Generative artificial intelligence will be advantageous to our daily lives

THE CONCEPT and technology behind artificial intelligence (AI) have gained more and more recognition in recent years. Along with the increased awareness of AI has come the consciousness of how this tech can benefit society.

In the Philippines, the government looks to harness AI and tap into the industry’s massive earning potential — with an extensive strategy outlined in the Department of Trade and Industry’s Artificial Intelligence Roadmap. As the conversations, plans, and usage for AI become richer, 2023 shapes up to be the year where AI will begin to reshape manufacturing, retail, finance, marketing, media and many other well-established industries. For these reasons, I believe AI is set to have a considerable positive impact on our personal and professional lives.

It is true that AI continues to intrigue and even trouble organizations and consumers who don’t — as yet — know what to make of it. However, innovation driven by the advances in technology and specific applications to a wide range of industries has become an irreversible trend, most often with favorable outcomes. It’s my belief that we should be positive about generative AI too, because what’s coming in the months and years ahead is set to bring genuinely beneficial progress to society as a whole. And that’s a good thing!

GENERATIVE AI BECOMES CREATIVE…What I find fascinating about generative AI is that instead of analyzing existing data, it creates new and original content from machine learning algorithms trained on previous work. Developers have already used it to generate images or text, to program code, paint and illustrate, and even create video and sound.

Over the next three years, generative AI will develop human-like content creation capabilities to facilitate digital content creation… and that’s the exciting part! An entire infrastructure and ecosystem based on generative AI will emerge to facilitate access to models and services for people without technological expertise. This has the potential to help everyone to ramp up their efficiency and productivity with this technology supplementing their existing skills and knowledge.

… AND IT HAS A SIXTH SENSE, TOOJust as humans have developed multiple senses to explore, enjoy, and survive the world, AI has become capable of learning from different sources in order to evolve, too. Multi-modal pre-trained models combine different types of data, including images, text, speech, and digital data, to understand the world. In doing so, they enter the field of AI.

Unlike their single-modular predecessors, these AI models will devour many different types of data and process them simultaneously to bring new found speed and accuracy to many applications. Imagine what positives this delivers for organizations when it comes to processing and understanding data, information sharing, enhancing internal operations, and even simplifying and optimizing the customer experience.   

TODAY’S AI IS A1 FOR BOOSTING PRODUCTIVITYMulti-modal pre-trained models outperform single-modal models in terms of understanding, extracting, generating and answering questions. By giving companies access to advanced models and data analytics, multi-modal pre-trained models will be key to boosting business productivity, agility and efficiency in today’s digital economy and in the future.

AI IS CRUCIAL FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING THE CLOUDToday, companies are all migrating to the cloud, which is often hybrid. However, the cloud is becoming a patchwork of integrated services that are now increasingly difficult to disentangle. It can be difficult to navigate, and even cloud experts can only absorb and retain so much information at a time. Because recruiting competent IT staff has become more challenging, there’s a shortage of cloud talent, so you can understand why a growing number of cloud service providers are using AI technology to reduce complexity and to manage cloud deployments more effectively.

AI ENHANCES DIGITAL IMAGINGIt is fascinating to think that something as compact as a smartphone can take exceptional photos and videos. The credit for this ability goes to computational imaging. The emergence of computational imaging is set to further transform the way humans and machines perceive the world. Using technologies like AI and signal processing, digital imaging enables smartphones to function like professional cameras. By making such high-tech tools available to everyone, digital imaging is revolutionizing imaging applications, from portrait lighting to vibration reduction.

AI IS GAINING MOMENTUMTo make AI processing more efficient, there is a new computer architecture called “processing-in-memory.” Traditional computer system architecture uses separate processors and memory units to perform data processing tasks. This requires a constant back-and-forth of data between the processor and the main memory. In-memory processing overcomes the data transfer by taking the processing directly to where the data is stored, resulting in reduced power consumption and increased system performance. This in-memory processing will become critical and prevalent computing architecture in the AI era. Developers have been building in-memory computing chips to power a wide range of AI applications, from virtual and augmented reality to astronomical data computing.

There is of course much debate about the most suitable applications for AI. As we have found in the past with many emerging technologies, I believe Generative AI will ‘find’ its place to coexist among other established technologies. I am confident that, as it matures, it will complement the skills of the human workforce to help us all become more efficient and creative in our output whether in the workplace or at home.

Allen Guo is Alibaba Cloud Intelligence’s Country Manager for the Philippines.