Directions NA Day 1: Deep Dive Around Ethical AI, Microsoft Copilot, Business Central
Microsoft MVP and Chief Content Officer Aaron Back is on location at Directions NA, taking place in Orlando, Florida, from April 16-19.
In this video, Aaron dives deeper into the Day 1 agenda, elaborating on the buzz around artificial intelligence and specifically, Microsoft Copilot.
Highlights
00:34 — Microsoft Copilot is named as such on purpose, rather than being called autopilot. Why? Because Copilot keeps the human at the center. This is something Aaron has always been bullish on: people + technology — with people being at the focal point.
01:07 — One of the early sessions from Microsoft was about responsible and ethical AI. This notion is deeply embedded in the Microsoft Copilot solution, which is responsible by design. In this same session, Microsoft execs emphasized that this tool is NOT ChatGPT. Instead, it utilizes Azure OpenAI services, and a completely different model with Microsoft’s AI standards embedded into it, in addition to scalability.
02:04 — Microsoft representatives offered a use case of Microsoft Copilot with Business Central, and how the tool can create compelling marketing text and product descriptions for items. The Microsoft team focused on the concept of “grounding,” which is a pre-processing step that enables Microsoft “to check against their Azure OpenAI models to ensure the validity of what’s going on is ethical,” explains Aaron. It also does post-processing correctness checks to see if its database is factual, detects any harmful content, or something it came up with isn’t an “AI hallucination,” — where AI is creating facts that aren’t real.
03:30 — Enabling Microsoft Copilot requires administrative access. At this time, only the English language is supported. Aaron explains how “the future of AI” was also a critical theme of this session, which highlighted the need for a shifting mindset in how we interact with, and use, AI.
04:40 — Now, it is possible to “pose a problem” to AI and the tool can help humans develop solutions. This can be done in a few ways:
- Conversational (guidance, insights, actions, discussions)
- Immersive (across Power Platform and the Dynamics 365 applications)
05:03 — Something to note from Business Central users, explains Aaron, is that Microsoft currently does not offer “AL programmability or extensibility” for Business Central, though it was discussed in an Open Forum at Directions NA.
06:21 — Aaron is inclined to share this with the community because it demonstrates Microsoft’s big push towards AI, but at the same time, the community must ensure they are “grounded” in the ethical use of AI.
Stay tuned for more on location coverage while Aaron is attending Directions NA this week!
