Can low-code development complement generative AI?

Generative AI is dominating conversations across the tech sphere right now, and even making its way into discussions in day-to-day life. But for the average IT team, large language models can still seem intimidating, and training or tweaking requires significant computing power and skill.

Additionally, concerns around explainability and approachability are still a barrier to some regulated industries such as financial services or life sciences.

Appian has long been a notable name when it comes to low-code development and automation, and its announcements at Appian World 2023 have leaned heavily on how AI – and generative AI especially – fits into this development proposition.

In this episode, Rory spoke with Michael Beckley, co-founder and CTO at Appian, to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of implementing low code, AI, and generative AI solutions and how companies could appropriately implement each.

Highlights

“...We think about how you introduce AI into the most regulated enterprises, and the most mission-critical operations in a safe and reliable fashion. And so the AI skills we're launching here at the show, are at this low-code AI pipeline are, for the most part, utterly uncontroversial. They do things like read your mail, they do things like classify documents and extract account numbers from them.”

“Companies of all shapes and sizes struggle with a lack of automation. In many cases, small companies suddenly find themselves part of a conglomerate, they find themselves acquired, they find themselves part of a group of small companies that are now a big company, you know, they wake up one day and suddenly they're part of a multibillion-dollar enterprise. And so those spreadsheets and SharePoint lists are no longer good enough.”

“Robotic process automation is always a bit of a hack, you know, screen scraping from a system pretending to be a human to interact with a system. It's an expensive proposition. But by the way, so is ChatGPT, it's a very expensive heavyweight algorithm.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

Rory Bathgate was Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro until 2026, overseeing all in-depth content and case studies. He also co-hosted the ITPro Podcast with Jane McCallion, swapping a keyboard for a microphone to discuss the latest learnings with thought leaders from across the tech sector.

In his free time, Rory enjoys photography, video editing, and good science fiction. After graduating from the University of Kent with a BA in English and American Literature, Rory undertook an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King’s College London. He joined ITPro in 2022 as a graduate, following four years in student journalism. You can contact Rory on LinkedIn.

Highlights

Footnotes

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