Enterprise hits and misses - ChatGPT-4o gets an early enterprise grade, Meta bails on Workplace, and AI forces a skills rethink

Lead story - ChatGPT-4o - a tiny step for AGI, a giant leap for emotional (like) AI?

I couldn't resist the snark of putting a question mark at the end of George's post. GPT-4o is here, and it deserves a thorough review - will it aid the enterprise? 

George has written some of the best enterprise AI posts on diginomica this year, always balancing the potentials and the pitfalls. But I get the sense he might be more bullish on GPT-4o than I am. On the emotional intelligence of GPT-4o, George writes about the implications of "audio as a first-class citizen in generating responses," cross-referenced against other modalities where needed: 

The upshot is that it will make standardizing the analysis of conversational cues across different speakers and cultures easier.  Early use cases might include better customer service, sales, and counselor coaching tools. It may be tempting to roll this out for customer-facing chatbots to improve user experience. However, this could also introduce new reputational or business risks.

OpenAI plans on offering a free version of some of its latest models. George issues a caveat: 

But as with all free products, it's worth cautioning that when big tech companies offer us a service for free, the product ends up being you. With social media, that means monetizing our attention. 

Free versions of this type come off as a consumer play, not an enterprise one. But as George points out, there is enterprise relevance here too: better user experience. 

 Once the service goes live, it will definitely be worth exploring to help appreciate how it and future competitive offerings may shape and improve user experience design. 

I view emotional intelligence as a low bar for AI. Why? Because humans are more than willing to project emotions and understanding onto objects they want to relate to, no matter how flawed their grasp is (I even do that with Alexa, and Alexa has no insight into my comings and goings, even after six years of exchanging verbiage, and has yet to propose a product I actually need). I don't view OpenAI as the most important company when it comes to enterprise AI - nor do I see OpenAI as the leader in any pursuit of AGI; they are too busy/under too much investor pressure to monetize, rather than to hit the white board, which is the toll the real pursuit of AGI requires. 

But here's an interesting one: with its audio emphasis, will GPT-4o supplant the mediocre mobile voice assistants (Siri et al)? The bar is clunky low here, and OpenAI excels at more entertaining interactions, even when accuracy falls short. 

On the enterprise side, George is onto something with the multi-modal, multi-lingual aspect. OpenAI isn't going to win awards for cross-cultural sensitivity any time soon, but translations and multi-lingual dexterity might be the top use case here for enterprises, based on the release reviews I've seen. But, limitations abound: GPT-4o’s Chinese token-training data is polluted by spam and porn websites. 

As for a reduction in hallucinations and operational costs, these are incremental improvements at best. Meanwhile, enterprises are figuring out how to reduce AI costs by reducing dependence on models trained on the known universe when that's overkill to their use case. The ROI of gen AI will remain challenging, due to everything from operating costs to the need for human review of (most) output, which impacts both the productivity and the financial return. Still, OpenAI is the elephant in the room, the biggest reason we are grappling with this, and, without doubt, the best at engaging users in appealing ways. That's one thing enterprises could stand to learn from. 

Diginomica picks - my top stories on diginomica this week

• Avatars, AI and authenticity - driving the revolution in marketing video production - Barb looks at how video production can be aided by AI - something I have seen firsthand (though production automation and creating terrific content are different discussions entirely). Barb: "COVID taught us that casual, authentic videos are the norm, according to Savage, with the result that people are creating some genuinely authentic videos."
• HarmonyCares CIO Kristin Darby - integrating patient data to bring back personalized care - Mark Chillingworth continues his solid series of CIO profiles: "Although taking care to the patient's home eliminates the friction of a hospital visit, there are complexities that could easily introduce new friction. This is the reason Darby and HarmonyCares have invested in an information-led culture and processes."

Vendor analysis, diginomica style. Here's my top choices from our vendor coverage:

• Team 24 - seven takeaways on the ongoing evolution of digital teamwork and the role of AI - Phil posted a notable roundup of digital teamwork lessons; his breakdown of AI use case into four categories is a keeper. Bonus points for not using the already-shopworn "co-pilot" phrase...
• What Davies Group has learned since becoming an early adopter of ServiceNow’s generative AI tool, Now Assist - Derek gets the scoopy from an early AI adopter. Good results so far, but with a useful reminder: your AI is only as good as the data your are exposing: "The system whereby knowledge is stored in documents with menus for navigation, doesn’t necessarily work when the information is being surfaced using natural language processing and in virtual conversation."
• Where do SAP customers stand on AI, RISE, and the transformations ahead? DSAG shares its position on the SAP innovation debate - Wherein I share the high points from a series of conversations with DSAG, the German-speaking user group. DSAG is never short on strong positions - this piece brings the upcoming hot topics of SAP Sapphire and the ASUG Annual Conference into focus.
• Sage turns in solid first half numbers with focus on AI, partnerships and scaling Intacct - Stuart rounds up the Sage 2024 updates: will the Co-Pilot lead to a revenue bump? Stuart quotes comments from Sage CEO Steve Hare. 

