AI Actions

AI so far

Generative AI focuses primarily on retrieving and understanding information and helps with tasks such as coding, marketing, and sales. However, its potential extends beyond simply generating and analyzing data. The future of AI lies in its ability to interact with real systems. While we're familiar with AI applications like ChatGPT, which use Python interpreters or Google searches, the next step is to integrate AI into business systems, allowing it to not only provide instructions but also complete tasks on behalf of users.

AI actions: closing the gap in business systems

To bring AI safely and effectively into business environments, Robocorp has come up with something new, AI Actions. AI Actions consist of solutions, workflows, and automations that can be safely exposed to AI apps or agents. These actions are defined by their input and output, described in natural language, allowing AI apps to understand and use them. Actions are predefined code snippets that are executed in a controlled environment, equipped with access rights, audit trails, and necessary controls.

While actions are similar to tools and function calls in frameworks such as Langchain, Llamaindex, and Microsoft Copilot Studio, they offer additional benefits. Actions can enforce strict user approval before execution and operate within an environment that is separate from the AI app, providing all required controls, authentication, and access rights. Actions can range from simple tasks such as retrieving data via an API to complex operations such as creating a new purchase order in SAP.

The benefits and open-source approach

Using predefined AI actions instead of generating code on the fly has a number of benefits, including:

• Ensuring the accuracy of results
• Understanding and strictly enforcing the desired behavior
• Reusing actions across multiple AI apps
• Enforcing human validation
• Managing authentication for third party systems
• Achieving fast and scalable performance
• Providing visibility for actions

This approach also addresses the needs of business decision makers who emphasize the importance of robust AI integration into their systems. To promote innovation and collaboration, Robocorp has made their AI actions open-source and invites developers to contribute and expand their capabilities.

In summary, AI actions represent a significant step forward in the evolution of AI, providing a controlled and efficient way to integrate AI into business systems. If you want to discover these options for your organization, please contact us.