Ubiquitous AI lands firmly in Australia - 2023 Australian Advanced-analytics and AI review
Sriraman ("Sri") Annaswamy GAICD IIT IIM
Advanced Analytics, AI, ML and BPM Researchers and Advisors | Scaling Advanced analytics COEs | Digital GCCs | ex PWC M&A |ex CBA GSD |ex E-Lance (now Upwork)|ex ICICI | IIT-IIM | AICD
DISCLAIMER:
?Swamy and Associates has done business with or currently does business with or aims to do business with any and all individuals and entities named in this and all previously published editions of the 19-yr-old-Swamys Perspectives
?VERY Important note:?Swamy’s Perspectives’ definition of “Australian stalwarts” includes "Australian analytics Orphans", those stalwart individuals and/or entities geographically based offshore but lead advanced-analytics and AI engagements for Australia head-quartered organizations, directly or indirectly via service providers and consulting firms
?Dear all
Welcome back to our annual edition of our 19 year-old Swamys Perspectives, the Wisden of the Australian Advanced-analytics and AI sector (Wisden as in John Wisden’s path-breaking cricketing almanack)
?From the ancient ChatGPT that enthralled all of us around last Christmas / New Year’s time with its ability to summarize and generate all sorts of documents through? Humane’s ?“AI Pin” which threatens to keep us connected to AI models (incl ChatGPT) 24/7, 365 days a year to Google’s Gemini which can create experiences from your 10-year old photos,? this year saw “AI Mania” morph and firmly establish itself as “Ubiquitous AI” in a manner that now is turning our lives, inside out
?Even more interestingly but predictably for many of us old owls, all of this occurred just when both social media and mainstream media were deluged with clickbait articles bewailing the Tech Wreck and the consequent layoffs ??
?Yup, that old Bay Area adage for those who give up on innovation and retreated, “only the tourists go home” rang true, yet again, perhaps truer than it ever did in the last 2 decades!
?Eventually when they pivoted, most Australian mainstream media journalists published hastily scribbled articles which didn’t even attempt to make the basic distinction between Generative AI and traditional Classificatory AI
They ended up lumping it all together as “AI” and liberally adding full table-spoons of the R word “Responsible” to anything and everything they could. Hence, we got "Responsible AI frameworks”, “Responsible AI regulations”,? “Responsible AI white paper” all quoting newly minted “Responsible AI” experts who apparently were responsible for ensuring that “Responsible AI”? was responsibly implemented, did you get that? ?? (there were a handful of non-mainstream exceptions but more about it later)
?All of this even before we were deluged by delightful events entitled “AI Day”, “AI Week”, “AI Month” and very soon, “AI Millennium” too ??
?But the biggest upshot of all of this AI Cacophony caused by Generative AI (some of it still continuing esp here in Australia) was that it put ALL types of AI incl good old traditional classificatory AI firmly on the agenda of Australian Corporate Boards and Governments (state and Federal)
?Indeed, that remains the biggest news of this year, the exponentially raised interest in all things AI from private sector boards and exec leadership through government departments and agencies (state and federal) to non-profits and charities
?Rightho then, what were the major Advanced-analytics and AI themes that dominated this year?
?Six Advanced-analytics and AI themes that are now here to stay at Australian organizations
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2. MLOps platforms, the lynchpin of scaling Advanced-analytics and AI
If replacing legacy data platforms with an Azure / AWS supported cloud data warehouse or a lakehouse (eg Snowflake / Databricks) was the data engineering story of the last few years, the acceleration this year shifted to the adoption of ?MLOps platforms to scale machine learning applications, accelerate their deployment and manage their maintenance Three stand outs here were ?three prominent MLOps platforms here in Australia – H20.ai ’s Driverless AI ?(part-owned by Commonwealth Bank of Australia), Dataiku’s DSS Platform and AWS’s Sagemaker MLOps platform As Australian companies focus on their CI / CD pipelines towards automating machine learning deployment in 2024, expect these MLOps platforms (and potentially, others without much presence here in Australia) to start becoming prominent both in intent and speed of execution
3. Rise of Synthetic Data in training ML models esp in data privacy heavy areas such as healthcare and health insurance?
As we stated in our 31 March 2023 edition of Swamys Perspectives entitled “Synthetic Data – Generative AI’s killer application”, the biggest potential for Gen AI impact lies in the utilisation of Synthetic Data to accelerate the training of ML models particularly in areas where access to data is highly restricted such as healthcare and health insurance
Synthetic Data is neither real nor fake data, it pertains to data sets generated by Gen AI engines but which share most of the properties of real life data sets and hence can be used to train ML models in the same way as real data For a more elaborate understanding, do click on the link below to our 31st March 2023 article https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7047212033162805249/
Why is usage of Synthetic Data critical? The most time-consuming part of any major ML project, even a simple POV, is the data governance approval for the data-sets (even PCI sanitized and tokenized data sets) to be released for the actual training of the models For a typical ASX 20 organization, that’s between 2 to 3 months (add another month, if it involves access by offshore data scientists) and for a healthcare / health insurance organization, it is even more of a struggle!
