Various sectors use AI as efficient tool to reduce costs, drive growth

DAVOS

Various sectors in the world use artificial intelligence (AI) as an efficient tool to reduce costs, Andrew Ng, founder of data science and AI firm DeepLearning.AI, told Anadolu, hailing it as an “exciting and a healthy change.”

Ng, attending the 55th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, said that many people are “getting past the hype” and putting in the effort to identify “the applications that will be valuable and then building and deploying them.”

Ng stated that one of the teams his company works with utilizes AI on hundreds of ships, “making ships more fuel efficient, saving half a million US dollars,” while the firm deployed an “AI healthcare, doctor or diagnosis assistance in India,” noting that it is “really hard to imagine a sector not affected by AI.”

He mentioned that a lot of work goes into determining exactly which AI would do a good job in a particular field.

Ng highlighted that the ethical use of AI can differ based on the field it’s utilized in, as the standards of responsible use in the healthcare sector are different from those of the banking industry.

“So, I find that, when we’re building different applications, we’ll think carefully about the outcomes we want and we don’t want, figure out what could go wrong, and that allows us to build mitigations or perform risk monitoring to try to make sure that what we do is safe and ethical,” he said.

Ng stated that larger AI models “require a lot of capital,” which is why the US and China became world leaders in AI, though many large AI model-producing firms make their models free to access, which creates opportunities for most countries.

“The biggest opportunities for most countries is not to try to compete head to head (…), but, instead take these AI models and build valuable applications on top of them; so, for example, one of our teams uses this to analyze legal documents, (while) another one uses this to fill out paperwork to smooth out cross-border trade,” he said.

“There are so many applications that are now possible, (… and) smart companies are figuring out how to hone their internal innovation processes to invest in new ventures or invest in new businesses to drive growth from,” he added.

*Writing by Emir Yildirim in Istanbul