May Habib, Co-Founder and CEO of Writer, speaks with Kirk Ball, EVP and Chief Information Officer, Giant Eagle Inc., in a video interview about investing in data to be ahead of time, use case examples to demonstrate the importance of organizational data culture for utilizing generative AI solutions, characterization of ‘human in the loop’ as ‘expert and AI collaboration,’ the organizational pros of using Writer, and the role of technology providers and leaders in ensuring equitable distribution of generative AI skills.
Writer is a generative AI platform for enterprises. It empowers people from various organizational sectors like product, operations, support, marketing, HR, and more to maximize creativity and productivity by transforming the way they work.
At the onset, Habib states that people who invested in data over the past decades are ahead of everyone and it makes a world of difference. She cites a use case example where someone wants to automatically generate employee communication after an earnings call transcript is released, it would be ideal to already have a template in place instead of starting from scratch each time.
Citing another example, Habib states that in an organization, accessing all training data within 30 minutes of an idea being proposed is significantly different from waiting for weeks. Further, she states that in the retail industry, to retrain a model or fine-tune it for complete automation without the need for human intervention, would require thousands of use-case examples.
The speed at which this can be achieved varies greatly depending on whether the data is extracted from manufacturer labels, or through a snowflake database, says Habib. Therefore, the culture set by data and ML teams across business functions plays a significant role in the speed at which companies can derive value from generative solutions.
Moving forward, Habib expresses her dislike for the characterization of "human in the loop" and instead prefers to label it as "Expert and AI collaboration." She believes that the current portrayal does not reflect the true potential of incorporating technology. Habib explains that her approach involves analyzing how different teams function and how AI can enhance and expand their capabilities.
Delving further, she cites an example of an influencer who feels that posting videos and responding to comments takes up 80% of the day when the influencer could work on relationship building. Habib affirms that Writer is reinventing workflows, where one can leverage AI to do the time-intensive work so that the expert can do the creative piece.
"It is evident that people have freed up a lot of time to do a lot of the second-order things."
May Habib | Co-Founder and CEO, Writer
In continuation, she states that as more and more teams are utilizing the platform, it is evident that people have freed up a lot of time to do a lot of the second-order things that they've always wanted to do.
Speaking about the increase in productivity, Habib affirms that the majority of people have confirmed being 30% more productive on a day-to-day basis after adopting Writer. She notes that using Writer opens up incredible potential for headcount avoidance, increased productivity, and growth.
Depending on the company, Habib asserts that 10% to 15% of the respondents say that their productivity quotient has gone up to 200%. She associates this with the features on the roadmap to connect generative AI to tooling in an automated workflow-based way.
Furthermore, Habib states that early adopters would be more productive than their peers, leading to a situation of hierarchy which could be worrying for executives. She believes it is the responsibility of technology providers and leaders introducing Generative AI to ensure the equitable distribution of skills.
In conclusion, she believes that considering implementation rollout adoption following infrastructure and platform decisions is the most effective approach for a technical or executive team to guarantee the success of its AI program.
CDO Magazine appreciates May Habib for sharing insights with our global community.