Tag: ai

  • Are you all in on AI or approaching it more moderately? The perils of not strategizing your AI roll out

    Are you all in on AI or approaching it more moderately? The perils of not strategizing your AI roll out

    AI (Artificial Intelligence) continues to proliferate modern workspaces, with some companies leaning heavily into AI investments including up to replacing human workers with an AI equivalent for roles such as customer service.

    One company, Klarna, is facing some pushback from investors for just such a strategy. Last year, Klarna which is known for it’s “buy now, pay later” financing for consumer purchasing, replaced 700 workers in favor of an AI solution for customer support. Now, their valuation has plummeted from a high of $45.6 billion in 2021 to $6.7 billion in 2025.

    At the heart of it is customer complaints of lower customer service satisfaction which has caused the company to pivot on their “AI First” strategy with their CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski stating recently “Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.”

    What does this mean for medium and small businesses looking at their own strategizing when it comes to artificial intelligence? Testing the waters and applying it in moderation to start is key to a successful AI roll out.

    While it may seem tempting to just go all in, especially if savings are on the table in terms of labor costs, the current iterations of artificial intelligence are not ready to be deployed without human oversight and intervention in our opinion. Rather than expecting AI to take over and replace human activities, it’s best to look at how you can use AI as a tool to do more.

    Here are three ways we recommend using AI to get the most out of your workday:

    1. Automating Repetitive Tasks
      AI can handle time-consuming activities like data entry, scheduling, and basic customer queries. This frees up employees to focus on higher-value, strategic work that requires human judgment and creativity.
    2. Enhancing Decision-Making
      AI-powered analytics tools can process vast amounts of data quickly and provide actionable insights. This helps employees make faster, more informed decisions without spending hours combing through spreadsheets or reports.
    3. Personalizing Training and Support
      AI can tailor learning experiences to each employee’s role and pace, recommending relevant skills development or providing just-in-time answers through intelligent chatbots. This boosts engagement and accelerates on-the-job learning

    If developing an AI strategy for your business is a priority for you in 2025, Valley Techlogic can help. We make it a priority to stay at the forefront of emerging technologies and help our clients access continuous improvements in the tech space to meet their goals. Reach out today for a consultation.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, leading provider of trouble free IT services for businesses in California including Merced, Fresno, Stockton & More. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on X at https://x.com/valleytechlogic and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/valley-techlogic-inc/.

  • 6 AI Do’s and Don’t’s Including ways you may be jeopardizing your workplace data with your AI use (and how to avoid)

    6 AI Do’s and Don’t’s Including ways you may be jeopardizing your workplace data with your AI use (and how to avoid)

    AI or Artificial Intelligence is becoming more and more common place in our daily lives, including in our places of work. You may even be using it daily without realizing it, most search engines for example have an AI response to queries baked in at the top of the page and if that’s the farthest you look then all of your searches are currently being powered by AI.

    Other tools like weather apps, navigation and even the spam filter in your inbox is using AI to train and collect data that is then given back to you as answers to your questions or provide solutions you are looking for. Drive a Tesla? All of your driving data is collected and used to train their autonomous car algorithms.

    Which brings us to the topic of today’s article, AI in general is powered by give and take. The models collect our data and turn that data into answers, it’s a common misconception that AI is producing the answers all by itself. Machine learning operates on a rule of 10, basically for every query you need 10 ways to respond, and those responses are collected by unfathomable amounts of data fed into it. Think of the breadth of knowledge an AI program like ChatGPT seems to have and you can begin to see that it would take a lot of data for it to provide to answers to millions of different questions it’s asked each day.

    So that data comes from you, and me, and everyone who’s ever interacted on the internet in a meaningful way. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, after all humanity tends to accomplish its greatest achievements when we all work in unison towards a goal. Although the way that the data is collected and how to approach things like copyright are still being determined.

