Amidst the AI revolution, e27 presents a new series showcasing how organisations embrace AI in their operations.

Gia Ngo has worked at Give.Asia, a free fundraising platform for charitable causes in Asia, since 2014. Starting as a volunteer software engineer, he is currently CTO at Give.Asia.

Ngo received his PhD from Cornell University, the US, and his B.Eng from the National University of Singapore (NUS). His research topics lie in artificial intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) applications in natural language processing and neuroscience. He has published over 20 papers with over 400 citations at international conferences and journals.

In this edition, Ngo shares how his company has embraced AI.

Edited excerpts:

How do you perceive the AI revolution and its potential impact on your industry and workforce?

The AI revolution is undoubtedly transformative, and we are witnessing just the beginning of its immense potential. Over the decades, AI technology has made remarkable strides, but what’s truly catalysing its impact is the recent move to make AI models more accessible to the public. This has brought AI to the forefront of discussions and has the potential to revolutionise the way we approach various industries, including fundraising for social causes.

As we look ahead, the future of AI will likely be characterised by its seamless integration into business processes; like how web stacks power websites behind the scenes, AI will become a foundational building block in our daily operations, quietly enhancing efficiency and effectiveness without drawing much attention. This commodification of AI will democratise access, allowing even more organisations to benefit from its capabilities.

Understanding this transformative potential, we at Give.Asia developed Sidekick AI as an assistant for fundraising with a clear goal in mind – to seamlessly embed it into our current processes. Sidekick AI is a significant step in the broader initiative called “AI for Good”, where we aspire to open up the existing AI tools we use for charitable fundraising to the public. Moreover, we’re committed to continually developing new AI solutions that have a positive and lasting impact on social causes.

In embracing ‘AI for Good’, we aim to share our AI-driven fundraising tools with partners, organisations, and individuals across the charitable sector. By doing so, we hope to empower them to maximise their fundraising efforts and create a ripple effect of positive change in the world.

As the AI revolution progresses, our workforce will also experience shifts. While AI will augment and enhance certain aspects of our work, it will also create new opportunities for creative problem-solving and strategic thinking. Our vision is to leverage AI as a powerful ally, enabling our teams to focus on what truly matters – creating meaningful connections between givers and social causes.

Through collaboration and partnerships, we believe we can collectively harness the potential of AI to uplift communities, inspire more people to become givers and create a brighter future for all. We invite like-minded organisations and individuals to join us in this journey, leveraging Sidekick AI and the broader AI for Good initiative to make a lasting impact on the charitable sector and beyond.

In what ways has your company embraced AI technologies to improve operational efficiency or enhance business processes?

Our vision at Give.Asia is to inspire everyone to be a giver. We believe that if more people can resonate with a cause and work together, we can permanently solve many problems in the world. We believe modern AI technologies offer new approaches for us to work toward that vision.

AI can help givers hear more stories and voices: We recognise that numerous organisations and individuals are working tirelessly to make the world a better place. However, their stories and efforts might not always reach a wider audience due to language barriers or challenges in making their causes compelling. We have integrated language models and generative AI technologies into our platform to address this. These AI tools assist fundraisers in crafting compelling narratives and engaging content, ensuring their messages resonate with potential donors. By harnessing AI’s capabilities, we aim to amplify the voices of those working for positive change and make their stories more accessible to the global community of givers.
AI can connect givers to causes they resonate with: We understand that every giver has unique passions and interests. Just like how streaming services like Netflix provide personalised content recommendations, we strive to make the giving experience equally tailored. By leveraging AI algorithms, we can connect givers to the causes that truly resonate with them. This not only enhances the overall giving experience but also increases the likelihood of long-term engagement with charitable organisations. Through AI-driven personalisation, we aim to create a stronger bond between givers and the causes they care about deeply.
AI can create new impacts: While fundraising for immediate needs is crucial, we believe AI can empower charitable organisations to go beyond conventional approaches and tackle the root causes of social issues. For example, AI can play a pivotal role in the healthcare sector by enabling easier and more affordable diagnosis. By utilising AI technologies, we can focus on upstream solutions to prevent problems before they escalate, creating a lasting impact and fostering sustainable change.

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As we continue to innovate, we actively explore diverse avenues to integrate AI into our operations. Whether it’s streamlining internal processes, optimising fundraising campaigns, or enhancing donor engagement, AI is becoming an integral part of many initiatives at Give.Asia. We believe that AI’s potential is vast, and by being proactive in its exploration, we can uncover new opportunities to maximise our impact on social causes.

Can you share specific examples of how AI has been integrated into your workforce to streamline operations or drive innovation?

