Humility is a framework for better AI solutions That was a primary takeaway from this week’s keynote at UiPath FORWARD VI as presented by UiPath Inc. founder and co-Chief Executive Daniel Dines.

“I realize that you need to think in terms of humility in your decision-making process, in approaching people, in listening to people. And it’s more like a framework,” Dines (pictured) explained during a post-keynote exclusive with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio.

“To me, humility gives you a direction, and it’s important because I think, like most people, I was not born with humility at all. I was pretty arrogant and unhappy. And I’ve seen how our competitors lost in front of us… because they were arrogant with customers. And customers in the end say, ‘OK, let’s worth with the other guys — they’re more flexible, open and they listen to us.’ So this is how I realized this is a big tenet of our culture,” Dines furthered.

Dines spoke with theCUBE analyst Dave Vellante during theCUBE’s live broadcast from UiPath FORWARD VI. They discussed the evolution of UiPath’s approach to integrated automation services, highlights from Dines’ keynote demo on semantic automation, and how UiPath is thinking about the next decade of AI solutions. (* Disclosure below.)

Early and ongoing investments in AI

The humble perspective has helped UiPath expand from a narrow robotic processing automation product to an AI-infused solutions platform, with several strategic investments across natural language processing, large language models and semantic automation.

“What if automation can actually understand what they do? They’ll be much more powerful in the sense when they stop working for some reason, they can adapt. So they become way more like humans,” said Dines.

It was this realization that drove UiPath’s early work in semantic automation as applied to document management. Rather than needing to code in fields of an Excel spreadsheet, UiPath can look at the data, understand its context, and copy + paste into the right place.

“This is why we are capable at first view, without even coding anything to match them,” said Dines of UiPath’s semantic automation capabilities. “This is actually the foundation technology for our Autopilot that we introduced yesterday.” 

UiPath’s history of automation made it well-positioned to integrate data-rich AI technologies as the current wave washes across the enterprise, and acquisitions such as Re:infer Ltd. bolstered the company’s efforts in natural language processing.

“We’ve done AI for a long time,” Dines said. “We have huge investments in document understanding. We’ve been a specialized AI company. If I want to be more precise about it, with the addition of generative AI we’ve become a more general AI type of company.”

Looking forward, UiPath has many avenues of interest as customers share ideas for AI integrations and UiPath as a company grows its reach and product portfolio. Remaining focused will be critical to its long term success, particularly as the industry finds more ways to combine the physical and software worlds through generative AI.

“People underestimate what you can do [with AI] in one year, and overestimate what we can do with AI right now. I think the expectations people have now will not be fulfilled, but in 10 years I think we will see the ‘iPhone moment’ of AI,” said Dines.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of UiPath Forward VI:

(* Disclosure: UiPath sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither UiPath nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)