Artificial intelligence (AI) quickly transformed from a sci-fi movie concept to a real-life accessible tool that's taken the world by storm. From professional capabilities to individual uses, AI programs offer productivity and efficiency benefits by simplifying everyday tasks. While it's increasingly integrated into business and personal operations, AI still holds a mystique that leaves people's questions unanswered and concerns unaddressed. Here are answers to 8 common questions about AI programs that can help you better understand their origins, capabilities, and hazards.
1. What is AI?
AI is when a machine, computer, or program successfully creates output that resembles human intelligence processes. While it resembles a person's thought processes, AI is not self-aware or capable of operating without human input. Most options available for personal and professional use are generative AI programs built on Large Language Models (LLMs), systems trained to examine vast amounts of data that are pre-loaded or accessed through the internet. These LLMs then generate unique answers based on their assessments, earning the qualification as generative AI.
Depending on their specializations, AI programs can process and create:
- Text
- Images
- Sounds
- Videos
2. What are some of the leading AI companies?
With the incredibly well-received release of ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI quickly became a prominent AI developer that most people then considered a leading provider. ChatGPT's enhancements, from image generation through DALL-E to video generation through Sora, continued to boost the company's prevalence and expose more people to the benefits of AI. While OpenAI was one of the first significant AI breakthroughs, it was quickly joined by other major companies.
Microsoft developed Copilot, its own AI program built with ChatGPT components, in different configurations that provide varying benefits. The online version of Copilot can be accessed on any web browser, and it has a built-in version for Microsoft Edge and Bing. Copilot for Microsoft 365 takes its AI capabilities to a whole new level, with the program capable of referencing your information within programs like Outlook and Word to further boost your productivity without compromising security.
Other companies that offer popular AI options include:
3. Is AI safe to use?
Because most companies that develop AI have well-established ethical standards, their AI programs are generally safe to use. You can check each program's privacy policy to ensure you understand how they process and store your data. Despite the overall secure nature of these programs, it's essential to follow basic precautions while using them. AI programs often retain the information you include in your input, so you should never share personally identifiable, proprietary, or confidential information.
4. Is AI always right?
Just like no human is perfect, a consistently correct AI program has yet to exist. AI can experience "hallucinations," resulting in outputs that either make no sense or are false. These AI programs can make odd connections and generate false outputs based on incorrect assessments. Additionally, AI can provide made-up responses to questions it can't answer. These inaccuracies are few and far between but entirely possible, so most programs include a disclaimer that important information should be double-checked before use.
5. How should I talk to AI?
Most programs are built in chat-like formats, so the natural way to work with AI is through text or speech conversations. Much like conversing with a person, the way you prompt an AI program can directly influence the results you get. Simple requests are often met with simple answers, while messages with context about your situation get more detailed explanations. One of Microsoft Copilot's designers even emphasized how using a polite tone with AI helps generate respectful, more collaborative outputs.
6. Are there ways to customize an AI program?
While many AI options offer a wide selection of uses, they go even further by providing specialized programs with heightened capabilities. With upgraded plans, providers like OpenAI and Anthropic offer paid plans that grant access to customizable AI options. ChatGPT allows you to access custom GPTs made by other users, focusing on writing, research, lifestyle, and other specialties. Anthropic's Claude and ChatGPT offer even further customizations where their AI programs can operate based on a foundational context of your uploaded writing, code, or file samples.
7. What are some of the best ways to use AI?
With AI tools like Copilot at your fingertips, being more productive, creative, and efficient at work is easier than you think. AI can automate time-consuming tasks, from summarizing long reports or email chains to helping you prepare for your next meeting, giving you more time to focus and work on high-priority tasks. If you need help researching a new project or creating an outline for an article, AI can do it in minutes when it usually takes hours.
You can also extend these time-saving, creativity-boosting benefits to your personal life. An AI program enables you to accomplish many everyday tasks and learn new things much faster. AI can help eliminate knowledge barriers, whether you're learning a new language or trying to help your kids with homework, while giving you the context to understand the concepts and solutions.
Some frequent personal applications of AI can include:
- Creating a workout plan to meet your fitness goals
- Planning meals based on the ingredients you have
- Writing a personalized birthday message to friends
- Taking better care of household or garden plants
- Identifying different species of wild animals
8. Will AI replace people?
In movies, AI is often represented as an all-knowing superpower, making it easy to imagine that it can replace people. Because AI programs can automate time-consuming tasks, they even seem capable of eliminating jobs. In reality, these programs were designed to complement a person's input, not substitute it. AI programs are created for a finite number of tasks and need people to function.
With that in mind, it's more likely that people who can maximize AI's benefits will replace those who can't. According to IBM, AI enhances human intelligence, giving those who adopt it an upper hand in their roles. When used optimally, AI can help produce astonishing results for any business operation with a fraction of the time and effort it takes. No matter what role you play in an organization, take time to experiment with AI and see how it can help you.
Want to maximize AI with support from real people?
Figuring out how to start optimizing AI for your business can be challenging, and the questions we covered are just the tip of the iceberg. Between that and supporting your operations, employees, and customers, you may have your hands tied on choosing an AI program that's right for you and implementing it where it's needed most. Whether you're ready to use AI or not, Bit-Wizards is here to help.
With our Managed IT Services (MITS), you can enjoy cost-effective IT support powered by real people who want your business to succeed. Outside of connecting your team to proactive, enterprise-level cybersecurity measures and help desk services, our Wizards can help you identify ways to leverage AI and automations that can improve your efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction.
Want to learn more about AI and how a managed IT provider can help? Get in touch.