Nicholas Brackney, Senior Consultant in Product Marketing at Dell, discussed the company’s AI initiatives ahead of AI & Big Data Expo North America.

Dell’s AI strategy is structured around four core principles: AI-In, AI-On, AI-For, and AI-With:

1. “Embedding AI capabilities in our offerings and services drives speed, intelligence, and automation,” Brackney explained. This ensures that AI is a fundamental component of Dell’s offerings.

2. The company also enables customers to run powerful AI workloads on its comprehensive portfolio of solutions, from desktops to data centres, across clouds, and at the edge.

3. AI innovation and tooling are applied for Dell’s business to enhance operations and share best practices with customers.

4. Finally, Dell collaborates with strategic partners within an open AI ecosystem to simplify and enhance the AI experience.

Dell is well-positioned to help customers navigate AI workloads, emphasising choice and adaptability through the various evolutions of emerging technology. Brackney highlighted Dell’s commitment to serving customers from the early stages of AI adoption to achieving AI at scale.

“We’ve always believed in providing choice and have been doing it through the various evolutions of emerging technology, including AI, and understanding the challenges that come with them,” explained Brackney. “We fully leverage our unique operating model to serve customers in the early innings of AI to a future of AI at scale.”

Looking to the future, Dell is particularly excited about the potential of AI PCs.

“We know organisations and their knowledge workers are excited about AI, and they want to fit it into all their workflows,” Brackney said. Dell is focused on integrating AI into software and ensuring it runs efficiently on the right systems, enhancing end-to-end customer journeys in AI.

Ethical concerns in AI deployment are also a priority for Dell. Addressing issues such as deepfakes, transparency, and bias, Brackney emphasised the importance of a shared, secure, and sustainable approach to AI development.

“We believe in a shared, secure, and sustainable approach. By getting the foundations right at their core, we can eliminate some of the greatest risks associated with AI and work to ensure it acts as a force for good,” explains Brackney.

User data privacy in AI-driven products is another critical focus area. Brackney outlined Dell’s strategy of integrating AI with existing security investments without introducing new risks. Dell offers a suite of secure products, comprehensive data protection, advanced cybersecurity features, and global support services to safeguard user data.

On the topic of job displacement due to AI, Brackney underscored that Dell views AI as augmenting human potential rather than replacing it.

“The roles may change but the human element will always be key,” Brackney stated. “At Dell, we encourage our team members to understand, explore, and, where appropriate, use tools based on AI to learn, evolve, and enhance the overall work experience.”

Looking ahead, Brackney envisions a transformative role for AI within Dell and the tech industry. “We see customers in every industry wanting to become leaders in AI because it is critical to their organisation’s innovation, growth, and productivity,” he noted.

Dell aims to support this evolution by providing the necessary architectures, frameworks, and services to assist its customers on this transformative journey.

Dell is a key sponsor of this year’s AI & Big Data Expo. Check out Dell’s keynote presentation ‘From Data Novice to Data Champion – Cultivating Data Literacy Across the Organization’ and swing by Dell’s booth at stand #66 to hear about AI from the company’s experts.

The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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IBM’s current focal point in AI research and development lies in applying it to technology operations. As Ball explained, “As people try to build applications out in the world, it’s an increasingly complex situation. There are so many tools, there are so many environments that go into building and maintaining an application over time that a lot of teams are just drowned under all of the data that’s involved.”

To tackle this challenge, the company has announced IBM Concert, which will harness AI to make sense of the vast amount of data involved in application development and maintenance. “It’s using AI to figure out actually how your application works, and then provides recommendations about how to make it better,” Ball said.

Upcoming AI opportunities

According to Ball, a current opportunity is organising the unstructured data that feeds into AI models. “There can be a gap between the unstructured amoeba of data and then what you want in AI, which is sorted, ready to go,” he acknowledged. However, IBM is actively working to bridge this gap, with IBM Concert set to evolve and incorporate tools to organise data into a format more digestible for AI engines.

Explainability is another critical aspect of AI that IBM is addressing with IBM Concert. Ball emphasised the importance of not blindly accepting AI recommendations, stating, “We’re actually building in a function that you can question the recommendation so that you can question what the AI comes up with, and sort of dig a little bit deeper into how it came to that conclusion.”

Powering the future of work

Beyond IBM Concert, IBM offers a suite of AI technologies and tools, such as watsonx and AI governance solutions. As Ball explained, IBM aims to provide a “use-case-neutral” approach, allowing customers to leverage IBM’s AI capabilities for their specific needs.

One area where IBM has seen early success with IBM Concert is in addressing the data overload faced by many organisations. Ball shared that design partners have been “amazed at what we’re able to do, the insights that we’re able to show, even at a very basic level.” As IBM Concert’s capabilities continue to evolve, IBM expects to deliver even more profound insights and conclusions, ultimately improving application performance, security, and overall management.

