Not another blog about Microsoft ChatGPT

How comedian Nate Bargatze and Microsoft’s latest tools relate

Microsoft Inspire is an annual event held by Microsoft for its partners to connect, learn and celebrate as one community. As one of Microsoft’s leading partners, FMT, a division of Citrin Cooperman, attends so that we can stay on top of all that Microsoft has to offer its customers. This year, AI was 100% front and center with most announcements focused on next steps Microsoft has for its sizeable ($10 Billion) investment into OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT.

Here is a quick glimpse of the latest:

• Introduction of Bing Chat Enterprise
• Announcement of Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing
• Empowering sellers and customer service agents with AI
• Process Mining in Power Automate
• Azure OpenAI expanded availability
• New Azure capabilities and investments
• Meta and Microsoft Partnership
• Expanded strategic collaboration with Epic

If you want to read more about these announcements, feel free to check them out here. But that’s not the focus of this blog, rather, I would like to discuss the correlation between a very famous comedian, Nate Bargatze, and Microsoft’s investments into AI power.

Curious how these two could possibly be related? Stay with me…

For those of you who don’t know Nate, he is a Grammy nominated standup comedian from Tennessee who has several comedy specials out on Netflix and Amazon Prime. If you need a minute to watch his material, go ahead, take a break, and come back here after you’re done.

For those of you who have seen his stuff, he’s a funny guy with many jokes about his various run ins in life…but I never thought about how Microsoft could help any of the comedic situations. Then he released his recent comedy special, Hello World where I saw his crazy internet searches collide with the potential of Microsoft’s powerful tools right in front of me.

(Not funny) summary of the joke – Nate happens to have a bald eagle living in his back yard. He knows they are protected animals, but he wants to know more on the laws since the eagle interrupts his ability to enjoy his land. He searches Google and is intrigued by the ‘People also ask’ section, couldn’t resist the suggestion of ‘Is it a good sign if an eagle touches your head’ and is convinced he routinely gets sent to the dumb version of the internet. He then questions whether he has seen the real internet in his life. He goes on to say that Eagles think bald headed men are rocks and so they drop a turtle on their head to try and crack open the turtle’s shell for food. Turns out it’s not a good sign and the joke ends. Trust me, it’s truly funny if you watch him use his story telling abilities with comedic cadence.

How did Nate get to this point? It all lies in him believing he doesn’t know how to properly phrase internet searches… ‘What are these laws with these eagles’ is what he claimed to enter in Google as he spiraled down the ‘dumb internet’. Although we weren’t sitting next to him during this experience, I would like to think the turtle and rock situation was a misrepresented Greek story stemming from the death of Aeschylus whom, as summarized by Wikipedia, ‘was killed outside the city by a tortoise dropped by an eagle which had mistaken his head for a rock’. Yes, another Greek reference.

What does Microsoft have to do with this? Think about your employees. Nobody knows everything and we all spend a lot of time looking up information to do our jobs. Look at this statistic from Microsoft and their most recent Work Trend Index Survey:

“Taking a closer look at how people spend their time, it’s clear that a lack of focus time, the search for information, and the volume of constant communications have an opportunity cost. Sixty-eight percent of people say they don’t have enough uninterrupted focus time during the workday. And 62% of survey respondents say they struggle with too much time spent searching for information in their workday.”

Imagine the time Nate spent looking for ‘these laws with these eagles’ and picture your employee’s doing the same – except they aren’t looking up information about eagles, they are searching for information to further your business efforts. Time wasted is money lost. Look at this survey question:

Employer’s want ways to increase employee productivity and Microsoft newest offerings can help tremendously. Enter Bing Chat Enterprise – Your AI powered chat for work with commercial data protection!

From Microsoft:

Let’s think about Nate’s situation in the context of work. Nate is now an employee at your Eagle Removal business, and you tasked him with spreading the word of your services. Everyone loves a good social media campaign, so Nate goes to Bing Chat Enterprise to get the job done in less time.

Nate tells Bing Chat Enterprise to “Write 5 social media posts describing how professionally trained staff can help remove eagles from backyards”:

Nate reviews but thinks people don’t want to read that much so he continues the conversation with “Can you make it less wordy?”. Results instantly come back as follows:

He thought this was great, but wanted something a bit funnier (he twilights as a comedian after all):

Just what he wanted. He shoots these responses over to you via Teams to gain approval (because you both know not to text message), starts posting on your company’s social media sites and moves on with his other responsibilities.

Ask yourself, how many items were checked off on the pie chart of AI benefits from above? Quite a few – all without distracting Nate with the perils of Eagles and bald men. While this doesn’t help with his standup, it sure helps your business take flight.

Think about the possibilities for your company. Bing Chat Enterprise is one of the many ways Microsoft is paving the way to our certain AI-enabled future and best of all, its free for organizations who are licensed for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium.

What do you have to lose?  The short answer is time – if you don’t give Microsoft Bing Chat Enterprise a try. Chances are your employees are already using public versions of these tools and possibly leaking company information. Read this excerpt from our parent company, Citrin Cooperman, which takes a look at the possible dangers of AI:

There are limited safety mechanisms in place to prevent the upload of sensitive information to AI tools. If users post information to a tool that is of a sensitive nature, that information is saved and is at risk of being exposed due to a future bug or hack. This risk can be especially dangerous (e.g., compromise of client data) for businesses that allow their employees to use AI tools without providing them with best practices.

Best Practice: Every business should provide training and establish policies for users authorized to access AI tools, and should consider blocking access for employees who have not received approval.

Remember, Microsoft’s platform includes:

Can you say that about the tools (AI or otherwise) your employees are currently using? Do you know what tools they are using? Take back the reins (or in this case maybe jesses?) of your business and boost productivity – SECURELY!

Two takeaway recommendations here:

1. Watch Nate tell his truly funny stories on Amazon Prime
2. Talk to FMT, a division of Citrin Cooperman, about how you can be licensed for this future technology, today

You won’t go wrong! Don’t believe me? Let’s ask Bing Chat Enterprise: