We’ve all seen the movies. Star Wars portrayed it as R2D2 and C3PO, The Terminator championed the fear of Skynet, and Iron Man had friendly JARVIS to help Tony Stark fight off whatever doomsday scenario was fast approaching. For several years, AI has been “in the works” or “a thing in the future” but it is 2023 and Artificial Intelligence has officially made its debut with Chat GPT.

While AI may seem to be shiny and new, it’s actually been around since 1951. The first successful AI program was developed by Christopher Strachey which ran on the Ferranti Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester in England. This program could play a complete game of checkers. If you want to get very technical, AI can even be dated back to the days of Alan Turing when he created the first computing machine in 1935. He even stated the preliminary notion of AI in his 1947 lecture by stating “What we want is a machine that can learn from experience and that the possibility of letting the machine alter its own instructions provides the mechanism for this.” AI was originally titled “Intelligent Machinery” but Turing’s paper was never published. To this day, many research papers cite Turing’s work as the dawn of AI.  

So what is Artificial Intelligence?  

“It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable. Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world. Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many animals, and some machines.” – John McCarthy   

So why now? Why is AI such a hot topic?

For the first time ever, AI is able to successfully use natural language algorithms to produce a response that is similar to our own language patterns. It is no longer producing choppy, robotic-like results.  That’s the secret sauce. ChatGPT has opened the floodgates for natural language algorithms because it is consistent, produces human-like results, and is readily available to the general public.

Companies like Salesforce hopped on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) bandwagon quickly because they realized its vitality to improving the industry. In an interview, Marc Benioff even said that AI will be the equivalent to the technology industry now what CRM was to the industry in the 2000s.

Myth or Fact: AI will take my job.

MYTH = BUSTED. AI is a tool in your toolbox that can help you do your job more consistently and efficiently. It’s like trading in a manual screwdriver for an electric screwdriver. AI produces human-like results, yes. But what it can’t do is operate entirely on its own. Humans are still an essential component of the process. Let’s take Einstein GPT as an example. Einstein GPT can act as a virtual assistant and respond to customer service requests and launch workflows to remedy a customer complaint. Einstein GPT can do this without getting annoyed, responding appropriately according to the customer’s complaint, and doing it without getting tired. What can’t AI do? Empathy, creative thinking, and moral reasoning just to name a few. Humans are and always will be an essential component of any process. AI is exactly its name: artificial. There will always be a need for the natural process.

What can AI help us do?

Einstein GPT acts as a virtual assistant by:

  • “Auto-generating sales tasks like composing emails, scheduling meetings, and preparing for the next interaction.
  • Generate knowledge articles from past case notes. Auto-generate personalized agent chat replies to increase customer satisfaction through personalized and expedited service interactions.
  • Dynamically generate personalized content to engage customers and prospects across email, mobile, web, and advertising.”

And can work with developers by “using an AI chat assistant to generate code and ask questions for languages like Apex.”

AI isn’t limited to the virtual assistant job title. AI can work as a full-time security manager too. Here at Thanawalla Digital, (harnessing the power of AI) we have created Fortress which protects large scale digital frameworks from security threats and protects sensitive data. You can learn more about Fortress HERE. 

Let’s not forget medical applications. AI is currently being used in conjunction with medical professionals to help diagnose illnesses. Atropos Health is “offering physicians a detailed and accurate consultation and possible answers to even the most obscure medical questions. This “digital consultant” may even discover and suggest emergent treatments.”Dr. Halamka states “You should be able to push a button and have the patient in front of you analyzed against every patient of the past and be told, well, you better consider this, that, or the other disease.”

Our main takeaways: 

Artificial Intelligence is a tool that has been around for decades but is emerging into a well-refined product. AI is not a job replacement but rather a tool to increase efficiency and confidence. It can be used as a virtual assistant to do mundane tasks, act as a walking, talking encyclopedia, or even a full-time security manager.