Ready for artificial intelligence?
The overnight success of ChatGPT secured AI’s place as the shooting star of emerging technologies. It took just two months to reach 100 million active users, leaving other big-name online services trailing in its wake, reported Reuters1.
Graphic: Rapid Adoption of AI Applications. Source: Kyle Hailey, Exponential Thinking, 20232
ChatGPT hit a million users in just five days: a milestone it took Netflix five years to reach. But that meteoric rise was almost matched by the speed with which it crested the peak on the hype curve.
The Hindustan Times reported a 3% decline3 in users just a year after its launch. But there’s far more to AI than the noise created around
Chat GPT, so how does that translate into the way you run your business today?
Artificial intelligence is going to change the way that we work and the way we interact with each other, with networks and with devices. The capability is evolving and new generative AI tools are being released all the time.
‘Generative AI, which specialises in creating synthetic content including text, audio, images and even video, will change the world. But it's early days and we're still working through the business cases,’ says Simon
But that hasn’t stopped businesses joining the goldrush to invest in its potential, with global spending on AI expected to reach £250 billion by 2026, according to IDC4. And that frontier spirit is already paying dividends.
The same survey found that early adopters enjoyed a 35% improvement in innovation by investing in AI over the past three years5. It also reported a 33% improvement in sustainability, while customer and employee retention each got a 32% boost.
‘AI lets organisations strip out the noise and have a subset of people, rather than an army of hundreds working in network operations, for example. Team morale increases dramatically when AI is seen as complementary not adversarial.’ says Jurgen.
‘By actively embracing AI, a UK tier-one service provider has already seen 80% improvement in its ability to deal with operational issues. The workforce could be redeployed to more meaningful tasks.'
‘The payback on investment is super-fast. This attracts board attention and investment. Typically, big IT projects takes 18-24 months. This change was in a matter of six to nine weeks. That’s orders of magnitude improvement to important business issues.’
But all advanced AI applications are data greedy. The more data we push through these intelligent systems, the more incremental gain we see for organisations.
Over the next few years, the total volume of data created, captured, copied and consumed worldwide will grow rapidly. That will be coupled with an almost exponential growth in the infrastructure needed to process these datasets.
That growth is a fundamental change in IT requirements for business. It shifts the way networks operate. Heavy downstream traffic is replaced by data sent symmetrically to and from the cloud.
AI works by getting training data and learning from it. The more data it gets, the better and more accurate it will be.
That data has to come from somewhere: from cameras, people, or machines out in the real world on the end of connections.
That will exponentially drive demand from a service provider and network perspective.
A growing field for AI is computer vision: the ability of computers to recognise and analyse moving images in real-time. In grab-and-go stores, shoppers simply fill their bag while computer vision recognises every item and bills it to your account.
Computer vision needs no additional radio tags or devices. The tech can also handle number plate recognition in car parks, facial-recognition for front-of-house security cameras or keeping track of livestock on a farm.
In retail, a business needs to process a transaction within a few milliseconds. The further you send your data, the higher the latency and the longer it takes to get a response.
‘AI tends to push more computing towards the edge. Businesses need a local bandwidth connection from their network operators. Edge computing means you can reduce your latency and reduce your overall bandwidth costs,’ says Simon.
Edge computing means placing data processing power as close to the source operator as your network architecture allows. With fibre, the packets of data travel at 200 metres a microsecond. So, the latency is very low to enable regional-based networking.
This need to rethink and ramp up infrastructure is driving demand for meshed metro networks. By opening multiple local interconnected paths, if one is blocked or busy, data can take another route.
Robust and flexible links such as this to a data centre in the same metro area enable low-latency connectivity without the need for banks of servers on each of your premises.
AI is an opportunity for businesses to review their network capabilities and upgrades to legacy systems built up over decades.
‘Organisations tend to run parallel legacy systems. And there is a cumulative effect over time. Unpicking that is a challenge for digital transformation projects,’ says Jurgen.
AI can even help with that: identifying the biggest problem, the easiest to fix or those likely to give you the best return.
By speeding up the evaluation process, AI can help you prioritise your best efforts or pivot to other parts of the business that may need greater priority than you first thought. Businesses can see positive results in a single quarter. That is phenomenal.’
The rise of AI means a transition for all of us. But business has been transitioning since the arrival of the printing press and production lines.
AI certainly replaces some skills. But it requires people to develop new skills. It's a natural evolution. AI is a tool to deliver on that. It's not the end of society, it’s a great opportunity for those with the right network connectivity to seize.
Now that you understand how AI might impact your business in future, get in touch with us for all your network requirements at WholesaleBD@virginmedia.co.uk or contact your account manager for more information.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01. [2] https://www.kylehailey.com/post/exponential-thinking. [3] https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/chatgpt-users-decline-3-globally-but-rise-0-4-in-the-us-71694424824369.html..[4] https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS49670322 ‘Worldwide spending on AI systems will pass $300bn by 2026’ IDC, 2022. [5] https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P33198 ‘Worldwide artificial intelligence spending guide’ IDC, 2022
