In this article, we look at how generative AI could change work and jobs going forwards, plus how it could help businesses adopt new work trends such as a 4-day week.

The Rise Of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – A Timeline 

AI has been many decades in the making. For example, the field of AI was established with a summer workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956, the first AI program, called “The General Problem Solver,” was developed in 1959, and the concept of “machine learning” was introduced in 1966 by (Arthur Samuel). That said, it wasn’t really until 1980s that the field of neural networks was established (machine learning inspired by the human brain) and, of course, with the rise of the internet in the 90s that AI techniques actually started to be used by search engines, leading to better helping users find information and products online.

Some of the most notable developments of AI (up until the more recent advent of the introduction of ‘generative AI’ heralded by the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT) include:

2011: IBM’s Watson defeats human champions on the quiz show Jeopardy! using natural language processing and machine learning.

2014: Google’s DeepMind creates an AI system that can play Atari video games at a superhuman level.

2015: Amazon introduces the AI-powered voice assistant Alexa, which can perform tasks and answer questions using natural language input.

2016: Google’s AlphaGo defeats the world champion in the game of Go, which was previously considered too complex for computers to play at a high level.

2017: The first self-driving cars become available to the public, using AI to navigate and make decisions on the road.

2020: The COVID-19 pandemic leads to increased adoption of AI in healthcare, including the usage of machine learning to analyse medical images and predict the spread of the virus.

How Are Businesses Already Using AI ?

Businesses are already using AI as part of their work in a variety of ways, including:

– Customer service. Chatbots and virtual assistants can provide customers with quick and efficient service, handling routine tasks and answering common questions.

– Marketing. AI can analyse data to identify patterns and preferences among customers, allowing businesses to create more targeted and personalized marketing campaigns.

– Operations. AI is already being used to optimise supply chain management, inventory control and production processes, leading to cost savings and increased efficiency.

– Fraud detection. AI can analyse data to identify potential instances of fraud or financial misconduct, helping businesses prevent losses and maintain compliance.

– Predictive analytics. AI can be used to make predictions about future trends or events, such as sales forecasts or risk assessments, allowing businesses to make better-informed decisions.

– Overall, AI has already become a valuable tool for businesses across a wide range of industries, offering the potential for increased efficiency, cost savings, and competitive advantage.

Generative AI : A Game-Changer For Businesses 

Although AI has been gradually introduced into many aspects of our lives and work in recent years, the biggest and most notable splash has come from the introduction of generative, conversational AI Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots like ChatGPT. With ChatGPT’s GPT-3.5 architecture due to upgraded with new image features soon with GPT-4, with ChatGPT soon to have a web browsing plugin, plus with the integration of the ‘Copilot’ chatbot with Microsoft 365 and Google’s ‘Bard’ conversational chatbot on the way, generative AI is about to play an even bigger role in our lives and work.

How Important Will Generative AI Be To Businesses? 

A recent Salesforce survey of 500 senior IT business leaders gives an idea of the perceived value of generative AI to businesses going forward. The survey showed that the majority (67 per cent) of business leaders are now prioritising generative AI for their business within the next 18 months, with one-third (33 per cent) naming it as a top priority.

How Might Generative AI Affect Jobs In The Future? 

With businesses giving (and planning to give) greater priority to generative AI, this has the potential to create a wide range of new jobs in the future, thereby changing the jobs market. Some possible examples of jobs that generative AI may create include:

– AI trainers. These individuals would be responsible for training the AI algorithms to generate specific outputs that meet certain criteria, such as realistic images or natural-sounding speech.

– AI data specialists. These individuals would be responsible for collecting and analysing data that is used to train generative AI models. They would also be responsible for ensuring that the data is high quality and diverse enough to produce accurate and unbiased results.

– AI art curators. As generative AI continues to advance in the realm of art and creative expression, there will likely be a need for individuals who can curate and showcase AI-generated artwork in galleries and museums.

– AI content creators. As AI-generated content becomes more common, there will be a need for individuals who can write scripts or create storyboards that guide the generative AI algorithms towards specific outcomes. This is already a role that many existing content creators are having to adapt to.

– AI ethicists. As AI continues to advance, there will be a growing need for individuals who can assess and address the ethical implications of generative AI. They would be responsible for ensuring that the AI algorithms are transparent, fair and unbiased.

