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Entrepreneurs Aren’t Using AI To Its Full Potential: Here’s How To Think Bigger

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By Jodie Cook

AI has been in existence for a while but Chat GPT has advanced the uptake among business owners. The user-friendly interface, insightful and often surprising answers have been attracting entrepreneurs in to see what they can do. The number of Chat GPT-based products on Product Hunt has exploded and is only set to rise. The tools are being created in their hundreds and millions of entrepreneurs are using them.

How entrepreneurs are using AI

Most of the uptake of AI among entrepreneurs is in using the tools that already exist to save time doing things they already did. Much of this has been in the form of content. They are using AI copywriting and image generator tools and asking Chat GPT to generate headlines and captions and even entire sales pages, marketing email sequences and calls to action. They are writing blog posts for SEO with the help of a robot assistant who seems to have all the answers and can put together copy of any style in no time at all.

Some entrepreneurs are afraid of AI. They see it as their competition, and they are worried their margins and USPs are being squeezed by the technology. Akin to the 19th century luddites of the industrial revolution who smashed up sewing machines, AI is their sworn enemy and they are spending energy highlighting its obvious flaws to prove how they are better. They’re writing policies to keep AI out of hiring, content creation and artistic licensing, forgetting that humans too have flaws and biases.

A separate bunch of entrepreneurs have turned into detectives. They are concerned with figuring out what is real and what has been generated by AI. A friend owns a content site monetized using affiliate links and she hires copywriters to generate over a hundred articles a week. Suspicious that some of her copywriters aren’t writing the articles by hand, she’s investing in AI plagiarism tools to catch them out. Academics are developing more strict methods to ensure students don’t submit essays written by AI copywriting tools.

Every single one of these groups is missing the potential and thinking too small about how to incorporate AI into their business.

How entrepreneurs should be using AI

In 2015 I watched Moley Robotics launch the prototype of its robot kitchen. A pair of animatronic hands was trained by a chef to cut vegetables, prepare ingredients, and stir pasta. It could make an entire family’s meal at the touch of a button, and it even loaded a dishwasher afterwards. I thought about who the winners in this scenario were, should it become widely adopted in the future. The winners: the owners of Moley Robotics, the chef whose hands were used to train the robot, and the people consuming the food who haven’t had to make it themselves or pay a human to have it cooked for them.

Who were the losers? All the other chefs, whose hands weren’t used to train the robot and whose customers were now being looked after by the robot chef. The gap between the winners and losers is huge here. So which side would you rather be on?

The future of AI is winner takes all. But this isn’t about writing headlines and submitting fake essays, it’s about actually building the tools that billions of people will use. Adopting a winner takes all mentality is futile if you look to make incremental changes within your existing business. The potential of AI can’t be squeezed into your human-made schedule and services. Think bigger, or become obsolete.

A favourite problem-solving tool of Elon Musk is thinking about the platonic ideal. This means, rather than bodge AI into what currently exists, think of what could be created from scratch. Imagine nothing existed. Pretend you didn’t have a business that operated in a fixed way, but a blank slate to reimagine how you deliver the same outcome for your customers using AI. Thinking about what already exists will only confine your thinking and limit your results.

What’s the potential of AI for business?

Instead of a commercial law firm thinking about how to use AI writing tools to tidy up contracts and remove typos, they should think about what they can build so their customer feels safe and protected legally when running their business. Instead of a personal assistant worrying that they are out of a job once their clients realise there’s an existing tool for everything they do, they can use their expertise to design the tools and create new ones that work better.

A personal stylist needn’t worry that Chat GPT can give their customers tailored style advice just as they could, they should be thinking about how they can appear on every professional’s wardrobe, as the person they ask what they should wear every single day. The technology makes it possible, but most entrepreneurs are fixated on the wrong things and failing to see the potential for themselves.

The potential of AI is that we exist in harmony alongside it, and we use it to advance our lives. In the future, human-only generated content will just be in a different category. In the sport of powerlifting there are drugs-tested and non-drugs tested federations. If you aren’t drugs tested, it’s assumed you’re using performance-enhancing drugs. This will be the case with AI: if you haven’t specifically stated you aren’t using the tools, it is assumed that you are. And why wouldn’t you? Embrace what exists to spend more time doing what only your human self can do.

What’s in the future?

In the future is Chat GPT 3.5 and 4, and a whole host of alternatives, plus every tool that is being dreamed up and developed into reality by visionary entrepreneurs. There’s a widening gap between those with their head in the sand and those grabbing AI with both hands. Your business could be unrecognisable in a few months if you harness the technology without the constraints you’ve been working within so far. Figuring out how to do this is no easy feat.

