Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2024. Read them in this 16th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
AI will bring sweeping advancements to the workforce and product enhancement
By Hubert Palan, founder and CEO of Productboard
The headlines in 2023 were dominated by AI, and sentiment spanned a wide range of emotions, from immense hope for innovative new tools and a brighter future to widespread fear of AI taking over the planet. While the advent of new generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard sent a spark of interest throughout every industry, the near-term implications of AI advancements will be less shocking than some of the claims we’ve heard. Nevertheless, AI will indeed have a tremendous impact on the enterprise and shape new ways of conducting business over the next few years. Specifically, advancements in AI will have a big effect on job functions, knowledge transfer and product innovation.
A new combination of the digital and human workforces
Employees across industries are fearful that AI will automate their jobs and displace them. While it’s reasonable to suspect that AI will alter jobs (many technological advancements have), in 2024 we’ll see that generative AI is making jobs easier and output stronger. In fact, companies are already reaping the benefit of new AI tools in the form of massive ROI. More and more jobs will soon be enhanced by AI through streamlined tasks and easier access to knowledge, meaning that employees will find tedious work has been simplified for them.
Rather than replace existing employees, organizations will need to leverage their expertise to determine how new AI tools can best supplement their positions. Over the next few years, businesses and employees will learn to leverage this new “digital workforce” alongside their human workforce, without making the latter feel underutilized or ignored.
AI will increase the velocity of knowledge
Generative AI can surface valuable and actionable insights for businesses, and that is likely its most impactful and accessible benefit that business leaders will recognize in 2024. However, unlike humans, generative AI does not proactively disseminate information to parties across the organization who might benefit from it. It can dig up a wealth of knowledge in seconds, but a user must know the right questions to ask and the right people to share the insights with for the value to be realized. Information sharing between humans is much faster than between computers today. For example, we can instinctively pick up cues from others when they may lack understanding on a certain subject, and as a result, we can proactively offer more information to help each other succeed. It’s also common for people to share useful details unknowingly simply by conversing with one another.
In the future, I anticipate a universal programming language will be developed to allow various computers and large language models to share information instantly with each other. This will eventually allow businesses to more easily access, share and act on the breadth of data at their fingertips. Until that time comes, generative AI will still be a powerful resource for humans as they drive the velocity of knowledge within their organizations.
Advancements in AI are crucial in modernizing enterprise solutions
Across the market, we’re seeing generative AI rapidly move from a specialist technology into the mainstream, which will continue over the next year. This is the number one priority for most business leaders as they realize generative AI is too valuable to fade away. As a result, it is triggering both productive, competitive innovation and a downright scramble to integrate certain AI features and functionalities into products fast. For this reason, and based on human nature, certain AI features are going to become expected across both personal and professional use cases.
For example, if a user is accustomed used to autocorrect on their iPhone but does not experience the same seamless writing and editing features while using their employer’s Outlook email, there will be a point of friction between the product and user. The functionality, user experience and ease-of-use that AI can provide to products will become table stakes and expected across tools – whether those tools are provided by a tech titan or a startup. Being prepared to keep pace with evolving AI features and capabilities and integrating them into products routinely will be critical for business leaders and product managers moving forward.
AI offers many advantages to the companies that understand it and have a practical vision for incorporating it into the workforce and into their offerings. Now that the initial race to implement AI has calmed down, 2024 will be a year of making AI work to each business’s advantage through refined technical expertise and careful, strategic planning. Company leaders can lead their organizations into a new golden era of tech if they make the most out of the latest tools available to them.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hubert Palan is Founder and CEO of Productboard. Driven by a passion for building truly excellent products, he started the company when he saw a hole in the market for a dedicated product management platform. Before Productboard, Hubert was VP of Product Management at GoodData and a management consultant at Accenture.
Hubert mentors and advises startups and judges teams at entrepreneurship competitions and frequently speaks at his two alma maters – UC Berkeley, where he got his MBA, and the Czech Technical University, where he received an M.Sc. in Computer Science.
