A former Facebook engineering chief is heading Core AI, an initiative by Microsoft to A.I.-ify the app stack of Microsoft’s services. What does this mean for business owners?
The Five Most-Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- “Agentic” is a key word that comes up in Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s memo about Core AI. This refers to the way that the A.I. operates—more like a self-sufficient worker than a mere tool.
- A key quote from that memo: “the mission [is] to build the end-to-end Copilot & AI stack for both our first-party and third-party customers to build and run AI apps and agents.”
- The idea is to enable Microsoft’s development team to focus their efforts largely on A.I., readily create A.I. apps and agents that the end customers can use.
- If you are a business owner, the fruits of these developers’ labors will be A.I. tools that you can easily orchestrate and customize according to your business’ needs.
- For business owners, this could bring them into the A.I. age within the next three years, with a wealth of A.I.-driven Microsoft tools available to use.
A.I. Touches Everything
This initiative represents Microsoft’s willingness to go “all in” on A.I.
The company is not alone, because at this point pretty much every major tech company is pouring the American $–equivalent of entire nations’ G.D.P.’s into developing A.I. systems.
So with so much focus on A.I., the bet is not whether A.I. will actually be a consequential, widely adopted technology—it is pretty much decided by most experts that it will be. The bet, then, is on the best way to develop A.I. and what tools are most worth developing.
That is indeed a super-important question, as A.I. will touch many aspects of life and especially work in the future. So, what is worth focusing on?
For Microsoft, the bet is that the adaptable and flexible qualities of “agentic” A.I. will allow for the creation of B2B tools that the acronym’s latter “B” can customize to its own A.I. agents to meet specific business challenges.
Agentic Business Tools
Microsoft is not the only company with a focus on creating agentic business tools.
For instance, IBM has been ahead of the curve here with its customizable Watson chatbots that have been around for some time.
An example here would be chatbots that can have conversations that normally a human customer-service rep knowledgeable about your business’ product(s) and/or service(s) would have.
So, for instance, if you run a sporting-goods store, you can upload product information to a custom-chatbot builder that could memorize that info and recall it during customer conversations.
One-Size-Fits-All A.I. for All Sizes
Yes, that section title is paradoxical and confusing, kind of. But it makes a weird sort of sense, and describes how these “agentic business tools” will work.
The ultimate goal for most major tech companies focused on B2B applications is to offer a suite of A.I. tools that can be creative, analytical, predictive, and other qualities. A one-stop-shop for A.I.
For instance, a customer-churn prediction platform that you can build from your own data.
And, importantly, to allow businesses to scale according to their own needs.
The Final Key Takeaway
A key aspect of 21st-century technology is personalization.
Our online media feeds are personalized by algorithms that pay attention to what we engage with. Our clicks, likes, comments, and other digital interactions are data that inform these algorithms.
In business, A.I. will allow for a certain kind of “personalization” that will allow businesses to create A.I. that pays attention to the business’ data to offer predictions, creative content, and difficult calculations that can all help meet that business’ “personal” goals for growth.
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
GO AI the blog offers a combination of information about, analysis of, and editorializing on A.I. technologies of interest to business owners, with especial focus on the impact this tech will have on commerce as a whole.
On a usual week, there are multiple GO AI blog posts going out. Here are some notable recent articles:
- For Businesses and Other Organizations, What Makes a Successful Chatbot?
- IBM Watson vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini: How Will Each Affect Search Engines?
- Using A.I. to Find Resources for Business Owners
- How Would Restricting Open-Source A.I. Affect Business Owners?
- The EU’s A.I. Act Has Become Law: The Implications for Business Owners (Especially American)
In addition to our GO AI blog, we also have a blog that offers important updates in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), with blog posts like “Google Ends Its Plan to End Third-Party Cookies”.
Recent Comments