We created Sidekick AI as a tool for our fundraising team to create campaigns more efficiently and quickly. Integrating Sidekick AI into our workforce has significantly streamlined our operations and empowered our content team to drive innovation in fundraising campaigns at Give.Asia. Here are specific examples of how Sidekick AI has been utilised:

Efficient campaign content creation: Sidekick AI was initially prototyped as a tool to aid our fundraising team in crafting campaigns more efficiently and rapidly. Creating compelling and informative content can be overwhelming with the vast number of cases we receive from individuals seeking to raise funds for medical treatments, education, and other social causes. Sidekick AI has been instrumental in generating campaign copy based on the raw information collected from beneficiaries. This enables our team to draft clear and persuasive content that resonates with potential donors, whether for an individual’s medical treatment or a charity’s fundraising drive. By automating this process, Sidekick AI saves valuable time and allows our team to focus on other critical aspects of fundraising.
Personalised marketing materials: Tailoring content to suit different audiences is essential in fundraising. Sidekick AI’s versatility enables us to create marketing copy for social media sharing that aligns precisely with the target audience’s preferences and interests. Whether it’s a child’s medical treatment campaign or a charity’s fundraising event, Sidekick AI generates drafts that cater to specific tones and angles. This personalised approach increases the effectiveness of our marketing efforts and helps build stronger connections between donors and causes.
Creative content generation: Sidekick AI extends beyond text-based content to creative assets like campaign images and infographics. Converting complex information and research into easily digestible visualisations is made simpler with Sidekick AI’s assistance. Our copywriters can transform data into engaging visuals more efficiently, enhancing our campaigns’ overall appeal and impact.
Automated video creation: Videos have become a powerful medium for storytelling and engaging audiences. Sidekick AI has been utilised to generate Instagram-style videos based on campaign content. By summarising the campaign’s text, integrating relevant images, and adding an audio track, Sidekick AI creates compelling videos that capture the essence of the cause. This automation significantly reduces the time and effort required to produce compelling video content, enhancing our multimedia marketing efforts.

What challenges or concerns did you encounter when implementing AI technologies within your organisation, and how did you address them?

Implementing AI technologies within our organisation did indeed come with its share of challenges and concerns, for example:

Identifying business needs: The most important challenge we faced was identifying specific areas within our operations where AI could make a meaningful impact. Understanding our business needs and pain points was crucial in determining where AI could fill the gaps and enhance efficiency.
Limited examples in the charitable sector: As AI adoption in the charitable sector is relatively new, there were fewer successful AI implementations in this context. This lack of reference points made it challenging to accurately foresee potential challenges and opportunities. To overcome this, we adopted an agile approach to prototyping and experimentation. By quickly creating prototypes and testing them, we gained valuable insights and iterated on our ideas swiftly.

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How do you ensure transparency and uphold ethical considerations in the use of AI technologies within your organisation to mitigate privacy concerns?

Transparency and respect for privacy are among the most fundamental foundations for everything built at Give.Asia. Some of the considerations that we stand by when introducing AI include:

Data privacy: Protecting user data is a top priority for us. Sidekick AI operates solely on publicly visible data and does not store any irrelevant information to its tasks. By limiting the data used by the AI, we ensure that sensitive or private information is not exposed, minimising privacy risks.
Understanding limitations: We recognise that AI technologies have limitations and should not be treated as one-size-fits-all solutions. Before implementing any AI solution, we look at our users’ specific needs and requirements. This approach allows us to identify where AI can be most effective and where human expertise is still essential.
Ongoing learning: We believe in continuous learning and knowledge-sharing across our technical team and the organisation. We held training sessions and workshops to ensure that our team members understood commonly used AI technologies, including their strengths and weaknesses. This knowledge enables them to make informed decisions and maintain a vigilant approach to privacy and ethics.
Human in the loop: Sidekick AI is designed to complement and assist fundraisers, not replace them. We emphasise the importance of human oversight in AI-generated outputs. By making fundraisers aware of potential errors that may arise, we encourage them to validate and review the content generated by Sidekick AI before use. This “human in the loop” approach ensures accountability and accuracy in the fundraising process.
Open-sourcing: we are committed to not only making Sidekick AI accessible to any charity or individual but also to open-sourcing our implementation. Open sourcing fosters transparency and collaboration in the AI community. By sharing our code and practices with the wider public, we encourage peer review and accountability, ensuring that our AI implementations adhere to ethical and privacy values.

How do you ensure that AI technologies complement your workforce’s existing skills and expertise rather than replacing or displacing human workers?

At Give.Asia, we firmly believe that AI technologies should complement, rather than replace, the skills and expertise of our workforce. We recognise the unique value that human workers bring to the giving space, where trust and human connections are at the core of what we do. While AI can excel in certain repetitive and large-scale tasks, we understand that human workers will always be the most vital aspect of our organisation.