For organisations considering adopting AI for the first time, Ball’s advice is clear: “Be deliberate about what you want to do with it. Don’t come in just thinking that the technology itself is the goal, but have a real use case in mind, a real goal in mind that you want AI to accomplish.”

At the upcoming Intelligent Automation Conference, where IBM is a key sponsor, the company plans to showcase IBM Concert and its potential to transform technology operations through the power of AI.

As the interview concluded, Ball expressed excitement about the possibilities of IBM Concert, stating, “We’re really excited about this, and we think our customers are going to be really excited about it too.”

You can watch our full interview with Ben Ball below:

Gain further insights from Ben Ball as he shares his expertise in his day one presentation titled ‘Leveraging Gen AI to proactively mitigate security vulnerabilities in your applications’ at the Intelligent Automation Conference.

Want to learn more about intelligent automation from industry leaders? Check out the Intelligent Automation Conference taking place in California, London, and Amsterdam. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including AI & Big Data Expo, IoT Tech Expo, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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Can you tell us a little bit about Atera and what it does?

We launched the Atera all-in-one platform for IT management in 2016, so quite a few years ago. And it’s very broad. It’s everything from technical things like patching and security to ongoing support, alerts, automations, ticket management, reports, and analytics, etc. 

Atera is a single platform that manages all your IT in a single pane of glass. The power of it – and we’re the only company that does this – is it’s a single codebase and single database for all of that. The alternative, for many years now, has been to buy four or five different products, and have them all somehow connected, which is usually very difficult. 

Here, the fact is it’s a single codebase and a single database. Everything is connected and streamlined and very intuitive. So, in essence, you sign up or start a trial and within five minutes, you’re already running with it and onboarding. It’s that intuitive.

We have 12,000+ customers in 120 countries around the world. The UK is our second-largest country in terms of business, currently. The US is the first, but the UK is right behind them.

What are the latest trends you’re seeing develop in AI this year?

From the start, we’ve been dedicated to integrating AI into our company’s DNA. Our goal has always been to use data to identify problems and alert humans so they can fix or avoid issues. Initially, we focused on leveraging data to provide solutions.

Over the past nine years, we’ve aimed to let AI handle mundane IT tasks, freeing up professionals for more engaging work. With early access to Chat GPT and Open AI tools a year and a half ago, we’ve been pioneering a new trend we call Action AI.

Unlike generic Generative AI, which creates content like songs or emails, Action AI operates in the real world, interacting with hardware and software to perform tasks autonomously. Our AI can understand IT problems and resolve them on its own, moving beyond mere dialogue to real-world action.

Atera offers Copilot and Autopilot. Could you explain what these are?

Autopilot is autonomous. It understands a problem you might have on your computer. It’s a widget on your computer, and it will communicate with you and fix the problem autonomously. However, it has boundaries on what it’s allowed to fix and what it’s not allowed to fix. And everything it’s allowed to deal with has to be bulletproof. 100% secure or private. No opportunity to do any damage or anything like that. 

So if a ticket is opened up, or a complaint is raised, if it’s outside of these boundaries, it will then activate the Copilot. The Copilot augments the IT professional.

They’re both companions. The Autopilot is a companion that takes away password resets, printer issues, installs software, etc. – mundane and repetitive issues – and the Copilot is a companion that will help the IT professional deal with the issues they deal with on a day-to-day basis. And it has all kinds of different tools. 

The Copilot is very elaborate. If you have a problem, you can ask it and it will not only give you an answer like ChatGPT, but it will research and run all kinds of tests on the network, the computer, and the printer, and it will come to a conclusion, and create the action that is required to solve it. But it won’t solve it. It will still leave that to the IT professional to think about the different information and decide what they want to do. 

Copilot can save IT professionals nearly half of their workday. While it’s been tested in the field for some time, we’re excited to officially launch it now. Meanwhile, Autopilot is still in the beta phase.

What advice would you give to any companies that are thinking about integrating AI technologies into their business operations?

I strongly recommend that companies begin integrating AI technologies immediately, but it is crucial to research and select the right and secure generative AI tools. Incorporating AI offers numerous advantages: it automates routine tasks, enhances efficiency and productivity, improves accuracy by reducing human error, and speeds up problem resolution. That being said, it’s important to pick the right generative AI tool to help you reap the benefits without compromising on security. For example, with our collaboration with Microsoft, our customers’ data is secure—it stays within the system, and the AI doesn’t use it for training or expanding its database. This ensures safety while delivering substantial benefits.

Our incorporation of AI into our product focuses on two key aspects. First, your IT team no longer has to deal with mundane, frustrating tasks. Second, for end users, issues like non-working printers, forgotten passwords, or slow internet are resolved in seconds or minutes instead of hours. This provides a measurable and significant improvement in efficiency.

