(19659001) It’s the stormy holiday weekend and you just received the last notice you wanted in the busiest week of travel of the year: the first leg of your plane is significantly delayed.
means you will be on hold for a half-hour with airline customer service. This time, however, the process is a bit different. You exchange a few texts with the AI chatbot of the airline, which quickly assesses the situation and places you into a priority queue. A human agent will then take over and confirm the details. They will then rebook you on an earlier flight to ensure you make your connection. You’ll arrive home in time for mom’s pot-roast.
Generative AI has become a critical component of today’s business operations and customer service interactions. According to Salesforce’s research, 3 out of 5 workers (61%) are currently using or plan to use AI in their role. A full 68% of these employees are confident that the technology–which can churn out text, video, image, and audio content almost instantaneously–will enable them to provide more enriching customer experiences.
The technology is not a complete solution, nor does it replace human workers. Sixty percent (60%) of the employees surveyed believe that human oversight and control is essential for generative AI to be effective and trustworthy.
Generative AI enables people and increases efficiencies in business operations, but using it to empower employees will make all the difference. Its full business value will only be achieved when it is used thoughtfully to blend with human empathy, ingenuity, and emotional intelligence.
Generative AI pilots across industries
Though the technology is still nascent, many generative AI use cases are starting to emerge.
In sales and marketing, generative AI can assist with creating targeted ad content, identifying leads, upselling, cross-selling, and providing real-time sales analytics. When used for internal functions like IT, HR, and finance, generative AI can improve help-desk services, simplify recruitment processes, generate job descriptions, assist with onboarding and exit processes, and even write code.
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This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.
