AI is at it again! The tech world’s portfolio of artificial intelligence software has once again expanded, with Microsoft launching its new Copilot chatbot assistant. Microsoft 365 Copilot is hailed by the company as "a whole new way to work".
Embedded into your pre-existing suite of Microsoft apps such as PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, Copilot aims to upskill, enhance and innovate our everyday work practices. Think of it as a really great assistant, built into our computers, ready to supercharge our documents, slides and spreadsheets.
It all sounds very promising but until its launch in Australia, we can only speculate about how Copilot could change the game. Is this technology as revolutionary as the tech giant purports? We investigate…
Video credit: Microsoft
So what exactly is Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Similar to the much-talked-about ChatGPT, Copilot utilises large language models (LLMs). LLMs are a type of machine learning that digests huge amounts of text data and infers the relationship between these words.
We like this description by Saikat Basu, Deputy Editor for Internet, Windows, and Productivity at tech publication makeuseof.com, "Microsoft 365 Copilot is the new AI-powered productivity layer integrated with your favourite apps in the Microsoft suite that will remove the drudgery of routine tasks you do with the apps every day."
In short, it is an enhancement to the suite that will make the way users work much smarter. Take these examples.
- Creating a project plan in Microsoft Word: Copilot can analyse collaborative documents across an organisation to create a first draft for you.
- Analysing data in Microsoft Excel: Instead of using a complex formula, Copilot can follow natural language prompts to give you the projections you require in your spreadsheet.
- Setting agendas in Microsoft Teams: Copilot can set meetings, agendas and schedules, thereby eliminating admin time. It can even prepare meeting notes for you.
Image credit: Microsoft
Hold up a second, I’m getting deja vu!
Does anyone remember Clippy, the beady-eyed paperclip who popped up in our Word Docs circa 1999 asking us useful questions such as, "It looks like you're writing a letter, would you like help?"
Copilot is more or less your 2023 version of everyone’s favourite virtual piece of stationery. If you’re under the age of 20, we apologise for showing our age!
Image credit: Seattle Met.
The benefits of Microsoft 365 Copilot
Should we be getting excited? Absolutely!
As Microsoft emphasises in its marketing for Copilot, advances in AI may well result in a boom of human creativity. AI lets the machines do the boring stuff, the dull tasks and time-consuming admin, and gives time back to us mere mortals to get on with the real work. The high-level strategic, creative, imaginative thinking and doing.
To summarise, some of the benefits of Copilot may be:
- Increased productivity.
- Fewer resources required to get simple tasks done.
- Improved well-being among team, as processes are made easier.
- Work is elevated and more innovative.
- More time for higher-level strategic and creative thinking.
The risks of Microsoft 365 Copilot
This is not Brave New World. The machines are not coming to replace us living, breathing folk. While AI is a handy sidekick to boost productivity and increase efficiency, it is only as useful as the human prompting it.
Using Copilot to formulate a meeting agenda will be useless if the initial notetaking has been poor, for example. Likewise, ChatGPT is not going to provide a user with insightful information if the wrong questions are asked.
Meanwhile, quality control issues are likely to arise sans savvy staff to analyse and refine the data AI churns out.
Businesses of all sizes must retain good talent to navigate the gaps, think critically and transform AI-generated data into something great.
To summarise, some of the risks of Microsoft 365 Copilot may be:
- More mistakes made (if strict quality control processes are not in place).
- 'Machine vs. human' mentality resulting in less investment in talent.
- Bugs, system errors and other teething issues.
Our verdict
If you are a business aiming to succeed, people remain your most important assets. The beauty of artificial intelligence lies in its ability to elevate our human output, increase our productivity and free us up to do the work that really matters.
If a machine can generate the same results, we should be focusing our efforts elsewhere - albeit with a healthy side of fact-checking and quality control.
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