– AI translators. As generative AI algorithms become more advanced, there may be a need for individuals who can translate the output of one algorithm into a format that can be understood by another algorithm. Alternatively, this may be done by AI itself.

– AI analysts. These individuals would be responsible for analysing the output of generative AI algorithms to determine their effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.

Overall, the possibilities for new jobs in generative AI are vast and varied and will likely continue to expand and change as the technology continues to evolve. It is likely too that as generative AI creates new jobs, as it improves its capabilities, it may swallow up those new jobs too!

How Will Generative AI Affect Human Workers? 

The increasing use of generative AI and improvements in the technology landscape are likely to reshape the job market and require workers to continually adapt and develop new skills. However, there will also be new opportunities for workers who are able to leverage the power of AI and develop expertise in the technology.

The 4 Day Week And AI 

It has long been predicted that greater automation and technological advances will lead to shorter working weeks. For example, in the 1930s, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological advancements would lead to a 15-hour work week.

With this in mind, the results of the world’s largest four-day working week pilot (Autonomy for 4 Day Week Global) were recently published. The study, which took place in the UK from June to December 2022, involved 61 companies in diverse sectors and sizes, and around 2,900 workers. The results were overwhelmingly positive with 56 of the 61 companies who took part continuing with the four-day week (92 per cent), and 18 confirming the policy is a permanent change. The ‘Before and after’ data showed that 39 per cent of employees were less stressed, and 71 per cent had reduced levels of burnout at the end of the trial. Also, measures of work-life balance were found to have improved across the trial period.

How Could Generative AI Contribute To Making A 4-Day Week Achievable For Businesses? 

The concept of a 4-day workweek has gained momentum in recent years, with businesses exploring ways to improve work-life balance and productivity.

Generative AI is an emerging technology with the potential to transform various industries and could play a key role in making the 4-day workweek a reality.

By automating repetitive tasks such as data entry and administrative work, generative AI can free up employees’ time to focus on more complex and strategic work. This could increase productivity and efficiency, potentially allowing for a shorter workweek.

Generative AI can also analyse vast amounts of data and provide insights to inform decision-making, enabling businesses to make more informed decisions in less time. Additionally, generative AI can be used to develop chatbots and other automated customer service tools, providing 24/7 customer support without requiring employees to work longer hours.

Also, by providing tools for virtual collaboration, project management, and communication, generative AI can help businesses to create more flexible work environments that can accommodate a 4-day workweek.

The adoption of generative AI, therefore, has the potential to revolutionise the way businesses operate and create a more balanced and productive work culture.

It Will Take Work & Planning Plus Will Require Cultural Change 

Overall, by leveraging the power of generative AI, businesses can become more efficient and productive, potentially allowing for a shorter workweek without sacrificing performance or profitability. However, it’s important to note that the adoption of generative AI also requires careful planning, training, management, and cultural change to ensure that it is implemented effectively and ethically.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

The increased productivity, time and cost savings that generative AI is already delivering to businesses are a taster of the potential going forward as the technology improves. It’s clear that generative AI is changing existing jobs and will create new job opportunities and roles as businesses give the technology greater priority. The benefits of generative AI also have the potential to help businesses adopt new work trends, such as the 4-day week and, just as predicted over the years, the automation created by technology could see people spending much less time engaged in ‘work’ and able to achieve a better work/life balance. Businesses, however, will have to engage in more planning and manage cultural change to help them adapt to make the most of the opportunities that generative AI provides.

World Backup Day founder, Ismail Jadun, has said that March 31 will “will make everyone think about their situation, learn about the various options and get their files backed up”. 

World Backup Day 

World Backup Day, first celebrated in 2011, is an annual event (taking place on March 31) that’s dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of data backups and encouraging individuals and businesses to back up their important data regularly.

The purpose of World Backup Day is to remind people about the importance of their critical data in case of data loss, theft, or damage to their devices. It has become a global movement with individuals, businesses and organisations participating in the event by promoting backup awareness, sharing backup tips, and encouraging others to take backups of their data.

Why?

Data is now a critical asset of businesses and organisations and over 1.8 zettabytes of data is being generated per year (according to IDC Digital Universe), which is a lot to backup!

If businesses don’t backup their data, they can be at risk of losing critical information that could have severe consequences, including:

– Data loss. If a business experiences a data loss event (such as a system crash, hardware failure, cyber-attack, or natural disaster) and they don’t have a backup in place, they can lose all their critical data.

