On AI Appreciation Day, Intelligent CIO has gathered commentary from industry leaders who share their perspectives on the state of AI, its benefits and the challenges toward responsible use.
Anthony Verna, SVP and GM, Cubic DTECH Mission Solutions
In the ever-evolving landscape of modern warfare, the role AI places in dictating the trajectory of military operations must be emphasized.
As we continue to see the complexities of an AI-accelerated battlespace intensify, AI combined with ML and advanced data processing have become indispensable to ensure the success of critical missions.
It’s also essential to recognize how vital next-generation tactical edge-based technologies are in providing decision advantage and how AI’s integration at the edge marks substantial advancement in military operations. The capability to process and interpret data instantaneously at the point of collection offers commanders prompt, actionable insights, facilitating rapid and well-informed decisions.
Modern operations demand immediate and precise data-to-decision capabilities to support mission-critical decisions at the swift pace of conflict today. This edge-based approach is crucial in denied, disrupted, intermittent, and limited (DDIL) environments where traditional communication channels may be compromised or unreliable.
As we celebrate AI Appreciation Day, let us acknowledge AI’s profound impact on our military capabilities, ensuring our forces are equipped with the most advanced technology to face the challenges of modern warfare and maintain a strategic advantage.
Dave Hoekstra, Product Evangelist, Calabrio
AI Appreciation Day is a day to honor the past and present accomplishments of AI.
AI is not a novel creation, but a product of decades of inquiry and invention. It improves our lives and efficiency, by allowing us to interact and obtain information quicker and easier than ever. Recent AI breakthroughs have opened exciting opportunities in education and innovation, providing powerful tools to analyze data and act on insights like never before.
From early chatbots to advanced voicebots, contact center customers have interacted with AI technology.
But the latest innovations in AI help companies make sense of the data customers provide, like reviews, surveys or calls. Modern models can offer human and virtual agents ongoing feedback on customer interactions to improve them. Workstation copilots can also work with agents and help them find answers. While a helpful human touch will always be required in the contact center, these AI enhancements are becoming more and more essential for agents to perform their jobs effectively and to create a positive customer experience.
While the contact center is poised for significant improvements with AI, there are still important questions remaining:
- How do we make sure AI tools are impartial, transparent and accountable?
- How do we maintain a human-focused and cooperative method of customer service?
These are some of the challenges we are addressing as we work towards a more advanced, AI-driven future in the contact center.
Cris Grossmann, CEO and founder, Beekeeper
Each year, AI Appreciation Day serves as a reminder to embrace the transformative and powerful potential AI holds for frontline industries.
The adoption of AI-powered tools by frontline businesses can provide managerial visibility – crucial for a more connected frontline workforce.
Automated features like real-time evaluation of employee sentiment allow companies to proactively address concerns and prevent employee burnout. Utilizing AI to gauge employee sentiment not only improves retention and engagement but also unlocks new levels of operational efficiency that traditional methods cannot achieve.
Javed Hasan, CEO and Co-founder, Lineaje
To meet modern business demands, developers often rely on open-source components to build AI-powered applications. It’s easy to see why, open source is quick and easily accessible. AI applications likely now comprise a significant portion of organizations’ software supply chains.
Despite AI software’s ability to transform businesses, it hasn’t been without consequences. Over three in four software supply chains were exposed to cyberattacks in the past year, leading to companies experiencing financial and data loss, reputational damage, and significant operational impact. These incidents occurred despite security teams’ laser focus on preventing attacks on AI software once deployed.
So where is the disconnect?
Security teams are only focusing on preventing cyberattacks once an app is deployed. For organizations to truly protect AI applications, and the entire software ecosystem, developers and security teams must know the creators of the AI models along with the potential bias and – to avoid gaps in security posture.
AI is a critical component of an organization’s software supply chain and to truly appreciate it, we need to consider the lineage of AI – especially if it uses open-source components. Doing so can increase the chances of an organization avoiding a software supply chain attack while still reaping AI’s benefits.
Daniel Keys, Head of AI & Innovation, xAmplify
AI has changed the world we live in. In today’s dynamic operating environment, harnessing the potential of AI has enabled us to revolutionise the way we think, work and operate.
