In an era where artificial intelligence is increasingly at the core of business operations, Edward Kim, co-founder and technology head of Gusto, presents an unconventional perspective. He argues that slashing the current team and hiring a large number of specialized AI engineers is not the optimal way to enhance a company's AI capabilities.
Instead, he believes that team members with non-technical backgrounds often have an edge over regular engineers in understanding customer needs and solutions.
In a recent interview, Edward Kim shared how Gusto approaches AI. Some non-technical members of the company's customer experience team are responsible for writing "recipes" that guide their AI assistant, Gus. This approach allows Gusto to leverage the domain knowledge of its team members to quickly and effectively build AI applications.
Edward Kim mentioned that the CoPilot tool launched in Gusto's customer experience team has interactions ranging from 2,000 to 3,000 times daily, significantly improving work efficiency. Through CoPilot, team members can directly ask questions instead of sifting through a vast knowledge base, enabling them to respond to customers more quickly.
Edward Kim noted that the barriers to developing machine learning and artificial intelligence have greatly diminished, allowing more employees with non-engineering backgrounds to build powerful AI applications using new tools and interfaces. He cited an example of an employee named Eric Rodriguez, who, while working in the customer support team, utilized his technical thinking to create a CoPilot tool that significantly boosted team efficiency.
Gusto's philosophy is that combining technology with domain knowledge can better drive the advancement of AI applications. Kim emphasizes that the direct interaction of the customer support team with customers makes them more aware of customer needs, making them more suitable to guide AI tools.
Edward Kim believes that while the company's team structure may undergo adjustments, employees' roles will evolve towards a higher level of abstraction, primarily focusing on writing "recipes" and optimizing AI performance, which will lead to higher work efficiency and better customer experiences.
Key Points:
🌟 Gusto believes that cutting the existing team and hiring AI specialists is not the best strategy; non-technical team members have an advantage in understanding customer needs.
🤖 The company's AI assistant, Gus, improves the efficiency of the customer support team through "recipes" written by non-technical members.
💡 The barriers to developing machine learning and AI have lowered, enabling non-engineers to build powerful AI applications and drive business innovation.