There are all kinds of AIs out there. Some of them are more beneficial, some are less. Some are just Chat GPT in disguise, and it’s a very thin layer. What we do literally changes the whole interaction with IT. And we know, when IT has a problem things stop working, and you stop working. Our solution ensures everything keeps running smoothly.

What can we expect from AI over the next few years?

AI is set to become significantly more intelligent and aware. One remarkable development is its growing ability to reason, predict, and understand data. This capability enables AI to foresee issues and autonomously resolve them, showcasing an astonishing level of reasoning.

We anticipate a dual advancement: a rapid acceleration in AI’s intelligence and a substantial enhancement in its empathetic interactions, as demonstrated in the latest OpenAI release. This evolution will transform how humans engage with AI.

Our work exemplifies this shift. When non-technical users interact with our software to solve problems, AI responds with a highly empathetic, human-like approach. Users feel as though they are speaking to a real IT professional, ensuring a seamless and comforting experience.

As AI continues to evolve, it will become increasingly powerful and capable. Recent breakthroughs in understanding AI’s mechanisms will not only enhance its functionality but also ensure its security and ethical use, reinforcing its role as a force for good.

What plans does Atera have for the next year?

We are excited to announce the upcoming launch of Autopilot, scheduled for release in a few months. While Copilot, our comprehensive suite of advanced tools designed specifically for IT professionals, has already been instrumental in enhancing efficiency and effectiveness, Autopilot represents the next significant advancement.

Currently in beta so whoever wants to try it already can, Autopilot directly interacts with end users, automating and resolving common IT issues that typically burden IT staff, such as password resets and printer malfunctions. By addressing these routine tasks, Autopilot allows IT professionals to focus on more strategic and rewarding activities, ultimately improving overall productivity and job satisfaction.

For more information, visit atera.com

Atera is a sponsor of TechEx North America 2024 on June 5-6 in Santa Clara, US. Visit the Atera team at booth 237 for a personalised demo, or to test your IT skills with the company’s first-of-kind AIT game, APOLLO IT, for a chance to win a prize.

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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A study from SS&C Blue Prism, conducted by Forrester Consulting and published in April, put together a composite organisation representative of five customers interviewed. The conclusion was that, over three years, there were key gains in IA from greater productivity to compliance cost avoidance, to improved employee experience and retention. This represented an overall net present value of $53.4 million (£42.5m) per customer.

Yet this may just be the tip of the iceberg. Dan Segura, enterprise sales manager at SS&C Blue Prism, notes one healthcare client who, in what is described as a conservative estimate, delivered savings of more than $140m overall on cost avoidance and recoup. Another healthcare client delivered a use case with a claimed $43m benefit on its own; a bot which recouped overtime pay for nurses and staff during the pandemic.

“They built it in an afternoon,” Segura explains. “It’s a perfect example of being in the right place at the right time; and having the right skills and technology being ready.”

Many of the technologies which comprise intelligent automation have been around for a long time, such as classic RPA (robotic process automation) or OCR (optical character recognition). SS&C Blue Prism’s document automation, which forms part of the latter, is described as a ‘game-changer’ by Segura. “There’s a lot of these processes, whether it’s going to be executed by a robot or a human,” he says. “First things first, we’ve got to get data off documents.

“Automation is not just doing simple tasks anymore thanks to the introduction of AI and generative AI” he adds. “There’s now more understanding, whether it’s assessing information from documents, information from a message, structuring things that are semi-structured or unstructured, to drive the process or complete the process.”

Segura describes wider business process management (BPM) and process orchestration tool Chorus, meanwhile, as ‘one of the world’s best kept secrets.’ Or, at least, it was; in November analyst Everest Group named the tool as a leader and star performer in its Process Orchestration Products PEAK Matrix.

The tool is now getting leverage outside the traditional finance and insurance fields. “It is how millions and millions of transactions and pieces of work are getting done every day,” says Segura. “We’re now seeing adoption [elsewhere] alongside automation to orchestrate their work and give them that end-to-end work orchestration, visibility, and efficiency gains with whatever they have going on.”

So how does a use case come to life? It is often a mixture of inspiration and perspiration. Where SS&C Blue Prism comes in is to ‘help customers catch lightning’, as Segura puts it. “We’ve all been in that situation where it’s like ‘oh if I were running this place, here’s what I would do’,” he says. “Intelligent automation gives you the opportunity to reimagine your processes and transform how you get work done. Once that light switch turns on, and the initial use case is built, that’s really the secret sauce of SS&C Blue Prism; it’s that realisation and awareness of what intelligent automation can deliver.

“We’re always learning from our customers,” adds Segura. “It’s at their direction because they know their business and processes better than anybody. Combine their business expertise with the transformational power of intelligent automation and its digital workforce, then that’s where the magic happens.”

