Now, anyone can afford artificial intelligence

Generative AI will help companies automate, innovate, and keep data secure.

Tell us about your latest research on generative AI. What were the main findings? 
Intelligence has been around for decades. What has changed recently is that Gen AI [generative AI] has become a lot more affordable. There have also been some tremendous advances in managing large data sets very efficiently. 

So Gen AI, and other large language models like Huawei Pangu, allow all companies, not just the larger ones, to benefit from automation and efficiencies in their operations.

What are some of those benefits?
Gen AI brings tremendous benefits in allowing companies to more efficiently manage customer experience and customer engagement. It allows them to implement what we call “logical bots,” and either route customers to a bot that can answer questions more efficiently or send the customer to a human agent. For companies, this reduces the cost of having a large number of human agents on staff.

How can large language models improve the operations and maintenance efficiency a of a telecoms network? 
Gen AI can help you manage a network more effectively by predicting and anticipating where there might be a problem and then offering some corrective measures much faster and more efficiently than a human can. 

Do any particular AI technologies stand out in this area? 
Of course, Chat GPT has gotten a tremendous amount of coverage over the last year or so. Other companies, including Huawei, along with Microsoft, Google, and others, also have large language models. I think the most important thing is the ability for a company to allow its customers to integrate various large language models, and not be tied to a specific one. They choose the benefits of various models.

What are some of the challenges you see for Gen AI? 
One of the key challenges is that Chat GPT and these models are still works in progress. They devour huge amounts of Information that is not always accurate. So sometimes they have what we call illusions, where they may provide the wrong Information, or slightly inaccurate information.

But they're getting better every day. The more information they ingest, the more accurate they become. 

What role can AI play in boosting energy efficiency? 
Leveraging AI also poses challenges to the overall IT infrastructure because you're using so much computing power. It generates a huge demand in energy. What we're seeing is data centers having to be prepared to upgrade their cooling and heat dissipation.

Also, we're seeing a lot of companies focusing on using renewable energy sources to manage these huge computing requirements. 

So, people and companies are meeting that requirement. 
Absolutely. There's a tremendous response we're seeing across the IT industry to meet the new demands for Gen AI. 

What about the governance and guardrails to ensure AI goes in the right direction? 
When they start leveraging Gen AI, one of the key things companies have to figure out is how to manage customer data sets. How do they get buy-in from customers as to what data the company can use? How do they anonymize the data so that it cannot be easily used to track specific customers?

So companies have to understand how to use the data and establish specific policies to ensure data security. You want your customer to be very confident that, when they give you their data, you’re going to make sure it is absolutely secure.

And what will be Gen AI’s role in helping companies innovate? 
One of the key advantages of Gen AI is that it provides an easy method for companies to personalize their customer engagement and customer experience platforms. It also allows for rapid innovation and differentiation. And because it's improving so rapidly, we’ll see the benefits much faster than with legacy technologies. Companies will be able to reduce the cost of implementing new customer experience applications, as well as the cost of managing and automating their infrastructure.