1000minds AI Assistant speeds decision-making with Microsoft Azure AI

1000minds’ AI Assistant simplifies and speeds decision-making with Microsoft Azure OpenAI.

A globally distributed company with headquarters in New Zealand, 1000minds helps people and organizations make better decisions consistently, fairly, and transparently. 1000minds’ AI Assistant combines decision-making and conjoint analysis (a type of market research) in a single package augmented by Microsoft Azure OpenAI. 1000minds builds on Microsoft Azure services, including Azure SQL, Azure Storage, and others to easily comply with customer data center requirements and simplify the introduction of AI services to existing customers. Across industries including business, healthcare, government, and academia, 1000minds is used for myriad applications to speed the decision-making process.

When performing multi-criteria decision analysis, users contend with the challenges of specifying relevant criteria and choosing alternatives. This process can be time consuming and often involves a steep learning curve, slowing and even stopping progress toward making important decisions and conducting market research.

Prior to the introduction of AI Assistant, 1000minds customers struggled with the amount of research, expert consultations, and trial and error required to perform decision-making with conjoint analysis.

AI Assistant eases challenges for its customers by suggesting criteria, proposing alternatives, and rating alternatives on the criteria. AI Assistant is among the first software platforms with such AI integration.

To build the AI Assistant, 1000minds fully embraced platform-as-a-service offerings on Azure including Azure App Services, Azure SQL, Azure Function Apps, Azure Storage, Azure Front Door, and, of course, Azure OpenAI.

“By offering AI as a service with a simple and robust API, Microsoft Azure put the incredible potential of LLMs within easy reach, freeing our minds to innovate,” said Franz Ombler, Co-Founder, 1000minds. “We were able to focus our efforts on how to harness AI for multi-criteria decision analysis, delivering a surprisingly powerful and unique product in a matter of weeks.”

Fundamental to the integration of AI into 1000minds was the company’s commitment to AI safety best practices, including a human-in-the-loop approach so that people are involved every step of the way. With just a few words about what you want to compare – such as electric vehicles for a family of four – the AI Assistant generates suggestions and then guides you through the suggested criteria and alternatives one at a time so you can refine them based on your own knowledge and expertise.

Azure OpenAI’s power when suggesting criteria is undeniably very impressive. However, when applying the criteria to a decision, the application also depends on the decision-maker and expert judgment about the relative importance, or weight, of the criteria.

“As powerful as it is, AI is not a mind reader – it can tell you about other people’s preferences, but it doesn’t know what you think. This is where 1000minds’ PAPRIKA algorithm powerfully complements the AI,” said Paul Hansen, Co-Founder, 1000minds.

PAPRIKA, which has been patented and recognized in 17 innovation awards, was designed to be as cognitively simple and user-friendly as possible, as well as scientifically valid and reliable. By asking you simple questions involving trade-offs between the criteria, PAPRIKA codifies your answers as weights on the criteria, resulting in the alternatives being ranked according to your preferences.

Unlike opaque AI-based decision-making, where the reasoning behind a decision can’t be fully explained, 1000minds, via PAPRIKA, applies explicit criteria and personalizes them via human judgments. By integrating Azure OpenAI with its already highly successful software, 1000minds helps customers make even better, more accurate, valid, and reliable decisions faster and with less effort.

1000minds’ AI Assistant dramatically reduces the time it takes to create a decision model by generating suggestions for criteria and alternatives in seconds, instead of potentially hours, weeks, or months depending on the complexity of the problem. This allows organizations to save time and money when making important decisions.

Since launching AI Assistant, 1000minds has served customers across a wide range of industries, including healthcare, government, the environment, sustainable development, agri-business, manufacturing, consulting, asset management, infrastructure, and research. These organizations have reported numerous benefits, from more informed decision-making to reduced time and expense.

1000minds’ AI Assistant generates helpful suggestions very quickly, enabling customers to make crucial decisions in less time. The time saved by the AI suggestions during the initial stages of creating the decision model frees up resources for strategic thinking, planning, and implementing decisions, as well as avoiding the cost of bad decisions.

The AI Assistant suggests criteria and alternatives that human decision-makers may not have considered, leading to more informed choices and better outcomes. Structured decision-making processes powered by 1000minds’ AI Assistant and PAPRIKA, combined with Azure OpenAI, lead to valid, reliable, and transparent decisions you can have confidence in.

Using 1000minds for a wide range of decision-making and conjoint applications, including project management and market research, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington provides a recent example of 1000minds customer success.

“Combining 1000minds’ PAPRIKA algorithm and OpenAI’s GPT, two incredible technologies, is brilliant,” said Colin Smithies, Business Intelligence Analyst, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. “1000minds has always been very powerful and user-friendly, and getting AI assistance with specifying criteria and attributes is extremely helpful. It’s fantastic!”