CIO OPINION
This is a sound approach . What about the rest of us ? Businesses have a responsibility to serve their shareholders , but also their customers and society more broadly . Treading a thoughtful line in the release of AI functionality to the market requires regular consideration of the benefits and potential risks .
EU and ethical AI
It is crucial for business leaders to support the notion of good corporate citizenship in how they serve customers and develop products . Regulation will play a massive role . It appears as though EU lawmakers have concluded marathon discussions to put in place a regulatory framework for AI .
The framework will probably maintain a list of all AI models deemed to pose a systemic risk , and providers of general-purpose AI will be required to publish summaries of their algorithms and the content used to train them . The EU is leading the global regulatory response to AI and could become the blueprint which other governments may follow .
AI and African businesses
The question , then , becomes : What does any of this mean for businesses who wish to leverage the power of AI to improve their business processes and customer service ? As a point of departure , it is interesting to read the views of Kevin Scott , Microsoft CTO , referring to Microsoft ’ s AI tool for its Office suite , in an article in the New Yorker .
“ The Office Copilots seem simultaneously impressive and banal . They make mundane tasks easier , but they are a long way from replacing human workers . They feel like a far cry from what was foretold by Sci-Fi novels . But they also feel like something that people might use every day .”
On the other hand , we already know that AI does not understand context the way humans do . It does not understand nuance , hope or fear . If we allow AI to have unfettered access to run business activities , it will miss things , and that is where customer trust will be damaged . In fact , the term AI hallucination refers to instances where AI tools identify patterns in the data which are actually non-existent or nonsensical .
There are practical ways this can be addressed over and above regulation . Businesses can restrict chatbot scope to simpler questions , and the routing of complex or nuanced business functions to humans .
Giving users more control is also important . Businesses can do this by offering users control over their data and the extent to which AI is used in their interactions , and by allowing users to easily opt in or opt out of AI-driven features .
The article goes on to say that if Scott , Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Chat GPT CTO Mira Murati get their way , then AI will continue to steadily seep into our lives , at a pace gradual enough to accommodate the cautions required by short-term pessimism , and only as fast as humans are able to absorb how this technology ought to be used .
When AI practitioners are building and training models , they would do well to record and selectively audit AI recommendations , and use this to refine their models . Responsible businesses , meanwhile , should communicate clearly to customers how AI is being used in their products or services in a way that is understandable to non-technical users .
There remains the possibility that things will get out of hand , and that the incremental creep of AI will prevent us from realising those dangers until it is too late . But , for now , Scott and Murati feel confident that they can balance advancement and safety .
GhostDraft , launched in Cape Town in 1984 , was one of the pioneers of the document automation industry . It has evolved today into an agile cloud-based solution that delivers advanced customer communications management , CCM capabilities . p
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