While there are benefits in using the tools that already exist, doing this alone might mean you tread water until you’re overtaken. Although an efficient strategy in the short term, it’s not going to matter if your entire industry is upturned by a few key players that thought several steps ahead. Level up your visionary thinking and make yourself one of them.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Jodie Cook

Entrepreneur psychology and how to run a business without it running you. Post-exit entrepreneur, author of Ten Year Career and Forbes’ 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs in Europe 2017.

Sourced from Forbes

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6 Free AI Text Generator Tools To Use At Work In 2023

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By Hayley Folk

Sometimes, you need to write, but you don’t have the time or energy to do it for yourself. But that’s okay. In 2023, we have AI writing generator tools to help you at work — no matter what you’re working on. With the rise of artificial intelligence being used in content creation, customer support and more, AI writing generator tools are becoming essential tools in helping stay competitive, efficient and thorough in your work.

Whether you’re looking to create a prompt for a project, write a business plan or simply answer an email, we’ve gathered the six best (and free!) AI text generator tools to use at work in 2023.

1. HiveMind

HiveMind

Looking to write a list of must-haves for a company party? What about a new article for your content calendar? HiveMind —Hive’s newest feature — has got your back. Using this innovative, free and brand-new tool, you can take full advantage of AI technology to make your workday run more efficiently, streamline your workflow, and best of all, write amazing content. All you had to do is write a prompt, such as: “Write an email back to John about meeting for coffee next Wednesday.”

Use HiveMind to:

  • Write amazing articles
  • Respond to emails automatically
  • Generate business plans
  • Create lists
  • Create original graphics to use on social media, your website, etc.

And more. In a matter of seconds, there you have it. This is truly a top pick for AI text generator tools that is easy, simple and extremely proficient in helping anyone write.

  • Cost: FREE

2. WordAi

WordAi is an AI writing generator that helps you create:

  • Quick and easy blog posts
  • White papers
  • Web content.

It uses natural language technologies to create human-quality content, ensuring that content appears more unique and professional. WordAi is also available in a range of languages, making it a perfect tool for companies looking to do business in international markets. 

3. Quillbot

Quillbot is an AI writing tool that allows users to produce high-quality content in just minutes. It uses a powerful algorithm to automatically generate personalized content. It can:

  • Provide accurate and interesting reading experiences
  • Offer potential customers an improved level of engagement with your brand

4. GPT-3

GPT-3 is an AI writing tool developed by OpenAI, a leading AI research lab. It provides a powerful writing assistant that can:

  • Craft content from scratch based on prompts from the user
  • Allows users to create more natural-sounding articles and blog posts with fewer grammatical mistakes

5. Automated Insights

Automated Insights is an AI writing tool that leverages natural language processing technology to generate insights from data. It can:

  • Generate reports, summaries, and insights quickly and accurately
  • Has the ability to take raw data and turn it into written insights that can prove to be very useful for a marketing or sales team

6. DeepCrawl

DeepCrawl is an AI writing tool that helps users create content that is optimized for search engines. It can:

  • Use natural language processing techniques to scrape content from the web and create content that is more relevant and visible in search engine results

As AI writing technologies become more accessible and affordable, they are likely to become indispensable tools in business operations in 2023. Are you ready to try it out an AI text generator for yourself? 

By Hayley Folk

Sourced from Hive

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AI is finally good at stuff, and that’s a problem

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By Rebecca Heilweil

Here’s why you’ve been hearing so much about ChatGPT.

A few weeks ago, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick told his MBA students to play around with GPT, an artificial intelligence model, and see if the technology could write an essay based on one of the topics discussed in his course. The assignment was, admittedly, mostly a gimmick meant to illustrate the power of the technology. Still, the algorithmically generated essays — although not perfect and a tad over-reliant on the passive voice — were at least reasonable, Mollick recalled. They also passed another critical test: a screening by Turnitin, a popular anti-plagiarism software. AI, it seems, had suddenly gotten pretty good.

It certainly feels that way right now. Over the past week or so, screenshots of conversations with ChatGPT, the newest iteration of the AI model developed by the research firm OpenAI, have gone viral on social media. People have directed the tool, which is freely available online, to make jokes, write TV episodes, compose music, and even debug computer code — all things I got the AI to do, too. More than a million people have now played around with the AI, and even though it doesn’t always tell the truth or make sense, it’s still a pretty good writer and an even more confident bullshitter. Along with the recent updates to DALL-E, OpenAI’s art-generation software, and Lensa AI, a controversial platform that can produce digital portraits with the help of machine learning, GPT is a stark wakeup call that artificial intelligence is starting to rival human ability, at least for some things.

