Traditional emails are time-consuming and considerably slow down business operations. Colleagues often find themselves spending days just waiting for other employees to forward information that will enable them to proceed with projects.
However, that could change with AI. Executives believe that it might be able to circumvent the necessity for most email communications and streamline workflows.
How could AI end emails?
The main job of emails is to gather information so that employees can make better production decisions. Employees set out their requirements, and their colleagues provide them with answers they can use to move ahead with projects.
Therefore, smart executives see email as a method for solving coordination issues. People can work together more effectively with electronic messages than without them.
The process, though, is inefficient. Unlike search engines that take seconds, getting bespoke email answers can take hours or days, holding up work.
That’s why executives are looking for AI-based opportunities. Instead of asking colleagues, the hope is that workers could question artificial intelligence.
According to Mark Whelan, the Corporate Communications Director at Guru, a company in this space, the best AI search engines for work collect data company-wide and compile it into a single app that users can query.
“The current use of email solves the coordination problem,” Whelan says, “but not particularly well. Colleagues can query their co-workers to learn more about a topic, but that often involves sitting around waiting for a reply. That’s not the case with conventional search engines, and it doesn’t need to be the case for AI-powered solutions in the workplace. Businesses want workers to get answers from available information before sending an email requesting something new or original.”
According to Whelan, companies already generate vast amounts of data that users can use to make queries. You can imagine, for instance, AIs scanning customer databases, company literature and marketing, conference meeting minutes, transcripts, files on the network and even customer call logs to answer questions. Such a system could do what many AI services are already doing: provide references to their sources and enable the user to make the final decision.
“Connecting all these information silos made sense twenty years ago,” Guru’s Corporate Communications Director says. “But given the company’s reliance on data, the need is even more pressing today. We want a situation where colleagues can quickly find what they are looking for without having to pester their colleagues. AI could find this information quickly from existing repositories, meaning that only novel data outside the system would necessitate a time-costly search process.”
The benefits of AI ending emails
The benefits of AI ending emails could be considerable. Data suggests that the average colleague waits around 2 hours to receive a reply from an email, whereas that could take just seconds with artificial intelligence. Office queries would go through an AI solution first before escalating to human contact.
The knock-on consequences of this change could be considerable. For instance, AI could increase productivity and efficiency dramatically. Systems could create personalized reports instantly based on queries, giving workers the information they need without requiring anyone to sit down and type something.
AIs could also streamline creativity and help workers develop more ideas. Instead of bouncing ideas off a colleague, they could question an AI and then send its suggestions to their coworkers for evaluation.
AIs could even help in setting proper tones for emails, improving the atmosphere in the office. The need for anything other than gaining permission would be moot.
Are such systems possible?
Whelan says that such systems are possible and that those at Guru have compiled a list of search engines that already use AI to scour company data and provide answers to colleagues.
“We were actually quite surprised by just how rapidly the technology developed,” he says. “Businesses are taking advantage of the large language model revolution and using it to parse data that would otherwise require human intelligence.”
How this works in practice depends on the software. Companies need to invest in setup costs, such as creating data streams that AI can use. But once that’s done, the user experience is pleasant.
For example, these systems offer high accuracy. AIs can rifle through conversations in a fraction of a second, looking for who said what to whom.
Interfaces are also quite straightforward. Employees simply enter search terms, and the systems can provide bespoke answers. Queries are also possible for highly specific pieces of information.
The added benefit of AI is that it can direct users to the specific pieces of information that are most useful to them. Systems can absorb vast quantities of data and regurgitate information that reflects the need.
“These systems,” Whelan from Guru says, “can integrate into users’ workflow. Workers can use native applications and then simply ask a question, no matter how obscure, and get reasonable answers that reflect the available information. Solutions then provide sources so that workers can double-check the AI’s references and avoid hallucinations.”
Are there risks?
Critics point to various risks for companies that adopt this approach to information-gathering. Over-relying on automation, they say, could deprive workers of a deeper understanding of company systems or cause them to rely on faulty information.
AI is still prone to errors and could result in unintended outcomes. Difficulties with understanding human nuances could prevent these machines from providing the kinds of information and data people want.
There are also authenticity concerns. AIs must synthesize information, but, to put it colloquially, they could get the wrong end of the stick.
These problems, though, pale in comparison to the benefits, according to the team at Guru. Such systems could save the average office worker days of email-writing and information-gathering every week.
“The consultative framework of modern AI systems lets them answer practically any question, given they have data to answer it. Workers can pose novel ideas and get responses almost immediately, without having to go through committee meetings or wait 48 hours for an email response,” Whelan concludes.
Therefore, AI could essentially become the executive’s single source of truth. Gathering all enterprise information and feeding it through advanced AI systems offers considerable benefits for those who take advantage of it.
VentureBeat newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.
