‘Six-hour day’: AI can revolutionise the workday for all staff – not just the CIO

Forbes Profile

Leading enterprise automation software firm UiPath says AI could revolutionise the workday for all departments, in all businesses, from nurses to public sector workers, interns to CEOs.
‘Six-hour day’: AI can revolutionise the workday for all staff – not just the CIO. Image source: Supplied

This year, artificial intelligence (AI) is the talk of the town, and as companies try and harness its power, leading enterprise automation software company UiPath, says all business divisions and roles can benefit from the new wave of technology – not just the chief information officer (CIO).

UiPath was founded back in 2005, and today its products are used by more than 10,000 customers globally. And while the world might just be catching onto the power of AI, this is something UiPath has been abreast of for years.

“We actually launched our Clipboard AI [an automated copy-paste software] in September 2022,” CEO of UiPath, Rob Enslin, says. That’s two months before OpenAI launched its generative AI product, ChatGPT, to the public. But Enslin says UiPath’s Clipboard AI “was 100% built on GPT – and nobody knew”.

“The formative moment of OpenAI launching ChatGPT, allowing users to understand the power of AI, that’s why we’re seeing more understanding and more investment now,” he says.

Even prior to the September 2022 launch of Clipboard AI, Enslin says AI was built into UiPath’s DNA. “We called it computer vision technology. Obviously, we didn’t speak much about AI because nobody really understood what that meant, but it was built into the very early product. And as the product evolved, we’ve acquired multiple areas of AI like natural language processing, active learning and more transformer models.”

Rob Enslin, CEO UiPath. Image source: Supplied

One of its newer developments is Autopilot, a set of new AI-powered experiences across the platform’s Business Automation Platform, which UiPath unveiled at the company’s global user conference in Las Vegas in October this year.

And it’s built for any user, because UiPath believes AI can be just as effective for the chief information officer as it for the nurse or public sector worker, intern or CEO, Enslin says. Particularly when it comes to administrative tasks.

For example, the Autopilot for Assistant function can help all users tackle manual tasks, like copying and pasting complex data sets (using Clipboard AI), paying a supplier’s invoice, completing work travel expenses or chatting with customers about service modifications. It can even order your go-to Subway lunch order.

“The intent of AI is to make our products more usable, more valuable, for the purpose of helping people be more productive, and businesses more competitive,” he says.

I think we can help them, and, hopefully, one day they’ll work six hours a day and be as productive as people who work 12-16 hours a day. This is the possibility of technology.”

– Rob Enslin, CEO, UiPath

Enslin points to nurses and the healthcare sector as an example: “Hospital systems are typically overloaded or constrained – there’s an incredible amount of paperwork that goes into that,” he says.

“We can use AI to do the administrative work for them. We collate the information, they can see exactly what the patient’s had overnight… Then they can spend almost all of their time on clinical delivery.”

Autopilot’s other capabilities go even further: there’s Autopilot for Test Suite, which can accelerate every phase of the product testing lifecycle; Autopilot for Process Mining, which helps business analysts use natural language to filter, summarise and create dashboards for their automation opportunities; and even Autopilot for developers, which allows developers to create automations, code and expressions with natural language. There is something, Enslin says, for everyone.

And over the next 12 to 18 months, the UiPath chief says he has a dream he’d like to realise: a six-hour workday.

“Because of the power of information and technology, humans are going to have to make decisions much faster, because they’re going to have much more relevant information,” he says.

“I think we can help them, and, hopefully, one day they’ll work six hours a day and be as productive as people who work 12-16 hours a day. This is the possibility of technology.”

Look back on the week that was with hand-picked articles from Australia and around the world. Sign up to the Forbes Australia newsletter here or become a member here.

More from Forbes Australia