Understanding the power of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and applying to personal and business process automation.

By now you have heard of all the AI (Artificial Intelligence) development and some of the app names such as ChatGPT making headlines. While scaring half the world with visions of killer robots taking our jobs in the future, you may ask yourself why is everyone so interested and how can we actually benefit from this supposed brain I can chat with that is constantly learning more and more each day? Well, in this article we will break it down with some practical applications to understand the power and then have some fun brainstorming some business process automation scenarios that can be applied to everyday tasks and real-world business issues.

While there are a number of AI applications already released, we have personally been working with the new Bard from Google. It is still in development but has been released free of charge from Google. The main difference between Bard and Chatgpt is that it is up to date and constantly learning versus ChatGPT being limited to a version date for its data that is in the past. If you would like to use Bard yourself just visit Bard.google.com and give it a try.

So, let’s get started. The first thing to understand is this is not a search engine and we already have Google on all our devices with intense search capabilities.  Many of us have Alexa or similar devices in the home that can be asked any unknown fact with an answer in seconds. So, what can AI really “do” for me? Therein lies your answer. Make it “do things”. When you ask AI questions, think of tasks that would take multiple searches and data collection tasks to get your final result. Think of AI as your worker that has a search engine in their pocket just like you do but all the other tools and knowledge along with it that far exceeds anything we can do in a comparable time frame. So enough of the tech speak, let’s go over some scenarios for practical use first.

Scenario 1: You are going on vacation to Denver, Colorado. You will need some printed map directions in case cell phone service is spotty during the drive and will have an overnight stay somewhere along the way. You will need some places to eat along the way that are vegan friendly, and you are members of the Hilton points network and prefer Hampton Inn hotels to use points for your stay. How can AI give me this without having to gather this info on my own?

Question to Bard: I am going on vacation in Denver, Colorado. Can you give me directions from my current location and list all the Hampton Hotels along this route and list all vegan restaurants on this route also?

Wait a few seconds and presto! We have what would have taken us a few searches and data collection all gathered in one place for us ready for a printout. Do I have your wheels spinning yet? That was an easy one, now let’s step it up.

Scenario 2: You love to visit garage sales on the weekends while running your normal weekend errands around town. Each Friday you check craigslist, your local paper website, and a national garage sale posting site for listings in your city. You check all three because you don’t want to miss any but do have to weed out duplicates. You don’t know all the street names in your city and can't tell which ones are close to you and the route you will be on that day.  Gathering this information each Friday is a big task to just visit a few garage sales on your route. How can AI make this easier for you?

Question to Bard: Today I will be going from my current location to my daughter’s soccer game at 123 Sports Park Drive and then to the store at 456 Grocery Lane and then back to my current location. Using the websites mycity.craigslist.com/garagesales, mylocalpaper.com/garagesales, and garagesales.com/mycitylistings please give me all the garage sales along this route today or within a three mile radius off that route using all three sites and not listing any duplicates?

That was a ton of work before, just a repeated question with a unique route each week now. Now that we have you really thinking, let’s get down to business, no pun intended. Here are a couple basic business process tasks that we would utilize AI to automate.

Business Scenario 1: Joe’s Used Car’s is a small car dealership. Each month the owner of the dealership will go to a car auction and purchase around 8 to 10 used cars. When he returns with the cars Ethan must look up each car by VIN# and print the Bluebook value, Carfax report, and find some similar comparative sales in the area in order for the dealership to price the car correctly and show the customer for transparency. Since these are all different websites, this task takes a decent amount of time for Ethan each month when he could be selling cars. How can we make this task easier for Ethan using AI?

Question to Bard: I have created an excel spreadsheet of VIN numbers labeled example.xls located at c:\folder\example.xls. Please give me the Blue Book value, Carfax report, and similar comps that have sold in my area recently grouped by each VIN separately.

Looks like Ethan will have some extra time on his hands! He just needs to print the results and get back out on the dealership floor. I bet you are really getting this now, one final somewhat tricky one that we go through the learning and improvement process on as well.

Business Scenario 2: Abe’s Delivery Service requires all drivers to have printed directions to all driving locations each week, but delivery locations are unique and constantly changing from week to week.  Betty is an administrative worker that spends all day Thursday and Friday printing directions for each driver's route next week utilizing the scheduled delivery spreadsheet. Betty has other tasks she can be working on, and the delivery spreadsheet is placed on a share drive at the end of day on Wednesday and there is no earlier time for her to receive it due to internal processes. How can we relieve Betty of this task using AI?

Question to Bard: Can you read the locations from Column D on the delivery spreadsheet labeled example.xls located at C:\folder\example.xls  and give directions to each location separately from my current location.

Now we have already cut down serious amounts of work for Betty but AI cannot yet “build” anything outside of the screen so at the most Betty needs to just print the output, but this can be taken even further. We can tell Bard we want him to repeat this task every Wednesday night and while it will say it cannot do this on its own, it will give you the exact directions to build a scheduled task for this question output to be performed each Wednesday using the Bard application. Now as long as the spreadsheet is replaced with the new one each Wednesday night, we have cut down two days of work for Betty into a few cut and paste clicks before they go to the printer, but let’s try to go one step even further. She still must cut/paste the directions for each driver and Bard has just given us a bunch of directions to each delivery location that needs some arranging. At this point we could modify the question to Bard and add that we want the results sorted by driver that is assigned to each delivery location in column C.

New Modified Question to Bard: Can you read the locations from Column D on the delivery spreadsheet labeled example.xls located at C:\folder\example.xls and give directions to each location separately from my current location. Group these separate location directions by the driver name assigned to each location in Column A.

Betty’s task is even easier now and can be printed and arranged in minutes versus two days of repetitive, non-productive work that takes away from Betty’s other tasks. That was fun, right? Betty just freed up two days of work.

Now you see, it's not just another chat tool, and you will find uses for it if you give it a chance. I bet you already have your own ideas from these scenarios that can be applied in both your personal life and maybe even some business cases. Give Bard a spin, test those ideas, and let your answers develop by complicating your questions and adding specifics for better results.  I hope this has helped with a basic understanding of AI interface concepts and practical applications for automation.

If you are interested in how we can help your organization realize the true potential of AI and business process automation, contact us for your free consultation at SKBInfo@skbcyber.com.