Abu Dhabi ''Talking About AI, Before It Was Cool''

[Music] ladies and gentlemen distinguished guests and colleagues a very good morning and welcome to abudhabi finance week I am honored to welcome you to this very exciting session titled ababi talks about AI before it was cool we're gathered here today to explore the remarkable Journey that abudhabi and the remarkable journey of abudhabi and the UAE in the realm of artificial intelligence just as AI is reshaping our world this remarkable region has taken a pioneering role in this transformative technology and as we delve in this discussion I would like to highlight that the commitment of Abu Dhabi under the Visionary leadership of his highness she khed B Muhammad bin Z AL nahan is not merely about embracing AI but about shaping its future and as some of you may have seen in the recent announcements of the UAE government annual meetings emphasizing the export of AI applications and systems underscores the Strategic importance of AI in in our leadership's vision our panel today brings together some of the brightest Minds in the field and together we will uncover the significant achievements that have made ababi a leader in AI long be before it became a global Trend so let's embark on this enlightening journey of Discovery and Innovation Aron we know AI is important for all Industries so what is its significance in the financial and banking sector thank you uh first of all good morning all I think it's great to see uh people turning up here and listen to our views in this very very important topic um J AI I mean I think these are the bur's words for me the most important thing whether it's financial industry or any other industry it's about customer engagement um I like the previous session where and uh I think industry colleague said that it is about Connecting People yeah so um I think artificial intelligence if it can be used to get insight about customers what they are thinking predicting their needs and personalizing what they're really looking for and providing them that those tailor made solutions that's going to be the biggest biggest outcome of uh artificial intelligence and and hence uh enhancing customer experience coming out with penetrated offers giving the vow impact by nudging customers with what might be in their mind and I think that's where maybe the fex and financial industry is going but that's one part of it um banks are also in the business of regulating risk minimizing fraud and that's a second line of I would say investment or thought process that I see that with the variety of data which is is there how um artificial intelligence could be used to predict frauds even before they happen so that legitimate customers they are given their due credit and people who are not that great they could be potentially penalized accordingly so I think those two are really really important uh sections where I see artificial intelligence playing a major role in the banking and uh financial industry that's very interesting Marcus what specific initiatives has abudhabi undertaken to cultivate a new generation of skilled coders and AI innovators and how this investment in human capital impacted key sectors within the emirat sure thank you so much thank you for having me uh I really appreciate it good morning everyone so 402 specifically is is a coding school that was uh initiated by the alab Department of Education and knowledge um and and that's what we're trying to specialize in to be one of the other pillars of of bringing talent to the region and creating this Talent within the region right there's there's a concept of of being able to to Outsource Talent OR to find talent that may do what you need them to do but they don't have the context locally that allows them to apply what they know here with the skills that they may need and create something that's tailor made and that fits to what's needed uh here so it's very important to invest in this uh sector which is something El and the El government is doing an amazing job at uh so there's there's a ton of initiatives as well with uh golden Vis opportunities as well as uh opening up uh you know a ton of companies uh within adgm or hub71 and a ton of others uh to come here and this Talent also helps bring these companies here right companies won't come here unless there are Talent available to help them uh Drive their uh their growth so it it kind of goes hand inand and it's been it's been an amazing journey and and you can see now with how many companies are coming here with how many people want to get established here uh talking about Louisa coming here to to Abu Dhabi potentially it needs that Talent right it needs that layer of talent and so that's that's one of the things that we're trying to contribute in and something that Abu Dhabi is doing an amazing job of being even ahead of the curve on definitely and I think uh the collaboration aspect is key because to us it seems like we're all one working as one big team serving the same Target which is based on our leadership's vision so uh going back to uh Aron how does uh how do you think abudhabi effectively forer collaboration and data ing between International and local industry stakeholders to create a robust AI ecosystem that stimulates Innovation while ensuring responsible development for the benefit of the economy and the job market there is a life cycle that we need to understand you know artificial intelligence it's not Magic first of all you know that's a myth that I would like to break I mean I maybe sounding controversial but it's not uh going to happen unless you have a good quality data and good s sample and representation of data so I as a financial institution can have hortes of data which are bases the transaction and the customers and the engagements and the events that I have with my customers and my stakeholders now what if what if I can get more data to argument my existing data and the way they say your models are as good as the data that you expose to your models they are as mature as the the data and the type of data the variety of data that you expose to your model and I think that's where I see the role of this ecosystem of UAE Abu Dhabi Dubai kind of playing a major major role because you are potentially dealing with the same set of customer who are not only taking the financial services they're also taking the government services they are taking electricity fuel they are coming into the country visa and so on now if there could be an ecosystem obviously subjected to rules and regulations as uh Allowed by Central Bank and other Regulatory Agencies if you can argument your existing data with the additional data now think about the power of it you can get more insight about the same customer and again going back to the previous point that I make which means I can then solicit you better because I now know your DNA better I know your persona better and once I know you as a person better it's like a relationship you know that what's going to wow me you know what is going to up upset me and you will do things which I will like and you potentially will not do things for example calling you for a card which you may not be interested in because that's not your Affinity I mean you don't go to airports while you're offering me a card with airport lounge access which is what most of the cards Doo so I think personalization become will become uh really hyper personalization and that's only possible that's my view if you argument what you already have with what is there in the market so adjacent data sets which are there and I think that's where scad in Abu Dhabi and different other government agencies they really really play a major role I mean again hypothetical scenario imagine if fraud data the the criminal data could be argumented with what you already have how well you can build your models to to predict that a particular customer you're going to be on on boarding is potentially not going to or it's going to be defaulting and that can save so much of dat and can help uh economy on the whole very well said Marcus