The “Internet Trends 2019” report indicated that the internet has connected almost 4 billion of the world’s population and 26 billion digital devices. The IoT trend will continue to grow, with it come amounts of data that will grow exponentially. Thomas L. Friedman, a column writer for the New York Times, once stressed in an article that the speed of technological advancement today is getting faster and faster, and is already so fast that people can no longer touch and understand it.
During the Google Cloud Summit in Taiwan, Keynes Cheng, cofounder and chief operating officer of iKala, stated that in this era with an explosion of technology and information, no matter how much effort people put in, they cannot make up the difference between themselves and technology; however, AI is the important answer that can lead humans across the gap.
Will AI replace humans or create more opportunities for humans?
In his speech, Keynes Cheng mentioned that according to the research by Oxford University scholars Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, in the next ten to twenty years, there is a chance that 47% of the jobs will be replaced by AI; but if applied properly, Ai can create more job opportunities for humans.
Take iKala, the AI marketing technology company that provides Google Cloud services, for example. iKala is committed to helping Taiwanese enterprises implement Google Cloud services through its in-depth cloud and AI technologies, from basic data processing to the digital transformation of the systems, companies such as CommonWealth Magazine, KKBOX, VoiceTube and other Taiwanese game developers have also received the help of iKala in their transformation. During the transformation process, not only did iKala allow the enterprises to lower operational costs and find marketing strategies with higher benefits, it also changed the features of the industries and increased job opportunities.
Keynes Cheng explained that enterprises digitalized their data (digitalization), improved their data learning and analysis capabilities (analytics), and extended their applications (application) – these are all within the service scope of “iKala DAA”. He also stressed that this will create a new type of business service.
iKala DAA flywheel helps enterprises perform digital transformation through AI
iKala DAA flywheel helps enterprises perform digital transformation through AI
Keynes Cheng used CommonWealth Magazine as example, explaining that in the past, whenever there were presidential elections or popular social issues, the number of views of internet media articles would increase; however, under high media exposure, the sudden increase in traffic flow usually caused the websites to become unreachable or take a long time to load. When faced with similar problems, iKala used the auto-scale function of Google Cloud Platform to increase the flexibility of the traffic that the system can bear and provide sufficient space effectively during traffic peaks, thereby minimizing the usage difficulties of users. Keynes Cheng explained that the official website, media streaming service and B2B online learning platforms of CommonWealth Magazine were all built on GCP; through data digitalization, not only was the difficulty for maintenance by engineers reduced significantly, it also saved over half of the operation and maintenance time costs.
AI identifies the correct audience to create maximum results with minimum cost
In addition to data storage and optimization, iKala also improved the role that AI plays in enterprise operations. The advantages of AI empowerment are shown through data analysis (analytics) and learning services. Take the monthly traffic flow of CommonHealth Magazine of almost a million for example; how to accurately identify the audience to push articles, products and events to the readers who really need them is a difficulty that needs to be urgently overcome. The implementation of AI technology can accurately and efficiently grasp the reading preferences and needs of readers through the popularity of articles, keywords and reader preferences, and deliver the information that the readers need in real-time.
In addition, the data analysis and learning capabilities of AI can provide effective auxiliary applications in commercial marketing. Take the “udn shopping” platform for example, through iKala’s Picaas service (application), AI technology can be used to quickly generate large amounts of images that meet the Google advertisement specifications, allowing the launch speed of commodities to be 400 times faster compared to traditional speeds, while also saving 80% of the photoshop costs.
According to the estimation of IDC, digital business models will make up over 50% of the global GDP in 2021. However, according to the 2019 CEO survey by PwC Taiwan, up to 33% of Taiwanese CEOs do not have layout plans to develop AI as yet. This shows that the speed of Taiwan in the digital transformation wave is relatively slower.
AI digital transformation is now the general trend. Enterprises release workloads by implementing AI. This can improve the work values of employees effectively so that they can focus more on the innovative development of products and technologies, and go with the technology growth trend using faster and smarter methods so that they will not be flooded by the waves of technologies and information and further losing international competitiveness.
(This article was reproduced from TechOrange.)