If you were at Dreamforce or following along on Salesforce+, you have heard a lot about AI. It’s what everyone in the tech world is talking about these days. But what does this really mean for you and your business? We at Trifecta have been following the AI trends closely over the last year and would like to help you navigate these waters. This article is the first in a series about AI and how you can begin to think about and leverage the various AI technologies. We start with a few myths and facts about AI to debunk any misconceptions.
First, we are not all going to lose our jobs to AI
AI has some very promising capabilities but we are a long way from self-aware AI technology. Despite the concerns on social media and portrayed in movies and novels, AI is not going to take over the world or eliminate the need for you at your job. What it will do is allow us to offload tedious and repetitive tasks so that we can focus on more important problem solving and decision making. All generative AI will still require human review and a polishing step, but the bulk of the time to create the content will be greatly reduced.
Second, AI will not replace large tasks – not immediately anyway
AI technology at the moment is best suited for well-defined targeted tasks such as writing an email, correlating purchase data to products and customers, and making predictions based on a large set of sample data and a well-built model. We are a ways away from being able to combine large disparate models together into something that more closely resembles the human brain. So while we can use a model to predict whether an opportunity will close based on a host of inputs, we don’t yet have the ability to automatically use the outcomes of such a predictive model as an input into other decisions without building that bridge. This will become more and more of an area of focus over the coming years though – automating output and actions between various generative and predictive models.
Third, AI is not yet sentient
AI is not yet capable of “thinking” on its own or even acting independently. All of the existing AI technology must be directed by and initiated by a human. One example of this is code generation. GPT models absolutely have the ability to generate code, and well-written code at that, but generative AI is just that – the code can be generated but the AI has no ability to “know” what to do with that code. It cannot deploy the code, it cannot request a machine or process to run that code. Human interaction is still required to take that generated code and deploy it to a server, schedule jobs to run it, etc.
Fourth, AI can definitely help eliminate time spent on repetitive tasks
For the moment, think of AI as an assistant that you can offload tasks that typically are somewhat repetitive and/or time consuming to. Things like: crafting personalized emails to sales prospects, adding a chatbot to an e-commerce site to deflect service requests from your human agents, writing a sales proposal, and determining which contacts to include in a marketing campaign are all great use cases. AI can reduce the majority of time spent and allow us to devote a fraction of the time we had previously spent to focus on content review and follow-up.
In Summary…
AI is going to continue to evolve rapidly and the rest of technology with it. Start thinking about how you can utilize it now but also be aware of its limitations at the moment. If you have questions or would like to learn more, Trifecta’s experts can help you further evaluate potential use cases and assist you with implementing the various AI features of the Salesforce platform. Stay tuned for more articles about AI in the coming weeks.
