The reaction to AI, both within the industry and in the general population, has been incredibly diverse. Some see AI as the start of a cautionary tale or making some career paths obsolete. Others see AI as a tool that allows individuals to be more productive and enter a new revolution that will drastically influence their role in the workforce, as consumers, and how they interact with organizations.
One thing we know is that AI is here to stay and technology solutions will benefit from their utilization. During the 2023 Sandler Partners National Summit, moderators/hosts Linzie Janis, and Sandler Partners Managing Partner, Alan Sandler were joined on stage by Dan O’Connell, Dialpad Chief AI & Strategy Officer; Amar Maletira, Rackspace Chief Executive Officer; Reginald Scales, Vonage SVP Global Sales Applications; and Raghu Ravinutala, Yellow.ai Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer for “Industry Leaders Discuss AI’s Impact on the Tech Landscape”. Their organizations are already using AI technology in their own operations and incorporating it into the solutions offered to customers.
The Panelists started by discussing their views on AI, both from gut-level and industry-requirement perspectives. “I don’t think it’s black and white,” commenced Raghu, “If you look at technological advances over the last several decades, the amount of effort humans are putting in is increasing, what’s changing is the value created for those efforts. People are creating more wealth and more value for their work.”
“We have the opportunity to be more focused,” adds Reginald, “we can be more efficient with technology. It’s going to open up so many more opportunities for us, the mundane tasks are no longer the focus, it’s more about strategy, working more efficiently, and I think AI will do that.”
“This is evolving technology,” states Amar, “AI has its challenges, but the opportunity is just immense. This is human interaction with machines, and how we can collaborate with machines to enhance our capabilities. Can society and organizations slow it down? I don’t think so. Every company will be fearful that if they don’t get ahead, they’ll lose the competitive edge, and so are humans. We’re just at the beginning of a decade-long cycle.”
“I get really excited about learning,” says Dan a little later on, “we all learn in different ways. The fact (is) that we’ll have (AI) assistants that will be able to tune to us and adapt to the way we want to learn different things. There are going to be some really exciting opportunities for that. AI models specifically do a really great job at opportunities that are predictable, and repeatable. Technology has always opened the door for humans to up-level themselves and find new opportunities.”
The conversation continued across an array of topics spanning everything from Government regulation and the growth of AI-created misinformation (deep-fakes, speech synthesis, etc.) to healthcare’s timely (and lifesaving) implementation of AI to the potential for enhancing careers by amplifying individual contributions.
Your customers are going to want to talk about AI, it unlocks so many efficiencies and possibilities. Make sure you’re ready to be part of the dialog, so it doesn’t happen without you. To hear the full unabridged conversation – including a discussion of terms, processes, and how AI actually works, watch the session recording today!