Ancoris made its way to the 2023 AI Summit London to join leading innovators and technologists to delve into AI and scope out the current state of the AI landscape.
Our Chief AI and Innovation Officer Matt Frank was there to share his thoughts on what AI means for business leaders in real terms with his session, ‘Avoiding AI Bandits: Enterprise-grade, Responsible AI with Google’. Undeniably, there’s a lot of hype around AI at the moment – owing to generative AI specifically – which is very easy to get caught up in. Matt was on hand to help clear up this hype, highlighting the key things that leaders need to understand about AI and how they can get the most out of it. Matt was also on hand to clue up leaders on Google’s stance on responsible AI plus how it's supporting enterprises to adopt responsible AI so they can capitalise on the opportunities that generative AI brings to the table.
While we were there to share our knowledge, events like the AI Summit also give us great opportunities to learn from our fellow professionals. What did we pick up, you ask? Well, there were three key things that stood out to us:
- The Gen AI hype is real BUT it is crucial for people to understand what it is and is not. By now it’s clear that there’s a lot of excitement (i.e. the “hype” we keep on mentioning) about what Gen AI can do for businesses. However, it would pay to be wary of how we manage our excitement. Google’s AI Advocacy Lead Laurence Moroney was also at the AI Summit discussing the Gen AI hype in the context of Gartner’s renowned Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. Currently, generative AI is in the Peak of Inflated Expectations, the second stage of this cycle where it is being propped up by stories of both success (think, tools like ChatGPT) and failure (also, think ChatGPT when it was misguidedly used by a lawyer to create a filing). Thrilling as the ‘Peak’ sounds, it is a tricky stage as a lot of technologies end up dying here, never to be hyped again. Ideally, what needs to happen is for generative AI to get over this peak and make its way to the final stage of the cycle, the Plateau of Productivity. This stage is where mainstream adoption starts to take off. For this transition to happen, people must understand what generative AI can and can’t do for business.
- Risk vs reward must be balanced but it shouldn’t stop us from moving forward. There’s potentially a lot to be gained from generative AI if it becomes widely adopted. However, the rewards that could be gained are punctuated by risk. This risk may give you cause to pause and perhaps slow down a bit but ultimately, it’s not something that should cause you to stop moving forward. It is challenging to mitigate for absolutely everything so if you make an attempt to do so, you risk hampering the progress of innovation. Google’s Laurence Moroney also discussed this during an interview at the AI Summit, saying that a balance must be struck between letting innovation advance and setting up guardrails that prevent misuse. Moroney made the point that innovations such as the Internet may not be here with us in the same shape and format as it is today if its creator had tried to plan for everything that could go wrong before launching. In fact, there were only some cases of misuse that were only brought to light with the launch of the Internet (for example, phishing) and could therefore only be remedied while the Internet was active. Applying this to generative AI, sometimes – within reason – you just have to let things progress and cross certain bridges when you come to them.
- Companies can start proving the value of AI today. While there are some key aspects to consider, nothing is stopping companies from proving the value that generative AI and AI innovations can add to their operations from today. A lack of a fully-fledged plan doesn’t necessarily have to be an obstacle between a company and its AI aspirations. Referring back to those key aspects, companies should think about things like the availability of suitable information, the current state of their data, and how consumers are working with the data, to name a few examples. Thinking aspects like these through and (remedying any surrounding issues if necessary) will set a company up well to effectively leverage generative AI and AI in general.
So there you have it – our key takeaways from the AI Summit London 2023. Overall, it’s clear that there’s an enthusiasm for generative AI and AI in general and companies can start proving the immediate value that AI can bring to their operations. However, to get the most out of it, there are some key things they can review to ensure they are in the best position to seize the AI day. In general, there also needs to be a more comprehensive understanding of what generative AI is and isn’t if we are to cut through the hype and get the technology to point where it is actually being widely productive for industry.
Ancoris is well placed to help you cut through the hype and understand what you need to do to be ready to make generative AI a productive reality for you and your business, even more so with our new practice dedicated solely to generative AI. If you’d like to understand how to make sure you are ready to embrace the AI future and what it has to offer, we’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to get in touch to see how we can help you – contact us today.