The True Story of UpdateAI's Action Item Detection Finetuned for Customer Conversations

Here's a tale you might not be familiar with...

Prior to embracing the 'Generation AI Revolution' of 2023, UpdateAI invested two years in the development of our proprietary data science.

Upon the inception of UpdateAI, our objective was to eliminate the noise in team communication. To this end, we committed our entire data science team to the creation of a model that could detect when action items emerged in meetings.

We wrote an article last year about the process we had established for this purpose.

Our results were turning out to be impressive.

Then, in January 2023, like the rest of the world, we stumbled upon the impressive capabilities of ChatGPT.

I delegated to Sergey, our Head of Data Science, the task of comparing the detection of action items between our model and GPT over two weeks. His feedback was straightforward: "Theirs is superior."

This is not fiction.

For a moment, my heart dropped. This was a man with a PhD in machine learning who had dedicated two years to resolving a significant challenge. I would have been shattered and demotivated if I were in his position.

However, with his characteristic stoicism, Sergey simply remarked, "This is quite exciting."

The mission was what mattered most, and Sergey understood that we could integrate OpenAI/GPT into the processes and assets we'd already developed to expedite achieving our target.

This leads me to an exciting announcement: we've just launched the latest version of Action Item Detection in the Smart Summaries of our meeting recaps.

You'll now notice a significant enhancement in the precision and accuracy of our predictions. In fact, they're the best in the entire industry, and they're specifically fine-tuned for customer conversations.

We're even attempting to structure this data for the first time. As you'll see in the image below, we not only detect the speaker but also identify who was assigned the action item, along with the due date. It's not perfect yet, and frankly, it will never achieve perfection, but we are dedicated to continually improving it.

If you're intrigued by the unique process we've employed to achieve these results, we'd be thrilled to share the details. Don't hesitate to schedule a call with me directly at www.update.ai/josh.

Hint: The remarkable efforts of our Linguistics Data Analyst, Chenay Gladstone, also play a crucial role.

As for Sergey, his stoicism has transformed into enthusiasm. In partnership with OpenAI's GPT, we've tackled the challenge of action item detection. And of all the generative AI applications we offer in UpdateAI, this one holds the highest significance. At least for now.

I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of your week.

Josh