AI becoming more accepted in industry

AI becoming more accepted in industry

Artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining momentum in the business sector, expected to drive economic growth soon.

"AI is entering the industrial mainstream, becoming easily accessible and implemented for real-world business applications," said Surakiat Sathirathai, chair of the board of trustees, CMKL University, a technology-focused university under a collaboration between King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL) and Carnegie Mellon University.

According to a PwC report, AI is poised to contribute US$15.7 trillion (514 trillion baht) to the global economy by 2030.

With the massive amount of data used by companies and the transition from 4G to 5G, businesses cannot afford to miss this technological advancement, he said.

AI fuels algorithms and lowers the cost of computing power, helping speech recognition to reach the accuracy level of humans in 2017, said Mr Surakiat.

The industries to benefit from AI technology are healthcare, automotive, financial services for automation and fraud detection, and logistics for better inventory and delivery management, he said.

AI-based algorithms are also taking on a bigger role in dictating consumer behaviour. Telecommunications, banking, real estate, and agriculture have experienced the most significant effects because of AI technology, said Mr Surakiat.

"Companies have restructured their business and invested more in technologies," he said.

Implementing AI solutions, developers need to access scalable and affordable computational infrastructure, said Mr Surakiat. They need raw data and specialists for data labelling, model output validation and more.

A whole new infrastructure needs to be established to support developers, he said.

Accenture reported AI enables corporations to prioritise business and customer insights more efficiently, helping to sharpen business decisions. AI should help increase efficiency and productivity by 40% by 2035, said Accenture.

Thailand's challenge is finding adequate talent, said Mr Surakiat. Educational institutes must work with the government and the private sector to build a skilled workforce of data engineers and data scientists, he said.

Hyong Kim, programme director at CMKL, said the school has already worked with public and private firms that sponsor research projects applying AI in their business such as ThaiBev, Betagro and Electronic Transactions Development Agency.

Jose Moura, professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said by leveraging use of webcam data and taxi data with deep learning AI, it can help with road traffic management.

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