Hit the tarmac with diginomica - as spring event season rolls on. 

Boomi World 2024 - Sarah was on the ground in Denver, and posted a flurry of use cases and updates, including: Boomi World 2024 - AI futures according to Boomi and Red Hat leaders and Boomi World 2024 - why organizations need to tackle data fragmentation more than ever if the benefits of AI are to be captured. 

Planful Perform 2024 - Brian and I made the trek to sunny San Diego last week. My roundup of the underrated news stories is up: Planful Perform 2024 - customers kick tires on AI, but will financial planning break down the decision silos? I've also posted the podcast wrap recorded with Brian: Planful Perform ’24 Review - impact of AI on finance and customer priorities. Plus: a bonus short podcast, ESG for finance - where do we stand now?

A few more vendor picks, without the quotables:

• Otter.ai - a transcription tool - is changing how S-Docs for Salesforce thinks about sales and product development - Derek
• Sparking change - how Schneider Electric powered-up procurement processes with UiPath - Alyx
• Evaluating Workday? How its new capabilities fare - Brian

Jon's grab bag - Madeline gets it done again with Three hundred meetings with young men in gilets and chinos who “laughed in my face” – how Anne Boden founded Starling Bank. Martin deciphers buzzword bingo in The art of super-opting - before you monetize data, ‘contractize’ it.  Finally, Stuart examines a high stakes industry for AI: education: "Getting past the plagiarism paranoia and the resultant negativity is going to be critical. Academic circles need to learn - or be taught - the wider benefits potential of AI in education." (EducAItion in action - two US academic institutions offer lessons on AI and education beyond plagiarism paranoia)

Speaking of Alexa, catch diginomica on Alexa - I'll have more on this in the next couple weeks, but if you're using Alexa, consider adding diginomica as a general Alexa skill. We've already had diginomica news summaries available in the Flash Briefings, but now it's a general skill. Once you add it, ask Alexa to "open enterprise news," and you can get the latest from diginomica - with no GPT4o needed...

Best of the enterprise web

My top seven

• With the end of Workplace, it’s fair to wonder if Meta was ever serious about the enterprise - no, it's not the biggest enterprise story and hardly a surprise, but it's one that gets under my craw. As I said to author Ron Miller on LinkedIn: "For a while, they were serious enough about it to have regular events dedicated to it, engage media/analyst, document major customer deployments etc. Obviously they backed off, in favor of much smarter and affordable investments like the Metaverse (lmao)."
• Monday's Musings: Margin Compression - Tech Vendors Are You Leading The Way Or In The Way? - Constellation's Ray Wang argues that margin compression is the driving force impacting software investments today. I'm not sure it can be boiled down that neatly, but it's a theory worth considering.
• How AI is Redefining Job Requirements and Skills: 4 Skills You Need For the Future - Eric Kimberling of Third Stage Consulting gives his view on the skills needed to succeed amidst the (ro)bots. I can think of some others, e.g. understanding algorithmic systems, critical thinking, user experience design (including AI prompts), and ability to make decisions based on AI-surfaced alerts, but this is a good list as well. 
• The new AI disruption tool: Devin(e) or Devil for software engineers? - Pretty rare item - a balanced assessment of gen AI's impact on coding: "For large enterprise software, Heena says, coding only comprises 40% of the whole software development process. “The rest involves designing the software, making it work with other software, and understanding how people will use it. That’s why Devin could be really helpful for simpler or medium-complexity software projects. It could let engineers focus on solving bigger problems instead of spending too much time on routine tasks.”
• AI chatbots’ safeguards can be easily bypassed, say UK researchers - No surprises here, but another item to add to the AI BS detector.
• Make Room for Leadership to Drive S&OP - Lora Cecere examines the leadership factor in supply chain transformation: "Supply chain complexity is analogous to cholesterol. Just like there is good and bad cholesterol, there is good and bad complexity. Good complexity drives growth while bad complexity drags expense without improving growth."
• To defend against disruption, build a thriving workforce - McKinsey makes the case for a different view of employees-as-assets.

Whiffs

404 Media reports that AI Generated Hentai Is Viral All Over Facebook (click at your own risque). Meanwhile, Facebook deleted a news article about AI-generated porn. Oh well - why read about it when you can experience it? 

Then there was this: 

The lesson isn't the whiff; it's the field-tested rationale for multi-cloud... Amazon is trying to keep workers cool, but they aren't impressed: 

Finally, Frank Scavo gave gen AI a shot... for stand up comedy: 

Humorous fortune cookies turn out to be a higher bar than summarizing a dense white paper, or a long-@ss meeting! Go figure...

If you find an #ensw piece that qualifies for hits and misses - in a good or bad way - let me know in the comments as Clive (almost) always does. Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed.