“The future of AI is not about replacing humans, it’s about augmenting human capabilities.” – Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has arrived and is rapidly becoming a major factor in our lives. We’ve already experienced some form of it; a shopping assistant on your favorite website, a banking program that recognizes suspicious activity, or even an article that pops up when you run an Internet search for “Top Kitchen Remodelers in Dubuque, Iowa.” It’s taken a foothold in our lives, and we’ve barely noticed.
Should this alarm you? Probably not, or at least not yet. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, one of the smartest humans on the planet, sees AI as a powerful tool that can be used to solve complex problems, automate tedious tasks, and drive innovation. While he acknowledges the need for responsible development and use of AI, he doesn’t believe AI will lead to the end of the world. So let’s put it at “highly unlikely” that you’re going to answer your door any time soon to find a T-1000 searching for you. Of course, this could be a big opportunity for an “I-told-you-so” moment if we’re swinging pickaxes together in five years, mining lithium under the watchful camera eyes of our new AI overlords.
Despite the science fiction-driven apprehension, AI is a tremendously useful tool. At its most basic level, it manages data far more efficiently than humans do. It can sift through vast quantities of information and recognize patterns. Pattern recognition and analysis help people and companies make faster, more educated decisions. For example, the more you shop on Amazon, the more accurately it can suggest other shopping options to you (and, yes, get you to spend more.)
However, the applications go far above and beyond that. AI can search a law firm’s case files for legal precedents. It can data mine files and produce leads for real estate. It can enhance operational efficiency and automation for Managed Service Providers (MSPs).
So, AI Isn’t Just A Smart Calculator?
Not at all; keep in mind that data isn’t just limited to numbers. For example, OpenAI’s GPT text generator is capable of generating mostly coherent articles based on massive quantities of verbal input and sentence structure. The blog post “Feeling unproductive? Maybe you should stop overthinking” was entirely AI-generated after being fed a few parameters.
The developments taking place in operational processes are equally impressive. “The advances AI offers are phenomenal,” says MacguyverTech CEO Steve McKeon (Mac). “The new Krista AI offers five different agents, all of which are designed to optimize business workflows in different ways. They’re revolutionizing operational processes; things that used to take hours now take seconds.”
How Does AI Help with Productivity?
AI offers a vast array of benefits for optimizing and transforming business processes. It’s not just about automating repetitive tasks; it’s about making processes smarter, faster, more accurate, and more insightful. It helps businesses move from reactive to proactive, from manual to automated, and from general to personalized, leading to significant improvements in efficiency, profitability, and customer satisfaction.
“Very soon, AI isn’t just going to be an option for business, it’s going to be necessary,” McKeon continued. “In the coming wave of AI agents, businesses that embrace them won’t just pull ahead; they’ll fundamentally redefine the competitive landscape.”
Summary
AI is by no means evil. Used properly as a tool, it will give rise to wonderful technical advances over the next several years and decades. Used improperly…well, let’s just say that there’s already a company named Cyberdyne in Japan, and they’re not manufacturing umbrellas. In the end, it’s not AI that we need to be concerned about – it’s ourselves.