Recent Blog Posts

All that being said, AI has advanced to the point where smaller businesses and individuals can take advantage of its capabilities?something that you may be doing even now. Let?s discuss some of the most common modern uses of artificial intelligence in the workplace, and how they foreshadow what could very well be next in workplace AI. AI Helps to Automate Processes that Do Little But Eat Up Valuable Time In fairness, process automation isn?t exactly a new thing?people have been figuring out how to automate aspects of their workload since the advent of the wheel and agriculture. Having said that, artificially intelligent tools can adapt to new information, unlike most of the process automation we?ve seen in the past. Most of the automation we?re accustomed to seeing in the workplace today can be defined as process automation, as it effectively takes care of tasks that would otherwise require human time and attention to be completed. In deploying tools that utilize artificial intelligence to carry out processes, your human resources are freed up to attend to other responsibilities that require a more human creative process. AI Helps Generate Insights Quickly and Effectively Businesses thrive on data?the more of it that is properly organized, the better. Obtaining, organizing, and analyzing this data, however, is a job that many businesses find to be prohibitively time-consuming and error-prone. The algorithms that artificially-intelligent tools rely on can and do make this procedure much more attainable on all fronts. Not only can data be compiled and arranged far more expeditiously, but modern programs can then take that data and infer valuable predictions based on it. In short, an AI can often see patterns that a human can?t, giving the human putting the AI to use actionable data that generally results in better outcomes. AI Helps Improve Customer and Client Communications Who would you rather work with: a business that repeatedly asks you to provide the same details and statistics about your business each time you reach out to them, or a business that uses what it knows about you from your past interactions to create a more accurate and personalized experience for you? If you?re anything like me, you?ll want to work with a company who knows who they are talking to and what you generally want from them?it saves time and makes your experience far less stressful. Various forms of AI are more often being used to either provide these kinds of answers, or support human employees as they work to do so. This is what is known as cognitive engagement, and it serves as a key source of customer service capabilities and streamlining processes. In the medical field, a physician can focus more on patient care, confident that the treatment plan an AI serves up will fit a patient?s needs properly. Businesses could use this kind of AI to handle some of its communications, too, whether that?s through setting up an artificially intelligent chatbot to field basic support questions at all hours, or using it for internal communication and engagement. In No Uncertain Terms, AI Can Be Useful Just About Everywhere? ?and we predict it may very well be! The best part is, there are many ways you could be using some version of AI in your processes right now. Give White Mountain IT Services a call […]

Patience is not a new concept, and it is a sought-after character trait that allows people to work their best with a high degree of consistency. People who get worked up and angry need time to come back from that state of mind, and you can bet that people who get like this are not working their best. Those who are somewhere in the middle and can maintain that level-headed attitude are able to keep their composure, minimize impulsive decision making, and work under pressure. Here are a few reasons why you should encourage patience in your employees. Patient People Have Better Time Management Skills Patient people aren?t so prone to their emotions being disrupted by any little mishap, meaning that instead of complaining about circumstances, they are more likely to sit down and figure out how to address the problem at hand, despite the tight schedule or timeline. They meet deadlines more effectively and they do so with fewer errors. Patient People Are Less Stressed Patient people will still get stressed out?that?s just a fact of life?but they won?t let it affect their work as much. They are more grounded and less prone to suffer from burnout or overwhelm. Burnout is a serious issue that can affect workers on both the individual level and the organizational level. Patient People Are More Creative Creativity is something that patient people are generally more effective at, as coming up with actionable ideas rather than just simple concepts is more challenging and requires more attention to detail. Patient People Are More Productive If a business has productive employees, then the business will operate more effectively. Patience is crucial to productivity. They might not be the hotheaded firebrands that inspire others, but they will generally outperform the less patient folks over time. Now that you know the importance of patience and its relationship with productivity, check back next week for how you can improve your own patience so that you can be more cognizant of how it affects your own work performance.

