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AI is in our offices, in our homes and in our pockets. This is true in many countries around the world, but the United Arab Emirates( UAE) stands as a shining example of forethought on all things AI. Examples of the government’ s vision include its National Program for Artificial Intelligence and its status as the first country to establish an AI ministry. As more and more organisations find ways to integrate analytics and models into their operations, we will move deeper and deeper into an era of unprecedented enterprise intelligence.
In taking advantage of the new opportunities AI brings, organisations must balance the temptation of impactful quick wins with the need to deliver sustainable Digital Transformation. The former requires a short-term strategy that has one broad goal – to prove the valueadding power of AI. Teams should select high-impact use cases with solutions that can be launched easily within reasonable timeframes.
A good guide in choosing these use cases is to explore what areas of the business are targeted for improvement and ask who the beneficiaries will be and how success can be measured. Those proposing the use case must then articulate why AI is the ideal option for transformation and explain where the necessary data is stored. After this, the consequences of a failed or stalled project should be discussed before project leaders sketch out a timeline.
Sid Bhatia, Area VP and General Manager – Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Dataiku
With the right people in place and early successes having inspired decision makers, the enterprise can look to the longer term.
The right technology stack will be critical in allowing businesses to match tools and solutions with selected use cases. Intuitive interfaces and dashboards and thorough documentation for governance and auditing purposes are critical. Just as critical are the people assigned to make Universal AI a reality. These are the leaders that will change the mindsets of colleagues to match business ambitions and to grasp the opportunities in AI that the UAE economy will deliver. The organisation needs to identify ambassadors and champions who will inspire and guide interdepartmental co-operation on the creation of models and agents.
Champions can be teams of analysts who are skilled in quantifying value returns and presenting them as inspiration for others. Or they can be power users who are good at articulating the benefits of AI. Also crucial are team and departmental leaders who can use their influence to initiate upskilling programmes. And IT managers will be at the centre of deployment, data access and governance. With the right people in place and early successes having inspired decision makers, the enterprise can look to the longer term.
Beyond quick wins
As the marginal returns of each successive quick win diminish, the business will scale its AI capabilities with a fundamental shift in company culture that reduces the incremental costs of AI use cases. It is in this phase of the AI journey that governance becomes indispensable as it focuses teams on risk-adjusted value delivery and on the efficiency of scaling, all while remaining compliant with government standards.
UAE law on AI is varied and continues to evolve, so, as enterprises scale their AI efforts, it will be prudent to formalise a strategy that balances these developments with the business’ s own view of responsible AI and the innovation requirements of MLOps. Governance as it relates to proofs-of-concept( POC), self-service data and industrialised data products must be clearly understood. Experimentation is to be encouraged but teams need to know when self-service projects should move into the funding, testing and deployment stages.
Modern MLOps teams embed governance into the AI lifecycle, from data collection to operationalisation.
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