“I think that things have changed very dramatically,” Mollick told Recode. “And I think it’s just a matter of time for people to notice.”

If you’re not convinced, you can try it yourself here. The system works like any online chatbot, and you can simply type out and submit any question or prompt you want the AI to address.

How does GPT even work? At its core, the technology is based on a type of artificial intelligence called a language model, a prediction system that essentially guesses what it should write, based on previous texts it has processed. GPT was built by training its AI with an extraordinarily large amount of data, much of which comes from the vast supply of data on the internet, along with billions of dollars, including initial funding from several prominent tech billionaires, including Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel. ChatGPT was also trained on examples of back-and-forth human conversation, which helps it make its dialogue sound a lot more human, as a blog post published by OpenAI explains.

OpenAI is trying to commercialize its technology, but this current release is supposed to allow the public to test it. The company made headlines two years ago when it released GPT-3, an iteration of the tech that could produce poems, role-play, and answer some questions. This newest version of the technology is GPT-3.5, and ChatGPT, its corresponding chatbot, is even better at text generation than its predecessor. It’s also pretty good at following instructions, like, “Write a Frog and Toad short story where Frog invests in mortgage-backed securities.” (The story ends with Toad following Frog’s advice and investing in mortgage-backed securities, concluding that “sometimes taking a little risk can pay off in the end”).

The technology certainly has its flaws. While the system is theoretically designed not to cross some moral red lines — it’s adamant that Hitler was bad — it’s not difficult to trick the AI into sharing advice on how to engage in all sorts of evil and nefarious activities, particularly if you tell the chatbot that it’s writing fiction. The system, like other AI models, can also say biased and offensive things. As my colleague Sigal Samuel has explained, an earlier version of GPT generated extremely Islamophobic content, and also produced some pretty concerning talking points about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China.

Both GPT’s impressive capabilities and its limitations reflect the fact that the technology operates like a version of Google’s smart compose writing suggestions, generating ideas based on what it has read and processed before. For this reason, the AI can sound extremely confident while not displaying a particularly deep understanding of the subject it’s writing about. This is also why it’s easier for GPT to write about commonly discussed topics, like a Shakespeare play or the importance of mitochondria.

“It wants to produce texts that it deemed to be likely, given everything that it has seen before,” explains Vincent Conitzer, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon. “Maybe it sounds a little bit generic at times, but it writes very clearly. It will probably rehash points that have often been made on that particular topic because it has, in effect, learned what kinds of things people say.”

So for now, we’re not dealing with an all-knowing bot. Answers provided by the AI were recently banned from the coding feedback platform StackOverflow because they were very likely to be incorrect. The chatbot is also easily tripped up by riddles (though its attempts to answer are extremely funny). Overall, the system is perfectly comfortable making stuff up, which obviously makes no sense upon human scrutiny. These limitations might be comforting to people worried that the AI could take their jobs, or eventually pose a safety threat to humans.

But AI is getting better and better, and even this current version of GPT can already do extremely well at certain tasks. Consider Mollick’s assignment. While the system certainly wasn’t good enough to earn an A, it still did pretty well. One Twitter user said that, on a mock SAT exam, ChatGPT scored around the 52 percentile of test takers. Kris Jordan, a computer science professor at UNC, told Recode that when he assigned GPT his final exam, the chatbot received a perfect grade, far better than the median score for the humans taking his course. And yes, even before ChatGPT went live, students were using all sorts of artificial intelligence, including earlier versions of GPT, to complete their assignments. And they’re probably not getting flagged for cheating. (Turnitin, the anti-plagiarism software maker, did not respond to multiple requests for comment).

Right now, it’s not clear how many enterprising students might start using GPT, or if teachers and professors will figure out a way to catch them. Still, these forms of AI are already forcing us to wrestle with what kinds of things we want humans to continue to do, and what we’d prefer to have technology figure out instead.

“My eighth grade math teacher told me not to rely on a calculator since I won’t have one in my pocket all the time when I grow up,” Phillip Dawson, an expert who studies exam cheating at Deakin University, told Recode. “We all know how that turned out.

Feature Image Credit: Carol Yepes

By Rebecca Heilweil

Rebecca Heilweil is a reporter at Vox covering emerging technology, artificial intelligence, and the supply chain.

Sourced from Vox

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The Future Of AI Is Finally Here – And A Lot Of People Are Going To Be Out Of A Job

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By Bryce Hoffman

For years, folks have been talking about the coming AI revolution, about how it’s going to change everything, and about how it is going to cost a lot of people their jobs.

