This is part of a series giving you an insider’s view of the products coming out of Pittsburgh to change the world. As its name implies, TechFest is normally one of the geekiest events in the Pittsburgh event-sphere.  But TechFest 2024 last Friday may make us rethink its geekiness.Sure, there were plenty of technology sessions at TECHWORKS at Commonwealth Charter Academy in Homestead for the conference’s core audience of technology professionals in the region.  Several of the sessions, though, broke through the nerdiness. Pittsburgh Technology Council brought in speakers who transcended a developer’s computer screen.Unleashing AI for the Future of WorkMany of us have heard of GenerativeAI (GenAI) programs such as ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, but perhaps not used them — either from lack of opportunity, fear or something else.In two separate workshops that included segments about using AI for time management I conducted this month, 90% of one group of business professionals said they use it at work, while in the other, only one hand out of 100 went up to indicate they use it.  Yet, the media bombards us daily with the fact that GenAI is here and will change our lives.  Chris Slee, principal technologist at Dublin, Ohio-based Transform Labs, says it’s not only here; it’s deeper than we know – based on so-called Large Action Models (LAM).These LAMs allow us to make better use of GenAI to become our agents to do our bidding.Chris Slee, principal technologist at Transform Labs, speaking at TechFest 2024. Photo by David Radin.Imagine you want to attend a conference in Idaho; but have never been there before. While you can use GenAI tools like ChatGPT to do each step of the process for you – where you might use Chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot or some other GenAI tool to gather info about the area, get recommendations, look for flights, and other steps – but you still have to put the steps together yourself. Once your GenAI helps you get the info, you will probably need to do the tasks yourself, such as registering for your conference, booking your flight, arranging your car (or rideshare) and reserving your hotel room.With the “agentic” model defined by LAM, you simply tell your agent what you want to do and your agent does your bidding – not only looking up and presenting you with the steps – it can actually do the transactions for you using your favorite tools, whether that’s Hotels.com or Expedia or multiple platforms of your choice.According to Slee, who, in his role at Transform Labs, guides organizations on how to use advanced technologies such as agents, the first test of trust is the first time you allow your computer-based agent to make a charge on your credit card.To be reliable, Slee said in his TechFest session, “Unleashing the Power of Generative AI: Navigating the Future of Work, “it requires a lot of people to use the agent, which trains it in the right way to take the action.” Then as the agent learns how people want to act, it can better act on their behalf – much the way a well trained travel agent used to make travel plans for you before the Internet became the preeminent too. In this way it behaves much like GenAI, where it gives better, more accurate responses, the more training it gets.Slee says the tools are already available, and that while most people are not yet familiar with LAM agent models, he expects them to grow suddenly in the next 6-12 months – initially impacting the way consumers act; then businesses following.SNL’s Sketch Comedy as a Metaphor for Successful Project CompletionJohn Krewson used to be an actor professionally and in 1997, he got the part as an extra, portraying a leprechaun in a Saturday Night Live sketch starring Sting.While there, he took note of the way SNL started with a blank slate every Monday, turning it into a fully completed TV show by Saturday night — and that they did it successfully week-in, week-out by using the same process consistently.As a part-time hobby computer programmer, he noticed the similarity to the process that the computer industry calls “agile” — where a task is broken into component parts and worked on separately.The Agile & Beyond Conference in Detroit where Sketch Development founder John Krewson presented: “Live from Detroit, It’s Saturday Night – The Agility of SNL,” in May 2022. Photo courtesy of Sketch Development. Realizing he wasn’t going to have the lifestyle he wanted as an actor, Krewson changed careers to take advantage of the software development skills that were already his passion.  Becoming part of and running software development teams in corporations for 18 years, including at MasterCard, he honed his software craft and refined his vision of how sketch comedy was similar to agile software development.This led to his founding St. Louis-based Sketch Development in 2015 to apply those merged skills to projects for clients.In 2019, he created a presentation for a national conference of agile software developers in which he highlighted the similarities between SNL and software development such as consistent processes and breaking up the tasks into smaller parts to get it done; and it was a hit.  He ended up making that presentation dozens of times — for audiences in Tampa, Denver, Detroit — and now in Pittsburgh.Krewson’s Closing TechFest Keynote, “Live from Pittsburgh It’s Saturday Night – The Agility of Saturday Night Live!” included stories about how teams coalesce — including how the SNL team first realized it was a real team 50 years ago during a sketch with Buck Henry and John Belushi, and how modern organizations can use the same dynamics as SNL to create teams that come together quickly and successfully complete their projects. That would include having a process that repeats almost identically each week, breaking up the processes into manageable pieces, and being willing to go live with what you have — even if it’s not perfect.Krewson is currently converting this topic into a book, “Pitch. Sketch. Launch. What the World of Sketch Comedy Can Teach Us About Product Development,” expected to hit the shelves in 2025.Know of a product or service being developed in Pittsburgh or by a Pittsburgh-based company that is cool, is creating growth or will change the world? Let David know via email.The post What do ‘Saturday Night Live’ and AI agents have to do with Pittsburgh tech? appeared first on NEXTpittsburgh.