– Downtime. If a business’s data is lost, it can take considerable time to restore systems and data. This can cause extended periods of downtime, which can negatively impact the business’s continuity, productivity, customer service, and revenue.

– No disaster recovery option. Many businesses now have disaster recovery plans in place with data backups as a central feature of them. Having no recent data backup available could seriously affect a business’s chances of recovering at all from a serious cyber-attack or fire, for example.

– Reputational damage. Losing critical data can also damage a business’s reputation. For example, if a business’s customer data is compromised due to a data breach and they don’t have a backup, they can lose the trust of their customers, leading to a loss of existing and future business.

– Legal and regulatory compliance issues. Many businesses are required by law to keep certain types of data for a specified period. Failure to do so can result in legal and regulatory compliance issues.

That said, according to a Backblaze survey, nearly 30 per cent of people say they have never even backed up their data.

How Can Data Be Lost? 

There are many ways that critical business can be lost such as theft (theft of hardware and cyber-attacks), hardware failure or loss a device, natural disaster, fire/flood/damage to premises and equipment, and obsolete file formats.

Backup What? 

According to World Backup Day sources, items to backup data from should include your computer, laptop, phone, iPod, tablet, other wireless devices, photos and even videos on social networks.

Options 

One of the goals of World Backup Day is to make people aware of the different backup options. There are two main types of backup solutions:

– Local backup. An external hard drive that can be easily retrieved at home.

– Cloud/offsite backup. An online backup service or hard drive securely placed in a different location.

Having both local and offsite backups can give businesses peace of mind, knowing files are safe and secure should anything happen.

Regular, Reliable, And Secure 

When backing up data, it is important to make sure that the chosen backup option is safe and reliable, has been set up correctly and has been tested, and that it happens automatically and regularly.

In general, businesses should backup their data regularly to minimise the risk of data loss and ensure that they can quickly recover from any data loss event.

A good rule of thumb for businesses is to perform daily backups of critical data, including customer data, financial data, and other mission-critical information. For less critical data, such as email or other non-essential files, weekly or monthly backups may be sufficient.

However, it’s important to note that businesses should also consider the type of backup solution they use. Some backup solutions allow for continuous backup, which means that data is backed up in real-time as changes are made. This can provide an extra layer of protection against data loss and ensure that the most recent version of the data is always available.

Cloud Is The Popular Option 

Most businesses now opt for cloud backups. 95 per cent of small businesses and 85 percent of all businesses store data or backups in the cloud..

Using the cloud for backups offers several benefits, including:

– Scalability. Cloud backup solutions are highly scalable, allowing businesses to easily increase or decrease the amount of storage space they need as their data needs change. This can help businesses save money by only paying for the storage they use.

– Cost-effectiveness. Cloud backup solutions can be more cost-effective than traditional backup methods, as businesses don’t need to invest in expensive hardware or hire additional IT staff to manage backups.

– Accessibility. Cloud backup solutions allow businesses to access their data from anywhere, as long as they have an internet connection. This can be particularly useful for remote teams or businesses with multiple locations.

– Security. Cloud backup solutions typically offer robust security measures, including data encryption, access controls and backup redundancy. This can help businesses protect their data from cyber-attacks, natural disasters, and other threats.

– Automated backups. Many cloud backup solutions offer automated backups, which means that data is backed up on a regular schedule without requiring manual intervention. This can help businesses ensure that their data is always up-to-date and reduce the risk of data loss due to human error.

– Disaster recovery. Cloud backup solutions can help businesses quickly recover from data loss events, such as cyber-attacks, natural disasters, or hardware failures. With cloud backups, businesses can restore their data quickly and easily, minimising downtime and ensuring business continuity.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Having an annual World Backup Day acts as a reminder of the importance of having an effective, regular, and automatic backup solution in place for one of the most critical assets of a business. With so many risks and threats to business data (e.g. cyber-attacks), backing up data is crucial for business continuity and disaster recovery and, therefore, for the survival of a business. The many benefits of the cloud (as outlined above) now make it a sensible and cost-effective option for the majority of today’s businesses and organisations and using the cloud for communications, storage and backups has become normal practice for many businesses, particularly since the collaborative online working in the pandemic, and with today’s cloud-based SaaS apps like Microsoft 365.

