Data management and data analytics are two critical fundamental resources that should be used by Thai enterprises and tech startups to develop innovative services backed by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, instead of working to develop intelligent products or services to compete with global players.
Chai Wutiwiwatchai, research unit director of the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (Nectec), said local enterprises can benefit from the many data sets held by state agencies through 20 ministries and the private sector.
"Intelligent products and services driven by AI may not be easy to enter for local enterprises and startups, as there are too many global tech players and AI tech-embedded tools available for free in the market," he said.
But the government must urgently digitise the existing data sets of all agencies, 70% of which are stored on paper and in portable document format (PDF) files.
Speaking on the sidelines of the "AI Shapes the Future" forum last week, Mr Chai said innovative products and services embedded with AI tech have been increasingly accessible in the global market for four years, especially through popular use cases of image recognition, biometrics, cybersecurity and smart speakers.
There are many open-source platforms and solutions that people can download for free to use AI-based solutions to help eliminate pain points for business, as well as develop innovative services for the market.
The open-source free downloads include Amazon Web Service, Google Cloud and Dialogflow.
The director outlined two benefits delivered by AI tech: "pain-to-profit", or AI tech-embedded services that resolve inconveniences for businesses, and "data-to-profit", in which AI tech creates innovative services through big data and data analytics.
Examples in the pain-to-profit category include self-service checkout machines, speed-to-text engines, chatbot customer service, customer analysis and agent monitoring.
For the type of data-to-profit services, Mr Chai said the existing state agencies' data sets are crucial resources that could be developed for innovative services driven by AI tech.
Nectec has worked on two data pool projects connecting data sets of departments under the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry and the Office of Higher Education Commission under the Education Ministry.
AgriMap is an integrated map service that uses ministry data to monitor the agricultural conditions in the country. AgriMap was also created as an application programming interface and updates data from related parties monthly for the mobile application and website.
Open educational resources and massive open online courses are projects Nectec worked on with the Education Ministry to create infrastructure for countrywide online free education.