Well, the future is now – and if you are a business leader, you need to start dealing with it today. But don’t take my word for it:

The AI revolution is transforming industries and organizations around the world. As a business leader, it’s important to understand the potential of AI and how it can be used to drive business growth and success. This means staying up to date on the latest developments in the field and learning about the potential applications of AI in your industry. It also means being proactive in incorporating AI into your business, whether through the adoption of new technologies or the development of internal AI capabilities. Finally, it’s important to consider the ethical implications of AI and to ensure that your use of the technology is responsible and aligned with your company’s values.

That passage was written by Open AI’s ChatGPT, a free research AI model that was opened to public last week. It was a response to my question, “What do business leaders need to know about AI?” and it took less than 10 seconds to generate.

It is also completely accurate.

So was its response to my request to write a blog post on the state of Agile in 2022. In less than 20 seconds, the AI generated a 453-word article that was 100% grammatically correct, cogent, and offered valuable insights – explaining that agile has moved beyond the domain of software development where it was born to drive broader business transformations while at the same time warning that those efforts often fail when not coupled to a culture that fosters collaboration and open communications between departments and functions.

That could put a lot of content creators out of a job, but bloggers are not the only ones who need to worry.

Last week, marketeer Zain Kahn asked the AI to perform the same series of tasks that an employee at a marketing firm might be asked to undertake for a client: create an SEO strategy for a website, develop a list of target keywords, write a content strategy for the website, develop 10 blog ideas, then write one of those blogs itself. He even asked the AI to create metadata and simple code for the website to optimize it for bilingual search.

Then he rated its performance.

“I’d rank it as a 5/10. The equivalent of an SEO marketer with 1-2 years of experience earning around $50k/year. Not excellent, but definitely more competent than an SEO intern,” Kahn wrote on Twitter. “All of this took me 5 minutes. In the real world, all of this would probably take at least 5-10 hours.”

In response, one witty marketer posted a revised version of his resume listing his only skill as “chatbot query writer.”

What else is this going to disrupt?

  • Search engines: Why go to the trouble of googling a topic, then clicking on a website to find the answer you’re looking for when you can just pose your question directly to the AI and get a comprehensive answer? I asked it who the greatest American general of World War II was and was told that Eisenhower, Patton, and MacArthur were all compelling candidates for that title, explaining the relative merits each commander.
  • Education: I am sure some fast-thinking (but otherwise lazy) students have already used ChatGPT to write their homework papers for them. I asked it to compose an 800-word paper on the key themes in the novel Of Mice and Men and it promptly produced an original essay discussing the American Dream, loneliness, and the bond between George and Lennie. How would a teacher or professor prove I hadn’t written it myself?
  • Consulting: Why hire Bain when you can type in “develop a business strategy to grow retail sales of diapers in India” to an AI and, in less than 30 seconds, get back a pretty comprehensive plan to “focus on increasing brand awareness, building customer loyalty, expanding the company’s distribution network, and developing a range of products that are tailored to the specific needs of the Indian market” while at the same time pursuing partnerships with local charities to provide free diapers to poor families with a portion of the revenue generated from sales to middle-class consumers. Obviously, there is a lot more to a good business strategy than that, but not as much as consultants would like you to think.

Is it any wonder then that more than a million people signed up to use this experimental AI last week?

Every leader should be asking themselves what this means for the future of their business.

So should songwriters. Before logging off, I asked ChatGPT to compose a rap song in the style of Eminem about how hard it is to write a good Forbes column:

Verse 1:

I sit down at my desk, ready to write

But the words just won’t come, no matter how hard I try

I’m trying to make this Forbes column the best it can be

But my mind is blank, and I’m starting to see

Chorus:

The struggle, the struggle to write a good Forbes column

It’s real, it’s tough, and it’s taking its toll on me

But I won’t give up, I’ll keep on fighting

Until I finally get this column right

Verse 2:

I stare at the screen, feeling the pressure

I need to deliver, or my readers will desert me

I know I have the talent, I just need to find the flow

But it’s like my mind is a blank slate, and I don’t know where to go

Chorus:

The struggle, the struggle to write a good Forbes column

It’s real, it’s tough, and it’s taking its toll on me

But I won’t give up, I’ll keep on fighting

Until I finally get this column right

Verse 3:

I keep typing, trying different approaches

But nothing seems to work, and I’m starting to lose hope

But then, out of nowhere, I finally hit my stride

The words start flowing, and I know I’m on the right side

Chorus:

The struggle, the struggle to write a good Forbes column

It’s real, it’s tough, but I finally overcame

I kept on pushing, and now my column is a hit

The struggle was worth it, and I’m feeling like a king

Outro:

The struggle is real, but I never gave up

Now my Forbes column is the talk of the town

I kept pushing, and now I’m on top

The struggle was worth it, and I’m feeling like a king.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Bryce Hoffman

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

I am a bestselling author, speaker and president of Red Team Thinking LLC. I teach organizations and individuals around the world how to see the truth, tell the truth and act on the truth – because I believe it is the lies we tell ourselves that hold us back. My books include Red Teaming: How Your Business Can Conquer the Competition by Challenging Everything and American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company. I also lecture at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

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Omneky uses AI to generate social media ads

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By Romain Dillet

Meet Omneky, a startup that leverages OpenAI’s DALLE-2 and GPT-3 models to generate visuals and text that can be used in ads for social platforms.