Any organisation, argues Segura, regardless of the industry, has change agents and citizen builders in waiting. Don’t think that’s a misnomer; the term is definitely ‘builder’.

“I hear about these citizen developer programmes, and they’ll say, ‘here we have 500, 1000 citizen developers.’ What I don’t hear is, ‘and with this army of citizen developers we’ve achieved this’,” says Segura. “Whereas I have customers where two people have basically become citizen builders with more of a robust type of approach.” The $43m healthcare single use case is a case in point. “It is the whole mantra of SS&C Blue Prism,” adds Segura. “We’re designed to go after those higher value chain automations that can have a tangible impact on some of the company’s key objectives.”

So, you have the idea, the value proposition, and the capability to build it out. How do you make it stick?  Every organisation is different; though if your company has a continuous process improvement department then that can be a good place to start. Segura likens it to offshoring processes. “You don’t just wave it goodbye and never think about it again,” he explains. “At the end of the day, it still has to function.

“You’re not just ‘digital-shoring’ [automation] and it will essentially be taken care of by digital. Someone has to continuously improve the process; someone has to mind when something changes with the business rules or regulatory compliance; somebody has to be responsible for making sure that those changes are kept up in an agile way.”

SS&C Blue Prism has a longstanding, large US retail customer that combines that lightning capture with the right internal culture around automation. This is a company that has 72,000 employees, as well as 60 ‘digital workers’ executing more than 150 automations. One such automation, through using OCR technology, lets the company automate the processing of inbound customer orders received by digital fax.

The overall result is 6.2 million transactions processed to date, and 250,000 hours of work returned to the business. But there is one extra ingredient required, particularly for a big company: discipline.

“It took them a while to get to that point in maturity,” explains Segura. “They do have a very central function when it comes to the intelligent automation team, [but] keep in mind one of those processes is in supply chain. That process is regularly reviewing 4.2 million purchase orders; it’s minding 50 million inventory case volume; it’s going through two million SKUs for 8000 suppliers.

“This is highly iterative, but it’s that process of having that lightning rod to capture the requirements and give people who are not necessarily technical a platform and a methodology to iterate very closely with the intelligent automation team,” adds Segura.

Think of what SS&C Blue Prism does therefore as providing a superhero cape for those who don’t otherwise get the chance to step into the limelight. It is a message the company will look to broadcast at the Intelligent Automation event in Santa Clara on 5-6 June.

“SS&C Blue Prism opens up that door to enable your citizen builders really make an impact and deliver strategic benefits to the company,” says Segura. “You’re not just playing with a pilot, not just fooling around with something; you’re really getting into the strategic objectives of the company.”

Photo by Tara Winstead

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

The post The rise of intelligent automation as a strategic differentiator appeared first on AI News.

This collaboration combines Tech Mahindra’s range of AI offerings, TechM amplifAI0->∞, and IBM’s watsonx AI and data platform with AI Assistants.

Customers can now combine IBM watsonx’s capabilities with Tech Mahindra’s AI consulting and engineering skills to access a variety of new generative AI services, frameworks, and solution architectures. This enables the development of AI apps in which organisations can use their trusted data to automate processes. It also provides a basis for businesses to create trustworthy AI models, promotes explainability to help manage risk and bias, and enables scalable AI adoption across hybrid cloud and on-premises environments.

According to Kunal Purohit, Tech Mahindra’s chief digital services officer, organisations focus on responsible AI practices, and incorporating generative AI technologies to revitalise enterprises. 

“Our work with IBM can help advance digital transformation for organisations, adoption of GenAI, modernisation, and ultimately foster business growth for our global customers,” Purohit added.

To further enhance business capabilities in AI, Tech Mahindra has established a virtual watsonx Centre of Excellence (CoE), which is already operational. This CoE functions as a co-innovation centre, with a dedicated team tasked with maximising synergies between the two companies and producing unique offerings and solutions based on their combined capabilities.

The collaborative offerings and solutions developed through this partnership could help enterprises achieve their goals of constructing machine learning models using open-source frameworks while also enabling them to scale and accelerate the impact of generative AI. These AI-driven solutions have the potential to aid organisations enhance efficiency and productivity responsibly. 

Kate Woolley, GM of IBM Ecosystem, emphasised the collaboration’s potential, adding that generative AI may serve as a catalyst for innovation, unlocking new market opportunities when built on a foundation of explainability, transparency, and trust. 

Woolley said: “Our work with Tech Mahindra is expected to expand the reach of watsonx, allowing even more customers to build trustworthy AI as we seek to combine our technology and expertise to support enterprise use cases such as code modernisation, digital labour, and customer service.”

This collaboration aligns with Tech Mahindra’s continuous endeavour to transform enterprises with advanced AI-led offerings and solutions, including their recent additions like Vision amplifAIer, Ops amplifAIer, Email amplifAIer, Enterprise Knowledge Search offering, Evangelize Pair Programming, and Generative AI Studio.

