In today’s data-rich landscape, harnessing the untapped potential of unstructured data has become a pressing concern for enterprises thanks to the latent value it holds — and with 90% of data within organizations lacking structure, artificial intelligence is stepping in to bridge the gap.

This transformative technology is unlocking the value of unstructured data by leveraging vector databases, streamlining storage optimization and significantly enhancing data retrieval speed, according to Ben Kus (pictured), chief technology officer of Box Inc.

“The vector embeddings I think in an interesting way, it’s the unsung hero in many cases of the new AI revolution,” Kus said. “Permissions are changing and the RAG approach, the retrieval augment generation, the vector that’s excellent. The vector databases are getting more powerful seemingly every day. There’s a lot of great vector database out there, I think this is going to be a big part, especially in an unstructured data world.”

Kus spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier at Supercloud 4, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how AI comes in handy when dealing with unstructured data for valuable insights and the way Box fits into the picture.

Dealing with the unstructured data headache

Since unstructured data does not adhere to any standard, dealing with it can prove to be troublesome because searching and managing the data is a tall order. Nevertheless, Box has come up with an out-of-the-box approach on how to tame this pain point thanks to AI, according to Kus.

“Most of the data is unstructured, and we believe that we need to be offering useful AI capabilities, being able to ask questions of your documents, being able to ask things and have the system go out and retrieve for you the answers,” he said. “We are also a platform by which people can do AI and their content overall, and that is something that is important to us and to our customers.”

With the enterprise world leaning towards data-driven decisions, being able to thoroughly analyze data is of the essence. As a result, generative AI has become a perfect gift that unravels unstructured data, according to Kus.

“The power of the new generative AI models is just wonderful, even compared to the previous models,” he noted. “With Box and with many of our enterprise customers, one of the big concerns is this unstructured data. It was just always so hard to do ML and unstructured data. They’re seeing that the rapid evolution of this AI is continuing.”

AI is no longer a product but an enabler

With getting to market faster and efficiency being top of mind for enterprises, AI is emerging as a game-changer based on its capabilities. As a result, AI has ceased to be a product because it’s an enabler that acts as a stepping stone toward the realization of business objectives, according to Kus.

“Maybe a long time ago, AI was a competitive advantage, but the fact that we’re talking about a wrapper AI, everybody has access to the same fundamental technology either online via OpenAI or via Google,” he said. “For companies that start with a really cool value proposition as a wrapper, they have to either build out the rest of their value, their product offering. Other companies are always looking to add AI to what they do.”

Since doing more with less is making airwaves, AI is emerging as a catalyst that enables the realization of this objective. As a result, the notion of AI assistance is gaining steam as enterprises continue with their cost-saving endeavors, Kus pointed out.

“If your employees and if people who are working have things like AI assistance, if they’re able to understand their data better, it helps them and you could say, ‘Well, it could be cost saving,’” he explained. “One of the good examples is GitHub Copilot. The idea of using AI in your engineering.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Supercloud 4:

Photo: SiliconANGLE