The company wants to make online ads both cheaper and more effective thanks to recent innovations in artificial intelligence and computer vision. Omneky is participating in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022.

While many fields have been automated in one way or another, creating ads is still mostly a manual process. It takes a lot of back and forth between a creative team and the person in charge of running online ad campaigns.

Even when you manage to reach a final design, the new ads might not perform as well as expected. You often have to go back to the drawing board to iterate and create more ads.

Omneky aims to simplify all those steps. It starts with a nice software-as-a-service platform that centralizes all things related to your online advertising strategy.

After connecting Omneky with your accounts on Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Snapchat, the platform pulls performance data from your past advertising campaigns. From this analytics dashboard, you can see how much you’re spending, how many clicks you’re getting, the average cost per click and more.

But it gets more interesting once you start diving a bit deeper. Omneky lists your top-performing and worst-performing images and text used in your ads. Customers can click on individual ads to see more details.

Omneky automatically adds tags to each ad using computer vision and text analysis. The result is a dashboard with useful insights, such as the dominant color you should use, the optimal number of people in the ad and some keywords that work well in the tagline.

This data will be used to generate new ads. Customers write a prompt and generate new visuals using DALLE-2. Omneky also helps you with those prompts as it also uses GPT-3 to generate prompts based on top-performing keywords from past campaigns.

Customers then get dozens of different AI-generated images that can be used in online ads. Similarly, Omneky can generate ad copy for the text portion of your ads.

If you have a strong brand identity, Omneky can take this into account. On the platform, customers can upload digital assets and historical ads so that the platform acts as the central repository.

“Customers can upload the brand guidelines, the font, the logo. All of this is integrated into our AI to generate content that is on brand,” Omneky founder and CEO Hikari Senju told me in a call before TechCrunch Disrupt.

Image Credits: Omneky

Of course, some images and text don’t work well for one reason or another. That’s why Omneky doesn’t run any ad campaign without the customer’s approval. Team members can add comments, provide feedback and request approval from the platform directly.

As soon as customers approve a new ad, it is automatically uploaded and displayed on social platforms — Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Snapchat.

After that, you are back to square one. You can track the performance of your new ads from the analytics dashboard, iterate and improve your ad performance.

The company charges a subscription fee that varies depending on the number of integrations with social platforms that you want to use. Omneky’s long-term vision expands beyond advertising.

There’s a lot of data involved with online ads, that’s why it’s easy to automate some of the steps needed to run an online ad campaign. But the startup thinks it could apply the same methodology to other products, such as AI-generated landing pages.

If you extrapolate even more, it’s clear that AI-generated content will cause a revolution in the martech and adtech industries — and Omneky plans to participate in that revolution.

Feature Image Credit: Omneky

By Romain Dillet

@romaindillet

Sourced from TechCrunch

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Land your dream job with this AI-assisted resumé writing tool

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If you’re currently looking for a job, there’s a lot you need to get in place, from your video interview space to the tools you need to do the job. But perhaps the most useful document you need to prepare to attract recruiters and hiring managers is a resumé. Take a task off your list with a lifetime subscription to the Complete Resoume AI Assistant Resumé Writer.

Let AI write your resumé

Enjoying 4.7 out of five stars on AppSumo and a No. 1 Product of the Day award on Product Hunt, Resoume ensures you’re writing an industry-standard CV every time. It starts by importing and collating the data from your LinkedIn profile, which helps you keep your message consistent and save you from copying and pasting.

Then, use one of 20 templates, and get pointers from the resumé feedback page before you submit. Resoume can be used from anywhere, so if you meet a contact in person, you can write, customize and send a CV straight from your iPhone.

From there, the AI designs your resumé to be friendly to applicant-tracking systems and your personal brand, with customizable themes, fonts and more. It also uses the resumé to write an effective cover letter. (All you need to do is tweak the letter with personal touches.) All documents are easily shared online and can be downloaded as PDFs, so you’ll never have to worry about having enough copies.

