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The good, the bad, and the ugly truth about AI in business
Dr. Jay Eckles from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory spoke to partners with the Knoxville Chamber about how to implement best practices for artificial intelligence into business processes and systems.
Almost every business owner is wondering the same things. How will artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies affect my company, workflow, and product/ service? The Knoxville Chamber hosted a well-attended session to answer those questions and welcomed Dr. Jay Eckles from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to show attendees the practical applications of this technology.
He works as the Division Director of Application Development, leading about 150 people to deliver AI solutions for a variety of industries and national laboratory projects. Additionally, he is a lecturer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), helping students understand how to leverage AI to be more competitive applicants.
“I tell my students – AI isn’t coming for your job. But, people who know how to use AI effectively are,” Eckles said. “It’s going to change the workforce as we know it, and that shift has already started.”
As an example, he explained how one marketing professional may take a week to write the base code for a company website, and spend the next couple weeks tweaking details and adding creative elements by hand. Whereas another marketing professional can generate a base HTML and Javascript code in the latest version of ChatGPT in less than one minute – leaving more time for tweaks and human creativity. At the end of the day, you may get the same website – but the second marketing professional was able to complete it in half the time.
From an efficiency perspective, most companies would prefer to hire someone with the second skillset. But, the human element of most job roles cannot be replaced by these automated processes, at least that’s how Eckles sees it.
“AI does not have a soul, no connection, no emotion, no feelings,” he said. “It’s essentially just a really complex math equation that makes all of our lives a lot simpler.”
Practical Examples
Lauren Longmire, the Director of Regional Enhancement for the Knoxville Chamber and Dr. Eckles broke down some of the best ways for small business owners to begin implementing AI into daily processes to improve efficiency, save time, and save money.
Perhaps the most well-known and most-used form of AI on the market is ChatGPT. Its capabilities are pretty all encompassing, especially for small business content needs. ChatGPT can help business owners generate text for ad campaigns, newsletters, paid media marketing, social posts, and more. It can help employees draft emails, tweak tones for professionalism, and generate ideas for various projects.
It can also review data sets, do broad research on any topic, provide HTML and Javascript code, make calculations, translate languages, and create images. The list goes on and on.
Two important things Eckles noted about ChatGPT: Unless you pay for an account or have an enterprise agreement with OpenAI, any information you enter into the chat is stored. Meaning, there could be some significant risks to exposing private company data. It’s important that people across the organization have an understanding of the risks involved.
Secondly, Eckers emphasized the importance of prompting well.
“Use AI the way you would a group of smart interns. Give it a detailed task, explain the context, and provide your exact expectations,” he said.
- Tell Chat GPT what your goal is in requesting the information.
- Give your search context – tell ChatGPT which sources it can and cannot pull information from.
- Explain how you want the information to be delivered – text, data set, image, or other.
- Check everything.
Emails, task management, image generation, and audio generation are also tools available to small businesses, Longmire explained. Some of the most common ways these are used are through apps and websites like Otter.ai (transcriptions), Mailchimp (automated email campaigns), Sane Box (sorting emails), Asana (task management), and Microsoft Co-Pilot technologies.
“Ai is developing so fast that one “AI year” is about three human months,” he said. “So, if you tried AI tools a year ago and didn’t like them, I can promise you they’ve improved since then.”
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