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Byte-sized AI: Granny is here to make it all better!

By Nick Ellis, AI and Innovation Lead | Published 4 Dec 2024

I’m back for another Byte-sized AI issue, and as promised here are my three things: 😁

  1. Something techy from the news
  2. Something that made me laugh 
  3. Something that you can do to improve how you work
Byte-sized Ai: IT consultancy in Kent at its best

📰 The one item of news:

AI granny!

O2 have created an AI that sounds like your gran! The obvious question is “why?”. Firstly, it doesn’t sound like your gran specifically, that would be weird; it’s a generic gran called Daisy, complete with confusion about technology and a tendency to talk about her cat too much. Still doesn’t answer why though.

It’s actually a weapon in the war against scammers, holding them up on long, rambling calls while they get increasingly frustrated at the inability to stay on subject or do what they want her to do, while seeming like a perfect mark.

This ‘AI Granny’ Bores Scammers to Tears

There’s a lot of talk about how AI is going to do this, that or the other amazing thing, but I really like the idea of it being used to frustrate scammers, reduce the time they have to scam actual people, and learn more about the techniques and how to block them.

😂 The one thing that made me laugh:

Pilot Whales and Queen

As previously mentioned, I was on holiday when the last issue came out. I didn’t go to Burger King though, which is both very sad and probably for the best.

While there I played the most frustrating round of crazy golf I’ve ever played. But I also went and met some Pilot Whales. It wasn’t a long meeting, and no one took minutes, but I did get a short video.

I also saw a not-terrible Queen tribute band. I say not-terrible, but honestly it was pretty cheesy. There were certainly moments when I wanted to break free.

💡 The one thing you can do next week:

Goal seek – one for the nerdy types like me

In Excel, once you’ve got your data laid out and your formulas working, Goal Seek is a really useful tool.

Let’s use a simple example. Imagine a very simple profit forecast:

But maybe we want to make £45 profit by increasing our profit per unit. What do we need to change it to?

The maths here is intentionally simple. Let’s make it more interesting. What if want to make £1.5m profit from a projected 391,425 units?

£3.83 is the answer. And yes, that’s still pretty simple (1500000 / 391425) but in more complex data sets it can be really useful in budget, sales and production planning!

Here’s a longer and more boring page about it.

If you are interested to find out how AI, automation and all things clever can help your organisation why not take a look at Future Workplace, our super special IT consultancy service that can supercharge productivity, business efficiency and so much more.

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