Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing work. In fact, it is changing life itself.

That is the overriding context of the webinar “How Are IT Managers Using AI to Better Manage Technology” held by the Asia Online Publishing Group (AOPG) on Tuesday, the 28th of March. The webinar was held in collaboration with cybersecurity leader Fortinet, service management solutions provider SymphonyAI Summit and Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).

Watch a recording of the webinar HERE.

Andrew Martin, Group Publisher at AOPG, kicked off the webinar by talking about AI and its growing role in society. He also touched on the roots of the ongoing AI revolution, which he described as “starting with big data.”

“AI is all about data,” Andrew pointed out in his opening keynote. “When you have bad data, you can have bad AI. But if you have good data, AI can do amazing things.”

Amazing AI at Work

Andrew cited as an example AOPG’s firsthand experience with AI courtesy of a proactive member of the AOPG database team. This employee, according to Andrew, started leveraging AI in the tedious and time-consuming everyday process of sanitising the company’s data. This employee significantly reduced the time he needed to do such manual work, making him more efficient and productive.

In short, he used AI to improve work.

That is the promise of AI in the workplace. But as Andrew also noted in his keynote, people themselves are ultimately responsible for AI doing good things, whether in life or at the workplace. In other words, it is up to people to derive the most value from AI.

Andrew then concluded his opening keynote with a reminder not to fear AI. Instead, people need to “embrace it and understand how to leverage it” so it can “help us be more productive.”

Those who do not do so, Andrew warned, will just “get left behind.”

Supercharging Security Operations

Among the areas of work AI is upgrading is security operations (SecOps), which is crucial in securing organisations from cyber attacks. Wallace Yaw, Business Development, Security Fabric, Southeast Asia & Hong Kong at Fortinet shared in the webinar how companies today are increasingly under threat due to the attack surface increasing significantly and threats growing more frequent and more sophisticated.

This is the challenge SecOps teams need to face continuously, and it is something AI can help with. According to Yaw, AI can empower Security Operation Centres (SoC) by providing them with security solutions that recognise malicious behaviours and detect anomalous patterns in real-time. These AI-powered solutions, like Extended Detection and Response and Fortinet’s FortiAnalyzer and FortiSiEM, can then shorten detection time, reduce impact and speed up response time.

Yaw also disputed the widespread notion that AI will be replacing humans in the workforce. On the contrary, the two will be complementing each other, with AI detecting threats in real-time and SoC teams responding accordingly—with, again, the help of AI.

Enhancing Both EX and CX with AI

Another way AI can improve work and drive a business forward is by enhancing both the employee experience (EX) and the customer experience (CX). AI can do exactly that, according to Madhur Kaushik, Senior Solutions Consultant at SymphonyAI Summit, as it can transform EX and CX in a good way. This transformation, in turn, will enhance employees’ productivity and satisfaction and improve customer retention.

The key in this case, Kaushik pointed out is having AI-driven service management—the kind SymphonyAI Summit specialises in. With it, a company can establish an AI-aided experience platform that will:

• Enable it to digitalise operations.
• Offer hybrid work.
• Automate various solutions for customers and employees.
• Transition from service level agreements (SLA) to experience level agreements (XLA).

Again, that is all to Andrew’s original point: that AI can improve work.

Malaysia Is AI-Ready

Another key revelation in the webinar is that Malaysia is one of the countries in Southeast Asia fully embracing AI. None other than Dr Karl Ng, Vice President, Digital Health & Digital Cities at MDEC, made this bold claim, citing as evidence the “fair number of [Malaysian] companies leveraging AI.”

Curiously, Dr Ng thinks this readiness to adopt AI may have been due, in large part, to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the health crisis grounding the world to a halt, Malaysian companies turned to digital tools as a lifeline to stay in business. This, according to Dr Ng “created massive awareness on the need to be online” and to leverage digital technologies—AI being one of them.

Now, Malaysia is uniquely positioned to derive the most value from this disruptive tech.

The Final Word

In the end, Andrew, Yaw, Kaushik and Dr Ng all agree that AI will be a good thing in the workplace—and will even change life itself, according to Kaushik. It will, specifically, “allow us to focus on things that are important,” said Dr Ng. But there are important caveats to take note of and address if AI will be put to good use, whether in the workplace or outside of it.

One of these considerations is the need for control, particularly on the data that will be used to “teach” AI. The key, in this case, according to Yaw, is more contextual information sharing, while Dr Ng believes experience and expertise will be critical, especially given AI’s tendency to give out small samplings of inaccurate data.

All things considered, Kaushik’s parting words for the webinar best sums up the discussion on AI: “People should look at it as a helping tool to make life easier . . .  and human intelligence will ensure that.”

If people thread wisely and responsibly, maybe that will actually be the case.

For on-demand viewing of the webinar “How Are IT Managers Using AI to Better Manage Technology” by AOPG, Fortinet, SymphonyAI Summit and MDEC, click HERE.

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