My key takeaways from the AI Everything Panel at GITEX 2021

After 18 months of COVID restrictions, heads down, delivering services and seeing our customers thrive as we push the boundaries of how tech can support them in their missions, it was time to take stock and go exploring again. I was delighted to be invited to travel to Dubai to GITEX by the UAE - UK Business council (UUBC), representing Kainos as a technology leader and as the leading partner for digital transformation for the UK government. 

The UUBC is a thought leadership forum that brings together senior business representatives, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders from both countries to identify and help to resolve barriers to trade and investment between the UAE and the UK.

GITEX is a world-leading conference with nearly 1,000 speakers. Topics discussed included AI, data, blockchain, skills, D&I and the event also features a tradeshow, with over 1,000 organisations from across the globe contributing.

Personally, I was glad to satisfy my itch to 'get out' and see the big wide world again and participate in such a fantastic event. I was joined by a couple of my colleagues, Kieran Barber who leads the Kainos Public Sector division, and Marc Nevin one of our Senior Software Engineers. 

As part of the AI Everything stream I shared Kainos’ experiences in a panel led by Liz Whitefield (Hippo Digital, Director) and Simon Penney (Her Majesty's Trade Commissioner for the Middle East, and Her Majesty's Consul General) which resulted in some great discussion on a number of topics. Here is an overview of what we talked about:

• AI isn't just about the robot that acts like a human, it serves to improve how we operate in the digital world, making a real difference to people. AI is needed to maintain the pace of change, meet growing customer expectations and deliver excellence at scale; the AI technology available today can do all of this. We see this in DVSA where we impacted fraud detection and in HMLR where they are now a leader in AI through our combined work on document comparison.
• AI has its roots in academia, but now we need to apply our tried and tested core engineering skills to bring it to production, delivering real and sustainable value. This means addressing issues of difficulty around repeatability, efficiency, control, transparency and ethics.

We can resolve these issues using techniques such as MLOps, data engineering and emerging ethics standards. We have proven this through the services we have delivered, and that's the journey we need to take organisations on. 

We had a great discussion with Scott Nowson, PWC, where we agreed that one of the most exciting things about AI in business today is 'boring AI', many aspects of AI are now mature in the market and allow us to solve real-world problems and support innovation with impact. All the while, research and progression in the AI field will continue to grow.

• Our cloud partners AWS and Azure are making huge inroads in commoditising AI. Their tools provide power beyond customers increasing expectations, this should be a significant part of any technologist's toolkit today as we strive to focus on high-value work and as costs need to be managed. Organisations can no longer afford to overlook AI as a core part of their digital transformation journey.
• Ultimately AI is just another technology, and while POCs and innovation is often required, it's time for organisations to evaluate it more robustly, strategically investing based on business value.
• A reoccurring theme in our discussions, and across the whole conference, was people. To really make AI successful now, we need to consider the wider team required to make an impact with this technology. Data scientists will be key, but we also need policymakers to understand the implications of AI technologies as well as engineers, architects, testers, business analysts and data engineers. As with most software development, a rounded, multi-disciplinary team is needed for success. Traditional approaches of growing this talent through our school and university systems isn't going to be sufficient to meet the global demand; we need more apprentice programmes, we need to aggressively access underrepresented groups, support cross-skilling into these areas and create new ways of increasing the global skill level in technology and AI.

The Kainos story is one I'm very proud to be able to tell and I was delighted to see the interest in our experience, as so much of what we're doing in the AI space, is making a path for others to follow in the flourishing industry.

If you would like to find out more about our AI services and how we are helping customers click here.