It is worth mentioning that the two companies have previously collaborated. Earlier this year, Tech Mahindra announced the opening of a Synergy Lounge in conjunction with IBM on the company’s Singapore campus. This Lounge seeks to accelerate digital adoption for APAC organisations. It aids in operationalising and leveraging next-generation technologies such as AI, intelligent automation, hybrid cloud, 5G, edge computing, and cybersecurity.

Beyond Tech Mahindra, IBM watsonx has been used in other collaborations to speed up the deployment of generative AI. Also happened early this year, the GSMA and IBM announced a new partnership to support the use and capabilities of generative AI in the telecom industry by launching GSMA Advance’s AI Training program and the GSMA Foundry Generative AI program.

In addition, there is a digital version of the program that covers both the commercial strategy and technology fundamentals of generative AI. This initiative uses IBM watsonx to provide hands-on training for architects and developers seeking in-depth practical generative AI knowledge.

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

The post IBM and Tech Mahindra unveil new era of trustworthy AI with watsonx appeared first on AI News.

GPT-4o, where the “o” stands for “omni,” is designed to cater to a broader spectrum of input and output modalities. “It accepts as input any combination of text, audio, and image and generates any combination of text, audio, and image outputs,” OpenAI announced.

Users can expect a response time as quick as 232 milliseconds, mirroring human conversational speed, with an impressive average response time of 320 milliseconds.

Pioneering capabilities

The introduction of GPT-4o marks a leap from its predecessors by processing all inputs and outputs through a single neural network. This approach enables the model to retain critical information and context that were previously lost in the separate model pipeline used in earlier versions.

Prior to GPT-4o, ‘Voice Mode’ could handle audio interactions with latencies of 2.8 seconds for GPT-3.5 and 5.4 seconds for GPT-4. The previous setup involved three distinct models: one for transcribing audio to text, another for textual responses, and a third for converting text back to audio. This segmentation led to loss of nuances such as tone, multiple speakers, and background noise.

As an integrated solution, GPT-4o boasts notable improvements in vision and audio understanding. It can perform more complex tasks such as harmonising songs, providing real-time translations, and even generating outputs with expressive elements like laughter and singing. Examples of its broad capabilities include preparing for interviews, translating languages on the fly, and generating customer service responses.

Nathaniel Whittemore, Founder and CEO of Superintelligent, commented: “Product announcements are going to inherently be more divisive than technology announcements because it’s harder to tell if a product is going to be truly different until you actually interact with it. And especially when it comes to a different mode of human-computer interaction, there is even more room for diverse beliefs about how useful it’s going to be.

“That said, the fact that there wasn’t a GPT-4.5 or GPT-5 announced is also distracting people from the technological advancement that this is a natively multimodal model. It’s not a text model with a voice or image addition; it is a multimodal token in, multimodal token out. This opens up a huge array of use cases that are going to take some time to filter into the consciousness.”

Performance and safety

GPT-4o matches GPT-4 Turbo performance levels in English text and coding tasks but outshines significantly in non-English languages, making it a more inclusive and versatile model. It sets a new benchmark in reasoning with a high score of 88.7% on 0-shot COT MMLU (general knowledge questions) and 87.2% on the 5-shot no-CoT MMLU.

The model also excels in audio and translation benchmarks, surpassing previous state-of-the-art models like Whisper-v3. In multilingual and vision evaluations, it demonstrates superior performance, enhancing OpenAI’s multilingual, audio, and vision capabilities.

OpenAI has incorporated robust safety measures into GPT-4o by design, incorporating techniques to filter training data and refining behaviour through post-training safeguards. The model has been assessed through a Preparedness Framework and complies with OpenAI’s voluntary commitments. Evaluations in areas like cybersecurity, persuasion, and model autonomy indicate that GPT-4o does not exceed a ‘Medium’ risk level across any category.

Further safety assessments involved extensive external red teaming with over 70 experts in various domains, including social psychology, bias, fairness, and misinformation. This comprehensive scrutiny aims to mitigate risks introduced by the new modalities of GPT-4o.

Availability and future integration

Starting today, GPT-4o’s text and image capabilities are available in ChatGPT—including a free tier and extended features for Plus users. A new Voice Mode powered by GPT-4o will enter alpha testing within ChatGPT Plus in the coming weeks.

Developers can access GPT-4o through the API for text and vision tasks, benefiting from its doubled speed, halved price, and enhanced rate limits compared to GPT-4 Turbo.

OpenAI plans to expand GPT-4o’s audio and video functionalities to a select group of trusted partners via the API, with broader rollout expected in the near future. This phased release strategy aims to ensure thorough safety and usability testing before making the full range of capabilities publicly available.

“It’s hugely significant that they’ve made this model available for free to everyone, as well as making the API 50% cheaper. That is a massive increase in accessibility,” explained Whittemore.

