Barely a day goes by without seeing, hearing or reading about AI. Alex and Andrew from the Waterstons Innovation Team give an insight into how generative AI can help - and hinder - your organisation.
Generative AI is a tool that can generate huge amounts of text and images based on a prompt you give it. If you ask it a question, it will try to give a sensible answer; if you ask it to draw a picture, it will try its best to create something.
Like all AI tools, it is fed enormous quantities of data in a process called training, the goal of which is for it to learn to use data to complete a task. In the case of generative AI, the goal is to be able to make new things based on the data it has already seen.
For example, if you ask: ‘please give me an oil painting of the Statue of Liberty holding a banana’ it would attempt to create something from everything is has already ‘seen’ during training. And it doesn’t do too bad a job
This is all very well and good, but what can you practically achieve with it? How can this help your business? A machine that can randomly create data isn’t actually that useful unless you make it specific to you – assuming you don’t need images of famous landmarks holding fruit.
Recently, data has been used to automate things associated with numbers – replacing Excel spreadsheets, building reports, and crunching numbers – but now we can think about automating tasks involving words and pictures.
There are various areas where real value could be gained, and real efficiencies to eke out, through the use of generative AI:
Drafting documentation: It is very good at generating large amounts of text, quickly.
Handling text: Summarising long Word files, taking parts from multiple files and merging them together, and understanding where files differ among many, many other activities.
Knowledge bases: AI models can be trained on your huge piles of data to give a more user-friendly way of accessing it.
Making more of what you have: Using image-generating tools to make new versions of the products you already make – e.g. architects generating new ideas for buildings; production companies generating new 3D models of sets.
Advertising: AI models have seen every viral tweet and ad campaign whether it went viral or not – combined with your catalogue of product images, can you use it to write viral content for you?
All sounds great – but where are the hindrances we hear you ask? If this tool you make becomes publicly facing, it will represent your company; if it’s for internal processes it will interfere with decisionmaking – an AI model will never be 100% accurate, so are you happy to accept the errors as well as all the other issues you might encounter?
Data security and privacy: AI models you use are typically run and trained by a company like OpenAI or Microsoft so when you send them your data, do you know what will happen to it? When you query the public version of ChatGPT in the future, your data may already be inside it, effectively making your data and IP publicly available.
Bias and discrimination: AI models can only know things they are trained on so will echo what is in it. A lot of these models have been trained on the internet, even the gruesome bits.
Creativity and originality: We don’t believe that any AI model out there can match human creativity and originality; AI models are parrots – only able to show you something it has seen before.
What is the truth? Trained to predict the next word to type or create an image that might look like the prompt you’ve given it, AI has no understanding of the truth. If you play with any of these tools it won’t be long until it’s generated a human with 6 fingers or told you a ‘fact’ that is demonstrably untrue.
What does it know? A generic version of ChatGPT will not know anything about the internal workings of your organisation so how useful even is it?
Even though there are lots of worrying things to consider when using generative AI, we are still very excited about it. We are realistic and pragmatic, but also believe that these tools can be used to build something that can change your business.
In the last year, AI tools have become cheaper and easier to use. Models which used to only be accessible in research labs are now available to the public. The technology is being democratised, with powerful generative AI models available open source. This means you can host them yourself and train them with your own data, all without worrying that you will leak your data to the public.
Are you ready to use AI safely and securely? We’d love to chat to you!
andrew.blance@waterstons.com
alex.waterston@waterstons.com
www.waterstons.com