Over the last decade the foundational code powering our platform has evolved in profound and exciting ways. If you were to sit down with me for coffee or beers and bring up software, I would reach for the analogy that software must evolve like an organism in nature. To stay fit, an organism must evolve—or die. Even more, a company too, must evolve in order to survive in a changing environment. This is classic stuff, maybe obvious even, so what’s the point Michael, get to it, man!

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Alright then, here it goes: * ai *

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Yes, we’re doing stuff with AI just like everyone else. Oh no... You’re probably dreading another generic Chat Bot whose sole function is to answer the most boring and obvious of questions. We’re all wading through the slop. We’re neck-deep in it. But here’s the thing: Large Language Models (AI) are a cool and fascinating technology. I’ve thought a lot about them and what they mean for software like MobileOps. I’ve been patient too, waiting for the cost of intelligence to drop.

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In 2020, I recall a prospect telling me over a Zoom call: “I just want something like MobileOps to answer my questions. I’m at a dinner with a customer and the customer wants to move 2 barges with product X from location A to location B in the third week of October. Need heated barges near location A. Can we do it?”‍

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This is now possible.

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‍“Michael, we’re having trouble with training crews on how to fill in deficiencies, work requests, and our custom forms in MobileOps. I wish there was a way for the system to guide the user through forms and check their work, essentially just help them.”‍

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This is now possible.

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‍“Michael, I just want to chat with my colleagues in the app, pulling data from many reports and generating a new report, on the fly, with pretty graphs and stuff.”

This too, is now possible.

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So many things are now possible. 

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But I’ve got to come back to evolution for a second. Bear with me. 

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It's about diffusion. To illustrate, try this: Take a deep breath in—fill your lungs completely. Hold it for a few seconds, then exhale. Can you feel the oxygen entering your lungs, your bloodstream, circulating throughout your body? That’s it right there. Now the curveball: What would happen if the contents of the atmosphere started to change? What if there was a little AI in it?

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Software must evolve its ‘lungs’ to diffuse AI using its circulatory system. Software must evolve to live in a world where the atmosphere now contains some AI. Most software companies will struggle to evolve and opt for what I call respirators. They’ll build side-products that ‘bolt-on’ to the primary product. They might even have fancy names and charge a lot of money for them. After all, respirators are expensive. For those less fortunate companies, whose software has bifurcated into a million versions, with their customers scattered among those versions, diffusion is not possible. It never will be. The only hope is a respirator that allows you to ‘talk’ to your data.

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MobileOps is not going to build a respirator and claim we’re ‘AI-native’. MobileOps is evolving to thrive in a world where the air now has some AI in it. What does this mean? It means that you’ll see AI diffused throughout MobileOps and appear in expected (and sometimes unexpected) places. It’ll be valuable and make sense. Furthermore, AI in MobileOps is democratized, meaning that a newly hired deckhand can benefit from it, all the way up to a company President. AI is just part of the software now and as the atmospheric concentration of AI goes up, MobileOps will continue to metabolize it into valuable functions and features.

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I’ll sign off with this: The entire MobileOps team will keep working with our customers the same way we always have been: Listening to their needs, thinking of creative solutions with our own brains, and shipping incredibly fast. The air just has a little bit of AI in it now.

- Michael