What does the future of AI look like? That is the ultimate question these days. As AI rapidly advances, organizations have to figure out where the puck will be. Whether it’s driving efficiency or developing a more adaptable workforce, it remains to be seen. We asked five tech leaders their thoughts on the future of AI.
Mayuran Yogarajah Head of IX Labs & Distinguished Engineer
The best advice for organizations looking to leverage AI…
Identify a specific area where AI can add value— start small and gradually expand. Generative AI is excellent for automating a variety of tasks, from drafting emails and writing code snippets to summarizing news articles and managing complex workflows. Ensure that your AI initiatives align with your organization’s broader goals and incorporate ethical considerations from the outset.
The AI trends we will see across industries are…I do not expect many new entrants in the space of foundational models. Apple has been quiet about any models they have been working on but have been actively acquiring generative AI startups. They are rumored to have acquired 32 AI startups in 2023. I expect them to announce their generative AI strategy later this year / early next year.
Look for generative AI platforms to slowly overtake Google searches when searching for information. I find myself using Perplexity more than Google when looking up information. Generative AI audio and video will become commonplace. Sora was announced in mid-February with no audio, but OpenAI plans to eventually incorporate audio. I expect the other big models to also offer video and audio in the coming months. How we interact with AI models will evolve. We will see a shift from typing to voice conversations for a more natural and intuitive experience.
The biggest opportunities in the next five years would be…the widespread adoption of generative AI by large enterprises. Since the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022, enterprises have been evaluating and forming their generative AI strategy.
The coming years will see increased adoption as organizations use generative AI to enhance decision-making and automated processes. Another opportunity is the emergence of verticalized AI. These platforms offer deep, industry-specific expertise that caters to the unique nuances and workflows of their sector.
With increasing automation enabled by AI, the top three skills future talent needs
would be…
a) Become AI-literate: Have a general overview of how AI works and its limitations. Get
familiar with tools like ChatGPT and Gemini and embrace new workflows that
incorporate generative AI into your day-to-day work.
b) Prompt Engineering: Spend some time on Prompt Engineering— it can help you get
the most out of AI models by understanding how the models interpret input. This can
help guide the models toward producing accurate and desired outputs.
c) AI Agents: If you have a task that requires multiple interactions with Large Language
Models, an agent can help. Agents can break a task into subtasks, execute, and
consolidate the output to give the result. They are autonomous and dynamic and are
designed to operate without constant human intervention.
The role of humans in AI-powered societies is…Ethical oversight and regulation are key. Humans are essential for setting the goals, values, and direction of AI development, ensuring that AI models align with societal values and enhance societal progress.
Connor Atchison Co-founder & CEO of Wisedocs
The best advice for organizations looking leverage AI is …for organizations entering the AI realm, my top advice is to prioritize talent with industry-specific AI expertise and uphold high data quality standards. In this growing industry with the fast-paced developments of AI use cases, it’s crucial for your team to be highly skilled in the techniques and understanding of the AI industry challenges, but also market dynamics. This insight enables a proactive and strategic positioning to predict how your product, or services will be able to address a foreseeable problem and corner the market. Tailoring your solutions with stringent data quality measures is essential for an effective AI solution implementation to ensure accurate AI model training. Having the synergy of a team that understands the importance of data quality and how your organization can address industry-specific needs will position your organization strongly and drive future innovation.
The AI trends we will see across industries are…I predict that the AI trends we will see most across industries will include increased adoption of Large Language Models (LLM’s), Small Language Models (SLM’s), and Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the rise of AI in decision-making processes. Specifically with NLP advancements, organizations will be empowered to enable higher value interactions between humans and automated technology and facilitate tasks at an organizational level with greater efficiency and ease. Some use cases I’ve seen so far are customer support, content creation, and data extraction, all which led to a stronger bottom line for companies.
Moreover, AI-driven decision-making will become more prevalent across various domains as SLM’s & LLM’s continue to advance. With the adoption of AI and modern technologies, workers across all industries will soon be optimizing their workflow processes and enhancing organizational outcomes, saving time and money along the way. As AI becomes more ubiquitous, there will be a growing emphasis on ensuring ethical AI development across industries, and adoption of this technology, including transparency in algorithms and accountability for AI-generated decisions will become more mainstream and expected. Wisedocs is glad to report we are already ahead on these fronts as obtaining our SOC 2 attestation is of the upmost importance to our organization when it comes to security protocols and protecting our client’s sensitive data.
The biggest opportunities in the next five years would be…I believe the biggest opportunities leveraging AI in the next five years will be in personalized customer experiences and enhanced operational efficiency through automation. AI technologies offer unprecedented capabilities to industry products and services, aiding teams to analyze vast amounts of data and deliver actionable insights in a fraction of the time it would take a human to do so.