OpenAI invites community feedback to continuously refine GPT-4o, emphasising the importance of user input in identifying and closing gaps where GPT-4 Turbo might still outperform.

(Image Credit: OpenAI)

See also: OpenAI takes steps to boost AI-generated content transparency

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

The post GPT-4o delivers human-like AI interaction with text, audio, and vision integration appeared first on AI News.

Ahead of AI & Big Data Expo North America – where the company will showcase its expertise – Chuck Ros, Industry Success Director at SoftServe, provided valuable insights into the company’s AI initiatives, the challenges faced, and its future strategy for leveraging this powerful technology.

Highlighting a recent AI project that exemplifies SoftServe’s innovative approach, Ros discussed the company’s unique solution for a software company in the field service management industry. The vision was to create an easy-to-use, language model-enabled interface that would allow field technicians to access service histories, equipment documentation, and maintenance schedules seamlessly, enhancing productivity and operational efficiency.

“Our AI engineers built a prompt evaluation pipeline that seamlessly considers cost, processing time, semantic similarity, and the likelihood of hallucinations,” Ros explained. “It proved to be an extremely effective architecture that led to improved operational efficiencies for the customer, increased productivity for users in the field, competitive edge for the software company and for their clients, and—perhaps most importantly—a spark for additional innovation.”

While the potential of AI is undeniable, Ros acknowledged the key mistakes businesses often make when deploying AI solutions, emphasising the importance of having a robust data strategy, building adequate data pipelines, and thoroughly testing the models. He also cautioned against rushing to deploy generative AI solutions without properly assessing feasibility and business viability, stating, “We need to pay at least as much attention to whether it should be built as we do to whether it can be built.”

Recognising the critical concern of ethical AI development, Ros stressed the significance of human oversight throughout the entire process. “Managing dynamic data quality, testing and detecting for bias and inaccuracies, ensuring high standards of data privacy, and ethical use of AI systems all require human oversight,” he said. SoftServe’s approach to AI development involves structured engagements that evaluate data and algorithms for suitability, assess potential risks, and implement governance measures to ensure accountability and data traceability.

Looking ahead, Ros envisions AI playing an increasingly vital role in SoftServe’s business strategy, with ongoing refinements to AI-assisted software development lifecycles and the introduction of new tools and processes to boost productivity further. Softserve’s findings suggest that GenAI can accelerate programming productivity by as much as 40 percent.

“I see more models assisting us on a daily basis, helping us write emails and documentation and helping us more and more with the simple, time-consuming mundane tasks we still do,” Ros said. “In the next five years I see ongoing refinement of that view to AI in SDLCs and the regular introduction of new tools, new models, new processes that push that 40 percent productivity hike to 50 percent and 60 percent.”

When asked how SoftServe is leveraging AI for social good, Ros explained the company is delivering solutions ranging from machine learning models to help students discover their passions and aptitudes, enabling personalised learning experiences, to assisting teachers in their daily tasks and making their jobs easier.

“I love this question because one of SoftServe’s key strategic tenets is to power our social purpose and make the world a better place. It’s obviously an ambitious goal, but it’s important to our employees and it’s important to our clients,” explained Ros.

“It’s why we created the Open Eyes Foundation and have collected more than $15 million with the support of the public, our clients, our partners, and of course our employees. We naturally support the Open Eyes Foundation with all manner of technology needs, including AI.”

At the AI & Big Data Expo North America, SoftServe plans to host a keynote presentation titled “Revolutionizing Learning: Unleashing the Power of Generative AI in Education and Beyond,” which will explore the transformative impact of generative AI and large language models in the education sector.

“As we explore the mechanisms through which generative AI leverages data – including training methodologies like fine-tuning and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) – we will pinpoint high-value, low-risk applications that promise to redefine the educational landscape,” said Ros.

“The journey from a nascent idea to a fully operational AI solution is fraught with challenges, including ethical considerations and risks inherent in deploying AI solutions. Through the lens of a success story at Mesquite ISD, where generative AI was leveraged to help students uncover their passions and aptitudes enabling the delivery of personalised learning experiences, this presentation will illustrate the practical benefits and transformative potential of generative AI in education.”

Additionally, the company will participate in panel discussions on topics such as “Getting to Production-Ready – Challenges and Best Practices for Deploying AI” and “Navigating the Data & AI Landscape – Ensuring Safety, Security, and Responsibility in Big Data and AI Systems.” These sessions will provide attendees with valuable insights from SoftServe’s experts on overcoming deployment challenges, ensuring data quality and user acceptance, and mitigating risks associated with AI implementation.

As a key sponsor of the event, SoftServe aims to contribute to the discourse surrounding the responsible and ethical development of AI solutions, while sharing its expertise and vision for leveraging this powerful technology to drive innovation, enhance productivity, and address global challenges. 

