Lunch Time Learning – Generative AI in 15 Minutes or Less

What is Generative AI in Simple Terms❓

Generative AI is a part of artificial intelligence (AI) that learns from existing data and creates new content, like images, videos, music, text, or even software code that mimics human creations. It can also be used for tasks like fraud detection and data analysis. In essence, it’s like having smart machines that can instantly generate content similar to what humans can do.

“Generative AI is very similar to an army of clever interns who are wonderfully skilled at generating high-quality output on any topic. “

Kieran Gilmurray CEO

What is ChatGPT❓

ChatGPT is a specific type of Generative AI. It’s a large language model designed for conversations, trained on a vast dataset of text and code. You can ask it questions or give it prompts, and it will respond with human-like text. It’s one of several conversational AI applications, including Bing AI, Bard, Claude AI, and Meta GPT.

How does Generative AI work❓

Generative AI relies on complex algorithms, large-scale computing power, and substantial financial resources for training. It’s mainly built on AI foundation models trained on extensive unlabelled data. Big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI are among the pioneers in providing platforms for Generative AI due to their substantial resources.

What’s behind the recent hype❓

AI has become accessible to everyone, leading to a surge of AI start-ups and innovative ideas. Generative AI is transforming industries by enabling data-driven decision-making without the need for expensive consultants or massive infrastructure.

It allows companies of all sizes to develop applications inexpensively, offering superhuman capabilities in tasks like art creation, music composition, news generation, drug discovery, and language translation.

The era of intelligent humans with very cheap, smart AI is tantalisingly within our reach.

Strategic cycles, once measured in years, might now become AI fuelled iterative cycles that happen in weekly or monthly – not yearly – planning cycles.

New business models are emerging, and these will be available to everyone.

As such Generative AI is a potential game changer for business.

Bill Gates quote on AI — Bill Gates on AI

What’s the Potential of Generative AI❓

Generative AI can automate tasks, enhance human and machine capabilities, and execute business processes autonomously. Its benefits include faster product development, idea generation, improved customer experiences, increased productivity, and new operating models. It’s a game changer with vast applications across various industries.

Any Risks?

Like any emerging technology, there are risks associated with Generative AI. It can be used to create misinformation, fake news, deepfakes, and potentially influence elections. Human validation is crucial, and there may be legal considerations regarding copyright and data bias.

Generative AI and Your Job

Generative AI won’t necessarily replace jobs entirely but may change how people work. Those who can use AI effectively will likely have a competitive edge. It’s important to adapt and learn new skills. AI can augment and improve roles, leading to better outcomes when used in conjunction with human expertise.

What Should You Do?

Leaders should assess the risks and benefits of Generative AI while not hindering its progress. Experimentation is essential, and companies should invest in data quality and the necessary skills for implementation. It’s a time for individuals and organizations to understand and embrace AI’s potential for transformation.

Learning More about Generative AI

To thrive in an AI-infused world, educate your team about AI and its use cases. Avoid confining AI to a small IT team; make it a company-wide effort. AI strategies should adapt quickly, given the rapidly evolving landscape. Generative AI offers a unique opportunity to reshape your business architecture.

You can follow relevant content and consult with experts to learn more about Generative AI and its applications in your specific context.

Need more help and guidance?

☎️ If you are a business leader who wants to learn more about how Generative AI can be used to massively transform your teams output, then book a FREE 30 minute introductory call so my team and I can discuss your business’s unique needs.

What are the business benefits of Generative AI❓

Generative AI can be used to automate, augment humans or machines, and autonomously execute business and IT processes. The benefits of Generative AI include faster product development, idea generation, enhanced customer experience, improved employee productivity, and new target operating models.