AI has allowed organisations to experience a multitude of benefits from streamlining operations, enhancing productivity and delivering innovation at scale.
In our digital world, AI is empowering organisations to analyse vast volumes of data quickly and accurately, extracting actionable insights that drive informed, responsive decision making. Whether it’s understanding customer preferences, offering intuitive interfaces to digital services or optimising supply chains, AI enables organisations to stay ahead of the curve by basing decisions on real-time data-driven insights.
As we increasingly rely on data-driven decision-making, it is crucial that we can interpret and understand the reasoning behind these choices. The opacity of some AI frameworks and rapidly evolving technologies poses a significant challenge, making it difficult to discern how models are trained, what data they use, and the subsequent impact on decision-making. This lack of explainability can have far-reaching consequences, potentially leading to biased outcomes, perpetuating existing social inequalities, and undermining trust in AI systems.
Moreover, the inability to understand AI-driven decisions can result in unforeseen risks to businesses and governments, damaging reputation and compromising compliance with regulatory requirements. It is essential that we prioritise explainability in all AI products and services, ensuring that decision-making processes are transparent, accountable, and trustworthy.
AI’s uses are limitless. The technology has already helped many industries to significantly improve efficiency through automation, reduce errors and redirect their focus and efforts to high-value tasks. By building AI capabilities and embracing new technological advancements, businesses can gain a competitive edge, better adapt to market disruptions and respond effectively to regulatory changes”
Leon Ward, VP Product Management, ThreatQuotient
This AI Appreciation Day we celebrate the advancements it brings. AI has the power to revolutionise industries, including cybersecurity. However, whilst it is crucial the cybersecurity industry embraces new technologies to ensure it stays ahead of the threat landscape, AI must be implemented responsibly.
Historically, security teams have been slower than others to adopt the cloud and automation as they needed to get comfortable with both the risks and rewards prior to deployment. As the scale of AI is potentially much larger, the same measured approach makes sense. At ThreatQuotient we’ve been carefully researching and implementing AI technologies and have identified three key pillars that each provide unique capabilities for threat intelligence applications. Listed below are ways we’ve identified to leverage them.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be used to automatically extract critical Threat Intelligence from unstructured data sources such as reports and emails. This automated process saves valuable time for analysts, allowing them to proactively address risks.
- Machine Learning (ML) can be leveraged to accelerate detection, investigation, and response in cybersecurity.
- Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) can be utilised to aid in the identification and detection of malicious software, enable faster and more effective incident response, and much more.
Gathering feedback from customers and partners, learning from experience, and continuously improving the integration of AI technologies are the steps we take to ensure a measured approach. Ultimately, we believe collaboration between human expertise and AI advancements will forge a stronger defence against evolving threats – shaping the future of cybersecurity.
Josh Aaron, CEO, Aiden Technologies
On AI Appreciation Day, we celebrate the transformative power of AI at Aiden and beyond. This year, AI has advanced our decision-making, achieved near-autonomy in software orchestration, and maintained rigorous configuration management, enhancing organizational agility and reliability. At Aiden, AI-driven hyperautomation is revolutionizing endpoint management, significantly reducing vulnerabilities through enhanced vulnerability management and autonomous remediation, ensuring seamless software updates. These advancements lead to fewer helpdesk tickets and greater workforce productivity. By automating mundane tasks, AI empowers IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives that align technology with business goals. Let’s recognize AI’s crucial role in creating a secure, innovative, and seamlessly integrated future.”
Ion Hatzithomas, CEO, RenderHub
AI is incredible tech that is revolutionizing industries across the board and in some cases providing more accessible experiences to often overlooked communities. But despite the benefits of the technology, there are very real concerns about AI plagiarizing people’s work, particularly that of artists. And at what cost? At the end of the day, AI cannot compete with human artists. It lacks the creative intentionality humans can bring to their creations, and leveraging AI for image generation will result in poor quality, generally non-copyrightable images that rely on stolen work. On this AI Appreciation Day, we must remember the limits of AI, the importance of using AI responsibly, but especially the brilliant minds behind every piece of creative, original art.
