The Gately Report: SolarWinds Says Generative AI Not a 'Scary Monster'

Generative AI isn’t a “scary monster,” and can help organizations improve operations, resolve issues faster, stay safer and increase customer satisfaction.

That’s according to Krishna Sai, SolarWinds’ senior vice president of technology and engineering. He said that’s the message SolarWinds is trying to convey to organizations that haven’t yet embraced AI and generative AI in their businesses.

Last month, SolarWinds unveiled SolarWinds AI, a purpose-built generative AI engine developed using the company’s newly unveiled AI by design framework to help ensure privacy, security and reliability in developing advanced AI technologies.

SolarWinds AI is first being introduced to the company's IT service management products to summarize complex ticket histories, provide suggested agent responses to inquiries, and generate real-time recommended steps for resolving issues.

“A lot of times AI is thrown around as this big thing that introduces a lot of apprehension, even fear of new technologies and fear of jobs being taken away,” Sai said. “All of these things are very common when it comes to AI in our professional environment. And what we're doing is, instead of making AI as this scary monster if you will, we're actually introducing it as, 'Hey, this is your friend; this is going to help you make your job better. And by building systems with AI by design, we're actually ensuring that the professionals who use our products are able to use AI with confidence … that they still have a lot of control in how they're able to use those tools to offer value. And our intentions are the same. We want to be able to make sure that IT and operations professionals who use our products are able to do their jobs better, get the answers they need quicker and resolve their issues faster so their customer satisfaction increases. These things are the core principles around how we've thought about AI in general.”

Time for Organizations to Embrace Generative AI

There is increasing awareness around AI and most people are considering AI as a tool to integrate into their day-to-day functions, he said.

SolarWinds' Krishna Sai

“And it's happening around across functions, not just in IT and operations,” Sai said. “It's happening in other functions like legal, HR, finance, you name it. But I think we’re about to enter an era where AI becomes a superpower and has this ability to influence all our lives and professional functions heavily. But being aware of the potential pitfalls will help us take that balanced approach. And then we're also going to see regulation come our way, which means that AI will get increasingly regulated. And as AI regulation becomes more important, that's the other aspect that IT professionals need to become more aware of. How do we ensure that the tools that they're rolling out to their customers, etc., have the right kind of controls built in so that whether that is audit and compliance to these regulations, or making sure that checks and balances are there when it comes to things like data privacy and security, these are the macro factors that professionals need to be aware of.”

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