Computer Code: Generative AI CoPilot applications can code like a super-human coder who knows multiple code languages. This has the potential to massively boost coders efficiency, or you may need fewer coders. For example, if a company has 100 software engineers and Copilot can make each 40% more efficient, then I can choose to get more done or remove 40 coders. Copilot is or will become a word as common as Google or Tweet for developers.
Virtual assistants: It can be used to create human-like chatbots and virtual assistants that respond to natural language prompts (i.e., human voice, pictorial or text input) and provide personalized customer support and product recommendations.
Product design Generative AI can be used to generate new product design ideas and speed up the development process.
Content creation: It can be used to create new content or repurpose existing content in various formats, such as text, audio, digital art, video or computer code.
Data analytics: Generative AI can analyse vast amounts of data to uncover patterns and insights that can inform business decision-making.
Predictive maintenance: Generative AI can be used to predict when equipment is likely to fail, enabling proactive maintenance and reducing downtime (and the cost associated with it).
Logistics: It has a lot of potential use cases for the logistics industry. It can optimize inventory management by predicting demand and automatically adjusting stock or order levels.
and lots more.

Why is this revolutionary❓

We are entering a new era of software and business – Intelligence 2.0 – where Generative AI’s capabilities and applications are limited only to our imaginations. If you can think it and describe then Generative AI can (or will) be able to create it.

Generative AI has the potential to permanently accelerate innovation across industries, enabling faster problem-solving and the development of novel solutions and business operating models.

It affords us an opportunity to industrialise and scale a generative enterprise at a pace. We live in a technology-driven time that requires businesses to be in a permanent state of reinvention, i.e. be Mutable.

Businesses can now create a paradigm shift operating model – a Mutable Operating Model (MOM). For the first time, businesses have a very real way to survive and thrive in the digital age by continually reinventing themselves, their value proposition and the way they operate.

As such, Generative AI could change everything and anything in terms of what an organisation does and how it operates to deliver value.

Now that is huge!

Do I need to be worried about my job❓

Great question. AI may not directly replace your entire job, but someone who knows how to use AI probably will. And that includes the replacement of both knowledge workers and executives who don’t learn to use AI.

That’s ok as we have always had to learn new skills e.g., from blacksmiths to software engineers.

And technology advances have tended to create more roles than they have destroyed.

Everyone can learn to use it to augment and improve their roles and career prospects. For example, anyone who successfully ‘co-pilots’ with AI will likely accomplish more in a given day than someone who does not know how to use it. Those individuals will be in high demand. e.g. a computer software engineer who uses GitHub Copilot to code.

History has shown that great technology that augments great people delivers better results than a machine or person alone, e.g. robotic process automation or intelligent automation technologies such as IDP plus a person achieves more with, than without a person.

That said, Generative AI ‘could’ and arguably is a technology that is already displacing large portions of the ‘cognitive’ working population. For example, artists who create digital artwork or cartoons are already finding themselves displaced by Dall-E and Midjourney prompters. Similarly, language translators, content creators, musicians, and copywriters may need to quickly find new income streams as Generative AI can already easily complete those tasks.

If that is the case, then do I need as many people in my business if everyone is immediately quicker and better than before?

Maybe, maybe not.

How should you react? Keep reading and find out.

Research on Generative AI:

What can I do to learn more about Generative AI❓

The short answer is to rapidly develop the people, culture, policies, business strategy, and digital skills you need to thrive in a Generative AI-infused world FAST.

How? Educate everyone in the business on AI and AI use cases!

AI awareness training and prompt engineering, for example, needs to be on everyone’s to-do list. If you don’t know how to engage with AI, get the consulting help you need to run hard with Generative AI.

Do not hand this transformative core technology to a small IT team in the corner office❗

Where AI strategies were drawn out over a 3-year roadmap, they are now moving too fast to plan beyond 12 months. Things are moving too quickly. The sheer amount of change that has happened in the past six months, suggests that this pace of change – driven by this goose-bump technology – will not slow down any time soon.

Generative AI is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to create a generative enterprise architecture that you can’t miss!

How can you learn more?

You can follow my content or if you want to learn more about Generative AI and how this game-changing core technology can help transform your business architecture today, then book a FREE 30 minute introductory call so we can discuss your specific needs.

I hope you enjoy this journey with me and the contributing experts.