Synthetic Data provided by Generative AI, as long as it is correctly prompt engineered and curated, can fill that void and help accelerate the training of ML models esp at the POV stage Two interesting examples of Synthetic Data this year were:
?4. Contact centre automation and customer digital journey
One of the two areas where AI (traditional classificatory AI, not Generative AI) has been the most effective this year (as has been over at least the last 3 years) has been in driving the automation of customer contact centres and the consequent increased productivity levels
From the commonplace chatbots to the more sophisticated use of intent mapping NLP algorithms for triaging customer chats and calls, this year saw a sustained high level of activity in this area
As mentioned in the previous section, we expect the acceleration in the usage of Synthetic Data in 2024 especially customer personas to extend to contact centres as well and make a significant impact on the customer journey
5. Risk and compliance analytics esp scam and fraud analytics
The second area where AI has made a strong impact has seen everything this year, from simple NLP to assist and automate document creation for legal teams all the way to scam warnings and fraud analytics
The stand out this year was Insurance Australia Group’s ?(IAG) Fraud analytics team that developed and implemented a fraudulent claims detection and prioritization ML model including estimating fraud investigation cost modelling across its entire motor claims portfolio
Other organizations focused on deploying ML to alert customers of potential scam calls and messages as well as identify and deal with fraud rings and participants within fraud rings Again similar to 4 above, we expect a lot of interest to be focused in this area in 2024, particularly around applications of fraud ring algorithms within healthcare, health insurers and workers compensation and disability insurers
6. Smart Reporting with embedded anomaly detection especially at state and federal government enterprises
The last area where we saw a large number of POVs and a couple of significant examples esp within government enterprises was in the area of smart reporting particularly the use of anomaly detection ML algorithms
This was consistent with the trend that we’ve been witnessing in this market-place over the last 5 years at least where traditional BI and Reporting functions are rapidly getting transformed using ML algorithms to focus on detecting unusual patterns as early as possible and then drilling down to the Root Cause and relevant fixes
?Rightho then, what were the organizations that stood out this year and the Australian Advanced-analytics and AI stalwarts that made it all happen this year?????????????????????
Advanced-analytics and AI?Stalwarts Hall of Fame
But before we jump into this year’s organizations and stalwarts list, first things first
Over the last 19 years that we’ve been publishing this annual edition of Swamys Perspectives, there have been ONLY EIGHT stalwarts who were commended at least THREE times or more:
Australian Organizations that stood out for Advanced-analytics and AI driven digital transformation this year
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领英推荐
Australian Organizations to look out for acceleration ?in 2024@– expect new Transformation Director, Danielle Handley (ex IAG), to accelerate AA and AI in 2024
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Advanced-Analytics and AI stalwarts that stood out in driving digital transformation (private and public sector) this year
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Advanced-analytics and AI advisors and consultants that stood out this year
Advanced-analytics and AI advocates and commentators that stood out
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Australian AA and AI start ups that made the most impact (preferably with as little noise as possible??)
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What will 2024 bring here for the Advanced-analytics and AI industry here in Australia?
Notwithstanding the much touted Fed rate cuts (finally taking shape) and the long rumoured Chinese govt mega-stimulus (just started in dribs and drabs), I expect disinflationary (and if I can be brave enough, DEFLATIONARY) pressures to start taking hold and apply the brakes even harder to the already slowing economic momentum
In this scenario, I would expect every aspect of operation of any significant organization, Australian and global, to be under huge pressure to drive serious value from the major investments made all across the Advanced-analytics and AI value chain be they technology and infrastructure (eg Snowflake and Databricks cloud data warehouses / data lakes) or expensive data engineering, data science and machine learning staff resources
The winners would be those that can use their Digital global capability centres (GCCs) to scale and deliver operational transformation and cut costs faster and cheaper?
Rest assured, our 19-year-old Swamys Perspectives will certainly be there to let you all know exactly who they are!!
?Have a peaceful and relaxing Christmas and New Year break and see you all back on deck in 2024
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Thanks and kind regards
Sri
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Sriraman ("Sri") Annaswamy GAICD IIT IIM
Founder and Director
Swamy and Associates
Advanced-Analytics, AI and BPM Advisors and Managers
Level 8, 65 York Street
Sydney - 2000
Ph(mobile): 61 414 629 981
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Very Valuable insights.
Chief Data Officer at Edith Cowan University
11 个月Sriraman ("Sri") Annaswamy GAICD IIT IIM - Really enjoyed reading your insights on AI and big thanks for having me in the list. Please keep sharing your insights - they are really valuable.
Global Group Executive - Transformation and Digital Enablement
11 个月Thank you Sriraman ("Sri") Annaswamy GAICD IIT IIM. So humbled to be on the list and honoured to have Ramsay Health Care recognised for the important journey we are on. Credit to the incredible team I have and the momentum we have built in a short period. Hope you are well. Have a fabulous Christmas and New Year!
Chief Executive Officer, NRMA Insurance
11 个月Thank you Sriraman ("Sri") Annaswamy GAICD IIT IIM. What an honour to be a stalwart but more so to see so many past and present IAG pioneers in your list Danielle Handley Willem Paling Tiberio Caetano Reza Mohajerpoor Chris Dolman
[Strategy | Leadership | Transformation | Innovation | Artificial Intelligence] in Retail
11 个月Thanks for the shout out Sriraman ("Sri") Annaswamy GAICD IIT IIM. It has indeed been a year of change in this space. A lot of exciting new stuff but also a lot of hype. Hopefully the hype cools down and we get on with it in 2024. Happy holidays!