The New York Times pens a weeklong series that centers around teaching their audience what A.I. is. They dive into industry terms, how the technology works, current applications, and - what everyone seems to be hyper-focused on - the potential risks and where we’re headed. 

• Monday:  How to Become an Expert on A.I. 
• Tuesday: How Does ChatGPT Really Work? 
• Wednesday: What Makes AI Chatbots Go Wrong?
• Thursday: How Should I Use A.I. Chatbots Like ChatGPT?
• Friday: Where are they headed?

As authors Kevin Roose and Cade Metz say, 

“ChatGPT and other chatbots are now poised to change our everyday lives in dramatic ways.”

Our A.I. has already made incredible changes for our clients - from increasing containment and resolution rates to handling the overwhelming majority of customer inquiries to saving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of third-party costs. The benefits are endless and we are in the business of driving results for our clients and their customers while empowering them to do so.  

The Process 

When it comes to setting up an L.L.M. (Large Language Learning Model), both Roose and Metz detail guidelines that are pretty straightforward: 

1. Set a Goal 
2. Collect Data 
3. Build a Neural Network 
4. Train Your Neural Network 
5. Fine-Tune Your Model 
6. Launch, Carefully 
   

On Setting a Goal: Our goal at Posh has always been purpose-driven for financial institutions. As a CUSO, the core of the company is about solving the pain points of financial industry call centers. Being purpose-driven ensures that we remain dedicated to solving the specific issues that have been raised to us by our CU and financial industry partners. Rather than attempt to accelerate our development and implementation of AI across multiple products and services, we choose to remain specialized which sets a better standard of service against other providers whose goals can be as vague as wanting to deploy solutions for the sake of advancement. 

On Launching Carefully: Caution is always advised when it comes to building or implementing L.L.M.’s and Conversational AI, not specifically because of ethical concerns but because the technology, despite having exploded recently, is still relatively new. The applications for it are proven, yet still unknown, which makes it incredibly important for AI providers and companies to build and expand AI with caution. This is precisely why Posh operates with guardrails in place when helping clients assess proper AI integration in a way that’s right for them. We invest heavily into our technology to ensure production-level readiness for our technology and provide a consultative approach for our clients to create the best experience for their users. 

Where A.I. is Going? 

In the short term, A.I. has already made its mark for writing - from poetry to code - and will continue to be better at automating the day-to-day. The long term is where the path goes from foreseeable to unpredictable, which is often met with apprehension and fear. It’s important to remember that the caution surrounding it is often overshadowed by the uncertainty, which until we can understand the path that A.I. is going - it stands to be said that those feelings can be tempered. 

What the industry at large, can, and should focus on, is finding a balance between further automating and adding more convenience to our everyday lives while also allowing humans to do the things they are good at. 

Companies should strive to keep this in mind and prospective customers should be wary of those that are attempting to join the game for the sake of it, rather than for a purpose. 

The Bottom Line 

Adam: How do you balance the excitement out there with caution about where this could go?

Cade: A.I. is not as powerful as it might seem. If you take a step back, you realize that these systems can’t duplicate our common sense or reasoning in full. Remember the hype around self-driving cars: Were those cars impressive? Yes, remarkably so. Were they ready to replace human drivers? Not by a long shot.

A.I. is poised to change the world in big and small ways - we’ve seen so much of the change happen during the day-to-day across all industries. The bottom line is, while there is still so much the world does not understand about A.I., there is also so much that we do know. 

We know that it can help eliminate the stress of antiquated, mundane tasks and free up humans to spend more time doing what they are meant to be doing. We are also certain that A.I. can lead to higher rates of efficiency, especially for companies that may not always be able to afford greater access to big tech. However, A.I. is still developing, so while companies can claim to be experts, it’s important to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, if there even is a solution at all. 

With all of this change on the forefront and already in the past, it is imperative that companies should seek a partner that already has the knowledge and expertise of A.I. under their belt. 

The A.I. frontier is still developing despite key cornerstones popping up along the way.  If a company is going to join the space, it’s best to do so with an established level of preparedness. 

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