Hopefully, World Backup Day will motivate the 30 per cent of people who say they have never backed up their data to understand the reasons for doing so, how easy it can be to set up, and to decide to start doing so as soon as possible.

Equinix, the largest global data centre and colocation provider for enterprise network and cloud computing, has installed a rooftop farm at one of its sites that uses waste data centre power to grow fruit and veg.

Paris Rooftop Greenhouse 

As part of its Corporate Sustainability programme, Equinix has already covered several of its data centre rooftop sites with covered with plants and vegetation to keep the buildings cool, lowers cooling costs and reduces storm water runoff. Now, the company’s new ‘rooftop farm’ at its Saint Denis, Paris PA10 data centre has 430 m2 greenhouse and a further 570 m2 of green space. The greenhouse is powered by a heat recovery system with heat exchangers linked to the data centre’s water-cooling system. It also features humidity monitoring, temperatures sensors, sunshades, automated irrigation, and ventilation systems, all of which can provide climate, year-round growing facility for fruit and vegetables and relaxing garden space.

Growing Fruit & Veg

RBA Architects, who completed the ground-breaking urban farm project for Equinix have highlighted how the seasonal fruit and vegetables are cultivated inside the greenhouse using a hydroponic system to maximise space efficiency and minimise water usage. Also, the gardens are planted with species known to maximise the amount of rainwater consumption and support insects and wildlife, and have been enhanced with the installation of ‘insect hotels’.

Sharing 

The rooftop garden has also been designed to be wheelchair accessible, and provide natural shade, cooling, and relaxation spaces. Visitors and staff to the site can share the foods that the project has created and use the dedicated seating and catering areas.

John Hutchinson, Director at RBA, said of the project “It is of increasing importance that we increase our actions and mitigate the environmental impact of an increasingly digital world” and that it “heralds the start of an exciting new era.” 

Tenth Data Centre In Paris 

The PA10 Paris data centre the tenth opened by Equinix in Paris over the last 20 years and the rooftop garden is one way that enables it to be built in line with global environmental standards and designed with the aim to be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certified.

What Does This Mean For Your Organisation? 

Projects that use heat transfer from data centres or from servers installed in homes (on the side of water tanks) or in businesses (to heat swimming pool sites) are becoming popular ways to save energy and energy costs, deal with data centre/server heat removal, help the environment, and help data centre companies meet their environmental targets and improve their green credentials. This urban rooftop garden project shows how modern heat exchange technology, the use of sensors and hydroponics can be combined in an innovative way make productive use of what would have been waste heat and wasted space in a way that benefits many stakeholders and the environment.

Further to the news that Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, died last week, it’s a reminder that also last-week-in-history (22 March 1993), Intel announced it would be shipping its Pentium microprocessor. This was the successor to the Intel 486, and it was a massive undertaking that involved thousands of engineers and scientists, and it took several years to complete. These first Pentium chips had a clock speed of 60 MHz, which was considered very fast at the time (despite modern clock speeds being several GigaHertz).

This perfectly illustrates Moore’s Law (i.e. the doubling of chip/components every year), which was observed by Gordon Moore himself back in 1965. For example, here’s one way they’ve grown in power, from 1971 (when Intel introduced the world’s first microprocessor, the Intel 4004) to 2021.

Year / FLOPS (Floating Point Operations per Second)

1971 700,000
1981 5,000,000
1991 1,900,000,000
2001 7,200,000,000,000
2011 8,200,000,000,000,000
2021 442,000,000,000,000,000

According to this, the fastest computer in the world in 2021 was 631,428,571,429 times more powerful than that in 1971. To be clear, FLOPS don’t show true processing power and Moore’s Law has been slowing down and many other factors apply; this exercise is purely for a sense of comparison and awe.

Humans brains aren’t great at scale (i.e. very small or large numbers) so for perspective, if one were to imagine that a single sheet of A4 paper (80 GSM standard office paper) represents a supercomputer in 1971. On that piece of paper, you coiuld write on it, draw on it, do sums on it, whatever you like.

In 2021, the computer would be represented by 631,428,571,429 sheets of A4. That’s 39 billion square metres or enough office paper to wrap over all of Wales TWICE over.

