When they raise the table stakes.

Working in the technology business is never dull. Innovation is a constant, job security is nonexistent, and when you think you have developed some competency, a new technology comes along, and your knowledge needs to be updated. Microsoft had its Build conference this week, and Satya Nadlla gave a keynote speech that changed the conversation about technology.

Since the public announcement of Chat-GPT, Microsoft and Google have been involved in an increasing arms race to become the industry leaders in artificial intelligence. I work in the technology business, and I was overwhelmed. The news also gave me a sense of excitement I had not experienced since the early days of smartphones.

Since the release of GPT 3.5, technology companies have been spending massive amounts of money to build data centers that can support the increased demand for artificial intelligence and boost the power of existing systems. These investments are reaping huge rewards. The latest release of GPT4o pronounced four-OH, can handle text and speech with flawless accuracy. At the conference, they used a version of CoPilot with 4o to help someone learn how to play Minecraft.

My favorite example was a panicked developer asking CoPilot to help her debug Python code. She was stressed, sleep-deprived, and under deadline pressure. She passed the function on her screen into her phone, and it walked her through the bug. Gosh! I wish I had something like that while learning C# fifteen years ago.

Artificial intelligence is taking over the technology business. Former President Obama says the changes could be as transformative as the advent of electricity 150 years ago. Looking at some of the applications, I see that is a healthy prediction. Thanks to artificial intelligence and large language models, life and work will change significantly.

I wrote earlier that researchers are discovering that artificial intelligence tools like GitHub and CoPilot are helping developers write code. I am glad for this development because I have always struggled to write proper unit tests and could never use Git from the command line. If I return to development, CoPilot could do those tasks for me. The challenge is that, according to Microsoft's research, code quality decreases while the code volume increases. It is a reality that human wisdom and judgment in organizations will become more valuable.

Technology like artificial intelligence is very good at doing repetitive and role tasks. Many people work on those tasks daily, so what we do with those individuals will be a big challenge. We can shift many employees to more customer-focused responsibilities and assign others more creative work. Still, today's office work will look different once artificial intelligence and Large Learning Models become common.

During Satya Nadella's keynote at Build this week, Open AI CEO Sam Altman said that artificial intelligence will become "table stakes" for many businesses. He meant that doing business in the global economy would be more expensive. The new technology is hungry for energy and requires significant capital investment. The people who understand and can operate this technology are smaller than the traditional talent pool. It is like a casino raising the limit on its blackjack tables. The chances of winning are the same, but the risks are more significant.

As we head into Memorial Day 2024, technology is now squarely focused on the innovations surrounding artificial intelligence. It is driving people to embrace Azure cloud service over Amazon Web Services. Finally, this new technology will change office work more than the copy machine did eighty years ago.

The conversation about technology is changing, and I will be here to help you follow along.

Until next time.