh, Scotland.
At one of the meetings our member Stratos Filalithis, Head of Website & Communication Technologies at the University of Edinburgh shared their progress with making AI useful and usable, including how to improve search and to power virtual assistants.
AI is a regular topic at our group meetings and conferences, including all the confusion and overwhelming hype that comes with it. It makes me happy that during the past months, the conversation seems to have shifted from sheer, almost blind excitement, to using AI to doing things better and actually delivering value.
Getting things done has always been a popular topic…..
Exploring the Impact of AI: Unveiling the Evolution from Assistants to Artilects
In a 2018 article I authored, “How AI Assistants will impact businesses and consumers,” I championed the potential of AI assistants to reshape the landscape of business and consumer interactions. At the time, it was evident that AI-driven platforms were poised to revolutionize how people accessed information, made decisions, and connected with brands. A central tenet of this transformation was the recognition that cultivating and retaining customer trust was pivotal to the widespread acceptance and success of AI assistants.
A central theme of the article was the capacity of AI assistants to analyze diverse data sources, spanning news, regulations, and customer satisfaction metrics. Armed with this wealth of information, these platforms had the potential to offer astute recommendations tailored to individual preferences and needs. However, it was clear that these recommendations hinged on user trust.
Trust was identified as the bedrock for effective AI platform performance. A virtuous cycle was posited, where a user's trust in an AI assistant would lead to greater task delegation and decision-making authority. This, in turn, would furnish the assistant with more data to refine its recommendations, thereby reinforcing user trust. Conversely, any negative experiences could disrupt this trust cycle, underscoring the delicate equilibrium AI platforms needed to maintain.
Read moreGitHub Copilot - Early adopter experiences at TELUS
GitHub Copilot is also known as 'Your AI pair programmer'. GitHub Copilot uses the OpenAI Codex to suggest code and entire functions in real-time, right from your editor.
In a recent member's call, we heard from Digital Platform Product Lead Seb Barre at TELUS, a Canadian national telecommunications company, GitHub Copilot is also known as 'Your AI pair programmer'. It’s a cloud-based artificial intelligence tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI to assist developers by suggesting code and entire functions in real-time, right from your editor.
In a recent member's call, we heard from Digital Platform Product Lead Seb Barre at TELUS, a Canadian national telecommunications company. Seb is on a growing team of developers that have been piloting it for the past 2 months to help make them both more productive and happier.
The conversation started with how they usually say no to experiments like these at TELUS, but with GitHub Copilot it was different.
Read moreHow AI Assistants will impact businesses and consumers
Then, on a nice Monday morning, the assistant would tell us that we have resigned from our current job, and that we are starting a job at another company. Of course, that job is better paid and with more perspective than the one at our previous company.
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