Today, this approach has many modern computer scientists wondering if that was the wrong question to ask, and if reframing the relationship between AI and human workers away from competition and towards collaboration is the right path to take. Has Pursuing Turing?s Standard Created Economic Inequities? Director Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford?s Digital Economy Lab certainly seems to think so. According to Brynjolfsson, advances in AI have created some serious problems, as he has argued in D?dalus, a journal produced by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In his contribution to the Spring 2022 issue of the journal, The Turing Trap: The Promise & Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence, Brynjolfsson states that the goal of AI swiftly became a mission to overtake the capabilities of the human mind. That, he says, was the big mistake.  Brynjolfsson?s paper posits that the aforementioned obsession with creating a human-like machine has done little but exacerbated wage inequality. According to Brynjolfsson, the AI that?s been created has done little but remove the need for human employees, and while this has had positive impacts on productivity, the benefits of this productivity tend to float up to business owners and leaders. In fact, Brynjolfsson points to this divide as the cause of wage stagnation amongst workers while millionaires and billionaires just get richer. It?s a phenomenon that he had dubbed ?the Turing Trap,? as indicated in the title of his article. Comparing the creation of AI to the inherent desire for apotheosis that humans have repeatedly demonstrated in stories throughout history?creating life in their own image, like the golem of Jewish folklore, the automatons that the ancient Greeks told tales of Dedalus creating, as well as the efforts of inventors in real life from the early Islamic kingdoms to the minds of the European Renaissance. Modern popular culture has continued this pattern, depicting artificial intelligence as human-like, often featuring AI seeking out a greater level of humanity. Brynjolfsson feels that this is the wrong approach. According to Brynjolfsson, AI Would Be Better Used as ?Augmentation? Let?s explain what he means. Human employees can do certain things very well. AI can do certain things very well. And?this is key? the things that your human employees can do well aren?t always the same things that an AI can do well. Therefore, posits Brynjolfsson, it only makes sense that AI be used to supplement the capabilities of human employees. Not only would this help to promote improved productivity, the benefits of doing so would remain with the workers who are ?partnered? with AI, as their work becomes more valuable as well. Unfortunately, substitution or replacement is considerably more attainable than augmentation, simply because there?s no precedent for it in many cases. It is also important to note that other research has shown that there are very particular tasks that people do and don?t want automated as a rule?so things like ?cleaning toilets? were popular ideas, while ?opening gifts? was decidedly not. In terms of professional uses, however, augmentation demonstrates much more obvious cases. Many people have presumed that automation powered by AI will be used as an excuse to replace the human worker, but others have argued that AI?s use only covers a small part of what different jobs contain in their responsibilities. So, Artificial Intelligence Should Be Seen […]

Productivity The most important part of collaboration is that people are able to work together to accomplish a singular goal; and fortunately for all of us, software developers identified this years ago. For a while now, the predominant productivity suites have come with real-time collaboration. This means that multiple people can contribute on a database, on a document, on a presentation, all at once. This built-in collaboration not only can make things move a touch faster, it can also give a tremendous amount of insight into the people you have working for you. The more you know about your employees, the easier it is to manage them. The better they?re managed, the more productive the whole team will be. Communication Communication has long been integral to collaboration. Without consistent communication, who would know what needs to be done or what has been done? Communications can have the opposite effect on collaborative outcomes, of course, and for that reason, it is important for an organization to have communications tools that push collaborative efforts toward positive outcomes rather than wasteful and costly ones. To accomplish this there are new ?collaboration tools? which integrate video conferencing (often with VoIP integrated), instant messaging, and a forum type-platform that gives a whole organization a way to manage tasks, services, and projects. Development Developing a business that makes money and doesn?t crash and burn at the first sign of adversity is hard, hard work. That?s why it is essential to have a solid business development program going on. Most SMBs don?t have a dedicated department that does only this, they typically depend on decision-makers working through the data the business creates to come up with strategies to lead the business forward in prosperity. Since it takes input from every department to make decisions on how policy and procedures are created, businesses set up business intelligence and business analytics platforms to help them track how their current processes are working and give them the underlying information to make strategic changes at a business.  At White Mountain IT Services, we work with New Hampshire businesses that, just like your organization, need the years of experience that our technicians have accrued putting together technology strategies that improve collaboration and build high degrees of efficiency, productivity, and security. Give us a call today at (603) 889-0800 for more information.

Implement Secure Wireless  Having a secure wireless network is extremely important for most businesses today. Not only because it makes it easier to connect devices around the business, but it also gives you the option to provide a Wi-Fi connection that guests and other visitors can use. Unfortunately, that altruism can backfire in a big way. You will want to separate the guest accounts from the productivity accounts to avoid any potential problems with guests bringing malware onto the network.  Antivirus and Anti-Malware With so much data coming in and out of a business? network, it stands to reason that some malicious code will get through. Of course, if this malicious code were to be executed it could cause major problems for your organization. This is where antivirus and anti-malware tools come in. They effectively search your network or endpoints for malicious code and then quarantine it so you can decide what to do with it. Firewalls Firewalls do the same thing, but they are set up as a proactive system. It is essentially a filter that constantly monitors network traffic and isolates and quarantines data that may be problematic. What?s best is that they can be set up between any piece of hardware. This gives additional support to all security strategies within a business? computing environment.  Password Managers The password manager is a platform where people can save all their passwords so they don?t have to remember the dozens they create for business and personal use. This does two things: it keeps a repository of all saved passwords, which means that users only have to remember one; and, it provides the impetus for people to really create unique and secure passwords for every account.  Multi-Factor Authentication Finally, we get to multi-factor authentication (also known as two-factor authentication). This is a strategy more than it is a workable tool. Essentially, password-laden accounts have the option to give users an additional layer of security by making them authenticate by entering a code or thumbprint or some other form of authentication. To learn more about how your business can use today?s security tools to secure your network and infrastructure, give us a call today at (603) 889-0800.