Pegasystems founder and CEO Alan Trefler on future of GenAI

Alan Trefler is a tech industry pioneer who founded Pegasystems in 1983 and built it into the multibillion-dollar business it is today.

Along the way, Trefler ushered traditional AI technology into the CRM and business process management vendor's systems.

But with the spectacular rise of generative AI since OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in November 2022, Trefler right away took note of the new AI offshoot -- which can create, not just predict like traditional AI -- and incorporated it extensively throughout Pegasystems' platforms and tools. Among others, those include Pega Infinity, now fully infused with GenAI, and Pega GenAI Blueprint, a design-as-a-service system that enables users to build and optimize business workflows.

"I'm still a big believer in statistical AI," Trefler said on the Targeting AI podcast from Informa TechTarget, using his term for classical predictive AI. "Statistical AI is not wiped out by generative AI. They're very complementary, though there's so much hype and so much confusion that people get it wrong all the time."

He continued, "We completely retargeted our development agenda for 2023 and 2024 to bring generative AI into the design and into the thinking and collaboration process. And that's what I think has really set our business going in the right direction."

Like many others in tech, though, Trefler remains skeptical about GenAI's ability to consistently produce accurate and trustworthy results. He pointed out that models from the major GenAI vendors still hallucinate, or make up false and misleading prompt responses, even with the fast pace of large language model development since 2022.

"So, how are you going to make sure that the LLM doesn't just decide it should do something extraordinary for this customer that violates the way you treated the last customer? Those are some of the really sensitive issues that have been pointed out," he said.

Trefler, a former national chess champion, explained how traditional AI is more like the game than GenAI is.

Alan Trefler

"It's funny because if you went to OpenAI and you said you wanted to play a game of chess, which you can, it will just make up moves. It will move pieces in ways that are not legal," he said.

"A statistical or predictive approach to AI is the way that these incredibly powerful chess programs work, and they also use the fact that computing power has increased so much," Trefler added. "It's kind of sad now. Any human grandmaster can be beaten by a piece of software running on their phone. But it's not generative. It's really going through the patterns of the moves and trying to figure out what the best move is for any position by reliable ways."

Shaun Sutner is senior news director for Informa TechTarget's information management team, driving coverage of AI, analytics and data management technologies, and big tech and federal regulation. Esther Shittu is an Informa TechTarget news writer and podcast host covering AI software and systems. They co-host the Targeting AI podcast.