Unlock Next-Level Intelligence And Transform Your Business With Generative AI

Gaurav Tewari, Founder and Managing Partner of Omega Venture Partners.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is growing rapidly. In the past few years, we’ve seen AI being used to automate tasks like customer service, fraud detection, and language translation. But until recently, AI has primarily sought to analyze and understand data that already exists. With the rise of generative AI, AI now creates content and models from scratch. For example, instead of just using AI to find optimal keywords for an internet article, companies are now able to create an entire, coherent article from start to finish.

My proximity to this emerging technology has shown me how much opportunity Generative AI has to transform business. Its capabilities span countless industries, as businesses use it to create entirely new content such as articles, musical compositions, art, graphics, podcasts, and even videos. With the ability to create something from scratch, Generative AI is catalyzing the next wave of artificial intelligence.

Recent advances in Generative AI have been exponential and astonishing.

2022 became the year that Generative AI really hit the map, but the technology has been around for several years. It first became popular in 2014 when generative adversarial networks (GANs) were developed to create realistic images of noise maps. However, in 2017 we were introduced to the transformer, which is the deep learning architecture underlying large language models (LLMs) that can read, summarize and translate texts to generate sentences from scratch. The transformer enabled AI to generate text, software code and protein structures, greatly enhancing its capabilities.

When most people think of Generative AI, they think of OpenAI’s image generator DALL-E. An early version of DALL-E used the transformer to create images from text, but this soon gave way to Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training (CLIP) in 2021. This technique was used in conjunction with diffusion in DALLE- 2, which was able to create even higher-resolution images with spectacular details. DALLE-2 made an incredible leap to picture-perfect images that you would have a hard time believing weren’t man-made.

But it’s not just image generation that has seen exponential growth recently. Large language model size has been growing 10x every year for several years. The growth in LLMs allowed OpenAI to release GPT-3, a language model trained to predict the next word in a sentence, which in turn allowed it to generate written content that looked indistinguishable from how people speak and write. (And no, this article was not written by a computer).

Generative AI is having a profound, transformative effect on many professions.

The ability to create content from scratch can be useful for almost any business. For companies looking to build their brand, an image generator like DALLE-2 allows them to create a high-quality business logo in seconds. For content marketing teams, Generative AI can produce SEO-optimized articles almost instantly. The healthcare sector can use Generative AI to generate better diagnoses and more personalized treatments. GANs can create high-resolution versions of lower quality images, improving the quality of old medical materials and records.

But Generative AI can do much more than create a photo or an article. It can also generate data not available in the real world, allowing researchers to test new machine learning algorithms or deep learning architectures. For example, if you trained a Generative AI system on a dataset of images of cars, it could generate new concept cars of different shapes, sizes and configurations. It can build a more diverse dataset with which to train your AI algorithm or spark ideas for new product designs.

Generative AI is complementary.

Of course, many people fear that Generative AI will take jobs away from people. With the ability to create an image or article out of thin air at your fingertips, what need is there for a graphic designer or copywriter? But in my experience, Generative AI is most effective when used to augment and add to human potential, not replace it.

For example, a company that wants to promote its new product with SEO-optimized content can use Generative AI to greatly streamline the process. Instead of spending time researching keywords and writing SEO content, they can use Generative AI as a catalyst for idea generation and rapid iteration – making Generating AI a smart collaborator that amplifies human creativity and impact.

Although Generative AI can do a lot, I don’t believe it will become the next Beethoven or Hemingway. There’s a difference between an AI-generated jingle on a 30-second commercial and creating a game-changing symphony. Generative AI is capable of incredible things, but it’s fundamentally about permutations and combinations of existing information. It can increase our potential and eliminate boring and embarrassing tasks, but it cannot replace our ingenuity.

How can you adopt generative AI in your business?

With Generative AI advancing so rapidly, it is imperative for business leaders to understand how to integrate the technology into their company. Research is essential before investing in new technology and identifying possible AI implementation opportunities.

First identify the problem you want to solve, then explore AI tools that can help you solve it. For example, if you’re experiencing low engagement, Generative AI can help you personalize content to improve sales conversions and improve service.

You need to define your expectations before adopting any AI system. Are you looking for specific, measurable results? Can the new technology improve your workflow to a high enough level to be cost effective? Implementation and support strategies are important to ensure a smooth deployment of new technologies. Make sure you identify realistic expectations and that you are supported during implementation.

Don’t just adopt the latest technology to keep up with the competition. If you plan and do your research, you can get the most out of what Generative AI has to offer.

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