INGRAM MICRO
The power of AI is human Artificial intelligence’s time is now, and, in tandem with humans, it can deliver real value to businesses, as Sanjib Sahoo, EVP and CDO at Ingram Micro, explains.
Imagine a world where artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t just a buzzword, but a building block for creating greater business value. What’s more, what if we reimagined AI as agile intelligence, empowering our teams to embrace the spirt of digitisation with enthusiasm and greater expertise. In this world, businesses and consumers would be cheering for AI instead of fearing it or forcing the acronym into their marketing to stay on trend. With a fresh, new outlook on how to approach and integrate AI, teams could use the advancing technology not only to gain a competitive edge but also unlock a future of possibilities and new experiences where agility, efficiency and strategic insights become signatures of their success. So, as you look ahead to building your AI strategy remember: The time is now It's essential to understand that AI isn’t a recent innovation. The term itself was coined back in 1956. While it’s true that the optimal moment to embrace AI might have been in the past, the next best opportunity is now. Innovation cycles are happening at an impressive clip: l 1964: MIT had already achieved a significant milestone by creating the first chatbot l 1997: IBM's Watson made headlines by triumphing over human champions on Jeopardy l 1999: Sony introduced aibo, a robotic companion designed to evolve its personality and abilities based on its interactions and environment l 2011: "Hey Siri" marked the integration of AI assistants into daily life l 2022: ChatGPT became available for public use and just two months after launching is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users. Today’s AI has evolved from natural language processing and speech and image recognition to machine learning, neural
networks and deep learning. And it continues to develop with the emergence of generative AI. Yet the evolution of AI is not happening in a silo. It’s happening with the assist and oversight of humans. For AI to work humans and machines must work together AI’s impact is widespread and working fast across a variety of industries. But AI does not work alone. It pulls from multiple inputs and mirrors human intelligence. It relies on human input and design for optimal functionality. Generative AI (Gen AI) mirrors the cognitive processes of the human brain, generating new data and valuable content at a scale and pace surpassing human capabilities. As such, businesses must approach AI with humans top of mind – recognising that humans are not being replaced by robots at scale. Yes, the jobs we do will be different. But what’s really important is to know that when it comes to AI, our mindset will drive our future skillsets and abilities. We must continue to move forward together. Getting better and stronger every day, using AI to build advantages for us and for those we serve. Where data goes AI follows We can’t talk about AI without talking about data – clean, accurate, meaningful data. The effectiveness of AI’s output and results is intricately tied to the quality of the information it derives from various data points. So, businesses intent on deploying a successful AI strategy must make the quality and scope of their data lake the highest priority. The AI opportunity is real and scaling AI presents huge opportunities. According to McKinsey 1 , venture capital investment in AI has grown by a factor of 13 over the past 10 years. Further, analyst firms such as Constellation Research 2 are saying businesses that adopt Gen AI early will see exponential growth and more meaningful customer
Sanjib Sahoo EVP and CDO
ingrammicro.com
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