With these streamlined processes, AI is enabling businesses to not only provide quicker services, but to also personalize their offerings and all their interactions with customers. Furthermore, automation powered by AI can streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and improve efficiency across various businesses, ultimately leading to cost savings and increased productivity. For example, analysts at McKinsey value the impact of generative AI on the insurance industry at $50-70 billion, a subset of the $1.1 trillion valuation of the AI global market released in 2016. With the rise of this industry comes vast opportunities for players in the claims sector and the Insurtech industry to offer personalized services to claims professionals and their claimants. With Chatbots being just the beginning in a personalized and human-focused claims process, the opportunities for new innovations and offloading manual work are endless.
With the increasing automation enabled by AI, the top three skills future talent needs would be …with the increasing rise of AI-powered automation, the top three skills future talent needs to be successful in my opinion would be adaptability, critical thinking, and data literacy. AI has quickly taken over various domains, and organizations all over are looking to quickly implement its capabilities for different use cases. Being adaptable to the technological changes that are evolving rapidly in the AI-industry and having the foresight to continuously stay updated on their skills and knowledge of the emerging technology will set those apart in the workforce.
Critical thinking skills are also paramount for employees to accurately evaluate and make informed-decisions when it comes to AI-generated technologies and their recommendations. The ability to identify potential biases, limitations or future challenges this technology may pose is a useful skill when adopting data-driven insights.
Lastly, I believe any employee looking to succeed in the AI field should be equipped with data literacy. It’s essential for employees to understand and interpret the data-driven insights provided by AI systems, and the best way to do so and be confident in your abilities is to have the prior knowledge and education to contribute meaningfully to organizational success.
The role of humans in an AI-powered societies is …in the wake of AI-powered societies, we at Wisedocs believe that human expertise remains rather indispensable, not replaceable. With this quickly evolving technology, AI serves as a complementary tool to humans, augmenting human capabilities rather than replacing them.
While AI streamlines processes and enhances efficiency in various industries, it’s important to recognize that it will not replace the nuanced expertise, judgement, and empathy that is inherent in human decision-making processes. Rather than displacing jobs, AI facilitates job growth and efficiency by automating routine tasks, freeing up time for humans to focus on more complex and strategic decision making.
For example, with Wisedocs’ AI solutions, documents can be processed up to 70% faster, allowing those within the claims industry to focus on higher value tasks and speed up the claims resolution process. In AI-powered societies, we believe that human’s expertise will never be replaced, and instead employed to oversee AI operations, interpret the data-driven insights, and ensure ethical decisions leveraging this technology for faster and accurate decision making.
Clark Lai CEO at Motiv
The best advice for organization looking leverage AI is …like most initiatives, to effectively leverage AI, it’s key to start with a clear strategy. Identify and prioritize opportunities based on its value, effort, resources, and risk.
AI thrives on data. Take a hard look at your organization’s data maturity before diving in—avoid putting the cart before the horse. For organizations new to AI, look for quick wins to build confidence and increase adoption within your team. At Motiv, we’ve developed a “Generative AI Maturity Model” which helps guide organizations from basic retrieval and summarization tasks to more complex reasoning and automation solutions.
Finally, don’t underestimate the human side of tech. Change management and training are crucial. Making AI work for your organization isn’t just about the technology; it’s about preparing your people for the journey ahead.
The AI trends we will see across industries are …AI is already enhancing existing horizontal functions like search capabilities, document management, and process automation. Yet, I believe the real game-changer lies in the vertical integration of AI. By leveraging proprietary data and knowledge bases, organizations can develop specialized AI tools and systems. Creating AI solutions that are tailored to the specific needs and challenges of an organization can drive innovation, competitive advantage, and significant value generation.
The biggest opportunities in the next five years would be …in my perspective, the most significant opportunities will be the development of autonomous AI agents and systems powered by large language models (LLMs). These advanced technologies aren’t just about making things faster; it’s about opening up a whole new world of possibilities.
The future of work envisions human teams augmented by and working in tandem with autonomous agents. The integration of autonomous agents will fundamentally transform our current operations and workflows.
With the increasing automation enabled by AI, the top three skills future talent needs would be …the skill set required for future talent is constantly evolving. We’re observing organizations increasingly integrating AI into their existing processes, but the real innovation lies in using AI to design new and improved workflows.
1. Data Science: Understanding how to process and analyze data is foundational. As AI becomes more integrated into our daily work, proficiency in processing and analyzing data will enable individuals to effectively leverage AI technologies.
2. Problem Solving: While AI can automate and streamline tasks, human intuition and creativity are still essential for solving complex problems that AI cannot address on its own.