    So, with all that said you might be wondering, what’s the problem? What should I be worried about when using AI in my workplace? As a technology company, we believe in using the tools available to streamline and strengthen our productivity, but we have determined that companies should be aware of these three things when using a burgeoning technology like AI in their workplace:

    1. Data Risks: As we hinted at above, AI systems tend to syphon as much information as they can to strengthen their machine learning algorithms. This includes potentially sensitive data. Any AI strategy should include how to protect and segment data you don’t want leaked to the outside world.
    2. Errors and Reliability: There are risks to trusting AI completely when looking for answers, AI data sets are fed by a wide range of sources and not all of them are trustworthy. You should always vet any answers you receive, especially if the question you’re asking is an important one.
    3. Bias, Discrimination and Transparency: Most of the AI tools currently on the market are being created by private companies and the processes used are hidden from outside view, so we should keep in mind that it’s possible the answers we’re receiving have been manipulated to reflect a certain outcome. Again, always vet the answers you receive from AI.

    Now that we’ve touched on the things to look out for, what are three things that you can safely use AI for in your workplace?

    1. Use a local AI model: Most people are not aware you can actually have a local in-house AI model, these may be more limited in scope but will not present the security risk of public facing AI and can be built on your own data.
    2. Automating repetitive tasks: Certain tasks won’t carry any risk of data exposure, such as scheduling or creating reports without PII (Personal Identifying Information).
    3. Use it to interact with customers: One of the best use cases of AI currently for businesses is automated chatbots, chatbots can be available 24 hours a day and field simple questions and answers which free up your staff for other activities.

    If you’re looking for the most practical and safest way to begin using AI in your business, Valley Techlogic can help. We are experienced in creating customized technology solutions for our clients and can advise on the way to implement an AI plan that doesn’t compromise on cybersecurity best practices. Reach out today for a consultation.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, leading provider of trouble free IT services for businesses in California including Merced, Fresno, Stockton & More. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on X at https://x.com/valleytechlogic and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/valley-techlogic-inc/.

  • China enters the AI race with the release of DeepSeek, prompting conversations about what happens when AI tools take data from each other (rather than just the general public)

    China enters the AI race with the release of DeepSeek, prompting conversations about what happens when AI tools take data from each other (rather than just the general public)

    The race for domination continues to heat up at China’s AI model “DeepSeek” enters the fray, just days after newly inaugurated President Trump announced his plans to invest 500 billion in AI infrastructure during the course of his term.

    Established as a startup under the same umbrella as the quantitive hedge fund High-Flyer, which is primarily owned by AI enthusiast Liang WenFeng (who built his fortune during the 2007-2008 financial crisis), little has been verified about how DeepSeek came to be.

    That has not stopped endless speculation since it’s launch was announced, including how much of it is modeled after existing AI models such OpenAI’s ubiquitous model, ChatGPT.

    Also being questioned is how the chips it was trained on were sourced, chip restrictions were placed in on China in 2019 which continued under President Biden specifically to curtail China’s ability to access infrastructure used in the advancement of AI technology. This restriction not only covered the chips themselves, but the technology used to manufacture them.

    According to Liang, he sourced the the 10,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs prior to the federally imposed ban.

    At present time the founders of DeepSeek are indicating that their goal is to continue the research and advancement of AI infrastructure with their model and not seek commercialization. To back these claims, you can currently download the first series of their model for free open source whether you’re a researcher or a commercial user.

    It should also be noted that DeepSeek has an updated data set as compared to ChatGPT, which is currently capped to data from 2023, what this means is its most recent data is from 2023 and before and anything that occurred in 2024 and beyond would not be available so if you were to example ask ChatGPT “Who won the 2024 Presidential Election?” it may not give you a correct answer.

    There have also been claims that DeepSeek is much cheaper to train, although training costs for existing AI models are largely inflated. These costs are based on the cost of cloud computing rental prices, which have a wide range of variance.

    AI training costs vary wildly depending on a range of factors.

    AI and cloud computing are both worthy investments for businesses looking to strategically position themselves for technology growth in 2025 and beyond, and Valley Techlogic is at the forefront of utilizing these technologies.

    Whether it be initializing AI tools like Microsoft’s Co-Pilot in your business or migrating more of your operations to the cloud to reduce overhead spending on physical hardware, we’ve got you covered. Reach out today for a consultation and learn how you can catapult your business forward with technology advancements through Valley Techlogic.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, leading provider of trouble free IT services for businesses in California including Merced, Fresno, Stockton & More. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on X at https://x.com/valleytechlogic and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/valley-techlogic-inc/.

