Dr Ayesha Khanna, Co-Founder and CEO, Addo AI
In her keynote speech on the first day of Echelon X, Addo AI CEO and Co-Founder Dr Ayesha Khanna discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) is being used today in businesses and how it impacts organisations.
She divided AI into three categories: One that makes humans more productive, another that makes machines more productive, and finally, one that makes AI more productive.
“If you think about any business and divide it based on how much work is done by labour, machines, and systems, then you can find the right interventions to use Generative AI,” Dr Khanna said.
In the context of AI that makes humans more productive, while the general public might be familiar with names such as ChatGPT or Gemini, according to Dr Khanna, the next big step is Enterprise GPT.
“As a niche AI consulting firm, we work with some of the world’s largest healthcare and financial services companies. We’re noticing that people don’t just want one AI assistant like ChatGPT. They want an entire Enterprise GPT stack,” she explained.
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“They want to know how to embed Generative AI throughout the organisation. Is this happening already? Ninety-nine per cent of companies don’t do this. So, that’s a huge opportunity.”
Echelon X was held on May 15-16 at Singapore Expo Hall 2. The event aims to empower startups, investors, corporates, SMEs, government institutions, and other ecosystem stakeholders with tools and insights. This year, it features 150 speakers and four stages.
AI for inclusivity
On the first day of Echelon X, another notable session on the implementation of AI is a keynote speech by Dr. Leslie Teo, Senior Director, AI Singapore.
The organisation is a national platform whose mission is to build national AI capabilities. Dr Teo explained that there are elements to the work that AI Singapore is doing, from research to training to building AI products, including an inclusive multilingual model called the SEA-LION (Southeast Asian Languages in Just One Network).
According to Dr Teo, there are several reasons why having a localised LLM is crucial for the region. One includes the beginning of the era of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a type of AI that can perform a wide range of cognitive tasks at a level on par with or even better than humans. As one of the various definitions of strong AI, this ability contrasts with ‘narrow AI’ designed to perform just specific tasks.
“We are a step closer to AGI, and it will have a huge impact; it’s foundational. One way of thinking about that foundational impact is by measuring the impact on the region’s economic activity,” Dr Teo explained.
Apart from that, there was also a problem of inclusivity and benchmarking, which is currently mostly done in English.
“We know that most models are built by teams in the US and China. Nothing is wrong with this, but there are very few teams from this part of the world. There are very few multilingual models, especially focused on Southeast Asia. This is true for both open and closed-source models,” Dr Teo said.
“Essentially, our goal and mission is not to compete, but to complement.”
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