In February, travel and expense management company Navan (formerly TripActions) chose to go all-in on generative AI technology for a myriad of business and customer assistance uses.
The Palo Alto, CA company turned to ChatGPT from OpenAI and coding assistance tools from GitHub Copilot to write, test, and fix code; the decision has boosted Navan’s operational efficiency and reduced overhead costs.
GenAI tools have also been used to build a conversational experience for the company’s client virtual assistant, Ava. Ava, a travel and expense chatbot assistant, offers customers answers to questions and a conversational booking experience. It can also offer data to business travelers, such as company travel spend, volume, and granular carbon emissions details.
Through genAI, many of Navan’s 2,500 employees have been able to eliminate redundant tasks and create code far faster than if they’d generated it from scratch. However, genAI tools are not without security and regulatory risks. For example, 11% of data employees paste into ChatGPT is confidential, according to a report from cyber security provider CyberHaven.
Navan
Navan CSO Prabhath Karanth
Navan CSO Prabhath Karanth has had to deal with the security risks posed by genAI, including data security leaks, malware, and potential regulatory violations.
Navan has a license for ChatGPT, but the company has allowed employees to use their own public instances of the technology — potentially leaking data outside company walls. That led the company to curb leaks and other threats through the use of monitoring tools in conjunction with a clear set of corporate guidelines.
One SaaS tool, for example, flags an employee when they’re about to violate company policy, which has led to greater awareness about security among workers, according to Karanth.
Computerworld spoke to Karanth about how he secured his organization from misuse and intentional or unintentional threats related to genAI. The following are excerpts from that interview.
For what purposes does your company use ChatGPT? “AI has been around a long time, but the adoption of AI in business to solve specific problems — this year it has gone to a whole different level. Navan was one of the early adopters. We were one of the first companies in the travel and expense space that realized this tech is going to be disruptive. We adopted very early on in our product workflows…and also in our internal operations.”
Product workflows and internal operations. Is that chatbots to help employees answer questions and help customers to do the same? “There are a few applications on [the] product side. We do have a workflow assistant called Ava, which is a chatbot powered by this technology. There are a ton of features on our product. For example, there’s a dashboard where an admin can look up information around travel and expenses related to their company. And internally, to power our operations, we’ve looked at…
2023-09-25 07:48:05
Original from www.computerworld.com