In addition to a strong resumé, Resoume offers a suite of tools to support your achievements. A portfolio-building tool helps you quickly assemble your best work for sharing both in documentation and on job sites. Resoume also offers website creation features to help you create a crisp, focused applicant profile. Actionable analytics show you how many views you’re getting and how to refine your presentation and targeted industry for better results.

Save on a Complete Resoume AI Assistant Resumé Writer: Lifetime Subscription

An effective job search starts with an effective resumé. A lifetime subscription to the Complete Resoume AI Assistant Resumé Writer gives you AI-powered job search tools for $39.99 (regularly $600).

Prices subject to change.

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One of the World’s Biggest Booze Companies Wants to Use AI to Recommend Your Next Whisky

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By Jonah Flicker

Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the algorithm.

You know how your Instagram feed starts sending you ads for khakis the minute you think about how you need a new pair of pants? Well, spirits giant Diageo is further immersing itself in the world of tech that knows what you want before you know what you want with the acquisition of flavour matching company Vivanda.

While not quite as nefarious sounding as the real life blocking or memory recall of a Black Mirror episode, this is indeed a look at what the future may hold for whisky consumers. Diageo has actually been using Vivanda’s technology since 2019 in several markets, including the “Journey of Flavour” experience at Johnnie Walker Princes Street in Edinburgh, as well as stores, ecommerce channels and the website Malts.com. It’s also the foundation of the “What’s Your Whisky” website, which works like this: Vivanda’s “FlavorPrint” system is powered by artificial intelligence, and by asking you a series of questions it’s able to map out your individual flavour preferences and suggest which whisky you should try based on your specific “Flavour Print.” Once you get your results, you are able to click to purchase a bottle of Talisker or Lagavulin or Oban, depending on your results.

Diageo plans to expand the use of Vivanda’s technology to other categories within its sizable portfolio, as well as using it to support “the continued development of our advanced analytics and digital marketing capabilities” to provide better understanding of just exactly what it is you like to drink, according to a press release. “We know consumers are looking for more personalized, interactive experiences and that they are increasingly engaging with our brands digitally as well as in person,” said Diageo chief marketing officer Cristina Diezhandino in a prepared statement. “We’re delighted to welcome Vivanda to Diageo and we are looking forward to working together to connect with consumers in more innovative ways that help shape the future of how we socialize in person and virtually.” So far the whisky has not become sentient and experienced its first sensation of love, but we are still in early days.

Feature Image Credit: Charl Folscher/Unsplash

By Jonah Flicker

Sourced from Robb Report

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Turning point for artificial intelligence: Will the large cloud providers dominate?

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Could the tech giants take control of the AI narrative and reduce choices for enterprises? Experts weighed the pros and cons in a recent online conference.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning requires huge amounts of processing capacity and data storage, making the cloud the preferred option. That raises the specter of a few cloud giants dominating AI applications and platforms. Could the tech giants take control of the AI narrative and reduce choices for enterprises?

Not necessarily, but with some caveats, AI experts emphasize. But the large cloud providers are definitely in a position to control the AI narrative from several perspectives.

That’s part of the consensus raised at a recent webcast hosted by New York University Center for the Future of Management and LMU institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization, joined by Daron Acemoglu, professor at MIT; Jacques Bughin, professor at the Solvay School of Economics and Management; and Raffaella Sadun, professor at Harvard Business School.

There’s more to AI than cloud. The complexity and diversity of AI applications go well beyond the cloud environments where they are run — and therefore reduce the dominance of a few cloud giants.

Certainly, “AI will require more capacity in storage, of the information flow,” says Bughin. At the same time, “cloud is only one part of the total pie of the platform. It’s part of infrastructure, but the platform layer is what you develop in house and through a third party. This integration is going to be hybrid, even more important than the cloud itself. Let’s be very clear, it’s not about operation, it’s a lot of algorithms, it’s a lot of different data, that integration piece, that will require system integration, architecture and design. That means that different types of firms will be involved in that work.”

What Bughin worries about more is the innovation potential from AI startups that may be squashed by larger players gobbling up smaller companies and startups through mergers and acquisitions. “Companies like the big internet or AI guys are going and buying a lot of very small and very clever AI firms.”

At the same time, Sadun points out that smaller companies may be in a better position to leverage AI innovations — but need help with training and education to prepare them. “This issue of who benefits from AI is really important,” she says. “On the one hand, we might think the smaller firms may be able to use these technologies more effectively, because they are more nimble, more agile. Companies that have already digital can exploit and scale AI.”