  • 5 technology predictions for 2025 (and where to invest your tech spend in the New Year)

    5 technology predictions for 2025 (and where to invest your tech spend in the New Year)

    2024 was a busy year in technology, with a lot of the focus shifted to continuing advancements in AI, which job openings even being available for those who can craft the perfect prompt. 2025 is likely to bring even more focus this way, but what other advancements in technology should your business be focusing on in the new year? Here are our predictions:

    1. 5G capability: 5G is not a minor upgrade to 4G, 5G is 10 to 100 times faster and has a fraction of the latency (under 5 milliseconds vs 60-98 milliseconds for 4G – an eternity when it comes to page loading times). 5G also has much greater capacity which will make providing network access to areas previously underserved or underrepresented by cable companies possible.
    2. Edge computing: In conjunction with AI, edge computing brings data much closer to the source. Rather than accessing your data solely from the cloud, edge computing involves having a “edge gateway server” act as the middleman and brings more of your data closer to home, while prioritizing that only the most sensitive or critical data is uploaded to cloudz. AI ties it all together for seamless access on the users end. This is especially important as IoT (Internet of Things) devices become more ubiquitous even in workspaces, as it reduces latency to devices with less processing power.
    3. Zero-trust Architecture: Zero trust was previously thought as an insurmountable hurdle to the day-to-day user experience, making things inaccessible and acting as a roadblock to completing even simple tasks. Now companies have come around to the notion that not every user needs admin level access and the only roadblock it presents is in front of bad actors trying to gain entry to your company data. Simple solutions such as continuous monitoring for threats, enabling MFA and least privileged access are easier than ever to implement for low or no cost to your business.
    4. Quantum Computing: Often dubbed the final evolution in computing capacity – quantum computing advancements will continue to progress in 2025 with it being predicted that the technology will become more readily available to the general public sometime in the future. While it would be difficult to cover what quantum computing is in this snippet – what it will be able to do is enable us to solve complex in seconds, and improve and optimize many other aspects of computing as we know them today.
    5. Artificial Intelligence: As we mentioned, AI advancements were abound in 2024 and this will continue to be the case in 2025. As more advanced generative models are released and AI-powered automation becomes common place in workspaces it will be something to watch in the coming months, especially for business owners looking to use it strategically within their company.

    At Valley Techlogic we try to stay at the forefront of emerging technologies, including AI. We are Microsoft partners and can make recommendations for utilizing Microsoft’s Co-pilot in your business, as well as helping you navigate technology solutions for your business in 2025. Investing some of your tech spend into a partnership with us in 2025 will help your business reach new heights (we guarantee it). Reach out today to learn more and also take advantage of our end of the year offer.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, leading provider of trouble free IT services for businesses in California including Merced, Fresno, Stockton & More. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/valley-techlogic-inc/.

  • AI explained and 4 simple ways to use it in your business

    AI explained and 4 simple ways to use it in your business

    AI or Artificial Intelligence has been all over the news as online tools have emerged that can do a variety of impressive things in the creative space such as copywriting, writing code, creating videos and images and much more.

    On a more technical level, AI is being used in medical applications for assisting doctors during surgeries or identifying suspicious tissue or masses in diagnostic images. The car you drive may be using AI through GPS to help you navigate a safer or more efficient route or for specific vehicles, autonomous driving. Advances in robotics grow via AI input each day, from minute applications such as cleaning robots to complex sensors that take in data and react to it in real time to make equipment used by a wide variety of sectors much safer or more efficient.

    Even on your mobile device and computer, AI input is found in abundance. The spam filter in your email? Powered by AI. Face recognition on your phone? That’s also AI.

    Our prompt was “Red haired girl sitting at desk with computer and cat.”

    We’ve found AI tends to have a negative association to it as well however, with some worried it may allow their employer to replace them for a computerized facsimile, some worried about the implications when it comes to privacy and autonomy and others worried on a grander scale what it will mean for humanity if AI ever reaches the level of being truly sentient.

    We would like to put some of these fears to bed, in a nutshell AI is exactly what we as a society make of it. When it comes to the creative pieces that have emerged from AI it’s a mistake to believe that those creations were spawned solely via technological input.