In short, as computers are getting more powerful, crunching passwords take less and less time – exponentially so. Furthermore, computers are now connected more than ever before and platforms (and associated AI’s like ChatGPT) are getting more powerful, exponentially. Think about next year!

In summary, Moore’s Law is a form of compound growth, the eighth wonder of the world, according to Einstein.

Guardio Labs researchers have reported finding a copy of the “ChatGPT for Google” open-source extension that is capable of covert malicious action such as hijacking Facebook accounts. The researchers say that the fake extension, which was downloaded over 9000 times before its removal from the Google Chrome Store, abuses the Chrome Extension API to obtain a list of Facebook-related session cookies.

The advice to anyone who has downloaded the extension is to:

– Remove the extension and change your Facebook account password.

– Go to go to Settings > Apps and Websites to make sure that hijackers haven’t added apps to your account that could post things on your behalf.

– Add 2FA to your account.

WhatsApp can use up a lot of space and mobile data by automatically downloading some large photos, videos, and voice messages. Here’s how to limit the types of media that are automatically download and the amount of mobile data WhatsApp calls use.

– Tap on the 3 dots top right and tap on ‘Settings’.

– Tap on ‘Storage and data’.

– Switch to toggle to ‘Use less data for calls’.

– Under ‘Media auto-download’, go through the mobile data, Wi-Fi, and roaming options and untick your preferences for photos, audio, videos, and documents.

Microsoft has announced that it is to help users save time and increase productivity by embedding its AI chatbot ‘Copilot’ into popular Microsoft 365 apps.

Embedded In Popular Apps 

Microsoft says that the Copilot chatbot has been embedded in the popular Microsoft 365 apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams. Like Chat GPT, Copilot is a natural language conversational chatbot that can give the same human-like responses to questions.

Business Chat 

Copilot is operated in Microsoft 365 by ‘Business chat’, which is the field (like that in ChatGTP) where you ask the chatbot questions and give it instructions using normal language, e.g. to generate a status-update based on the morning’s meetings, emails and chat threads, type in “Tell my team how we updated the product strategy”. 

How Will Copilot Help? 

Examples of how embedding Copilot into the main Microsoft365 apps can help users include:

– In Word, Microsoft says Copilot can save hours in writing, sourcing, and editing by being able to write a first draft, to edit and shorten it, rewrite it, or give feedback as required, in the same way as you might write a piece using ChatGPT.

– In Teams, Copilot can again save time and effort and make meetings more productive by summarising key discussion points of meetings, including who said what, where people are aligned and where they disagree, and suggest action items, all in real-time during a meeting. It can also recap meetings for you and send you the notes afterwards.

– In PowerPoint, it can create whole presentations for you from a simple text prompt and add any relevant content from a document you made.

– In Excel, Microsoft says Copilot can analyse trends and create summaries and graphs of data, all done in seconds from simple text prompts.

– In Outlook, Copilot can save time by clearing your inbox in minutes, not hours, e.g by drafting emails for you and analysing long email threads in seconds.

– In Power Platform, Copilot can be also used to automate repetitive tasks, even creating chatbots and go from idea to working app in minutes.

Save Time, Increase Productivity and Uplevel Your Skills 

Microsoft’s announcement focuses on three main benefits of using Copilot, which are improving productivity, saving time, and upleveling skills, i.e. making you better at what you’re good at and helping you to quickly master new AI functionality.

OpenAI Launches GPT4 

Microsoft’s Copilot announcement comes just days after OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT that Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in and has been working closely with) announced the launch of GPT4, an updated version of the AI model that powers ChatGPT.

OpenAI said GPT-4 (which was trained on Microsoft Azure AI supercomputers) outperforms ChatGPT and “can solve difficult problems with greater accuracy, thanks to its broader general knowledge and problem-solving abilities.” 

Caveat – It Can Be Wrong 

Even though ChatGPT has already become a trusted and valuable tool to businesses in just a matter of months and Copilot and GTP-4 holds even greater promise, OpenAI is covering itself by highlighting one caveat – it can be wrong because it can share disinformation.