3. Strategic and Systems Thinking: To truly innovate with AI, individuals need to think strategically and understand systems at a macro level. This involves conceptualizing innovative solutions that harness AI’s potential to enhance or even reinvent business processes and models.
The role of humans in an AI-powered societies is …I strongly believe that the essence of human contribution will pivot towards what AI cannot easily replicate: strategic and creative thinking. As AI continues to be integrated into our society, the true competitive edge for organizations will emerge from harnessing these distinctly human abilities. The winners in this new era will be those who excel not just in technological innovation, but by embracing a human-centric approach.
Mila Banerjee CEO at Pronti
Linkedin | Website
The best advice for organization looking leverage AI is …I am going to use AI and Machine learning interchangeably to refer to what we have today, but I haven’t seen a true AI yet! We really have amazing Machine Learning algorithms at work today. This is an important distinction even if we use the terms interchangeably because it helps us orient our expectations on what we can do today with ML.
My advice is learn a little about the many types of models (reinforcement learning to supervised and unsupervised learning) and submodels. They can help with different things.
What do you want to predict? Ultimately machine learning models predict things and if you can figure out the question or goal that you have you can figure out what model makes sense
What data do you have access to? I like to think about how a human predicts the thing that you are looking for and then ask myself what information do we take in to do that. Find people to help, ask questions, and talk to! This is especially true if you are new to the AI space.
The AI trends we will see across industries are ….I think we are seeing more and more people adopting AI in their roles and jobs. I am personally very bulllish on AI in Consumer space and retail. There is an enormous opportunity to benefit from personalization and in dealing with such high volumes of information, data and choice.
The biggest opportunities in the next five years would be …..I think about every day and believe in the opportunity in Retail and Consumer.
We are lost in an ocean of ecommerce where the buyer and the seller can not find each other easily. Retail is set for their next era – we had ecommerce, then mobile, then social/influencer and now I would say AI can bring an assisted shopping. Our demographics have shifted in such a way to be seeing huge pulls from shoppers in how they access and search for new items. I think that opportunities will also be there for Entrepreneurship and intra-preneurs – this is where all the next ideas will come from, the opportunities to shape what we do and love will come from creative, driven, problem solvers.
With the increasing automation enabled by AI, the top three skills future talent needs would be…It will be critical thinking, ability to move between big picture and detail, and adaptivity – that wonderful quote is still relevant – learn, unlearn and relearn!
The role of humans in an AI-powered societies is …self expression! I recently joked that as long as the AI is not sentient then it will take on the tasks and work while we enjoy endeavors that allow us to self actualize. I think self expression is one of those, and humans for thousands of years have been doing that with clothing. There is no reason why that wouldn’t increase. Seriously though, I also believe that our roles will be to relate to one another – communication and interpersonal skills will still be very relevant.
Lisen Kaci AI Engineering Lead at Discrepancy AI
The best advice for organization looking leverage AI is …It’s best to use artificial intelligence (AI) to get the most out of your team. People are inundated with administrative tasks that consume time but have little measurable output. To do this effectively, an organization needs to understand what’s possible to automate, what the people in your organization are looking to eliminate from their to-do list, and what AI is actually capable of achieving. Combining these items will allow for automation that is truly supportive. For example, AI is really good at finding a needle in haystacks of information and people are good at providing larger context to that information.
The AI trends we will see across industries are ….AI will spread more widely as a tool to boost productivity.
Many companies believe that anywhere from 25-40% of their administrative work can be automated, depending on the industry. Interfaces that are better suited to a task than the classic chatbot to solve problems will arise, thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other simpler ways to deploy new AI models arises. It is believed AI has the potential to create 97M new jobs – jobs built around creating, using, maintaining, and managing these AI systems.
The biggest opportunities in the next five years would be …..The biggest opportunities in the next five years will be in solving for the “mundane” and “repetitive” work using AI. Sourcing and automating the manual processes in entrenched industries where AI could supercharge the people in that industry to focus on high value tasks. Much like my statement above, I believe we will move beyond the chat interface and tools will be created that solve company and customer problems directly using AI.
With the increasing automation enabled by AI, the top three skills future talent needs would be …being a lifelong learner is a key way to stay ahead of the curve and manage changes – regardless if your industry is likely to encounter AI or not. Leveraging AI tools to increase productivity will become a huge competitive advantage. Learning the basics about how AI works and what tools can best enhance your skills is important. The human plus AI combo is the right path and is better than either AI or human alone.
The role of humans in an AI-powered societies is…our role is to guide the AI models and train them on what is and isn’t important to us. We have to make sure these models are aligned with our values yet free from our biases.