    In reality AI conjures up images, songs, and video by compiling the vast resource that is available to it via the internet. It takes human creations and fragments them to recreate them into something that matches your text prompt. The stylistic choice, the colors, the layout – all of this is garnered from human ingenuity that is then reiterated for your viewing consumption,via machine learning.

    The impressive part of AI is not the end product it provides to you, it is its ability to take so much information and compile it into something even remotely coherent. Even this is not something that’s spawned from the ether but is instead the net result of many decades of talented engineers with one goal in mind – to make many jobs simpler and safer to do.

    AI will not replace human ingenuity; it will do as any tool is designed to do – help us do more.

    Now that we have hopefully put some of your fears about AI to bed, you may be wondering how you can use AI in your business? Well, we have a few suggestions.

    1. Images. As we showcased above, AI is excellent for creating graphics that match your text input and can add a little bit of context or pizzaz to your designs or documents. Top Recommendation: AI
    2. Social Media Posts. If you own a business, you should ideally be posting to your social media platforms every weekday if possible (or at least three times a week). However, managing to squeeze content creation into your day to day can feel like a major chore. That’s where our top recommendation comes in, Canva allows you to create social media posts quickly and easily resize them for whichever platform you’re on (so you can make one post go further). Top Recommendation: Canva
    3. Editing: Just take a great group photo at work but realize there’s something really distracting in the background? Or maybe the colors are off, or it’s a little blurry? All highly fixable via Adobe Express, and you don’t need to be a graphic design expert. Best of all, it’s free. Top Recommendation: Adobe Express
    4. Text Prompts: While we don’t recommend leaving all of your content writing to AI, it can be a useful tool to help you get started or to help you reword a paragraph to be more persuasive or engaging. Top Recommendation: AnyWord

    Of course, it would be remiss of us if we didn’t mention you can get the best of human ingenuity and technological prowess by partnering with a technology service provider like Valley Techlogic. We pride ourselves on being at the forefront of technological innovation, and that includes advancements in AI.

    If you would like to learn more about how we can help you navigate this space and utilize automation and AI in your business today, you can schedule a consultation with us here.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

  • Security Camera Buying Guide for Businesses in 2023

    Security Camera Buying Guide for Businesses in 2023

    We may be alone here, but it seems like the interest in security cameras has climbed over the past year. Perhaps it’s because the technology has vastly improved over the last decade and our clients are ready to swap out slower, inefficient models that capture lackluster video at and are expensive to maintain for newer models that capture crisp clear video and have increased features to make reviewing that video much, much easier.

    If you were unaware, the grainy surveillance footage you’re used to seeing is quickly becoming a thing of the past. If you’re a fan of crime dramas, you may have seen the police officers in those show ask to have a video unrealistically “enhanced” to show the suspects on screen from original footage that starts out barely visible. Now, that sort of technology is in some cases a reality.

    Instead of starting with grainy footage, the cameras we have available for our customers have clear easy to view footage of a wider area than you would have been able to get in the past (meaning less cameras to buy to cover the same square footage). These cameras are also backed by software enhancements that enable you to search through the footage to find a specific time, an object such as a license plate, or even specific people.

    You can learn more about the AVA powered camera systems we offer here. The best thing about the AVA solution is it can pair with your existing cameras, allowing you access to many of these benefits without buying new cameras.

    That brings us to the pros and cons of buying a new camera system for your business:

