There's a lot of excitement surrounding GenAI and we, at Devhd, are enthusiasts for what AI can deliver and enhance. We noticed the amazing changes AI did in our lives since 2020, yes THAT special year, because it was, as far as we consider it, the tipping point of what we witness today.
The Rise of Enterprise Automation
In the last decade, there has been a significant shift towards enterprise automation, with organizations embracing robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI). These technologies reduce manual efforts, minimize errors, and accelerate business processes. However, the challenge has constantly been integrating these technologies seamlessly into existing workflows and deriving meaningful insights from the data generated.
But, even though Generative AI (GenAI) is often perceived as a groundbreaking new technology, it's been around for quite some time. As Mirella Lapata, a professor of natural language processing, pointed out in a September 2023 talk at the Royal Institution in collaboration with The Alan Turing Institute, GenAI's roots extend back, and earlier innovations were Siri and Alexa. These technologies, introduced years ago, were early examples of GenAI at work, enabling voice-activated assistance and natural language understanding. Google's predictive text features and search suggestions further exemplify how GenAI has been subtly integrated into everyday tools, gradually enhancing user experiences.
So, what changed? What’s the fuss?
The leap from basic predictive text to advanced models like ChatGPT marks a significant transformation in GenAI capabilities. Today's GenAI can perform many sophisticated tasks, offering extensive applications at an enterprise level. This advancement not only boosts productivity and efficiency but also significantly reduces costs. The rapid adoption of ChatGPT, which reached 100 million users in just two months—as you can see in the picture below - compared to the slower adoption rates of earlier tools like Google Translate and Uber, underscores this revolutionary shift. This speed of adoption highlights the profound impact and utility of these advanced GenAI models in both personal and professional spheres.
Incredible potential contribution to the global economy
There is also an astonishing economic potential of GenAI features, with McKinsey's research indicating a potential annual contribution of up to $4.4 trillion to the global economy.
Gartner, on the other hand, foresees a substantial rise in the use of foundation models, projecting their involvement in 70% of natural language processing (NLP) use cases by 2027, a notable leap from a mere 5% observed in 2022.
Generative AI is proving to be crucial in reshaping operational landscapes and driving efficiencies across diverse industries. As an active player in the tech industry for years, we at Devhd see the impact of AI being more evident and faster in healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and a few more industries than in others.
Healthcare
Digital assistants providing concise medical summaries are reducing administrative burdens and boosting productivity for healthcare providers. For example, an AI-powered chatbot could aid healthcare providers in extracting patient information from internal documents and electronic health records.
Gartner's prediction that over 30% of new drugs and materials will be discovered using gen AI techniques by 2025 underscores the technology's potential impact on drug development. Generative AI has been successfully applied in designing drugs for diverse purposes within a few months, presenting the pharmaceutical industry with substantial prospects to decrease both the expenses and duration of drug discovery.
Financial Services
Financial services, highly regulated and risk-conscious, stand to benefit significantly from emerging AI technology. In the banking sector, the pivotal question no longer revolves around whether generative AI will significantly influence the industry, but rather focuses on the way it will do so.
Within this sector, the technology has the potential to provide value equivalent to an additional annual sum ranging from $200 billion to $340 billion if the full implementation of use cases were realized according to a McKinsey report.
Accenture's research suggests a potential 30% increase in employee productivity across the sector by 2028: 90% of all working hours in the banking industry can be impacted by large language models (LLMs).
Gen AI is expected to enable financial institutions to generate well-structured, coherent, and informative financial reports. Banks can harness customer intelligence for a better understanding of customer purposes and preferences. This, in turn, facilitates the enhancement of customer interactions across various channels such as digital, phone, and in-person servicing and sales.
In terms of operations transformation, Gen AI solutions offer substantial potential to streamline various operational processes encompassing consumer duty, knowledge management, complaints, KYC, and controls. Gen AI can also contribute to improving bank supervisory practices by providing guidance that promotes sound risk management and ensures compliance with laws, regulations, internal policies, and procedures.
Manufacturing
Gartner research shows that 80% of CEOs are increasing digital technology investments to counter current economic pressures. According to the same report, one of the technologies that is most likely to be implemented by 2025 is Artificial Intelligence.
Generative AI offers unique capabilities that empower manufacturers to automate and enhance factory activities, supporting their workforce in innovative ways. Generative AI draws insights from diverse data sources, including customer behavior, previous sales, industry trends, and seasonal patterns.
Potential use cases include product design and development, predictive maintenance, quality control, or production planning.
Technology
Gen AI is revolutionizing how software developers approach code writing, enhancing productivity across the IT value chain. McKinsey estimates that corporate IT organizations could realize a productivity lift worth $485 billion, or 31% of global IT spending, by utilizing intelligent coding assistants powered by large language models (LLMs).
Education
The strategic and deliberate implementation of generative AI models presents an exciting opportunity to catalyze transformative advancements in educational innovation, making possible scenarios where intelligent assistants dynamically adapt course content in response to the unique learning processes of each student.
Educators, empowered by the capabilities of Gen AI, can craft personalized teaching plans, and efficiently manage administrative tasks, thereby fostering a more dynamic and adapted educational experience for students.
It all comes with challenges
Acknowledging the promise of Generative AI requires a thorough examination of potential challenges. Two critical facets demand attention: security and ethics.
Gen AI introduces security and privacy risks, including misuse in cyber-attacks, data poisoning, and the potential for data exfiltration. An effective AI governance strategy is vital to comprehensively manage risks.
Generative AI also introduces ethical concerns, spanning misinformation, plagiarism, copyright infringements, and the potential for worker displacement. Managing data governance, transparency, and accountability becomes crucial to mitigate these risks It becomes imperative to have a healthy platform to handle all these. If you use ServiceNow GenAI capabilities, these facets are covered safely, but more in a future article.
ServiceNow GenAI capabilities
ServiceNow has one of the most ambitious GenAI roadmaps in the industry. In the last seven years, they’ve intentionally executed more than 10 strategic AI acquisitions to gain world-class AI technology and talent.
AI is floating through the NOW platform. These acquisitions equipped ServiceNow with critical, complementary AI capabilities. From machine learning to natural language understanding (NLU) to AI-based search, the next logical step was adding GenAI. ServiceNow was ready as soon as the technology was. And when the technology was ready, so was ServiceNow.
Interested in more details? Follow us at Devhd, your Boutique ServiceNow Partner, as we continue the Generative AI series. Next week, in our following article, you'll read more about GenAI capabilities infused into every workflow on the Now Platform, called Now Assist. Until then, if you have any questions, reach out to us at contact@dev-hd.com, and let’s start the conversation.