Not Yet 

Although the launch has been announced, Copilot will initially be available (as a pilot) to just a small number of enterprise customers, and there are no details of pricing and licensing as yet.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Copilot is another big step forward in what seems to be a conversational chatbot revolution that’s transforming the way we can work by saving time and boosting productivity. The power of Copilot will provide a way to get more out the most popular apps in Microsoft 365, adding significant value to the app and creating new opportunities for users. Copilot is another major selling point and competitive advantage for Microsoft and for businesses, Copilot offers an easy-to-use way to save time, boost productivity, get greater insights into their own business and operations to aid better decision making, plus learn more about aspects of Microsoft365. All in all, Copilot could be the next game-changing step in the AI chatbot revolution

Following the news that Microsoft will soon be integrating Copilot, an AI large language model (LLM) like the one behind ChatGPT, into Microsoft 365, we look at how this will help businesses, what OpenAI’s GPT-4 will bring, and Google’s response.

Copilot 

Microsoft announced last week that it will soon be adding Copilot to Microsoft365. Copilot is an AI large language model (LLM) and natural language conversational chatbot that can give the same human-like responses to questions as OpenAI’s Chat GPT can. Once integrated, Microsoft 365 (there’s no news of when that will be yet) users will be able to type instructions into (and ask questions via) the ‘Business chat’ text field – like the text field in ChatGPT

Microsoft says that Copilot will be integrated in the most popular Microsoft 365 apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams. This will mean that, with the use of normal language typed text prompts, be able to carry out tasks like:

– Writing/re-writing, sourcing, and editing documents in Word, just as you might write a piece using ChatGPT, thereby saving hours.

– Use Copilot to make meetings in Teams more productive e.g., by asking Copilot to summarise the key discussion points e.g., who said what, where people are aligned and where they disagree and suggest action items, all in real time during a meeting. Copilot will also be able to recap meetings and send you the notes afterwards.

– Creating whole PowerPoint presentations from a simple text prompt and adding any relevant content from other documents.

– Analysing trends and create summaries and graphs of data in Excel.

– Making it much faster for users to clear their inbox in Outlook, e.g. by drafting emails  and analysing long email threads in seconds.

– In short, Microsoft sees Copilot as major value-adding USP for its Office suite and is highlighting the time-saving, productivity-potential for users.

ChatGPT4 

Just days prior to Microsoft’s announcement about Copilot, OpenAI, ChatGTP’s creators and a close working partner of Microsoft announced the introduction of GTP-4, an improved and upgraded version of ChatGPT. Open AI says that GTP-4 is “OpenAI’s most advanced system, producing safer and more useful responses” and it can “solve difficult problems with greater accuracy, thanks to its broader general knowledge and problem solving abilities”. 

Images As Inputs Too 

As well as text inputs, GTP-4 can accept images as inputs and can generate captions, classifications, and analysis. For example, on the OpenAI website it gives the example of a GTP-4 user uploading a photo of some cooking ingredients accompanied by the question “What can I make with these ingredients?”.  The example reply for GTP-4 is a list of dishes that can be made with the ingredients featured in the image.

OpenAI also says that GTP-4, which was trained on Microsoft Azure AI supercomputers surpasses the earlier version of ChatGPT in its advanced reasoning capabilities and outperforms the earlier version by scoring in higher approximate percentiles among test-takers (90th compared to ChatGPT’s 10th on the Uniform Bar Exam).

Safer 

OpenAI also says that it has spent 6 months making GPT-4 safer and more aligned. For example, OpenAI says that, in its own evaluations, GPT-4 is 82 per cent less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content and 40 per cent more likely to produce factual responses than GPT-3.5.

Already Included In Other Products 

GTP-4, which is already incorporated in Microsoft’s Bing search engine, is also already being used in new products in collaboration with other companies and organisations, e.g. Stripe, Duolingo, and even the Government of Iceland (to help preserve its language).

Limitations 

Although ChatGPT has been extremely popular, and GTP-4 looks like being even more so, OpenAI itself and other tech commentators have warned of some important limitations and potential problems that businesses need to bear in mind about these AI models. For example:

– They can produce wrong and/or inaccurate answers and can potentially spread disinformation.

– The free version of ChatGTP is sometimes busy, i.e. it’s not available to all users in periods of high demand.

– GPT-4 can display social biases, hallucinations, and create adversarial prompts.

– Microsoft may not have server hardware needed to run the AI for Copilot across Office 365 and for GTP-4 in Bing (a shortage of GPU power). This could impact smaller businesses as Microsoft may prioritise capacity to bigger customers.

Google’s Answer?