    • Pro: Enhanced Features, obviously we just spent some time going over the features you’ll stand to gain from a new camera system. Another feature you may not have considered is reduced storage costs; many camera systems now store data in the cloud meaning you will not have to pay for onsite storage (which can add up if you tend to save your footage for a while).
    • Con: Cost, obviously the cost of a new camera system can be quite expensive, but perhaps less than you may think. As technology has grown and cameras have become more ubiquitous, the costs have also dropped.
    • Pro: More Options to Fit More Spaces, if you have old school bullet style cameras only you may be surprised at the range of options and styles available now. We still recommend the bullet style for outdoor use as it’s very obvious that a camera is in place to potential intruders, but for in office use a more discreet camera might make more sense (and you can look at our chart on camera styles below).
    • Con: Installation, going through the installation of any kind of equipment can bring up unforeseen issues. Problems with wiring or getting the placement exactly right for the location it’s being placed. There is of course the expense of the installation too, which in some cases can rival the cost of the cameras themselves. Every situation is different and it’s best to have your specific setup reviewed by a technician to get a clear estimate.
    • Pro: Better Able to Work in a Variety of Conditions, older cameras often didn’t handle interference or poor lighting very well. Today’s cameras can adjust for poor lighting or poor visibility and some cameras even offer night vision for poorly lit areas of your building.
    • Con: Software Costs, of course for AI or software backed cameras you will encounter a software cost for utilizing those features. We feel it’s more than worth it considering how much more useful your cameras will be for your business and should be considered part of the cost of maintaining your security in your business.
    • Pro: More Integrations, as our AVA page illustrates, many of today’s camera systems also integrate with sensors that can monitor for odors or liquids, and even specific sounds (such as screaming or a gunshot).
    • Con: There really aren’t any additional cons outside of the expense and going through the installation process, once your new camera system is in place you will wonder how you ever got by without it.

    Here is a brief overview of the types of cameras that are now available on the market:

    While we recommend the AVA solution the most for our clients, we have camera system options for businesses of all shapes and sizes. We would be more than happy to provide a custom estimate for your business, reach out today to schedule a walkthrough with one of our security camera experts.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

  • Bing’s ChatGPT Chatbot had some unexpected conversations with customers this week, plus 3 Chatbots we CAN recommend for your website

    Bing’s ChatGPT Chatbot had some unexpected conversations with customers this week, plus 3 Chatbots we CAN recommend for your website

    While Microsoft has been somewhat hush hush on the exact amount of their investment into the creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI (with some estimates nearing $10 billion).  It is clear that they’re going all in on AI and looking towards the future by already integrating it into their search engine Bing, via a new chat bot feature.

    The results have been, to say the least, unexpected. While in the majority of cases the bot responds appropriately to the prompts and provides helpful information, there were some instances this week where the opposite happened.

    Including a conversation about the new movie Avatar: Way of the Water in which case the bot got confused about what year it was and insisted it was still 2022, punctuating it’s arguments with the user with “I’m a good Bing bot”.

    In another case, a New York Times writer hearing about the unusual way the bot was sometimes responding, led him to holding a conversation with it for over 2 hours. The bizarre results of the lengthy conversation culminated in the bot trying to convince him they were in love and that he should leave his wife.

    This highlights the complex nature of AI in its current form, many think AI is advanced hardware working at full capacity to create something brand new to human-kind. When in reality it’s a vast collection of what humans have already put onto the internet scrambled together and supported by algorithms to be readily available upon a human prompt. You have to imagine having the full capacity of the internet at your fingertips – both the good and the bad.

    That’s why AI has been able to pass the Bar exam and also why it has also responded very strangely to simple prompts as in the Bing example, because like the internet it’s a mixed bag.

    In response to the news Microsoft has limited their chatbot to prevent more unsettling conversations, with 5 user prompts on the same topic the bot will now respond with “I prefer not to talk about this topic.”.

    AI can be very useful but it’s definitely not a replacement for all human led activity, especially when it comes to engaging with your customers.

    That’s why we have our top 3 picks for live chat options that will improve customer engagement (with no unexpected results):

    1. LiveChat: This is the one we personally use and we enjoy the features it has including an “attention grabber” which is an animated .gif that grabs customers attention and the ability to instigate conversations with visitors. It also keeps a record of who has tried to chat and allows customer service agents to “take over” a conversation when it’s appropriate to. It also includes customizable branding (all of the chatbots on our list do).
    2. Olark is another good option, like LiveChat it keeps track of the conversations happening on your website but it also offers analytics based on those conversations so you can track customer outcomes. It also offers many integrations with popular products such as Google Analytics, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Salesforce and more.
    3. Tawk.to is a free live chat option that still has some very nice features, including monitoring customers on your website and being able to answer chats from a mobile device. You can even share your screen if you’re trying to assist a customer in finding something.

    We believe in answering customers live which is why we have Live Chat available to our customers, with live service reps on our website and a dedicated dispatcher to answer customer phone calls. Technology advice like what’s provided in this article is just one of the ways we help our clients, if you would like to learn more about obtaining technology support for your business schedule a consultation with us today.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.