Artificial intelligence for Aussie businesses: start small, start now says ACS

ACS, the professional association for Australia’s ICT sector, has published a special report to help Australian businesses integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into their development plans.

“Our message today to Australian business is to get in now, or risk missing out on the largest business opportunity since the internet,” ACS president Yohan Ramasundara said. 

ACS’s publication of Artificial Intelligence: A Starter Guide to the Future of Business was officially released at the ACS Innovation Hub in Barangaroo, Sydney on December 6. The guide is an easy-to-read introduction to AI for businesses – what it is, what it can do – and how to get started with AI in your own organisation.

“Artificial intelligence promises to revolutionise the way we do business, optimising business processes and creating entirely new revenue streams,” Mr Ramasundara said.

“Many business leaders think AI may be too hard, and don’t consider it as a solution to the issues they face today. If Australia is to remain a competitive leader in technology, we must both inspire the current and future entrepreneurs, and encourage adoption and experimentation with existing AI solutions.”

The report was launched with the support of Australian leaders in AI, with CEOs and founders from Sortal, Gameface and Hyper Anna demonstrating their capabilities.

Sortal CEO Majella Edwards said, “When we speak with enterprises about artificial intelligence, too often we find that business leaders focus on what the technology will achieve in the future.

“While there is an enormous amount of potential as the field develops, we can already do incredible things with AI in the here and now – and by investing in AI now, businesses can set themselves up to thrive rather than play catch up later on.

“We welcome this initiative from ACS to help educate Australian businesses about what can be done, and the opportunity to showcase Australian innovation in this space.”

Mr Ramasundara said more must be done in this space in order to keep Australian AI talent from going overseas.

“The government has committed to invest $29.9 million over four years to pump up Australia’s AI and machine learning capabilities in fields such as cybersecurity, health and energy,” Mr Ramasundara said. “This is a very small step in the right direction and if we are genuinely committed to harnessing the power of AI a more demonstrably significant investment will be required.

“AI experts in the US and China, for example, can demand salaries as high as US$300,000 (A$400,000). We also know there is a gap when it comes to the adoption of AI solutions in the Australian enterprise. Our report today aims to bring knowledge of what is possible to business decision makers.”

Gameface has developed an AI that “truly knows sports” through a combination of computer vision and machine learning models. The Gameface platform breaks down live sporting match footage for key match events and player performance data in real time, with no human involvement, no wearables, and no additional camera infrastructure. Gameface recently announced a groundbreaking partnership that will see Cricket Australia implement Gameface’s industry-leading machine learning technology for the 2018-2019 JLT One Day Cup and the National U17 Championships, tracking every player, action, and object in real time.

Sortal intuitively helps businesses and individuals manage thousands of digital images. In the workplace, Sortal retains corporate knowledge and keeps track of versioning, usage and copyright. It manages your image assets and provides a collaboration space for image related workflows.

Sortal can also be used by individuals and families to help organise digital images, like a personal assistant with enhanced memory. Sortal can navigate through the ‘digital junk’ to find what is important and valuable.

Hyper Anna is an AI powered data analyst. Users ‘interact with her as you would with another person’. Anna does all the tedious and technical work of writing code, analysing data, producing charts and more importantly insights – all things that come along with data analytics. Hyper Anna is backed by Sequoia and Australian leading venture capitalists and is currently helping some of the largest organisations in the Asia-Pacific region.

To read the full report visit https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/acs-publications/ACS%20Artificial%20Intelligence%20Starter%20Guide.pdf

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