Following OpenAI’s recent announcement of the general release of API access to ChatGPT and ‘Whisper’, its automatic speech recognition (ASR) AI model, Google has now announced that it’s giving API-level access to its LLM model PaLM to enable developers to build it into their apps and workflows. Google says that developers and businesses can now try its APIs and products to start building Google’s AI models through Google Cloud and a new prototyping environment called MakerSuite. Also, Google says that it’s introducing new AI features through Workspace. Google has also said that it may add PaLM’s AI capabilities to Google Docs, Gmail, and other parts of its suite.

No More Heard About Bard 

There have been no new announcements, however, about when Google’s direct conversational chatbot competitor to ChatGPT ‘Bard’ will actually be released. The original announcement of its impending release in just a few weeks, as an answer to the announcemnet of ChatGPT’s release, was reportedly met with criticism by Google employees for being “rushed” and “botched.”

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Although there were already chatbots out there, the release of ChatGTP and its game-changing success was really just the opening of the AI chatbot revolution which looks likely to be the next big leap in computing and business. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella puts it (with reference to Copilot) “we are at the start of a new era of computing” and as Microsoft’s Jared Spataro says, “Copilot marks a new era of computing that will fundamentally transform the way we work.” AI language models are now being released thick and fast, both through APIs so developers can make new, much more powerful apps, embedded in search engines and across productivity suites (Google and Microsoft), and as online chatbots for all end users. ChatGPT is already onto its next big chatbot upgrade with GPT-4. For businesses, all this will mean increased leverage and productivity, time and cost savings, better business insights, and being able to harness new value adding powers that can transform work and outcomes. We are still at the beginning of an AI revolution that holds a lot of promise for businesses going forward.

The UK government Department of Health (DOH) is facing criticism over a report that says it spent more on new Apple iPhones than it did on defibrillators last year.

£1.5 Million Spent On iPhones For Whitehall Staff 

The report from the Mirror newspaper highlighted how, in 2022, the DOH spent £1.5 million buying iPhones for Whitehall staff, whereas it only spent around only £1 million on defibrillators, which would be installed in a variety of locations for public use.

Defibrillators Save Lives 

There are an estimated 100,000 defibrillators across the UK. According to the British Heart Foundation, the use of a defibrillator, along with CPR, can increase the chance of survival following a cardiac arrest by up to 75 per cent.

In the UK, defibrillators are widely available in public places such as train stations, airports and shopping centres. There are also community defibrillator schemes that place defibrillators in public places and train local people to use them in emergencies.

450 Per Cent Increase On iPhone Spending Last Year 

The iPhone purchases are reported to have included 1,570 brand new iPhone 13s and 650 iPhone SEs. The Mirror’s report says that if the DOH averaged just under 4,000 staff in its core Whitehall team last year, it looks as though one in every two workers got a new iPhone. The report highlights the fact that 2022 spending on iPhones at the DOH appears to have been up by a massive 450 per cent compared to 2021.

Misplaced Priorities? 

The report highlights a quote from Labour’s Shadow Attorney General, Emily Thornberry, in response to the report’s findings, saying: “You have to question not just the misplaced priorities but the warped mentality of ministers at the Department of Health, when they are willing to spend £550,000 more on buying the latest iPhones for their own staff than on installing defibrillators in our local communities.” 

Spending Was On Necessary Replacements? 

According to the Mirror’s report, the response from a spokesperson was to say that DOH staff needed “access to the appropriate tools and resources to do their jobs effectively” and the 2022 iPhone purchases were to “replace iPhones that could no longer receive vendor updates and represented a cyber vulnerability.” 

Prices 

iPhone 13s, of which 1,570 were reportedly bought brand new for DOH staff in 2022 generally retail (at today’s prices) at around £700.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

The UK government is known to buy-in Apple iPhones in large numbers for government departments. For example, back in February 2021, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was widely reported to have purchased 11,000 64GB iPhone SE 2020’s. Its preference for iPhones could be due to their security, reliability, ease of use, and compatibility with some government back-end systems and, of course, deals struck with certain suppliers. In the case of the Mirror’s report, the DOH spokesperson suggested that the larger spending was because of the need to buy replacements. Contrasting spending on iPhones with life-saving for communities, however, was always going to lead to questions and criticism about values and priorities and it could, of course, be argued that defibrillators can be priceless life-saving tool that benefit everyone and worth allocating more of the department’s budget to.