“We are, of course, always interested in both sharing and hearing about the diversity of business cases for applications in AI and big data: the concept of the rising tide lifting all boats is definitely relevant in AI and GenAI in particular, and we’re proud to be a part of the AI technology community,” Ros concludes.

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

The post Chuck Ros, SoftServe: Delivering transformative AI solutions responsibly appeared first on AI News.

First reported by The Verge, the group of eight publications owned by Alden Global Capital (AGC) – including the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, and Orlando Sentinel – allege the companies have purloined “millions” of their articles without permission and without payment “to fuel the commercialisation of their generative artificial intelligence products, including ChatGPT and Copilot.”

The lawsuit is the latest legal action taken against Microsoft and OpenAI over their alleged misuse of copyrighted content to build large language models (LLMs) that power AI technologies like ChatGPT. In the complaint, the AGC publications claim the companies’ chatbots can reproduce their articles verbatim shortly after publication, without providing prominent links back to the original sources.

“This lawsuit is not a battle between new technology and old technology. It is not a battle between a thriving industry and an industry in transition. It is most surely not a battle to resolve the phalanx of social, political, moral, and economic issues that GenAI raises,” the complaint reads.

“This lawsuit is about how Microsoft and OpenAI are not entitled to use copyrighted newspaper content to build their new trillion-dollar enterprises without paying for that content.”

The plaintiffs also accuse the AI models of “hallucinations,” attributing inaccurate reporting to their publications. They reference OpenAI’s previous admission that it would be “impossible” to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.

The allegations echo those made by The New York Times in a separate lawsuit filed last year. The Times claimed Microsoft and OpenAI used almost a century’s worth of copyrighted content to allow their AI to mimic its expressive style without a licensing agreement.

In seeking to dismiss key parts of the Times’ lawsuit, Microsoft accused the paper of “doomsday futurology” by suggesting generative AI could threaten independent journalism.

The AGC publications argue that OpenAI, now valued at $90 billion after becoming a for-profit company, and Microsoft – which has seen hundreds of billions of dollars added to its market value from ChatGPT and Copilot – are profiting from the unauthorised use of copyrighted works.

The news publishers are seeking unspecified damages and an order for Microsoft and OpenAI to destroy any GPT and LLM models utilising their copyrighted content.

Earlier this week, OpenAI signed a licensing partnership with The Financial Times to lawfully integrate the newspaper’s journalism. However, the latest lawsuit from AGC highlights the growing tensions between tech companies developing generative AI and content creators concerned about the unchecked use of their works to train profitable AI systems.

(Photo by Wesley Tingey)

See also: OpenAI faces complaint over fictional outputs

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

The post Coalition of news publishers sue Microsoft and OpenAI appeared first on AI News.

“Making up false information is quite problematic in itself. But when it comes to false information about individuals, there can be serious consequences,” said Maartje de Graaf, Data Protection Lawyer at noyb. 

“It’s clear that companies are currently unable to make chatbots like ChatGPT comply with EU law when processing data about individuals. If a system cannot produce accurate and transparent results, it cannot be used to generate data about individuals. The technology has to follow the legal requirements, not the other way around.”

The GDPR requires that personal data be accurate, and individuals have the right to rectification if data is inaccurate, as well as the right to access information about the data processed and its sources. However, OpenAI has openly admitted that it cannot correct incorrect information generated by ChatGPT or disclose the sources of the data used to train the model.

“Factual accuracy in large language models remains an area of active research,” OpenAI has argued.

The advocacy group highlights a New York Times report that found chatbots like ChatGPT “invent information at least 3 percent of the time – and as high as 27 percent.” In the complaint against OpenAI, noyb cites an example where ChatGPT repeatedly provided an incorrect date of birth for the complainant, a public figure, despite requests for rectification.

“Despite the fact that the complainant’s date of birth provided by ChatGPT is incorrect, OpenAI refused his request to rectify or erase the data, arguing that it wasn’t possible to correct data,” noyb stated.

OpenAI claimed it could filter or block data on certain prompts, such as the complainant’s name, but not without preventing ChatGPT from filtering all information about the individual. The company also failed to adequately respond to the complainant’s access request, which the GDPR requires companies to fulfil.

“The obligation to comply with access requests applies to all companies. It is clearly possible to keep records of training data that was used to at least have an idea about the sources of information,” said de Graaf. “It seems that with each ‘innovation,’ another group of companies thinks that its products don’t have to comply with the law.”

European privacy watchdogs have already scrutinised ChatGPT’s inaccuracies, with the Italian Data Protection Authority imposing a temporary restriction on OpenAI’s data processing in March 2023 and the European Data Protection Board establishing a task force on ChatGPT.

In its complaint, noyb is asking the Austrian Data Protection Authority to investigate OpenAI’s data processing and measures to ensure the accuracy of personal data processed by its large language models. The advocacy group also requests that the authority order OpenAI to comply with the complainant’s access request, bring its processing in line with the GDPR, and impose a fine to ensure future compliance.

