Mike Branch on Trust and Transparency: The New Era of AI

While it’s been in development for years, generative AI (Gen AI) has rapidly emerged in the public spotlight, with large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT making the technology a household name and building excitement for all its possibilities. This technology represents a new frontier in data-intensive technology, quickly becoming a tool that organizations worldwide are utilizing to gain a competitive advantage and achieve better customer and performance outcomes. 

However, just as Gen AI is quick to give answers to complex questions, users can be equally quick in showing skepticism of the reliability of the information they are receiving. This uncertainty is understandable since organizations – as they’ve done with previous technologies – are entrusting the growth and security of their enterprises to the reliability of the digital tools at their disposal. 

2024 will be a year of establishing trust in Gen AI, and the best way to address reliability concerns is through transparency. People are more likely to trust technology that explains how it arrived at its answers – as they would with any other source.

Delivering AI transparency 

Enter: Geotab’s new AI assistant, Geotab Ace – kick-starting a new era of transparent Gen AI in the transportation industry. With trust driving this transformation gives users and fleets access to a wealth of insights including safety analytics, predicting maintenance issues, EV suitability, GPS, zonal data, and more. 

This innovation is a significant leap forward in the world of AI, following the success of Geotab’s beta Gen AI project in 2023 – called Project G – where customers could pose questions through a chat interface linked to Geotab Data Connector. We collaborated with customers by gathering their real-time feedback on operational challenges they faced and features that would help make their work easier.

Instead of structured query languages, users of Geotab Ace can now communicate with complex datasets as if they are having a normal conversation right from within MyGeotab. What previously took a day or more, including data report analysis, can happen in minutes. 

Just as important as Geotab Ace’s access to critical data is the technology’s intentional transparency and openness. The AI explains its comprehensive interpretation of users’ questions, how it reached its answers, and deconstructs its analysis into natural language for everyone to understand. By getting this behind-the-scenes look at the thinking of the technology, users will be able to place greater trust in its insights – leveraging the tool to greater benefit. 

Geotab Ace also creates a unique sense of familiarity by retaining a memory of previous questions asked by the user, enabling them to continue previous conversations with the platform. 

What’s next for data predictability 

While there will likely be bumps along the journey,  trust and transparency will lay at the core of this next phase of data predictability, where vast quantities of quality data will be required to inform a new era of AI models that users can trust. Organizations will need reliable partners with the tools capable of translating that data, meaning Geotab is ideally placed to help enterprises navigate this brave new world of Gen AI.  

Gen AI will continue to prove itself as a valuable decision-support tool, functioning as a back-pocket data scientist that gives users access to critical data and increases the speed to insights that may have previously been more challenging to obtain. This greater access will democratize data access for both employees and companies and drive better decision making for years to come.