In this insight, we look at what GPL is, how it relates to the right to repair, and how businesses can be affected if other businesses don’t fulfil their obligation under GPL.

General Public License (GPL) 

The General Public License (GPL) is a widely used open-source software license that grants users the right to use, study, modify and distribute software that is licensed under it. The GPL is designed to ensure that software remains free and open, and that users have the freedom to modify and distribute the software as they wish

What Obligations Do Companies Have Under GPL?

Under GPL, companies (e.g. manufacturers who make a product which has a software element) have number of compliance obligations which are:

– Providing the source code. If a company distributes software that is licensed under the GPL, it must also make the source code available to anyone who receives the software. This ensures that users have the ability to modify and distribute the software themselves.

– Providing a copy of the GPL. Companies must include a copy of the GPL with the software they distribute. This ensures that users are aware of their rights under the license.

– Allowing modifications. Companies must allow users to modify the software as they see fit. This means that users have the ability to customise the software to meet their specific needs.

– Releasing modifications. If a company modifies software that is licensed under the GPL, it must also release those modifications under the GPL. This ensures that modifications remain free and open.

– Providing notices. Companies must provide notices to users that the software is licensed under the GPL and that they have certain rights under the license.

Failure to comply with these obligations can result in legal consequences and damage to a company’s reputation within the open-source community.

Providing The Source Code & The ‘Right To Repair’ 

The ‘right to repair’ refers to the legal right of consumers to repair or modify the products they own, including electronic devices and appliances. The right to repair is often associated with open-source software because access to the source code is essential for repairing and modifying software.

If a company does not provide the source code for software that is subject to the GPL, it can make it difficult or even impossible for users to exercise their right to repair. Without access to the source code, users cannot modify or repair the software, which can lead to increased costs, waste, and environmental harm.

For example, if a user has a device that relies on open-source software and that device malfunctions, the user may need to modify the software to fix the problem. If the company that produced the software does not provide the source code, the user may be unable to fix the issue themselves, which can result in unnecessary waste and expense.

Reasons For Withholding Source Code 

In some cases, companies may intentionally withhold source code as a way to limit competition or maintain control over their products. However, this can be detrimental to consumers and the environment, which is why the GPL requires companies to make the source code available to anyone who receives the software. By providing access to the source code, the GPL helps ensure that users can exercise their right to repair and reduce waste, while also fostering innovation and competition in the software industry.

A Recent Example – John Deere 

A recent example of how businesses can be affected by not being given access to the source code of a product is featured on the Software Conservancy website in a recent post from Denver Gingerich, a member of a farming family. In the post, Gingerich explains that he is from a farming family and that farmers have the right to repair their tools, including tractors and other farming equipment. Gingerich alleges that some farm equipment manufacturers like John Deere (the largest manufacturer of farm equipment in North America and one of the largest worldwide) are not complying with the right to repair licenses for the software used in these tools. The effect of this is that farmers are cut off from their livelihood if the manufacturer does not wish to repair their farming tools, even when the farmer could easily perform the repairs themselves.

Gingerich suggests that John Deere may have been failing to meet the requirements of the software right to repair licenses they use for some time and haven’t yet provided complete corresponding source code to the farmers who are entitled to it.

Depending on the veracity of Gingerich’s claims, this potentially illustrates how a manufacturer, by not complying with its obligations under GPL, could have far-reaching implications for (in this case) farmers’ livelihoods and even food security throughout the world. Gingerich has reportedly called upon John Deere to immediately resolve all its outstanding GPL violations, across all lines of its farm equipment, by providing complete source code to the farmers and others who are entitled to it.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

With so many important business-products which are essential tools for organisations now having an open source software element to them, providing the source code with the product is an important obligation that enables users to exercise their right to repair. Not providing the source code can seriously affect the businesses of users by stopping them from using vital work tools and lead to increased costs, waste, and environmental harm as products are scrapped that could otherwise be repaired.

For companies that don’t provide the source code for products (or withhold it), this could lead to legal consequences and damage to their reputation within the open-source community. Depending on your viewpoint (and any impacts to guarantees/warranties aside), it could be argued that it is in the interest of businesses to keep a free and open system where users are given all the tools they need (i.e. the code as well as the products) to enable them to make modifications where they see fit and exercise their right to repair.