Generative AI: Abilities and Limitations

Our partners from One North, a full-service digital agency and TEKsystems company, discuss when generative AI enhances business outcomes and when it hinders them.

March 22, 2024 | By One North, A TEKsystems Company

What's your AI strategy?

If you're a member of the C-suite, IT team, legal department or dedicated AI crew, you've likely been asked this question. We get that question quite often from our customers.

We’d like to boldly go on record and say, “You’re asking the wrong question.”

Hear us out.

There is always a flurry of excitement when new tech is introduced to the market. Consumers want to be among the first on board, and businesses don’t want to be labeled laggards. But where there are technological breakthroughs, there is hype. And where there’s hype, there is misunderstanding.

We’re not saying that AI—generative or otherwise—isn’t groundbreaking. It is. But if organizations want to make the most of AI, they have quite a few vantage points to consider before taking advantage of the tool’s capabilities.

Generative AI Is a Tool, Not a Strategy

In their eagerness to take advantage of generative AI (Gen AI), many organizations focus on developing a “strategy.”

“What are we going to do with AI?”

This is the question everyone is desperate to answer, but it’s not the one your enterprise should ask.

Why? Gen AI isn’t a strategy—it’s a tool. And like all tools, AI is fantastic at some things and not so great at others. Before you look for ways to implement Gen AI throughout your organization, you need to understand the benefits of Gen AI, what the technology can do and its limitations.

AI won’t be able to solve every problem in your business, but when you understand the benefits of Gen AI and take the time to find the best use cases for it, you can enjoy incredible results. Instead of viewing AI as a magic wand, understand the solutions this technology is most useful for and view it as another tool in your arsenal—and a powerful one.

The One Question Your Organization Should Ask About AI

So if you shouldn’t be asking about AI strategy, what should you be asking?

When you look at AI—including Gen AI—as a tool, you can find the places where that tool fits into your existing processes. After all, you wouldn’t use a hammer to tighten a screw. Look at your current strategies and ask: Which ones could be improved or accelerated with AI?

While it’s true that AI will likely transform many workplaces, look for areas in your organization where the technology can be harnessed to make immediate improvements instead of just envisioning broad future applications. Think about what may be possible now with AI that simply wasn’t possible before. Develop concrete plans for using this tool and put them into practice—efficiency and productivity gains will follow.

What AI Can Do

The possibilities may seem endless with Gen AI right now, but it’s critical for organizations to understand exactly what this tool can do. With Gen AI, content teams can streamline their processes, using the technology to create outlines and perform research that they can then fact-check. Businesses can train AI to handle repetitive tasks, freeing human workers to focus on more customer-centered and creative work. So if you shouldn’t be asking about AI strategy, what should you be asking?

In the design space, one of the benefits of Gen AI is its ability to help generate unique imagery and creative assets, allowing designers to be more efficient and productive. Many organizations already use AI to quickly create code that developers can then optimize. AI can even reveal intrinsic biases in data, flagging inclusivity issues that stakeholders need to address.

From improved customer experiences to data augmentation, there are many tasks AI can help streamline and improve, transforming the way your organization runs.

What AI Can’t Do

With so many potential use cases, AI can seem limitless. But every tool needs a skilled worker. Gen AI is only as strong as the prompts you give it . Without high-quality input, you won’t receive useful output. This underscores one of the limitations of Gen AI—the quality of its output is heavily dependent on the quality of input. Understanding how to develop prompts is essential for any organization that wants to take advantage of the full power of AI.

While AI is smart, it isn’t able to provide context in the same way a person can, and even the most advanced AI tools are still prone to error. No AI technology can guarantee 100% accuracy, and while the technology may seem limitless right now, it has significant limitations. For example, Gen AI can summarize a long passage or help rewrite a paragraph in a specific voice, but it can’t generate facts and has even been known to give wrong information.

When it comes to empathy and thinking outside the box, the human user will beat the machine every time, which is why it’s key to train employees on how to use AI as a tool. AI is a fantastic starting point for improving processes and quickly generating information, but it still requires a human to turn its output into a usable product.

Understand the Possibilities and Limits of AI

AI, specifically Gen AI, can help teams streamline processes and improve productivity and efficiency, but the technology isn’t without its limitations. Instead of treating AI like the solution to every problem, look for places where this tool can help improve existing strategies. The results could transform your business operations and significantly increase your return on technology investment.