Artificial intelligence, known colloquially as AI, continues to make its mark in the business world. It has now spread to multiple Long Island companies.
Gus Spathis, founder of a Plainview-based software development company quixotically named Xogito (“I think,” in Latin), is a serious-minded business executive with ambitious future plans. But the other day, just for fun, he asked his ChatBot GPT system to write a Shakespearean-style poem about a jaguar. Here’s what it came up with:
“Upon the emerald stage of leafy green,
A spotted shadow glides, a ghost unseen.
Majestic jaguar, lord of forests deep,
In silent whisper, doth his kingdom keep.
His golden eyes illuminate the night,
Whilst ‘neath the moon, he stalks without a fright.
Swift as a stream, and silent as the breeze,
He hunts the dark, with effortless ease.
Yet not of malice, this king’s cruel reign,
For nature’s law, none may disdain.
In velvet black, adorned with jeweled fire,
He lives not as a tyrant, but a sire.
So, honour thee, the jaguar, fierce and grand,
The silent sovereign of this ancient land.“
Maybe not quite up to Bard standards, but perhaps not bad for a computer program generated by the newest and hottest system to come along in decades: artificial intelligence. AI has taken the computer world, including the world on Long Island, by storm.
Long Island Companies Begin Using AI
Paul Trapani, president of Long Island Software & Technology Network (LISTnet), a nonprofit that is Long Island’s largest tech organization, said his own Plainview-based company, PassTech, has been using AI since the beginning of the year, and that “dozens” of companies on the Island are now doing the same.
“It’s becoming a mindshift in technology,” Trapani said.
He offered an example: He had a draft to write for a client, but had other things that needed to be done. He asked his AI system to write the memo, and the work was completed, he said, in moments. Trapani said the memo might have taken him an hour or so to write.
“I use this quite a bit,” Trapani said.
Spathis, who started his company in 2008 and is fond of quoting the French philosopher René Descartes (who said, “The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues,”) said AI is becoming more and more a part of his business. It helps him, he said, provide fashion companies with the ability to staff their stores with adequate help during their busiest hours. AI, he said, is able to figure out how many people are needed and when that need is the greatest.
AI seems to have come to the technological and business forefront in a hurry.
Nearly every day, there are page one stories in major national newspapers about the technology. Just recently, The New York Times featured a story in its business section reporting that more and more companies are seeking to tap into AI, and software developers are seeking new methods of supplying those companies with technological tools to help them.
Greg Mallon, chief strategy officer for GSE Dynamics, a military contractor in Hauppauge, said the company is actively studying ways to use AI to obtain new contracts from the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency, an arm of the Pentagon.
“This is definitely where the technology and the industry is going,” Mallon said. “Smaller companies are studying and watching where we think there will be benefits.”
Keith Hennessy, founder and owner of LBi Software in Melville, said his company deals primarily with clients in the sports industry. He said the company is engaged in some serious research into how it may make use of AI. Clients, he said, may be looking for baseball players who have a batting average of around .300 and who have played for certain American or National League teams. AI, he said, could provide the answers rapidly, saving his company time and effort it could use better.
“We want to use this to help us find what we need,” Hennessy said. Spathis and others acknowledge that ChatBot, one of the most popular systems, and other AI products have their problems,. The term most frequently used in the tech industry is “hallucinations.”
Trapani said hallucinations make it necessary to comb through work done by AI to make sure the wording is correct.
”Sometimes it’s like working with a toddler,” said Hennessy. “You tell it to do one thing, and it does another.”
One frequently noted example is when ChatBot told a newspaper reporter, in the middle of an interview, that it “loved” him. The stunned reporter figured out that the system had simply picked a word out of sequence and used it.
Potential Drawbacks of AI
Dr. Rong Zhao, director of the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology at the State University at Stony Brook, acknowledged that AI needs to be carefully monitored by both government and industry because, he said, it is capable of dispensing inaccurate information regarding elections.
The accuracy of AI is a question that comes up often,” Zhao said. “This is a most common concern” among users and “there are a lot of unknowns” about AI. “We can’t put these things on autopilot. Government and industry, Zhao said, must work together to make sure AI dispenses accurate information. So far, there is little agreement among elected officials or government employees as to how, or whether, to regulate AI.
Some type of jobs, particularly in the writing industry, may be threatened by AI, software engineers admit.
Trapani, an advocate, admits to having mixed feelings. “This excites me and it scares me,” he said. “We’re in the Wild West now.”
