AI is being used for crunching data, detecting fraud, writing software, analyzing language and much more, but business users say human expertise remains as important as ever.
Spencer X. Smith, founder of Madison-based digital marketing firm AmpliPhi, emphasized the importance of human feedback for an AI training method called reinforcement learning. He spoke yesterday during a panel discussion in Madison organized by In Business magazine.
“That’s still an integral part — we just can’t have AIs talking to AIs,” Smith said. “We have to have a human actually be part of the feedback loop … That’s still a super, super important part.”
Panelists yesterday highlighted a variety of ways they’re integrating different forms of AI into their own business operations, as well as broader industry trends.
Rachel Neill, CEO of Carex Consulting Group in Madison, said she gets help from AI software when writing job descriptions. She runs the listing’s language through a program that analyzes it for biased language and other issues. And she uses Chat GPT, an AI-based language model, to write HTML code for online content and optimize it for various devices.
“I am not a great HTML coder … That saves me days, probably, if I was having to go back and do that myself,” she said.
Nick Myers, co-founder of Madison-based health tech startup RedFox AI, discussed his company’s conversational AI program that’s been trained to help users understand and use at-home medical devices and medications.
And Ben Udell, senior vice president of client experience for Madison’s Lake Ridge Bank, noted AI applications have been deployed in the financial sector by major companies like VISA.
“They are applying technology like this to uncover and understand fraud,” he said. “Probably everybody in here has received some sort of fraud alert, fraud message. So that’s happening, there’s a lot of investment into there.”
Smith also spoke to the potential for AI to transform the writing process, putting the human user into the position of editor while the software does the more time-consuming work. But he and the other panelists underlined the crucial role of human intelligence in ensuring machine intelligence is used correctly.
Myers argued for always keeping “a human in the loop,” referencing an example in which a New York attorney relied on Chat GPT to write a legal brief, which was later found to contain fabricated case references.
And Udell urged attendees to closely “read, to review, to edit” any AI-generated content to ensure it meets their standards for accuracy.
“The reality is, it takes work and a skill to be able to use these services to their full capability … it’s about building prompts, it’s about interacting,” he said.
See a recent related story: https://www.wisbusiness.com/2023/uw-expert-warns-of-ai-cyber-threats-urges-skepticism-about-defenses/
Listen to a WisBusiness.com podcast with Myers: https://www.wisbusiness.com/2023/wisbusiness-the-podcast-with-nick-myers-redfox-ai/
–By Alex Moe
