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Artificial Intelligence
The dynamic development of artificial intelligence and its proliferation among entrepreneurs offers an extraordinary opportunity to streamline production and logistics processes. This technology can also serve as a basis for gaining a competitive edge. To explore opportunities for surpassing competitors in profitability and efficiency of production processes using artificial intelligence, one must first understand the main directions and possibilities that this technology offers. In this paper, we will discuss how to harness artificial intelligence for intensive work within just one hour.
YES, in an hour you will have your own cybernetic employee who will do exactly what is needed here and now.
Can I be a pioneer of change?
A monthly subscription using the most common model of artificial intelligence, Chat GPT 4, costs $20. Paid users of Chat GPT can utilize plugins and programs that have been created by other users. Moreover, users can create their own plugins or define assistants. There is no need for any programming skills. Programming assistants and plugins for Chat GPT 4 is done through writing instructions. The instructions take the form of sentences and can be written in Polish. In summary, everything is very easy and straightforward, requiring virtually no programming or analytical qualifications. So, let’s proceed to the possible applications of artificial intelligence in the grain milling industry.
Let’s start by defining the most important tools-cyborgs that we can specify ourselves and which can greatly assist us in our work. These tools will be able to quickly search for the most important information. They will also design content, analyze data, and compare different types of information.
Financial Assistant GPT
Only those who have purchased a subscription can create their own assistants in Chat GPT 4. We can design an assistant and attach to its memory all our notes, documents, and reports that we have written over the last 15 years. We can also attach contact lists—everything that will be necessary for its functioning.
Let’s assume we want to create an analytical assistant, a virtual person who will be an expert in analyzing reports. When programming such a virtual analyst, we can start with the following instruction: „I am the director of a grain elevator base, and I expect you to help me analyze the reports of grain intake and distribution from the elevators.”
Artificial Intelligence in the Grain and Milling Industry?
Next, we define what behavior we expect from our virtual analyst: „At first, ask me to send reports based on which you will conduct the analysis.” At this moment, when we activate the assistant, it will ask us for the current reports. We attach the reports in the window where we enter commands. The format of the reports can be anything; they can be documents in CSV, PDF, or Word format, spreadsheets, or even photos. In this case, we can send cash and inventory reports. Theoretically, the assistant can automatically retrieve such reports from the system, but that requires a bit of tinkering.
The next instruction should be: „Then ask me what format of reports you should prepare. Ask what you should analyze.” Here are two types of analyses. „Ask me to choose one of these analyses: 1. Daily report of intake and distribution of raw materials. Provide: how many tons of each type of grain were received, how much was paid for each type of grain, what is the account balance at the beginning and end of the day, and the inventory status at the beginning and end of the day. Also, provide the number of vehicles weighed on the scales. Place all information in a table and export it to MS Excel format. Respond in Polish. 2. Report on wholesale prices on the commodity exchange. Provide the prices of each type of grain at collection points on commodity exchanges and in sales, provide our prices, and compare them with the prices from the commodity exchange. Also provide the exchange rates for the euro and dollar. Place the data in a table. Save the table in PDF format.”
We save the instruction and close the assistant editor. What do we get? By going to the Chat GPT website, we can do this from both a computer and a phone. We click on the analytical assistant. A polite voice asks us to provide daily information on which it can perform the analysis. After receiving the daily reports, it asks us which analysis we would like to hear. In the instructions, we defined two analyses. The assistant informs us of everything that has been defined for it. At the end, it saves all the information it conveyed in table form. (Source: Chat GPT 4 https://chat.openai.com/g/g-Hoc1c7dIy-sticker-wizard). The above-described behavior is a defined behavior. However, we can propose the analytical assistant to perform a different analysis that has not been defined by us. We can tell it to analyze the number of weighings and the number of vehicles that entered the scale. We will then know how many vehicles were weighed multiple times. We can directly ask how many vehicles were weighed multiple times and who they belonged to. The number of analysis variants, the number of possible instructions and interactions is unlimited, or rather, limited only by the data we directly provide to the assistant. Regarding external information, we can provide it with links to commodity exchange portals in its memory so that it can retrieve data independently.
Strategic Assistant
The strategic assistant is another variant of the Chat GPT assistant. A strategy specialist is someone who, based on years of research, analysis, definitions, and all kinds of conditions that have been gathered in the past, creates certain probabilities, certain forecasts, based on which strategic decisions are made. What should we do to define this kind of virtual specialist? Above all, we should provide it with all our documents that are significant for us in creating strategies. We can upload many books in PDF format to its memory. We can provide it with financial data. In the case of this data, we should prefer documents in the form of management reports. Chat GPT still has a rather weak understanding of typical, extensive spreadsheets. Therefore, financial and quantitative data should take the form of documents rather than spreadsheets for the virtual assistant.
We program the strategic assistant similarly to the analytical one, but it is very important to include the following protocol in the instruction: „When creating strategies and answering any of my questions, you must use the resources that have been uploaded to your memory. Use all documents, PDFs, reports, and spreadsheets for the analyses that I request.” Of course, these sentences can be formulated differently. The important thing is to refer to the resources that have been uploaded to the memory of the strategic assistant. Without this information, the assistant will not use specialized knowledge that results from the experience of a particular enterprise or director. If we do not upload our own knowledge sources, the assistant will rely on general knowledge.
