Hi everyone! Thanks for joining us on AI Appreciation Day! This is a subject we have often talked about here at rAVe, particularly as it relates to the way in which it will change the face of ProAV. While artificial intelligence is still relatively new, in that we don’t have a ton of regulations or standards for its many uses yet, we already know that it holds the ability to change our industry forever. Here are five reasons why we love AI.

It Makes Our Lives Easier

So often we look at AI in the context of whether or not it will take over our jobs one day. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sweat every time someone says that products like ChatGPT will eventually make any writing job obsolete. (Anyone remember the part of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” where Charlie’s dad loses his job at the toothpaste factory because he was replaced by a robot?) We’re thinking about it the wrong way. Instead of hiding from this new frontier of technology and dreading what it will one day do, why not harness its powers for good? Or at least for your job? For instance, I would never use ChatGPT to write a piece that I claim to have written myself. However, I use it for things like organizing my thoughts into an outline so that I have a more organized way to write. I also use it to write some of the poll questions for our LAVNCH events. There are numerous other things that we can use this for and we’ve barely scratched the surface! If we continue to harness the powers of artificial intelligence, not to do our job, but to help us do our jobs better — aka automatic lighting adjustments, display configurations, audio level adjustments — I think we’ll be set up for success for a very long time.

Personalization and User Experience

Ever notice the personalized recommendations on streaming platforms? Those are all thanks to AI! This technology has allowed us to access more content that we actually like and care about because it takes into account how we use different platforms. This technology has completely changed e-commerce — our suggested items become much better and more accurate the more we shop, watch Netflix, etc.

In ProAV, this can be adapted to customized content recommendations in a digital signage setting or recognized lighting preferences in an office space. Really there are endless possibilities for how personalization can become part of our everyday lives.

Analytics for Everyone

A big, big function of AI is how it can help with analytics. If you Google it, you will see service after service offering AI-based analytic insights for large sets of data. AI can analyze gigantic data sets much quicker than you or I could, and help you discover the trends and patterns in this data set. Anyone remember using R for data analysis? (I used it in college!) AI is basically the next step! Even more, AI can help the decision-making process that’s built off of these sets of data.

Predictive Maintenance

Many of our BlogSquadders have written frequently about how maintenance for AV systems is an important job — this is particularly true for many of our in-house integrator / technology manager friends. Artificial intelligence can help us monitor the health of the many AV systems we work with daily in order to make that maintenance process much easier. If we can start to catch problems early, won’t that make the process for fixing and improving these systems better in the long run? I’m all for finding out about a problem before it causes a system failure and I know you are too.

Enhanced Collaboration

You’ve seen it at virtually every ProAV trade show in the past year. Exhibitor after exhibitor touting AI abilities for making collaboration better. From auto-framing to camera tracking, these technologies were designed to make meetings better for everyone involved (no matter where they join from) — and potentially solve the meeting equity problem. What else can be automated? How else can AI make the different pieces of meeting technology become interoperable? We’re only at the beginning of figuring out everything it can do.

These are only a few reasons why I love artificial intelligence and you should too! Keep an eye out for the rest of our featured pieces today. Happy AI Appreciation Day!

(By the way, ChatGPT helped me create the outline for this piece – I was very serious about reason #1!)