iscover Avoiding ‘zero-thought’ AI
TechnologyFinding the right AI tool amid a heavily competitive tech market can feel daunting; it’s crucial that business goals and strategy are taken into account to pick the right one.
On an episode of Accountants Daily Insider, SavvyWise chief executive Drew Pflaum said that while there are many tools out there, not all of them add value.
“There is a fundamental issue with large language models [where] they’re just predictions of the next word. In simple terms, it’s just guessing what the next word is based on its training data.
“There’s no actual thought going into it. Even though we call it artificial intelligence, there’s zero thought [that goes] into it, and that’s how we end up getting some hallucinations.”
He said to find the right platform, firms should explore and experiment.
“Go try them all and find out which one works for you. It’s like what’s the best flavour of ice cream? Well, try them and work out which one you like best,” Pflaum said.
Choosing the right tool
Further, to choose the right tool, Pflaum said, it is important for businesses to ponder what their business strategy and goals are.
“You should always start with that in mind. So what are you trying to achieve with whatever solution you’re picking, whether it’s AI for tax research or AI for file note-taking or automation technologies, what is the business goal? So you start with that and then once you’re satisfied [you can say] ‘okay, this is what we’re trying to achieve by adopting a tool’.”
Pflaum said that the next stage is to look at the options that are out there.
“How do we make sure… that the ones we select have strong security behind them? You’ve got a policy, an AI policy in place, and then you support that. You’re going to support that with appropriate level of training for your staff so they know how to use it and get the best practice out of it.”
He stressed that if a business does not train their staff how to use the tool, they will get low usage of the tool compared to the overall potential usage.
Pflaum said that when developing SavvyWise, he tried to ensure that it had a low-cost entry for smaller firms with a smaller cost base.
He said that through the SavvyWise AI platform, firms are able to use their own firm’s knowledge bank to enhance their use of the AI tool.
“One of the big things that really people go ‘aha’ with is when we show them firm knowledge, which is the feature [where] each firm can upload their own tax training manuals, templates of advice into SavvyWise.”
“Instead of these being uploaded and just like sort of sitting there on a SharePoint drive, File Explorer, OneDrive, whatever you want to call it, we actually transform that data into AI-optimised data and then the firm can search upon that,” Pflaum said.
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