In 2023, thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, generative AI became truly accessible on a wide scale. In a short period of time, this technology went from something people rarely heard about, to an everyday term you couldn’t escape. It became the fastest-adopted technology of all time when ChatGPT hit 100 million users just two months after launch.
As an early adopter of this revolutionary new technology, we’ve found a variety of exciting ways to use artificial intelligence in both our internal operations and the products our customers in the payments space rely on every day.
At NMI, we’re using AI to push payments forward, and we’d like to help you do the same. Below, we’ll explain what our approach to AI has been and how our partners (and other professionals in the payments space) can successfully adopt this technology as well.
NMI and AI: How We Approach Generative Artificial Intelligence
At NMI, we watched intently as generative AI entered the mainstream. As better models rolled out across a variety of fields (such as marketing, finance, sales, development and customer support), it became apparent that there was a technological opportunity in front of us that we needed to adopt.
We were already familiar with artificial intelligence models. After all, AI is involved in several parts of our ecosystem, including our ScanX underwriting solution and Kount partnership. However, generative AI opened up new opportunities for NMI. Initially, our instinct was that we’d find new ways for these tools to help with our internal operations. But, we very quickly realized that AI applications went much further than we’d anticipated.
The Two Pillars of NMI’s AI Integration
Generative AI adoption at NMI can be broken down into two main pillars — operations and product. The first is mostly internal, with teams using AI tools to help them be faster and more efficient. The latter is more external, with the NMI product and engineering teams finding new ways to incorporate AI into our products.
Generative AI in NMI Operations
On the operations side, our employees are leveraging tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT to streamline workflows. There are very few limitations to what internal processes generative AI tools can improve. As a tech company, we naturally have a large number of developer projects. AI has been incredibly helpful to our engineering teams, aiding in developer productivity and enabling more efficient coding.
Generative AI is also useful for repetitive, highly manual tasks such as gathering information, writing documents or summarizing meetings. For instance, various departments use custom GPTs to assist them in their daily workflows. Over time, these GPTs learn and get even better, helping our teammates be more productive and effective.
Besides improving productivity, employing AI tools has also been a significant morale booster for team members who can think more strategically, without being bogged down by so many time-consuming, menial tasks.
Generative AI in NMI Products
On the product side, we’re extending the benefits of generative AI to our customers in a frictionless way. A great example of that is Penny, our new AI-powered support assistant.
Rather than digging through a knowledge base to find a solution, Penny allows website visitors and existing partners to ask about NMI’s products and services. Because of Penny’s training, it can provide easy to understand answers in natural language nearly instantly. Then, if the user needs more help, Penny can direct the support request to the best person to solve the problem.
That kind of natural language interfacing is one of the most powerful benefits of generative AI, and it can be applied in so many ways.
For instance, imagine being able to just ask your residuals or financial reporting tool for a specific piece of data instead of having to generate and interpret a custom report. That’s an example of a more natural, personalized way to interact with software, and AI is going to make those humanized interactions a big part of the user experience (UX) in the near future.
How AI is Changing the Payments Industry
The payments industry relies on dense data, which makes it an excellent use case for GenAI. As this technology progresses, experts anticipate it will drastically affect how the industry handles fraud prevention, customer support, underwriting and money management. It can even help businesses reduce operational costs and create new revenue opportunities.
Just as the internet changed the very essence of society, AI stands to push the payments industry into a new era of safety, productivity and business intelligence.
“AI will change how we tackle fraud, perform daily tasks and go to market. We’re still in the early days of AI adoption. As with any revolutionary technology, we can’t fully imagine where it will go or what the future will hold. That said, I think AI has great potential to simplify money management and improve our quality of life by analyzing and summarizing data for us,” NMI CEO Vijay Sondhi says.
6 Tips for Applying AI in Your Business
Tip 1: Embrace AI and Start Using It Today
People tend to be resistant to generative AI for a couple of reasons. First, they are hesitant to trust it for security reasons. Second, it can be hard to understand just how powerful AI tools are without using them, and a lot of companies don’t think they have anything to gain from it. Thankfully, this isn’t the case.