You can read the full complaint here (PDF)

(Photo by Eleonora Francesca Grotto)

See also: Igor Jablokov, Pryon: Building a responsible AI future

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

The post OpenAI faces complaint over fictional outputs appeared first on AI News.

In an interview ahead of the AI & Big Data Expo North America, Igor Jablokov, CEO and founder of AI company Pryon, addressed these pressing issues head-on.

Critical ethical challenges in AI

“There’s not one, maybe there’s almost 20 plus of them,” Jablokov stated when asked about the most critical ethical challenges. He outlined a litany of potential pitfalls that must be carefully navigated—from AI hallucinations and emissions of falsehoods, to data privacy violations and intellectual property leaks from training on proprietary information.

Bias and adversarial content seeping into training data is another major worry, according to Jablokov. Security vulnerabilities like embedded agents and prompt injection attacks also rank highly on his list of concerns, as well as the extreme energy consumption and climate impact of large language models.

Pryon’s origins can be traced back to the earliest stirrings of modern AI over two decades ago. Jablokov previously led an advanced AI team at IBM where they designed a primitive version of what would later become Watson. “They didn’t greenlight it. And so, in my frustration, I departed, stood up our last company,” he recounted. That company, also called Pryon at the time, went on to become Amazon’s first AI-related acquisition, birthing what’s now Alexa.

The current incarnation of Pryon has aimed to confront AI’s ethical quandaries through responsible design focused on critical infrastructure and high-stakes use cases. “[We wanted to] create something purposely hardened for more critical infrastructure, essential workers, and more serious pursuits,” Jablokov explained.

A key element is offering enterprises flexibility and control over their data environments. “We give them choices in terms of how they’re consuming their platforms…from multi-tenant public cloud, to private cloud, to on-premises,” Jablokov said. This allows organisations to ring-fence highly sensitive data behind their own firewalls when needed.

Pryon also emphasises explainable AI and verifiable attribution of knowledge sources. “When our platform reveals an answer, you can tap it, and it always goes to the underlying page and highlights exactly where it learned a piece of information from,” Jablokov described. This allows human validation of the knowledge provenance.

In some realms like energy, manufacturing, and healthcare, Pryon has implemented human-in-the-loop oversight before AI-generated guidance goes to frontline workers. Jablokov pointed to one example where “supervisors can double-check the outcomes and essentially give it a badge of approval” before information reaches technicians.

Ensuring responsible AI development

Jablokov strongly advocates for new regulatory frameworks to ensure responsible AI development and deployment. While welcoming the White House’s recent executive order as a start, he expressed concerns about risks around generative AI like hallucinations, static training data, data leakage vulnerabilities, lack of access controls, copyright issues, and more.  

Pryon has been actively involved in these regulatory discussions. “We’re back-channelling to a mess of government agencies,” Jablokov said. “We’re taking an active hand in terms of contributing our perspectives on the regulatory environment as it rolls out…We’re showing up by expressing some of the risks associated with generative AI usage.”

On the potential for an uncontrolled, existential “AI risk” – as has been warned about by some AI leaders – Jablokov struck a relatively sanguine tone about Pryon’s governed approach: “We’ve always worked towards verifiable attribution…extracting out of enterprises’ own content so that they understand where the solutions are coming from, and then they decide whether they make a decision with it or not.”

The CEO firmly distanced Pryon’s mission from the emerging crop of open-ended conversational AI assistants, some of which have raised controversy around hallucinations and lacking ethical constraints.

“We’re not a clown college. Our stuff is designed to go into some of the more serious environments on planet Earth,” Jablokov stated bluntly. “I think none of you would feel comfortable ending up in an emergency room and having the medical practitioners there typing in queries into a ChatGPT, a Bing, a Bard…”

He emphasised the importance of subject matter expertise and emotional intelligence when it comes to high-stakes, real-world decision-making. “You want somebody that has hopefully many years of experience treating things similar to the ailment that you’re currently undergoing. And guess what? You like the fact that there is an emotional quality that they care about getting you better as well.”

At the upcoming AI & Big Data Expo, Pryon will unveil new enterprise use cases showcasing its platform across industries like energy, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and government. Jablokov teased that they will also reveal “different ways to consume the Pryon platform” beyond the end-to-end enterprise offering, including potentially lower-level access for developers.

As AI’s domain rapidly expands from narrow applications to more general capabilities, addressing the ethical risks will become only more critical. Pryon’s sustained focus on governance, verifiable knowledge sources, human oversight, and collaboration with regulators could offer a template for more responsible AI development across industries.

You can watch our full interview with Igor Jablokov below:

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

The post Igor Jablokov, Pryon: Building a responsible AI future appeared first on AI News.