Artificial intelligence (AI) enabled applications, such as Adobe Illustrator, are becoming increasingly more common in the consumer market as well as in business applications. And as AI systems advance, most software developers will likely use existing models (with plenty of free and premium models available to choose from) that meet their requirements and interact with those models using their language of choice. Since my language of choice is C#, my most recent exposure happened after being inspired to create an AI enabled application using Microsoft’s Semantic Kernel and Azure AI.
Semantic Kernel provides developers with the ability to perform basic tasks, such as creating a system prompt and chat history, to create a highly customized AI application. However, one of its more powerful features is the ability to use plugins that enable the AI to execute code when some condition is met. For example, if a user asks a question about the status of today’s production, the AI could trigger a method that retrieves a table from the database to analyze and return an answer. And depending on the AI, that answer may include charts and graphs, spreadsheets, images, or other friendly ways of presenting the data, which makes programming business intelligence (BI) systems quicker, easier, and more interesting.
While AI enabled business applications are still in their infancy, AI has already demonstrated some interesting ways of serving business needs much more rapidly than human-power alone. If used responsibly, AI could provide doctors, experts, and knowledge workers with superpowers that enable them to build on their existing knowledge and capabilities and rapidly improve overtime.