from your perspective so that's it AUD mentioned everything that is pretty much relevant it's it's about making sure that the quality is is there that the collaboration is there that uh companies are able to talk right so ABAB has been doing a wonderful job at this you can see m42 right so it's it's a lot of healthcare companies that are then able to apply the platform g42 utilizing their artificial intelligence but even yesterday they announced AI 71 right which is again a collaboration of of uh using large language models and applying it to multiple other sources of data so I think it's really important that this collaboration happens specifically because individual organizations may have individual biases right and the as run mentioned the model is only as good as the data that's fed into it right when you start diversifying and that data has different points of of Ingress and different opinions in the sense it it starts becoming much more relevant it starts becoming much more trustworthy and I think that's something that's really really important to have and also it allows for expertises that people may not understand right so somebody may be good at what they do they don't know that they're not good at something that they don't know right and so being able to collaborate with other companies and seeing oh wow okay this is the data that these other companies do super important for the uh for the adoption and that's I think that's one of the benefits of having such an integrated system in uh in Abu Dhabi and you see now uh Department of government enablement with Tam app and all the services together right it also allows for much easier time and and much quicker time to be able to resolve issues centralized help desks and things like that which really allow for a quicker integration all around of course and it's also for the benefit of the individuals itself I mean everyone seems uh very happy about the services and uh I mean thinking about digital transformation um and all the uh AI tools and technologies that the government is uh offering uh is very very helpful I mean it makes our lives so much easier absolutely uh so I know we don't have a crystal ball but at this time next year what is one thing that both of you would like to be able to see we have achieved over the past year Arun do you want to go yes I can um yes we we we cannot predict we are having so much of data still we cannot predict sounds contradictory but that's reality right you'd never know how the geopolitical situation is going to play how macroeconomic factors are going to play but one thing for certain and that's again my personal View and believe being in the industry now for more than 25 years in this is uh height will get into reality it's already happening I think idation gen it's it's here to stay that's first of all my belief the way I potentially 12 12 months down the line what I see is the way I talked about hyper personalization I think llms are going to be personalized for the organizations who are going to be investing into llms now I'm not recommending and mentioning that one should build their own llm because an expensive uh Affair however can you bank ify it can you tune it for banking can I Fab ify it you know if I represent Fab can I you know if I'm a compliance person can I compy it what I really mean by that is I think Investments potentially need to happen in terms of leveraging llms as the base uh within the security uh firewalls and the rules expose the internal data and then come out with the variant of llm which is suited to your organization's need and organization's use case I strongly believe that that's where you know 24 is going to be a breakthrough year because if honestly it will not happen in 24 I see this going down which I'm not wishing and saying will happen but my my view is that's what is going to happen and that's where I think efforts need to be put to uh to productionize rather than just doing the poc's enough poc's ideation hype cycle over we all believe that it's a technology which is going to help the cause but any organization any fintech which can help in creating that part to production for Journal purpose llms so that they are Bank ifying it they are personalized for organizations's need and use case I think that will be the deal Clincher as far as I think that's amazing Marcus what do you think so for me as a self-proclaimed technologist and someone who's uh working in a disruptive higher education institution I'm going to go completely against the grain of both of those things and I'm going to say very conservatively I hope that within the next year we achieve some form of Regulation um I think uh especially regulation around the growth of these models is very very needed um we can see it with the controversy around what just happened with open Ai and SE malman and also around the questions of generative Ai and and who owns what it creates right is it the owner of the prompt is it the owner of the model especially when you're talking about models like stable diffusion Dolly Etc that are coming up with images and videos and so I I really want to see uh a more cons conservative approach in that sense and just kind of uh walking before we can run kind of making sure that we nail down the details uh to ensure that as the growth happens we're in a better place for it and we're ready for it uh for everything that's coming and I think that's probably one of the most important things that I'm seeing and it's not because we're in adgm and it's not because of of everything here I honestly truly do believe that I think it's super important that we start looking into you know the the as as the previous panelist uh mentioned it's not just the good it's also the bad it's also the ability to generate a ton of content much quicker it's the ability to to achieve much broader reach or Outreach with a ton of of things that are just not true and I think that that misinformation as well that that ability to to create so much misinformation as an Outreach really we need to look into a couple of things if you please allow me to further ad I think I respect that thought and absolutely that's what I what was my caveat as well that within the rules of the game however you know let's be real co-pilot is a reality you know so Genna at mass is happening you know on teams uh you you already have co-pilot institutionalized it's in the you know Journal availability which means uh on Microsoft products you already have these things uh institutionalized I mean we already are using whether knowingly or unknowingly these llms Ms I'm not sure if you have seen the recent co-pilot version of msword as soon as you open a blank document it gives you so-call chat GPD kind of window on what would you like to write and I I tried uh using my name on something and it kind of picked up stuff from LinkedIn as well yeah it's reality so yes governance and all absolutely get that I'm a part of the bank so that's given but we need to figure out a way so that it is not getting into uncontrollable chaos and hence I talked about something which is specific suited to your organization need that's what should Prevail in 24 and onward definitely and I'm sure we can achieve even more under our Visionary leadership in conclusion our exploration today has shed light on ab's extraordinary journey in pioneering AI shaping not only not only its technological landscape but also its economic and educational future the intersection of innovate Innovative Financial Technologies investment in the next generation of AI talent and strategic collaborations forms the foundation of Abu Dhabi success story in Ai and as we navigate the future the importance of collaboration data sharing and fostering a thriving Tech ecosystem remains key towards ensuring that Abu Dhabi continues to lead AI to lead in AI with a shared commitment to Excellence and responsible Innovation thank you for joining us in this enlightening Journey where the fusion of finance and Technology paves the way for a brighter collaborative future in ababi thank [Applause] you