The good news is adoption can begin with baby steps. If you haven’t already, create a free personal account with one of the big providers like ChatGPT or Claude. Encourage your staff to do the same, and just start playing with the tools — as long as security has approved them, of course. As you tinker with these programs more, you’ll start to have ‘aha’ moments that clarify the ways they can help your business. Then, start rolling out the tech in small ways. It doesn’t have to be zero to 100 in an instant. Dip your toe in — but do it now.
Tip 2: Direct AI Efforts Toward Your Weaknesses
There are so many tools out there, and generative AI can do so much. Once you’ve embraced AI, it can be overwhelming to decide how you’re going to use it. But, the most natural place to start using this technology is where you have a problem that you’ve been struggling to solve.
Start by looking for the issues or roadblocks that your company hasn’t been able to overcome — especially those related to a lack of financial resources or personnel. Then, ask yourself how AI might help. Or you could even ask the GenAI model how it can help! You’ll be surprised how many times a tool like ChatGPT can give you great ideas on how to employ it.
One of GenAI’s purposes is to boost efficiency and streamline tasks. In the early stages of adoption, don’t try to force it into areas you’re already excelling in. Instead, direct it toward your weaknesses.
Tip 3: Empower and Incentivize Your Team to Get Creative
The returns on generative AI tools increase the more you use them and the more familiar you are with how to prompt them. Encouraging your team to use a platform like ChatGPT is a great start. But, to unlock its full potential, you need to go beyond just making it available. Empower your team to use it effectively and to find creative ways to solve business problems.
There are a ton of ways you can help your team get the most out of these tools. For instance, try hosting lunch-and-learns to highlight the tech and teach people the basics of good prompting. Or, establish open office hours where your best ChatGPT users make themselves available to help other members of your team learn the ropes or refine prompts. You can even gamify adoption by holding contests with financial incentives for employees who find creative ways to use AI.
Tip 4: Don’t Overestimate Generative AI (Yet)
Generative AI is very powerful, and it’s (seemingly) getting more capable by the week. However, it’s important to be realistic about where these tools currently are.
As it stands, AI tools are incredibly effective at augmenting and enhancing the performance of your people, but they can’t just do the work on their own. That’s important to remember for two reasons. First, it should eliminate any fears your team might have about AI threatening their jobs. It won’t. Second, any AI application has to be part of a human-led process; it won’t be as effective if you’re trying to get it to create a final product in and of itself.
Imagine AI as a brilliant intern. Under your guidance, it can help you produce great work. But, on its own, it doesn’t have the knowledge, experience or context necessary to do that. So, just as you wouldn’t accept an intern’s work without reviewing it, you shouldn’t do that with AI either. The goal is to make it a part of your workflow, but it cannot single-handedly become the workflow — not yet, at least.
Tip 5: Don’t Get Locked Into a Single AI Tool
It can be easy to become aligned with a single AI ecosystem or even to feel locked into it. But, to get the most out of generative AI, it’s important to use whatever tool is going to provide you with the best results. There are a lot of GenAI tools out there now, and some are better than others at certain things. As an example, OpenAI’s Dall-E can produce images for you, but not as well as Midjourney, a competing application.
Encourage your team to branch out if they think other applications will get the job done better. But, make sure everyone is clear on security. An employee shouldn’t feed proprietary company information into a new AI tool without having it cleared by security first. As long as people are security conscious, giving your team some freedom to choose their tools can significantly improve output and effectiveness.
Tip 6: Don’t Feel Like You’ve Already Missed the Boat
Generative AI has seen astounding growth over the last year and a half. AI advances so quickly that it can be easy to feel like the ship has already set sail. Thankfully, that’s far from the truth. Although GenAI has evolved significantly since breaking into the mainstream in early 2023, it can’t be emphasized enough that we are in the earliest stages of this technological revolution. There is no better time to start adopting it than right now.
AI evolves exponentially, and humans aren’t great at conceptualizing that kind of growth. It can be difficult to comprehend just how far this tech could go in the next year, let alone the next five to ten years. At this point, that growth is unstoppable and inevitable. AI will eventually be a core part of all of our lives, just as the internet is today. We’re currently at the start of that journey, and you owe it to your business to use AI to maximize the competitive advantages it can offer you not just today, but also once it matures.
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