The world’s largest technology players, including SA’s Naspers, are taking steps to define how generative artificial intelligence (AI) will be used by the majority of people for the foreseeable future.
In the past week alone, SAP, Microsoft and Meta (Facebook) all announced new tools, indicating the direction that the industry will now be going in for both businesses and consumers. Much of this is being driven by virtual assistant and chatbot tools.
Growing interest in AI
AI investment, or at least its visibility, has grown in leaps and bounds in 2023, driven by the rapid adoption and popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT since launching in November 2022.
ChatGPT is a chatbot underpinned by a large language model, launched by nonprofit OpenAI. It is capable of generating human-like text and has a range of applications, including translation.
According to Andrew Bourne, Zoho’s regional head for Africa, says these recent developments have made AI more accessible.
Zoho is an Indian multinational technology company that makes computer software and Web-based business tools. It is best known for the Zoho Office Suite.
“For a very long time, AI has promised a lot while remaining inaccessible to ordinary people.”
“That has changed dramatically over the past couple of years. Suddenly everyone can use advanced AI tools for everything from getting answers to basic questions and building holiday itineraries to creating professional-quality images, videos, and audio. And we can all do so from the comfort of our couches,” he said.
Business case
“As generative AI moves on from the initial hype, the work to ensure measurable return on investment begins,” said Phil Carter, group vice-president for worldwide thought leadership research at the International Data Corporation.
Among corporates, Naspers recently outlined its strategy saying it has been working with OpenAI for a number of years. The group has developed of “PlusOne.io”, a generative AI tool that employees and portfolio companies are making use of daily, internally.
Others are looking to grow in the space by baking AI into their existing software products for businesses. German tech giant SAP announced Joule, a natural-language, generative AI that will be built into its platforms for businesses.
The tool will be embedded into SAP applications from HR to finance, supply chain, procurement and customer experience. The company is estimated to have 425,000 customers worldwide.
Perhaps the most significant move comes from Microsoft. Last week, the firm started by Bill Gates released the public version of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Similar to PlusOne, Copilot uses OpenAI’s technology as an assistant in its popular products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Unlike Prosus’s platform, Copilot is available to the public.
With more than 1-billion people making use of its products across the world, Microsoft is betting on its software dominance to push AI user. Unlike SAP, Microsoft's products are used not only by businesses, but a host of various of customers that include consumers, schools, non-profits and small businesses.
Consumer case
In the consumer world, Facebook parent Meta is looking to popularise use of the technology through its social media platforms.
Meta AI was the most significant product among the company’s first consumer-facing AI tools unveiled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at its recent annual products conference, Connect. This year’s event was dominated by talk of artificial intelligence, unlike past conferences which focused on augmented and virtual reality.
Meta created the assistant using a custom model based on the powerful Llama 2 large language model that the company released for public commercial use in July, as well as a new model called Emu that generates images in response to text prompts, it said.
The product will be able to generate text, audio and imagery and will have access to real-time information via a partnership with Microsoft's Bing search engine. For users, Meta AI will work as a virtual assistant or chatbot which interacts “like a person”, on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram.
Cybersecurity
John Mc Loughlin, CEO of cyber security-focused business J2 Software, says AI has made significant strides in the fields of machine learning and deep learning, offering a range of benefits in the realm of cybersecurity.
“AI-powered security systems are capable of analysing vast amounts of data in real-time, surpassing human capabilities in speed and scalability. This ability is invaluable for swiftly identifying and responding to emerging threats,” he said.
Moreover, AI’s proficiency in detecting certain anomaly detection enables it to analyse user and system behaviour patterns, detecting deviations indicative of potential threats. This approach is highly effective against insider threats and zero-day attacks that may go unnoticed by traditional, signature-based security systems.
Another strength of AI lies in its capacity for pattern recognition.
Humans are still needed
But even as the technology advances, experts warn that human oversight is still crucial.
As powerful a tool as generative AI can be “it’s important to remember that it’s still in its infancy (at least in terms of widespread, popular use),” says Bourne.
He highlights that there’s still some way to go before the tech is capable of answering questions with 100% accuracy. “Even a genuinely valuable tool like ChatGPT occasionally exhibits moments of what can be termed as ‘inaccurate responses’ or outputs that lack coherence.”
While Naspers and others encourage the use of AI, Paul van de Boor, senior director of data science at its subsidiary Prosus, says the group has a set of guidelines around how staff can and should use the technology.
Bourne insists that as scientists, researchers and engineers continually push the boundaries of AI capabilities, it becomes increasingly imperative for organisations to exercise caution when considering the application of generative AI.
“Even in well-established use cases, the inclusion of human oversight is paramount to preventing unintended consequences,” he said.
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