Is your company’s AI getting smarter every day? It should be

Imagine working with someone who was completely unable to learn, to gain any experience whatsoever. There’s no need to picture someone completely stupid: just think of someone who joins the company, starts to deal with a lot of customers, experiences successes and failures, attends meetings, makes decisions… but one year later, has the same skills and capabilities as on day one. Would you be able to call that person experienced? Surprisingly, that’s exactly what happens with much of the corporate AI that is being deployed and implemented these days. Obviously, I’m not saying that an AI system cannot change after deployment: we all know it can, we have experienced that even in our own interactions with chatbots. Systems can accumulate memory, retrieve previous interactions, be updated, fine-tuned or have their surrounding logic modified. However, remembering is not the same as learning. A system can accumulate information without becoming better at deciding what to do next. Using an LLM more does not, by itself, make the deployed model learn from the consequences of its actions. Satya Nadella saw that clearly, and distinguished the replaceable general model from the enduring “compa…