Where the large cloud providers may also make their dominance felt is in the monopolization of the data that feeds AI systems, says Acemoglu. Cloud architecture itself can be based on price-sensitive and competitive cloud services, he explains. “But the cloud architecture will not enable you to exploit data. The area, where I worry about the future of AI technologies are those that enable firms to monopolize data. That’s where firms have an oversized effect on the future direction of technology. That means a few people in a boardroom are going to determine where a technology’s going to go. We want more people focused and people-centric AI. That’s not going to be possible if a few firms that have a different business model dominate the future of technology. ”

The value of an AI-driven enterprise “does not reside in the cloud that enables it,” Bughin believes. “I think there’s enough of competition for the price point not to destroy the value. The value will come from the fact that you have integrated these technologies where you work, and the way your company works, in your own back end. The back end is not going to be the battlefield. The value is from generating productivity and revenue, at a rate faster than what we’ve seen in traditional digital transformations.”

And, for the first time, we see the terms traditional and digital transformation used together in the same sentence. As these thought leaders relate, such transformations are moving to the next phase, enabling autonomous, software-driven operations and innovation through AI. It’s a question of whether large tech vendors control the momentum, or if it remains a market and practice with a diversity of choices. Stay tuned.

Feature Image Credit: Joe McKendrick

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How AI adds value to crisis communications systems

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By Paul Kirvan

AI provides key enhancements to existing emergency notifications systems that can reduce the amount of time a business needs to effectively prepare for and respond to a crisis.

Crisis communications have come a long way from call trees and text chains. Today’s emergency notification systems and cloud-based notification services are far more effective than relying on employees to call each other.

However, these developments have not made crisis communications foolproof. For example, if emergency messages never reach their intended recipients, the sender might not get a notification of the message delivery failure. If a reply message is not generated, an organization’s emergency teams could be facing an incident that escalates into a full-blown crisis due to the lack of clear communication.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are highly proficient in capturing a wide variety of data inputs and then making predictions and emergency recommendations. Organizations can use these technologies for identification and classification of emergency tasks, as well as to provide communications and intelligence at the right time and to the right people. AI has a role to play in the future of crisis communications, and it’s only just getting started.

What does AI bring to the table?

AI and ML can provide additional value to emergency notification system (ENS) technology. Today, ENSes are generally programmed to disseminate a variety of message types, such as email, text and SMS, to preset lists of individuals. While some more traditional systems can request replies from message recipients, AI-enhanced systems can do that and more.

AI crisis communications systems can use multiple channels of information to provide value to emergency message delivery. These channels can include weather forecast data or drone-generated video, among others. An AI-enabled ENS, for example, can take weather data generated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and translate it into forecast data that can then be formatted into a series of alert messages helping people to prepare for an impending hurricane or other severe weather.

Another example of AI-enhanced crisis communications is using the system to ask specific questions about a situation, such as the likelihood of tornadoes or other natural disasters forming. The system can examine multiple resources to provide message recommendations and other analyses.

Inclusion of AI and ML technology is increasingly found in ENS offerings from traditional vendors as well as messaging system vendors. It is up to the user to determine which AI-enabled capabilities will be best suited to the organization and how it will add value to corporate ENS requirements. Non-AI systems will still provide rapid dissemination of emergency messages, and many can support reply messages, so at that point the added edge — and expense — of AI becomes a business decision.

AI-enhanced vs. traditional ENS

Earlier ENS technology was largely on site, with a server designated to provide ENS functions connected to either landlines from the local telephone company or via the internet to deliver messages. Figure 1 depicts how a traditional premises-based ENS uses the internet to deliver messages.

Diagram of a non-hosted ENS
Figure 1. A non-hosted emergency notification system.

By contrast, today’s systems are often hosted by a specialized ENS vendor, with the technology in the cloud. All resources are located with the vendor, and access is as simple as using a laptop or smartphone. Figure 2 depicts a hosted ENS configuration. Users are completely dependent on the ENS vendor to deliver emergency messages when the system launches.

Diagram of a hosted ENS
Figure 2. A hosted emergency notification system.

When AI and ML are in the mix, the configuration is largely unchanged except for the added capabilities of the ENS when AI and ML are implemented. Figure 3 shows a possible configuration of an AI-enabled, cloud-based ENS.

Diagram of an AI- and ML-enabled ENS
Figure 3. An AI- and ML-enabled emergency notification system.

Traditional ENS message delivery and reply features are enabled, and AI capabilities add value by using a variety of other resources.

Market options and pricing

Prices for standalone crisis communications systems can range from under $5,000 to well over $200,000.

Managed ENS offerings usually require payment of a monthly fee for the service. This is typically based on the number of contacts in the database, the features being used and the network transport services that deliver the messages. There can also be activation fees when the system is used in a disaster, and some systems will have setup fees. Monthly fees can range from under $500 to over $25,000, depending on the system configuration.

