Accra, Ghana//-For businesses to be able to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly and sustainably, they need to create an AI strategy that goes hand-in-hand with their business strategies.
They also need to put governance and risk processes in place so that they can innovate with trust and confidence.
Partner In-charge of Data Science and Analytics at Deloitte West Africa, Jania Okwechime advised in an interview with African Eye Report at the sidelines of the just-ended Ghana CEO Summit held in Accra.
She quickly acknowledged that in this era artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming businesses more than anything else in the world and therefore called on all companies across the globe to embrace AI.
Madam Okwechime also advised businesses to take advantage of AI to improve and accelerate their products and services for the benefit of their customers.
Madam Okwechime who spoke on the topic and its implications on Ghana’s economy, noted that Ghanaian businesses are doing well when it comes to the adoption of AI.
She said globally, the adoption of AI has moved from the Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) stage to more implementation stage.
“In the African continent, we are still experimenting with some of the opportunities that the AI can generate for the people. So, we see adoption, but it could get accelerated”.
I think it is going not be long before they would see the impact of AI. You already saw some of the presenters today specifically in the telecoms and advertising industry that, AI is already being leveraged by businesses. We only going to see the acceleration in the next coming years”.
Why AI becomes a buzzword
She noted that AI has been run for decades, but suddenly, AI has become a buzzword.
Madam Okwechime attributed it to three key things.
These are the key reasons: One of them is engagement or engagement. Every time we do any action, it creates AI. Any time that we send a text message, every time we take a phone to make a call, any time that we watch our favourite series on Netflix, it is creating data, according to the data scientist.
“So, there is a huge data explosion. 90% of the data that we use today was created in the past. So, you can imagine. Now, we have no choice not to harness technology like AI for our use.”
On the other hand, we also have infrastructure solutions. So, storage is no more an issue than it was a decade ago. So, because of this, now businesses are trying to leverage AI to transform their organisations.
Generative AI and the traditional AI
Touching on generative AI and traditional AI, Madam Okwechime first drew the differences between the former and the latter.
In her words: “The difference is that generative AI can perform tasks predominantly done by humans. Like reading documents, creating documents, generating videos, generating reports, etc.
Now, it is making AI more accessible to businesses in a way that they can harness in three different ways.
They can change the way they interact with their customers and increase customer experience internally within their network and their internal organisations. So, that they can improve internal statistics”.
By harnessing AI and generative AI, they can reduce cost by automating tasks, and they can make things more effective and efficient because now you can only put humans in the loop to gain better insight and supervision.
One thing that is key to also mention is why AI and generative AI are used today for automation tasks and improving the set of processes that businesses already have.
Only businesses that are going to be successful and thriving in the next five years or those which are harnessing AI to transform what they are doing. And this needs some more thinking, she stated.
Concerns
On concerns of AI leading to job losses and other things, she said: “So, that is the concern right, because I mentioned that there are certain things that AI and generative AI can do today that were predominately done by humans. So, that is a concern, and we understand why. However, it doesn’t need to be”.
We don’t need to worry
We don’t need to worry about our staff and our talent losing jobs, but rather we must transform the talent. So, things are going to change in businesses. Their staff are going to change the way they work. So, organisations are responsible for upscaling their staff.
Because their roles are going to be transformed. Instead of one person being in charge of creating a report, now that person needs to know how to use and leverage AI solutions to be able to interpret that report to be able to make strategic decisions”.
So, AI has a big implication on talent and the responsibility and the responsibility of the organisations to invest in the talent and upscale it.