To ensure that AI technologies enhance our workforce’s capabilities, we adopt the following principles:

At Give.Asia, we focus on using AI even further to enhance the core values of our team, which are growth, impact, and trust.
We view AI as an always-present but sometimes flawed assistant that must be used appropriately. Rather than seeking to replace human workers, we focus on empowering our team to leverage AI to augment their skills and abilities.
AI allows us to create more impact by automating time-consuming tasks, which frees up our team’s time to create new value for givers and find innovative ways to drive lasting social changes.
Trust is a cornerstone of our work at Give.Asia. AI technologies can help us build and reinforce trust with our users by improving campaign storytelling, providing better verification processes, and enhancing transparency. We use AI to bolster the credibility of our platform and demonstrate our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of integrity.

Attracting and retaining human talent has always been challenging in the charitable sector. AI technologies like Sidekick AI serve as a superpower that equips our team to do more and do better in their roles. Using AI to augment our capabilities, we empower our workforce to tackle complex challenges and deliver greater value to our users.

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We recognise that human connection and empathy are irreplaceable in the charitable sector. AI technologies are harnessed to enhance our team’s impact and efficiency, but they can never replace the passion, dedication, and creativity our human workforce brings.

How do you envision the future collaboration between humans and AI? What role do you see AI playing in augmenting human capabilities?

I think AI will permeate more and more industries and business processes. We will figure out more ways to integrate AI better and subtly into daily activities. As AI becomes more prevalent and deeply embedded into our lives, it will be a challenge for companies and individuals to keep growing, learning, and growing differently, too.

Here are how I envision the future of AI:

Complementing human skills: AI’s role will be to complement and augment human capabilities rather than replace them. Mundane and repetitive tasks can be efficiently handled by AI, freeing up human workers to focus on higher-level tasks that require creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence.
Enhanced decision-making: AI can process and analyse vast amounts of data quickly, providing valuable insights to humans in making informed decisions. By leveraging AI-generated insights, humans can make more strategic and data-driven choices, leading to better outcomes across various domains.
Innovation and co-creation: As AI automates routine tasks, humans can dedicate more time and energy to innovation and co-creation with AI. The collaboration between human creativity and AI’s data-driven capabilities can lead to groundbreaking solutions, especially in addressing complex societal challenges.
Continuous learning: AI can act as a catalyst for continuous learning and upskilling. As AI technologies advance, humans will need to keep pace by developing new skills and expanding their expertise. This ongoing learning process will foster a culture of adaptation and growth.
Ethical considerations: Addressing ethical considerations will be crucial as AI becomes more pervasive. Humans will need to ensure that AI systems are designed and used responsibly, with a focus on fairness, transparency, and accountability.

The future collaboration between humans and AI can be a harmonious balance where AI empowers humans to achieve more, make better decisions, and drive innovation. We can have a future where AI-driven advancements go hand in hand with human ingenuity and compassion.

What advice would you give to other company founders looking to leverage AI in their workforce?

Here is my advice:

Embrace the AI revolution: AI is not just a passing trend but a transformative force that is here to stay. The field of AI has evolved beyond mere research, and it has reached the stage of commoditisation. We should all consider embracing AI as an integral part of our business strategy.
Understand the key drivers of AI advancement: the current AI wave has three main drivers. The first is the abundance of data and the increasing power of hardware have made many modern AI approaches possible. Secondly, there has been a shift in focus from AI as a scientific endeavour to one of engineering. The desire to build and apply AI solutions has been a significant driving force. Thirdly, the open-source culture has fostered the development and adoption of foundational AI technologies and models. Understanding these drivers will enable you to make informed decisions about adopting and developing your AI capabilities effectively.
Contextualise AI adoption: leveraging AI should align with your company’s specific context and business needs. Every company is unique, and AI should be integrated where it can fill gaps, enhance productivity, and create value. AI adoption should be driven by a clear understanding of your company’s objectives and strategic vision.
Complement human expertise: view AI as a tool to augment human capabilities rather than replace them. While AI can excel in handling repetitive and data-intensive tasks, human creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence remain invaluable. Strive to find the right balance between human judgment and AI-driven insights, leveraging AI to empower your workforce rather than displacing them.
Commit to responsible AI practices: prioritise ethical considerations, transparency, and fairness in your AI initiatives. Responsible AI practices are essential to build trust with customers, employees, and stakeholders. Ensure that AI models are developed and deployed responsibly, adhering to privacy and data protection regulations.

The reasons laid out above motivate us to initiate AI For Good at Give.Asia. We love to invite other organisations, charities, companies, and individuals to see how we can leverage AI to give better. I think we have a lot more to learn and understand the gaps that AI can fill. We would love to work on open-source solutions with other partners to create lasting impacts.

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