Hosted ENS tools require no physical space for equipment, there are minimal or no upfront installation fees, and customers can discontinue service with minimal technical effect on the organization. The inclusion of AI features will vary by vendor, and organizations should carefully research all options before making a buying decision.

Organizations that already use emergency notification systems will need to evaluate the added value versus the cost to upgrade their existing tool to an AI-enabled one. For example, an existing system might not be upgradeable to one with AI, and a replacement would be needed.

There are several crisis communications vendors that offer AI- or ML-enabled platforms and products. Vendor options in this market include the following:

  • Omnilert started as the developer of a campus emergency communications system. Current hosted products use AI to detect, analyze and visualize emergency situations through intelligent data capture and analysis, and the products offer an easy-to-use interface. Omnilert offers a free trial; check with the vendor for more pricing information.
  • Quiq provides an AI-enabled messaging platform that businesses can adapt to different situations, such as customer order placement and customer service inquiries. Although ENS is not specifically listed as an application, the Quiq platform is easily adaptable to crisis communications applications. Pricing begins at $12,000 per year.
  • OnSolve offers a variety of hosted ENS tools. It also has an AI engine to provide emergency intelligence that businesses can use for decision-making. Pricing ranges from a basic system for under $2,000 to more complex systems with a variety of pricing plans.
  • Everbridge offers numerous ENS options for many different applications and uses AI functionality to analyse data from multiple sources to provide intelligence for emergency management. The company offers on-site as well as managed emergency notification services, with fixed and monthly pricing plans.

By Paul Kirvan

Sourced from TechTarget

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AI can predict risk of a heart attack in the next year from a routine eye scan

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By Jeanna Vazquez

An artificial intelligence system is capable of spotting whether someone will have a heart attack within the next year — through a routine eye scan.

A team from the University of Leeds believes this AI tool opens the door to a cheap and simple screening program for the world’s No. 1 killer. Their tests find the computer can predict patients at risk of a heart attack in the next 12 months with up to 80% accuracy. The breakthrough adds to evidence that our eyes are not just “windows to the soul,” but windows to overall health as well.

“Cardiovascular diseases, including heart attacks, are the leading cause of early death worldwide and the second-largest killer in the UK. This causes chronic ill-health and misery worldwide,” project supervisor Professor Alex Frangi says in a university release.

“This technique opens-up the possibility of revolutionizing the screening of cardiac disease. Retinal scans are comparatively cheap and routinely used in many optician practices. As a result of automated screening, patients who are at high risk of becoming ill could be referred for specialist cardiac services,” Frangi adds.

Looking at the retina to discover red flags in the heart

The retina is a small membrane at the back of the eye containing light sensitive cells. Doctors have found that changes to the tiny blood vessels can hint at vascular disease, including heart problems.

Study authors used an advanced type of AI, known as deep learning, to teach the machine to automatically read more than 5,000 eye scans. The scans come from routine eye tests during visits to opticians or eye clinics. All of the participants are part of the UK Biobank, which tracks the health of half a million adults.

“The system could also be used to track early signs of heart disease.”

Deep learning is a complex series of algorithms that enable machines to make forecasts based on patterns in data. The technique, described in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, could revolutionize heart therapy, according to the researchers.

“The AI system has the potential to identify individuals attending routine eye screening who are at higher future risk of cardiovascular disease, whereby preventative treatments could be started earlier to prevent premature cardiovascular disease,” says co-author Professor Chris Gale, a consultant cardiologist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

The study identified associations between pathology in the retina and changes in the patient’s heart. Once the system learned each image pattern, the AI could estimate the size and pumping efficiency of the left ventricle from retinal scans alone.

This is one of the heart’s four chambers. An enlarged ventricle can increase the risk of heart disease. The computer combined the estimated size of the left ventricle and its pumping efficiency with data like age and sex.

The eyes are revealing a lot about disease and death

Currently, doctors determine this information using an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) or echocardiography scans of the heart. The diagnostic tests are expensive and are often only available in a hospital. The tests can be inaccessible for many people in countries with lesser health care systems. They also increase health care costs and waiting times in wealthy nations.

“The AI system is an excellent tool for unravelling the complex patterns that exist in nature, and that is what we have found – the intricate pattern of changes in the retina linked to changes in the heart,” adds co-author Sven Plein of the British Heart Foundation.

A recent study discovered a similar link between biological aging of the retina and mortality. Those with a retina “older” than their actual age were up to 67% more likely to die over the next decade.

Feature Image: Their tests find the computer can predict patients at risk of a heart attack in the next 12 months with up to 80% accuracy. (CREDIT: Getty Images)

By Jeanna Vazquez

Sourced from Brighter Side of News

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