Human Resources Assistant
In a similar way, we can define assistants dealing with human resources. In this case, we should upload our own notes analyzing the labor code, our analyses, personnel records of individual employees, current reports related to working time, and so forth. The assistant can provide information on how many hours a given employee has worked, when they were last on sick leave, what their salary is, or how much they are entitled to as a bonus for that month. Besides simple information that the human resources assistant can provide, we can ask about individuals who always take sick leave before Easter or we can request information about which employees worked together in the same company in the past.
The assistant will analyze all the CVs of individual employees and generate a summary. A necessary condition is to upload all the needed information to the assistant’s memory and, as I mentioned, to indicate to the assistant that it should use the documents that have been uploaded to it.
In a similar way, one can create any assistant, a virtual employee who will work effectively and according to our expectations. Therefore, we can hire a technologist, a security specialist, a logistics expert, or a virtual warehouse assistant. Above all, we must convey our expectations and define what they must receive from us in order to conduct analyses, submit reports, clarify, or identify concerning phenomena. We can create an article editor assistant that will search for the most interesting information from publications available on the internet. We can define that this assistant must provide the five most important points from each encountered publication related to a given topic. The assistant can also search for information that may pose a threat to our company or industry. It is advisable to upload documents that will indicate to the assistant what it should understand as a threat. We can define a virtual psychologist who will use 40 psychological books uploaded to its memory in PDF files. We can also hire a virtual detective who will conduct investigations for us. We could even have our own doctor who could diagnose us based on the symptoms we provide.
With your own assistant, you can communicate using the computer keyboard. You can also use assistants with voice systems. While driving, you can activate your financial assistant and assign it analyses. If the assistant asks which analysis it should perform (at the beginning, we defined two types of analyses), we can directly say: „Do something different for me, tell me what the prices are for purchasing sugar beets on commodity exchanges.” The assistant will, of course, respond to all questions and send an accurate report of the conversation if we ask it to do so.
Assistant Visualization
Managers create virtual offices for themselves and fill them with robotic assistants. I once saw a visualization where a manager walks around the screen using a keyboard as an avatar and enters different rooms where assistants are seated. Visualizing assistants is a very nice solution as it brings these robots closer to human forms. To minimally visualize an assistant, we can upload our own image of the assistant’s face. A more advanced method is to use a plugin that designs the faces of individual assistants for us. There are many plugins; I use a plugin for Chat GPT 4 called Sticker Wizard.
This assistant is generally available in Chat GPT; it is one of dozens of plugins specializing in designing stickers.
Below, I present a few stickers that were created by this graphic assistant.
I would now like to introduce you to three of my assistants. The first is an accountant who answers difficult questions regarding expenses, types of costs, provides me with charts related to expenditures, and informs me about account balances, debts, and payment due dates.
This gentleman with a beard and mustache is the assistant who talks to me during long walks in the woods. While walking my dog, I often discuss current events with him. The assistant is designed to present me with the latest facts along with the economic phenomena currently taking place.
And this gentleman is the assistant who tells me about the history of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. He narrates facts related to the development or decline of entire industries or specific enterprises. During walks, the assistant informs me about the most important events related to industrial history and refers to many economic theories in his narratives.
Below, I present the prompt based on which the program generated the face of my industrial revolution historian. Notice that the command I issued differs slightly from the image generated by the model. Here is the prompt: „Make me a round sticker with the face of a man in a hat, about 50 years old, smiling, in Victorian style. Show this design now. Use colors: black, white, silver.”
Summary
Today, practically anyone for $20 a month can have whatever employee they want. Of course, I am referring to mental workers; we can create psychologists, assistants telling jokes, or specialists in observing wild birds. The latter will generate images and recognize birds based on the photos sent to him. Our virtual office can be filled with all kinds of experts. They can be virtual people who will, for example, proofread texts. Until recently, I considered my two-page CV to be a perfectly crafted masterpiece. The assistant specializing in creating CVs detected many stylistic errors, pointed out that using three types of fonts is unprofessional, stated that there shouldn’t be so many colors, noted that the photo was inappropriate, and explained that the style of responsibilities for individual job positions does not align, suggesting that some of these responsibilities were copied from external sources. A quick analysis of my CV indicated that the hastily configured assistant can perform its work multiple times better than the average person and even better than a specialist in a specific field of knowledge. Just look at the graphics this machine can generate.
Recently, someone asked me what they should do to implement artificial intelligence in their company. The above publication indicates how to do this within an hour. The information revolution, like any revolution, can be astonishing.
Wojciech Moszczyński
Wojciech Moszczyński is a graduate of the Department of Econometrics and Statistics at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, specializing in econometrics, finance, data science, and management accounting. He specializes in optimizing production and logistics processes. He has been conducting research in the field of the development and application of artificial intelligence. He has been engaged in popularizing machine learning and data science in business environments.