AI is a hot and sometimes divisive topic. Its power is undeniable, enough to cause concern that AI will outstrip the capabilities of human talent.
Newsflash: the opportunities overwhelmingly outweigh the concerns.
Many see AI as a ‘pandora’s box’ of sorts. The long-term results of what emerges remain to be seen. This element of the unknown has slowed businesses’ progress in adopting new tools.
One thing is for certain. AI is never going back in the box.
It’s here to stay and will become ever more embedded in daily business. Instead of shying away from AI, it’s time to start making it work for you, by training your people and renewing the way you work.
But why is AI so essential?
To set the scene, if you combine every word ever spoken since the dawn of humanity, this amounts to about 5 exabytes.
The total internet traffic from last year alone dwarfs this figure at 2000 exabytes!
That’s 400x more data in a year than all the words ever spoken...
Not to belabour the point, but that’s a lot of data. Too much for us mere humans to handle efficiently.
According to QA’s Practice Director David Pool, ‘AI has a different relationship with time and learning than people do – it’s constantly thinking and learning.’
We can only truly unlock the value of vast oceans of data once we embrace AI’s potential.
How do we embrace AI?
The question that follows is: how?
The short answer is Data Talent.
The longer answer is that humans will always be needed to control, craft and guide AI solutions. Contrary to the idea that AI will replace human talent, it is a huge new area of opportunity.
According to the World Economic Forum; by 2025, 97 million new roles could be created which are ‘adapted to the new division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms’.
According to Business Reporter, one in three companies face a lack of AI skills, and 67% of employers are seeking candidates specifically to fill that need.
The catch? A talent deficit blocks progress, as there isn’t enough AI talent out there, no matter the salary you can offer.
The solution is home-grown AI talent. It’s time to start reskilling and upskilling your employees in earnest for a future shaped by AI.
Where does QA come in?
We’re at the forefront of AI skilling and ready to be your strategic partner in harnessing new ways of working.
Here are three key ways we can help you to stay at the cutting edge:
1) Innovate and unleash creativity with Copilot
By combining AI with the software co-completion tech, Microsoft created Copilot; trained and customised to perform coding tasks, and incorporated into other MS products like PowerPoint and PowerApps.
It allows non-coders to translate natural language into a functioning app to store and maintain your data. As Microsoft puts it: ‘to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet.’
Take a step toward mastering data today on the Cloud Academy course Introduction to AI Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps.
The aim is to improve productivity, by freeing you from tasks that aren’t utilising that uniquely human trait: your creativity.
Other integrations include Outlook, Teams, Word and Excel. Copilot, by acting as a ‘right hand man’ across the Microsoft environments your business is already using, can make your workforce more creative, analytical, expressive, productive and collaborative.
Through automation, it seems that AI tech is here to help us be more human, after all.
2) Accelerate your output with Chat GPT
We’ve all heard of ChatGPT. This language tool is famous (and sometimes infamous) for its ability to generate authentically human-sounding text. However, it’s useful for a whole lot more than cheating on your homework! (yes, we see you)
One example would be making tasks like catching up on meeting minutes more efficient by asking ChatGPT to summarise for you.
ChatGPT can produce fresh ideas and examples according to prompts. For those who are sceptical; don’t think of this as relying on technology to replace human originality; think of it as one more source of inspiration to use as a starting point!
It can also speed up research. See how ‘speed’ is becoming a theme here?
Since ChatGPT has access to huge amounts of data in-the-moment, by asking an intelligently worded question you can get pertinent info and save yourself hours of reading. And, yes, you can obtain citations by asking the tool for sources.
Finally, the big one: Data.
If your task is to interpret a large amount of data to gain meaningful insights, becoming proficient in the use of ChatGPT for data analysis can empower you to reach reliable conclusions faster. No more spreadsheet purgatory!
Interested in starting your journey to harness all these benefits of Chat GPT? Check out a couple of our Cloud Academy courses:
ChatGPT Prompt Engineering, Role Prompts, and Chain Prompting
ChatGPT Prompts, Completions, & Tokens
3) Transform the way you work with Google Cloud Generative AI Studio
Generative AI studio currently offers tools to create text, code or audio. Directing or ‘programming’ the model also doesn’t require any complex coding ability, meaning it is accessible for anyone.
Generative AI can be useful in a wide range of roles and businesses. For example, similarly to ChatGPT you might use it to create content and ideas, to accelerate manual or repetitive tasks, or to personalise experiences, for instance via chatbots or targeted ads.
As you can see, the applications are vast!
Does this make human ‘ideas guys’ and content creators redundant? Far from it!
With generative AI, you can outsource your tasks to free up time (imagine a personal assistant with superpowers!). Instead of writing descriptions or creating presentations, you can be strategizing and innovating.
According to VP of content at Cloud Academy, Andrew Larkin, the way to do this is to stop seeing yourself as the one who executes tasks, but instead as the one who directs and owns process.
Outcomes will be as effective as the instructions you give. Applying the expertise of your role to AI will produce work that’s reliable and high quality, but faster and in larger quantities. What’s not to love?
Check out the Cloud Academy Generative AI Studio course or the QA course Develop Generative AI Solutions with Azure OpenAI Service to get started!
For a more comprehensive programme on all things AI, see our AI Data Specialist degree apprenticeship, designed for deeper knowledge and creation of new AI driven solutions.