AI Work Assistants Need a Lot of Handholding

Getting full value out of AI workplace assistants is turning out to require a heavy lift from enterprises. ‘It has been more work than anticipated,’ says one CIO.

aka we are currently in the process of realizing we are paying for the privilege of being the first to test an incomplete product.

Mandell said if she asks a question related to 2024 data, the AI tool might deliver an answer based on 2023 data. At Cargill, an AI tool failed to correctly answer a straightforward question about who is on the company’s executive team, the agricultural giant said. At Eli Lilly, a tool gave incorrect answers to questions about expense policies, said Diogo Rau, the pharmaceutical firm’s chief information and digital officer.

I mean, imagine all the non-obvious stuff it must be getting wrong at the same time.

He said the company is regularly updating and refining its data to ensure accurate results from AI tools accessing it. That process includes the organization’s data engineers validating and cleaning up incoming data, and curating it into a “golden record,” with no contradictory or duplicate information.

Please stop feeding the thing too much information, you’re making it confused.

Some of the challenges with Copilot are related to the complicated art of prompting, Spataro said. Users might not understand how much context they actually need to give Copilot to get the right answer, he said, but he added that Copilot itself could also get better at asking for more context when it needs it.

Yeah, exactly like all the tech demos showed – wait a minute!

[Google Cloud Chief Evangelist Richard Seroter said] “If you don’t have your data house in order, AI is going to be less valuable than it would be if it was,” he said. “You can’t just buy six units of AI and then magically change your business.”

Nevermind that that’s exactly how we’ve been marketing it.

Oh well, I guess you’ll just have to wait for chatgpt-6.66 that will surely fix everything, while voiced by charlize theron’s non-union equivalent.

  • ebu@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    a thought on this specifically:

    Google Cloud Chief Evangelist Richard Seroter said he believes the desire to use tools like Gemini for Google Workspace is pushing organizations to do the type of data management work they might have been sluggish about in the past.

    “If you don’t have your data house in order, AI is going to be less valuable than it would be if it was,” he said.

    we’re right back to “you’re holding it wrong” again, i see

    i’m definitely imagining Google re-whipping up their “Big Data” sales pitches in response to Gemini being borked or useless. “oh, see your problem is that you haven’t modernized and empowered yourself by dumping all your databases into a (our) cloud native synergistic Data Sea, available for only $1.99/GB”

    • Architeuthis@awful.systemsOPEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Google pivoting to selling shovels for the AI gold rush in the form of data tools should be pretty viable if they commit to it, I hadn’t thought if it that way.

      • Architeuthis@awful.systemsOPEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        It’s a sad fate that sometimes befalls engineers who are good at talking to audiences, and who work for a big enough company that can afford to have that be their primary role.

        edit: I love that he’s chief evangelist though, like he has a bunch of little google cloud clerics running around doing chores for him.

        • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          I’m sorry but “evangelist” to me conjures an image of a techbro on a street corner with a makeshift shelf of Google Cloud brochures advertising free documentation study hours.

          There’s Jehowa Witnesses doing the same schtick one block over and they’re absolutely furious he took their favourite spot.

        • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          Did no one tell them that “evangelist” is not exactly a positive term? Do they call their sales people “crusaders”, too?

          • flere-imsaho@awful.systemsEnglish
            0·
            5 months ago

            i think this is a common european misconception; the us is bloody religious, even compared to our polish parishes.

            (and if you want to know how the salespeople think? remember the movie glengarry glenn ross? the movie about alienation and lack of humanity? this absolutely inhumane monster is thought by them as an example of the right attitude.)

        • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          This is the moment I’ll remember when future generations ask if there were any signs.