Technological prowess to look forward to in the upcoming year
Organizations will start integrating technology in 2024 in a way that applies intelligence throughout the entire company, making it more successful and smarter over time than anything we’ve ever seen.
AI will undergo a rebrand and businesses will begin to self-optimize their business.
Whilst AI whisperers are predicting ‘AI winter’ – or a slowdown in interest in the technology due in part to its overexposure in some quarters – notably, a lot of the current focus is on negative aspects of AI. The facts are that fear sells, and on some level, it makes people more likely to pay attention. But as more and more people become comfortable using AI tools, as things like ChatGPT raise awareness further, the next year should see more people opening their eyes to how AI should be used.
The modern-day business landscape is full of organizations claiming to be using artificial intelligence (AI) as a means of making themselves more effective and efficient. However, it can sometimes be difficult to measure whether or not the investments some of these businesses have been making in AI technology have been successful or not in terms of helping the organization achieve specific goals, as the technology has largely been disconnected from business outcomes. If the AI is not injected into or driving specific business processes, workflows, or interactions at scale, it will be nothing more than a lab experiment. In the coming years, those who will be most successful will be those who understand how to use AI alongside technologies like automation within their organization to demonstrate real business value and drive these outcomes. The next twelve months will see the first steps from these businesses in establishing effective use of AI to not just help them work harder but also work smarter, by using AI as a tool to help them autonomously meet specific business goals to continually improve and self-optimize through the creation of a feedback loop.
Lot of companies are still grappling with how to monetize their AI driven functions from a business perspective. Companies do not know what customers are willing to pay for these new features that may use high end infrastructure. I expect the industry to mature and figure out the monetization equation in 2024.
Autonomous enterprise will become a reality thanks to the combination of automation and AI tools.
By 2024, digital transformation will be fully completed when automation, improved decision-making, and artificial intelligence are combined with task and process mining. These technologies will come together to power and drive autonomy, rather than continuing to function as distinct entities. The agility that businesses sorely need to keep up with the digital transformation of their organisations as AI technologies advance will be made possible by connecting work from different processes and systems and introducing automation and intelligence into it. Those who do not embrace AI and automation to begin their autonomous journey in the next year will be those who are left playing catch-up in the years that follow. Additionally, organizations will need to invest in AI literacy to maintain customer trust. As regulatory guidelines roll out and transparency improves, we will begin to see companies that are leaning into AI reaping the benefits. This will trigger a competitive incentive to experiment with and embrace the AI capabilities their tooling offers.
AI and low code are about to become inseparable.
AI is set to revolutionize the low code landscape in 2024, transforming it like never before. While low-code solutions were successfully implemented and used by organizations in the past, with AI continuing to make headlines, these low-code-only solutions are facing significant disruption and will no longer be sufficient. Generative AI sets the stage for high-end, enterprise-grade low code solutions to emerge, providing business customers with tremendous value and new opportunities to leverage low-code and AI throughout their business. At the end of the day, if your low-code solution does not integrate AI, you will be left in the dust.
Generative AI will be let out of its cage
We were all taken aback in 2023 to learn that generative AI might assist us with a variety of creative jobs. However, the practical benefits of technology have always outweighed its drawbacks. The year 2024 will mark the release of generative AI from its captivity, allowing it to fully realise its potential. We will soon be able to connect generative AI-driven agents to all types of internal and external data sources, and let it do the heavy lifting in terms of creating actions for execution of an entire plan from start to finish, rather than restricting its use cases or treating it as a creative tool or plaything. But a human will still need to be in charge of the AI and provide explicit guidelines for what it can and cannot do. Therefore, generative AI will be given some freedom, but it will also remain under strict control.
(The author is Deepak Visweswaraiah, VP, Platform Engineering, and Site MD, Pegasystems, India, and the views expressed in this article are his own)
