IBM Philippines president and country general-manager Aileen Judan-Jiao asked businesses in the country to trust artificial intelligence and take advantage of its capability to make them more competitive.
“We are here to unlock the barriers for AI. AI is already in our backyard. We must trust AI,” Judan-Jiao said in a news briefing on the launching of AI and data platform “watsonx” during the IBM Tech Innovation Forum at Grand Hyatt Manila Hotel in Taguig City on Aug. 16.
“AI is meant to augment human intelligence, not replace humans,” she said.
IBM technology technical sales leader Kieran Hagan said AI could assist humans in decision making and help businesses take advantage of AI tools.
IBM launched “watsonx” amid the growing popularity of generative AI which has capability to generate new content including text, images, video and music based on existing data using generative models. The platform includes watsonsx.ai studio for new foundation models, generative AI and machine learning; the watsonx.data store built on an open takehouse architecture; and watsonx.governance toolkit to help enable AI workflows to be built with responsibility, transparency and explainability.
The IBM Tech Innovation Forum tackled emerging technologies and the future of computing. IBM said watsonx utilizes the power of foundation models that are pre-trained on massive amounts of unlabeled data, making it less expensive to prepare, reducing the cost of scaling AI workloads across cloud and on-premise environment through a single point of entry. Foundation models can be adapted to use cases with 10 to 100 times labeled data than previous approaches, IBM said.
Hagan said the foundation models in watsonx ensure accuracy and prevent the generation of false information, as they come with quality controls.
Judan-Jiao said AI needs to be advanced with trust if it is going to make a difference in the business sector, including small and medium enterprises.
“AI is here. It can be used for business, but it needs to be responsible, trusted, explainable. Let us not be afraid of AI,” she said.
She said those that fear AI run the risk of falling behind their AI-augmented competitors. “They would need to put AI to work at the strategic core of their business to meet tomorrow’s elevated customer expectations. At the same time, it is critical for organizations to use AI that is explainable, fair, robust, transparent, and prioritize and safeguard consumers’ privacy and data rights to engender trust,” she said.
Judan-Jiao also warned against taking “ethical shortcuts” to AI, which she said, would only result in increased costs due to redesigning or recreating models, while preventing a future where many people can benefit from transformational strategy.
Judan-Jiao said IBM’s watsonx.governance solutions monitor and manage model building, deploying, monitoring and centralizing facts for AI transparency and explainability.
Fatima Yambao, chief executive of digital software company Digiteer, said among the sectors that would benefit from AI are human resources, finance, education, administrative services, customer services, agriculture and transportation.
She said, for example, that AI could be used to resolve traffic congestion in Metro Manila or monitor farm yields in the provinces.
Yambao said in that in the business process outsourcing sector, AI would not necessarily replace customer agents, but they need to upskill or reskill to take advantage of these tools to enhance services.
According to the global CEO’s guide to generative AI study, about 77 percent of entry-level workers and a quarter of executives will see their jobs shift by 2025. This means organizations should make human central to their generative AI strategy, IBM said.
Executives in the Philippines estimate that 38 percent of their workforce will need to reskill as a result of implementing AI and automation over the next three years, based on the results of the “Augmented work for an automated AI-driven world” report.
The Filipino executives said the availability of external skills (58 percent) and building new skills for existing talent (48 percent) are the most pressing issues in AI adoption.
Felix Ayque, founder and chief executive of climate data analytics company Komunidad, said AI is also very useful in risk management and communications. He said AI could help solve real-life problems, and this is important in the Philippines which is considered one of the most at-risk countries because of climate change.
Ayque said leveraging AI would help Komunidad’s customers make better business decisions and implement effective continuity planning strategies that minimize risks of environmental changes.
A global study by the IBM Institute for Business Value found that 75 percent of global CEOs believe that enterprises equipped with the most advanced generative AI would gain significant competitive advantage.
About 43 percent of them have already implemented generative AI to inform strategic decisions, while 36 percent use it for operational decisions and 50 percent are incorporating it into their products and services.
About 50 percent of ASEAN CEOs, including businesses in the Philippines, also pinpoint technology modernization as a top priority.
