AI is all around us now — or at least it feels that way!
But it feels that way for good reason. There’s a lot of hype and a lot of substance behind the technology powering generative AI like ChatGPT and Gemini. Even if there are still a lot of things evolving with AI, it’s already an incredibly useful tool that can save us and our customers time, money, and energy.
Wading through that hype is the hard part, however.
There’s so much enthusiasm for the technology that it can be difficult to slow down and consider all of the implications that come with using AI in the real world.
Whenever I start consulting for a new company, invariably one of their first questions is, “How can we implement AI to benefit our team and our customers?”
My answer to that question is always (with much understanding and humor), “Very carefully.”
I say that not just because I’m a customer support professional and I always want to make sure that an AI tool makes sense in the context of a particular company’s customers and needs, but also because there are practical considerations involved with using AI that go beyond implementation.
Implementation is just the tip of the AI iceberg, and you can’t focus on implementation until you’ve taken the steps to understand the AI systems you’re using — how they work, how they’re trained, and why they come to certain conclusions.
After implementation comes presentation — communicating all of that same information (and then some) to your customers so that the AI, in whatever form it’s taking, can actually be useful.
What I’ve just described is AI transparency, and it’s not an understatement to say it’s the most important concept you’ll ever hear about when evaluating and using AI in your business.