Eating the Elephant: The Future of Work with Functions and LLMs

The saying goes, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." This age-old wisdom perfectly encapsulates the future of work in the face of automation with large language models (LLMs) and function calls. Instead of fearing complete job displacement by AI, we can leverage these technologies to gradually automate tedious tasks, freeing ourselves to focus on what humans do best - creative problem-solving and strategic thinking.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are at the forefront of this evolution, having recently introduced a benchmark for evaluating function-calling capabilities in LLMs. Their work, detailed in this blog post, highlights how LLMs are taking a significant step towards integrating with real-world applications by understanding and executing code. This ability to "call" pre-written functions is precisely what allows us to "eat the elephant" one bite at a time.

Automating the Mundane: More Time for Value Creation

LLMs, trained on massive amounts of data, can understand and execute these pre-written functions, essentially mini-programs designed to perform specific tasks. Imagine a business analyst currently burdened with manually compiling data, generating reports, and analyzing information. With LLM and function integration, they can simply instruct the system to "generate a quarterly sales report."

The LLM, empowered by functions, then retrieves data, formats reports, and extracts insights, all autonomously. This frees the analyst from the drudgery, allowing them to dedicate their time and expertise to higher-value activities like strategic planning and interpreting complex data patterns.

The Ripple Effect: Boosting the Bottom Line

The benefits extend far beyond individual roles, impacting entire company structures. Consider a call center. Let's say integrating LLM-powered functions into their system increases service representative efficiency by 10%. This translates to handling more customer inquiries, potentially leading to a smaller team size while maintaining service levels. This translates to significant cost savings on the company's bottom line.

The Evolving Landscape: Automation and Job Transformation

It's important to acknowledge that as functions and LLMs mature, automation will continue to encompass more complex tasks, potentially leading to some jobs becoming obsolete. However, this doesn't necessarily translate to widespread unemployment. Instead, it presents an opportunity for upskilling and reskilling the workforce towards roles that leverage human strengths alongside AI capabilities.

The future of work isn't about robots replacing humans, but rather about humans and AI working together. By "eating the elephant" one bite at a time, using functions as our tools, we can use LLMs to automate tedious tasks, free ourselves for higher-value roles, and ultimately, unlock new levels of efficiency and innovation in our professional lives.mid