AI is here, are you ready for it?

We’ve all seen it in the news recently, as development into Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Chat GPT has been used to cheat in schools and threaten industries by making it easier than ever for a computer-generated response to be good enough to not only pass the Turing test but in some cases improve on the original works.

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Large Language Models (LLMs) are computer programs that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand and generate human-like language. These models are trained on vast amounts of text data to learn patterns and relationships between words and phrases, allowing them to generate coherent and contextually relevant responses to text prompts. LLMs have been used in various applications, including language translation, chatbots, and content creation. Their development and improvement have advanced the capabilities of AI and have the potential to revolutionise the way we interact with computers and information.

Now, you may have been asking yourself, if LLMs have so much ability to replace menial tasks and even act as your own personal assistant, at what stage will you be able to automate/offload some of your own work?

Well, the answer may be closer than you think. Microsoft has recently announced its new utility within the Office 365 realm called Microsoft Co-Pilot. This is a new tool that will give you the power of LLMs in your day-to-day operations with its extensive tie-in to the Office applications.

Do you have a routine task of going through large cumbersome spreadsheets with raw data such as sales reports? With a click of a button, Co-Pilot will analyse the entire document, and once it's done, you will be able to ask it questions such as "What was our best-selling product this year?" and "What do you think influenced the trend recently?" It will provide you with the answer based on your data, such as "The uptick was mostly people subscribing to the newsletter as they led to more sales."

Now that you have the analysed data, what can you do with it? Well, Co-Pilot can generate reports/presentations based on the dataset and its analysis. What could have taken days before to complete manually will now be possible in a matter of minutes via the power of Co-Pilot.

Had a nice week away from work and come back to a mountain of emails you need to sift through? No problem! Have Co-Pilot triage your inbox, allowing you to respond to the most important ones first. It will also draft email responses for you, with the ability for it to pull information out of your spreadsheets and other documents.

Have you ever run late to a Teams meeting and not been caught up with what has been discussed? We’ll let Co-Pilot help you! Simply ask it to catch you up! It will also know based on your previous meetings and your role within the business what information is relevant specifically to you.

With the development into LLMs, where does this leave you and your job with rapid development of LLMs happening all the time, trying to predict the future of AI and how we integrate it into our lives is virtually impossible. Microsoft are pivoting Co-Pilot to be an aid to your role rather than a direct replacement. As with anything, it isn't perfect and has been known to fail successfully (provide you with an answer that is completely wrong), so vetting and a level of quality control is always recommended when working with LLMs.

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As the way we are working is changing, implementing AI based tools to increase efficiency can also come with risks, if you would like to look at the best options for you and your team of making use of AI in your workflows our team of experts can go find the best solution for you going forward.

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To demonstrate the true power of LLM’s, one of the paragraphs within this blog post was written by chat GPT. Can you figure out which one it is?