Microsoft's Latest AI Assistant Is Meant for Marketers, Customer Reps and Work Apps (bloomberg.com) 23
Microsoft, having brought artificial intelligence to its battle with Google over search, is now turning to the latest AI technology to catch up with rivals in the corporate applications market such as Oracle, Salesforce and SAP. From a report: The software giant is introducing an AI assistant -- called Dynamics 365 Copilot -- for applications that handle tasks such as sales, marketing and customer service. Based on technology from OpenAI, the software can draft contextual chat and email answers to customer-service queries. It can help marketers come up with customer categories to target, and write product listings for e-commerce. The new capabilities are being released in preview form on Monday and are being tested by hundreds of early customers. For example, Italian aperitif maker Campari is trying out the marketing tools to concoct targeted campaigns for events around the Negroni cocktail.
Microsoft also said its next set of AI announcements, planned for March 16, will relate to "workplace productivity," a term the software maker usually uses to mean Office software. Business applications are the latest Microsoft programs to get an AI makeover so far this year as the company adds language-generation tools and chatbots to everything from its Bing internet-search engine to the Teams corporate-conferencing software. The strategy follows a successful debut for an AI programming tool called GitHub Copilot last year and Microsoft's expansion of its investment in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, in January. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has said the company plans to overhaul its whole product lineup using AI and tools from OpenAI. In the business applications category, where Microsoft has operated for more than two decades but lagged behind rivals, Nadella ultimately wants to use AI to break down silos between formerly separate programs, each with their own workflows and acronyms, like ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) software. Instead, he said, they should be blended and have one AI copilot that can retrieve information and help workers with tasks. Still, like the Bing bot, Nadella noted Microsoft's Dynamics tool will also make mistakes.
Microsoft also said its next set of AI announcements, planned for March 16, will relate to "workplace productivity," a term the software maker usually uses to mean Office software. Business applications are the latest Microsoft programs to get an AI makeover so far this year as the company adds language-generation tools and chatbots to everything from its Bing internet-search engine to the Teams corporate-conferencing software. The strategy follows a successful debut for an AI programming tool called GitHub Copilot last year and Microsoft's expansion of its investment in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, in January. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has said the company plans to overhaul its whole product lineup using AI and tools from OpenAI. In the business applications category, where Microsoft has operated for more than two decades but lagged behind rivals, Nadella ultimately wants to use AI to break down silos between formerly separate programs, each with their own workflows and acronyms, like ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) software. Instead, he said, they should be blended and have one AI copilot that can retrieve information and help workers with tasks. Still, like the Bing bot, Nadella noted Microsoft's Dynamics tool will also make mistakes.
Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship *B*, then (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I wish Sloshdut "Editors" had that kind of hit rate.
Headline is incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
And for everyone who says there's going to be new jobs, Name them. I hear a lot of people saying that but when I ask them point blank to list out the jobs the answer I usually get is that they're going to be so futuristic I can't imagine them. That's a cop out.
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And for everyone who says there's going to be new jobs, Name them. I hear a lot of people saying that but when I ask them point blank to list out the jobs the answer I usually get is that they're going to be so futuristic I can't imagine them. That's a cop out.
This, exactly. I think the thing that the wooden-shoes-and-buggy-whips crowd are missing is the universality of AI and robotics. Never before in history has there been a combination of technologies which seriously threatens to be a substitute for humans in almost anything which humans are capable of, including creating art and, eventually, engaging in original thought.
I'm willing to discuss with anyone the timeframe required for AI to substantially duplicate human creative endeavour - I say 10 years, others
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I say 10 years, others might say 20 or 50.
AI: Just 10 years away since 1950!
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More like "thin them out", like the Amazon warehouse model where you have 1 real worker for x robots. Still means a majority of them will lose their jobs. And no, there will be none or only very few new jobs, which in addition will require a different skill-set.
Correct (Score:2)
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you don't have to replace all the workers, just replacing some of them will massively increase labor supply and collapse wages.
Pretty much. Although you do not even need to collapse wages. Since you employ far fewer people wages become a minor factor and quality of the work done by the remaining ones becomes a major factor. For most workers it does not matter either, because if you are unemployed, it does not really matter what you could earn otherwise. In my field (IT, IT Security), wages are doing anything but collapse for well qualified people and that is unlikely to change, because the demand far outstrips the supply and things
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it's not quite there yet, but it's getting there really fast.
That's the belief that keeps the hype going, but I don't think it can last. You don't need to play with something like ChatGPT for long before its shortcomings become too much to ignore. That you get anything even relevant at all is neat, and that gets people excited for what they believe that these sorts of programs will be capable doing, even though they fall so short now. But knowing how the technology works, there isn't a whole lot that can be done to further improve the output, short of larger and
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No, I'm complaining about a walking path being a terrible rocket ship.
Re: Headline is incorrect (Score:2)
Seriously, how much ad money is Slashdot getting (Score:2)
The mass marketing campaign for this cruddy little story generator is really something to behold.
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Indeed. I think they are desperate to make as much money as possible before too many people realize how severely limited this thing actually is.
"Marketers and customer reps" (Score:2)
Well, I guess artificial intelligence is better than none at all...
Re: Ahhh great (Score:2)
Please tell me (Score:2)
that it's here to replace them.
So to screw over customers, essentially? (Score:2)
Well, what else is new with Microsoft. At least, if these are typical MS "quality" level, the marketeers and other creeps will suffer as well.
Hi I'm AI Clippy (Score:2)