To stay ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving world of generative AI, you need to know what’s new and what’s coming next, and how your organization can best prepare to embrace the change. In this article, we unlock our five key takeaways from the recent Snowflake Data + AI Predictions 2024 report and discuss how you can harness the full power of generative AI at half the cost.
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The dramatic change everyone’s talking about is real. Generative AI and related technologies will affect productivity, job roles and responsibilities. It will aid creative processes and create entirely different experiences.
Quoted in Snowflake’s Data + AI Predictions 2024 report.
Trend #1:
AI workplace assistants
We’re already seeing new AI-powered assistants crop up on our phones and within widely used operating systems. What’s more, they’ll soon be helping you work smarter not harder, with global tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce already trialing new tools.
Going forward, AI assistants tailored to specific job roles will become essential for employees across all departments, with these smart chatbots designed explicitly to support individual roles within a company. Persona-specific assistants will be able to direct employees to the resources they need in any given situation, prompting access to relevant data and, critically, restricting access to anything that an employee is unauthorized to view.
The benefits this could bring to your business:
These AI assistants will be especially useful for onboarding, empowering your new employees to get oriented, hit the ground running, and become efficient far more quickly. This kind of hands-off support will help your teams be more productive and allow your business to generate a return on your investment sooner, so keep a close eye and watch this space!
Trend #2:
AI-fueled data strategy
Having a robust data strategy in place is crucial if you want to collate, analyze, and use the data you have available effectively and in a way that doesn’t compromise sensitive information about your clients or internal operations. And the rise of gen AI only makes investing in and executing your data strategy even more important.
But the key to creating a data strategy that will deliver maximum value is focusing on the core needs of your business, and considering how gen AI can be applied to help achieve these goals. There may be an AI tool out there for almost every aspect of your operations, but not all of them will grow your business in a meaningful way. Accelerating your investments in data governance will be essential, because your success in wielding gen AI tools will be determined by your data governance strategy.
How your business will need to adapt:
With large language models (LLMs) requiring a single, well-managed source of truth to offer the best results, how you store and secure data in the cloud should be a significant consideration for your business strategy, going forward. What’s more, consumers will increasingly demand data transparency, so it’s important to work this factor into your data governance strategy as well.
In the words of Jennifer Belissent, Principal Data Strategist at Snowflake and a former Forrester analyst, quoted in Snowflake’s report: “As LLM-powered AI begins making more decisions that affect us, like whether you can have a loan, a job interview, a medical procedure, people will demand more transparency into how data models affect them.”
Trend #3:
The emergence of specialist,
industry-aligned models
The quantity of data that LLMs have access to plays a big part in how well they can perform. It also makes these tools expensive to train and operate. In the near future, we’ll be seeing more industry-specific generative AI tools emerge, designed to perform specific functions that don’t require the LLM to tap into vast oceans of generic data. Picture ChatGPT, for example, a gen AI tool that can perform so many incredible functions, but at the cost of needing huge amounts of data to operate. James Malone, Snowflake’s Director of Product Management for data lakes and data storage foresees lots of gen AI vendors building tools, highly tailored for specific industries and use cases.
How this could benefit your business:
You’ll be able to benefit from more affordable generative AI tools that can create more optimal results, tailored to your industry, by using smaller, more niche sets of data. Research is already underway to create custom, hyper-focused models for industries like healthcare, finance, and manufacturing.
To make the most of these tools as they become available, it’s wise to start investing in specialist talent now who can leverage these tools most effectively and stay ahead of cutting-edge developments. If you use an existing Snowflake implementation, for instance, consider investing in SnowPro-certified talent. Here’s why.
Trend #4:
The 'appification' of AI
For businesses looking to employ AI to improve customer or employee experiences, choosing the right LLM for the job is only half the battle. Those businesses that truly benefit from gen AI will be the ones that deliver it through the best intermediary.
No matter how good the underlying data model is, how we interact with AI is determined by the application that’s built on it. Apps will be the interfaces through which we communicate with AI, and it’s this marriage between data and apps that will prove truly revolutionary for businesses like yours.
Steps your business will need to take:
If your organization is already planning how it will utilize data, algorithms, and AI to deliver your services, you also need to think about how users will communicate with its foundational technology—and that means designing useful, accessible, and engaging applications.
An explosion of applications has already been happening. But it will be significantly accelerated by generative AI and LLMs. There will be a major category of apps around those technologies, and many more applications will have AI-based search and natural language processing built in.
Quoted in Snowflake’s Data + AI Predictions 2024 report.
For instance, here’s a list of just some AI apps that integrate with Snowflake and are already available. However, to decide what’s truly best for your business, consider working with an experienced Cloud Consultant expert to help you pick the right solutions that address your organization’s specific needs.
Trend #5:
The evolving role of Data Engineers
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” spoke Mark Twain, delivering his own obituary. The fears of generative AI tools and applications ‘eating up’ Data Engineer roles and replacing them with robots are greatly exaggerated, too.
What’s far more likely to happen—and is already happening—is the evolution of several data roles, including Data Engineers. Good AI relies on good, clean data, meaning that this role will become increasingly important in organizing, cleaning, and storing the data securely, so that it can be used by LLMs effectively to drive business success.
With talent scarcity at a 17-year-high, employers across the globe are already struggling to access skilled talent, leading to project delays and missed deadlines. While we’re constantly hearing news of how AI could fill some of these skills gaps as it gets better, the need for qualified data engineers who can organize and manage data sets to provide their organizations with meaningful insights will only continue to grow.
How you can brace for the change:
Your organization should, first and foremost, be putting the proper resources into managing your data if you want to maximize your investment in AI. So much so that Gartner predicts the market for database management systems like Snowflake will more than double by 2027, reaching a value of around $208 billion.
So, if you want to stay ahead of the curve, now is the perfect time to start growing your teams’ data and AI expertise by bringing certified Data Engineers into your organization. And the good news is, we can help you access certified talent while cutting your hiring, onboarding, and training costs. Check out this page to find out more.
Accessing specialist talent who can help you effectively manage data and stay on top of emerging generative AI trends can be a challenge in itself. Demand for Snowflake has grown by more than 30% in the last year alone, creating fierce competition for professionals with Snowflake skills.
If the Data Engineer skill shortage is affecting you, don’t worry. Our talent creation model can help you get more out of Snowflake by accessing Snowflake Data Engineers at half the cost. As a member of the Snowflake Partner Network, we’ll connect you with the talent you need while significantly reducing your recruitment, onboarding, and training costs.
