- Quaid Saifee, President of WIT
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, most people have heard of a powerful, new artificial intelligence technology called ChatGPT. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI, based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture. It is designed to understand and generate human-like text based on the input it receives. ChatGPT can perform a wide range of tasks, from revising text you provide, giving an explanation to a question you ask, summarizing text, generating new content, and even coding, all enhanced by a dynamic back-and-forth interaction with a human. It's trained on diverse internet text so that it can engage on virtually any topic.
Rarely has a technology sparked such polarized views, ranging from Bill Gates heralding this technology "as revolutionary as mobile phones and the Internet," to other leading CEOs and scientists equating its risks with those of pandemics and nuclear warfare. Yet, despite these significant endorsements and warnings, this technology remains under the radar for most Americans. Over a year since ChatGPT's debut, questions like "What exactly is ChatGPT?” “Is it software?” “Do I need special training to use it?” “Is it free?" are still commonplace. These questions highlight a notable gap in public awareness and understanding of this groundbreaking technology. ChatGPT is just one of the several Generative AI (“GenAI”) technologies currently available in the marketplace. I am going to focus on ChatGPT as it has the most market share and mindshare currently.
And no, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to use it or have any special training. You just need to go to chat.openai.com and sign up for a free account, or go to bing.com and click on the Copilot link at the top. Now you have access to a super-smart digital friend. Whenever you type a question or share a thought, this friend instantly responds with helpful answers, ideas, or even just a back-and-forth conversation. This digital friend is a blend of knowledgeable librarian, chatty companion, and quick-thinking problem solver.
In my professional life, ChatGPT has been nothing short of transformative. Our employees use this tool to generate and tweak marketing content that better resonates with our audience, improve prospecting for new business, and brainstorm new ideas. The magic of ChatGPT lies not in its capacity to replace human ingenuity but in augmenting it, acting as a catalyst for creative and critical thinking. You will be doing a disservice to your business by ignoring this powerful tool. Here at WIT, we are in the business of Data & Analytics, and we are seeing a big shift in technology in this field. GenAI is being added to almost every software we use to curate and analyze data and produce user-friendly visualizations. GenAI enabled tools like Microsoft Copilot can help generate scripts for ETL (Extract, Transform and Load), identify data quality issues, generate synthetic data for testing and development, data tagging, analysis of unstructured data and even create dashboards. Gartner has predicted that by 2026 GenAI-augmented tools can reduce the need for data engineers by 40%.
We host the Great Lakes Data, AI & Analytics Summit every spring, and it is undeniable that AI will be dominating the conversation at our upcoming event on April 18th. Both our keynote speakers will be discussing AI and its impacts on the data and analytics field. Erik Zwiefel, Chief Data and Analytics Officer from Microsoft will be talking about the latest trends and developments in this space, and Donald Farmer, a seasoned data and analytics strategist will be discussing how AI is transforming businesses and the people who work there. In addition to the keynotes, a few of our software vendor sponsors will be presenting on how they are incorporating AI into their software platforms. Practical use case presentations are central to our Summit content lineup, and while we won’t have any use case sessions this year about GenAI or LLM’s, we anticipate that next year’s event will have a few.
Looking ahead to the future of ChatGPT, as well as other AI technologies, I'm inspired by the possibilities. Imagine a world where technology not only enhances our professional capabilities but also enriches our personal lives, making education more accessible, healthcare more personalized, and daily tasks more manageable. However, its flaws are for us to address — and its strengths remain for us to mold.
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About Great Lakes Data, AI & Analytics Summit
WIT created this event 12 years ago to provide analytics and IT practitioners an opportunity to network and gain access to the latest resources in the analytics field. This event has evolved as the analytics field has seen new technologies, the rise of self-service tools, and its expansion into almost every corner of the business. We invite you to join us on Thursday, April 27th, it is sure to be another great event for analytics practitioners and business professionals alike! For more information and to register, visit GreatLakesSummit.com.
Date & Time: Thursday, April 18 from 9am-5pm
Location: Troy Marriott, 200 W. Big Beaver Rd, Troy, MI
Cost: $249
Group Discount available for 3 or more from a company. Contact glsummit@witinc.com for a 10% discount code
About WIT
WIT is an analytics and automation consulting firm, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2021. WIT helps clients build solutions to maximize the value of their data and analytics assets, and automate key business processes. In partnership with elite software companies, WIT’s capabilities span a broad spectrum of business functions and industry verticals. For more information, visit www.witinc.com