Transparency, regulation and convergence with 5G -- AI predictions for 2022
Artificial intelligence is making its presence felt in more and more areas of our lives. But what impact is it going to have on digital transformation projects, legislation and more?
Industry experts gave us their views.
AI and 5G will converge thinks EdgeQ CEO Vinay Ravuri, "The convergence of 5G and Artificial Intelligence will become more indispensable and value oriented. Enterprises will expect 5G and AI to be seamlessly integrated as a key value center of 5G deployment. This will include the use of AI for advanced network automation and for intelligent analytics to streamline operations, optimize network performance and drive greater efficiencies overall. These capabilities will be important in the deployment, management, and operation of 5G."
Nick Thomson, general manager of AI at iManage believes there needs to be greater transparency, "Increasingly, there's a need for greater explainability with AI. Users need to be able to say how and why the AI arrived at a particular decision rather than just writing off AI as a 'black box' whose thought process is totally opaque. Because AI is being used to assist with both process automation (extracting clauses from mountains of contracts, for example) as well as decision-making (applying rules and logic to the information that’s been extracted), there needs to be more explainability at that decision-making level. Making sure that the rules and the logic behind a decision are not just fully explainable to a human being but also defensible are key to ensuring that AI isn't inadvertently making bad decisions based on poorly trained models, unintentional bias, or other faulty logic."
Benoit Grangé, chief technology evangelist at OneSpan believes AI will lead the regulatory agenda:
The use of artificial intelligence in finance has expanded massively in 2021, and it will only increase in the coming years. According to a recent OneSpan survey, 32 percent of FIs are already putting AI in place to comply with regulations. Jurisdictions across the world are eagerly looking to develop AI-based solutions, while also considering the ethical implications of its use such as addressing racial bias that creeps into facial recognition algorithms. Policies and legislation pertaining to the use of artificial intelligence will lead to regulations in 2022 and beyond.
In March, US Financial Regulators issued a Request for Information to get input from financial institutions on their use of AI. The regulators wanted to understand how AI is used in their provision of services to customers and for other business and operational purposes. These insights will likely lead to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, a precursor to a regulation. We expect these to be published in 2022. Federal regulatory action should not surprise financial institutions based on our recent research conducted by Arizent: 43 percent of US FIs noted that anticipated federal AI regulations are a top concern.
The European Commission's proposed Artificial Intelligence Regulation seeks to encourage the development of AI, while classifying and regulating AI solutions according to risk. The regulation is currently progressing through the legislative process. If the legislation passes, it won't occur until late 2022 or 2023. We expect the first regulations to be published in 2023, so it can go into effect in 2024.
This is echoed by Blake Hall, CEO and Founder of ID.me, "The United States will establish the outlines of an overarching privacy framework, similar to the EU's GDPR, to govern the use of AI and biometrics. This may take the form of industry alignment to existing state laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), a ballot measure approved by California voters in November 2020, to head off a fragmented ecosystem."
Sam Babic, SVP and chief innovation officer at Hyland believes AI has a key role in digital transformation. "Artificial intelligence has been recognized as the main facilitator of digital transformation across numerous industries. The progress numerous companies have made on AI will continue to expand in 2022 as people across the enterprise realize the capability AI has on productivity, efficiency, and optimization. With the continued focus on the power of AI, automation will become more prevalent in helping to streamline business processes as we further settle into hybrid work. The extent to which automation and AI can now reach is greater, enabling a more powerful and robust digital transformation. AI will continue to increase adaptability, innovation and flexibility across the enterprise."
Contact centers will become reliant on AI says Patrick Ehlen, vice president of artificial intelligence at Uniphore. "AI has quickly gained widespread acceptance in the business world and has proven to be an important element in business processes. As the labor shortage continues to persist, businesses can't risk burning out their agents so they will look to AI technology to help offload mundane tasks agents dislike while augmenting their capabilities to solve customer issues. Without a doubt, in 2022, consumers will also embrace artificial intelligence to help make their lives easier while preserving their ability to speak to humans."
Michael Krause, senior manager of AI solutions at Beyond Limits sees advances in natural language processing. "In general, major breakthroughs in AI technologies are hard to time. However, 2022 will be an exciting year, a potential new language model, GPT-4, brings with it hopes to dramatically improve natural language AI. Auto-generated articles that are indistinguishable from human writing, improved real-time language translation, and meta-learning capabilities are just a few ideas of what may come next. Taking this kind of human-like processing power and applying this to existing technologies such as the cloud will elevate the advancement of tech not just in one sector, but within every single industry."
Predictive analytics will drive new, emerging use cases around the next generation of digital applications, thinks Nelson Petracek, CTO of TIBCO. "The technology will become more immersive and embedded, where predictive analytics capabilities will be blended seamlessly into the systems and applications with which we interact. Predictive analytics will drive use cases in next-gen apps like metaverse applications (convergence of digital and physical worlds, powered by technologies such as IoT, digital twins, AI/ML, and XR) and the next generation of composable applications."
Photo Credit: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock