For companies where AI is applicable, good and bad

Geekwire recently ran a story from a business person about the positive and negative aspects of using Artificial Intelligence, or AI.

The piece is a "reality check" about AI

The story references how a startup company, and the pressures to develop AI and use it to ship products. Replify is a company that provides AI sales and AI customer service tailored toward health clubs and wellness brands.

The writer, Anna Rodriguez, says AI isn't replacing engineers, its replacing slow engineering. The article says AI can turn some unacceptable timelines into same-day releases.

It can also help accelerate projects and can create prototype products much faster. It's also better at de-bugging, or finding and correcting some problems.

However, where AI still gets it wrong includes:

*It confidently can give wrong answers. Replify says sometimes they get AI answers that their data clearly shows as wrong, and old-fashioned human work is required to fix it.

*AI must be prompted carefully, and end products have to be reviewed.

*AI won't "10X" everything, as Rodriguez wrote, some parts will fly faster, others still require people, judgment and time. But she does say that a tech team of 3 people who are well-trained in AI can compete with a 30-person team, because the tech is that advanced.

Many of you have already run into AI use in some business applications, for example, newer AI-assisted telephone customer service. There is one HVAC business in the region who informs callers that during peak times or after hours, they may be dealing with an AI-guided automated system. The voice sounds VERY human.

This theoretically saves the company by replacing a human, but often results in frustration on the part of the consumer, especially if they have a specific or 'different' question or issue.

We're hearing Amazon hopes to automate 70 percent of it's fulfillment and warehouse tasks with AI robots within 10-15 years. Perhaps that saves them money, but eliminates a lot of jobs.

And attempts to utilize AI in media such as news, information and reporting for radio and TV especially, have met with dismal failure. Less than 18 months ago Gannet Newspapers abandoned using AI for reporting and sports stories after bizarre, incomplete and factually incorrect stories were generated by the technology.