Artificial
Intelligence
Intelligence
Over the past years, the full realisation of the transformer architecture (a digital neural network that can process vast amounts of data) has completely transformed the Artificial Intelligence (AI) landscape. Most AI research and development has pivoted towards Generative AI (GenAI), a subfield that employs computational models to generate text, images, video, and audio.
In many countries, government-funded organisations are developing large AI models for use in fields such as education, research, and healthcare. Unsurprisingly, many organisations are also integrating GenAI into their products and services in pursuit of profitability. Businesses are also seeking real-world applications in the name of efficiency, while also aligning with the responsible deployment of AI in those applications. For example, there is an increase in the use of AI-Concierge, where AI can assist users (like hotel guests) with enquiries around the clock via popular messaging apps.
A key adoption bottleneck is the lack of knowledge that the general consumer, as well as many employees in organisations, have about prompt engineering for GenAI. Put simply, for any GenAI model to produce what a user wants, the user needs to know what type of instructions to provide the model with to get a desired result. This has pushed Agentic AI into the spotlight as an obvious solution for the novice AI user. In Agentic AI, the AI system serves the user by operating autonomously to perform pre-defined tasks with little or no human involvement or supervision.
Large-scale AI models (which are trained using enormous datasets) are becoming widely available and accessible, and applications built around them are increasingly being integrated into everyday life. The emergence of other new Human-Computer Interactions (HCI) powered by AI and concepts such as AI Love (where humans form intimate connections with AI) is also gaining traction. A major consequence of the advancements in AI is that it is now a significant topic of geopolitical interest and controversy.
In essence, AI is a key tool in the political world and as it now represents the greatest asset in the geopolitical game of AI supremacy. Governments are investing more in developing AI models and supporting infrastructure as they seek to establish themselves as AI superpowers to realise the full potential of AI for broader society and national security. The unfortunate result of the race for AI dominance appears to come at the cost of a responsible or ethical AI based on principles such as trustworthiness, explainability, and human-centric AI.