Three Numbers Spell Burnout—But AI Can Change That 

Three numbers say it all. 

10. 50. 150.  

In 1986, the average person working in a data intensive task might consume 10 pages worth of information in a day, including newspapers, magazines, office memos, and other documents. By 2011 that number had increased 5-fold, to 50 pages per person per day. Although it’s hard to get exact numbers for the increase since then, conservative estimates put it at another 3-5x as of the early 2020s, putting us on a daily diet of 150 pages—or more—of information.  

That’s the equivalent of reading a short novel every single day. 

And, let’s face it, the information we need to absorb and act upon is far less exciting than most novels. It’s no wonder that people burn out struggling to turn data into knowledge: We create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data—and counting—daily (90% of the world’s data was created in just the past two years). We are drowning in a flood of data and the waters are rapidly and relentlessly rising—and these waters don’t extinguish burnout. 

Using AI to Prevent Burnout 

We’ve spent decades building tools to help us create, store, and retrieve data. The problem with those tools is that they are limited in their ability to help us turn all that data into knowledge—that task falls to human brains. And human brains really don’t like reading 150 pages every day (not even those of us who enjoy reading). We end up with information overload. 

A big part of the challenge of turning data into knowledge is that much of those 150 pages are not helpful: To find the right data, we have to absorb and understand a lot of irrelevant information. The data scavenger hunt can, by itself, easily burn up 7-9 hours per week, or the equivalent of a full day of work.   

Fortunately, we now have a tool that can help us turn data into knowledge: AI. The great thing about AI is that it is very good at extracting meaning from long, complex, and boring data. The drawback, however, is that AI isn’t really an intelligent entity—it just plays one on TV (or the internet). Because AI isn’t really intelligent, working with AI can be incredibly frustrating and getting useful information out of it frequently requires a combination of patience and the mind powers of a Jedi. In addition, using AI comes with a host of security concerns, data duplication and synchronization issues, and the need for Yet Another Database (specifically, a vector database).   

SWIRL makes AI useful, ends the data scavenger hunt, and reduces information overload. SWIRL does it all without re-indexing data, without moving data outside your trust boundaries (so no security issues), without bulk data copying (so no duplication issues), and without needing Yet Another Database (so no vector database required). 

SWIRL brings AI to all the data you have permission to access: Enterprise databases, email, Slack, WebEx, Teams, other productivity apps, local and cloud storage. SWIRL will even find that key nugget of relevant information buried in that 200-page PDF that you’d long since forgotten existed. SWIRL makes it easy to interact with the AI even for those of us who don’t possess Jedi powers.  

Instead of 150 pages worth of information overload, you get the few pages of relevant information you care about. Instead of burnout, you get to enjoy your work.  

To find out how SWIRL can help you end the data scavenger hunt and prevent information burnout, contact SWIRL today. 

Join SWIRL at KM World 2024, at Booth 300.