April 13, 2017
Posted by Mark Henderson

On 10^th April, Adjuno attended the ‘Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in Business’ forum of Internet Economy Summit (IES) hosted by Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) in Hong Kong. This event comprised of 10 speakers from across the globe who shared their experience of how organisations are leveraging various forms of Artificial Intelligence in conjunction with big data analytics to deliver benefit to government, private sector and end-consumer.

The main message we heard during the event was “AI should actually be considered to be ‘Augmented Intelligence’, good AI amplifies human creativity it doesn’t replace it.”

Below is a snapshot of the various keynote speeches and the topics briefly covered by each speaker.

• Dr.C. Mohan from IBM shared some of the insights on the ‘The Era of Cognitive Computing’ and IBM Watson is an example that represents the first step into cognitive systems. These cognitive systems can transform how organisations think, act and operate in future. He stated as cognitive systems grow richer, they are expected to gain the ability to sense. We expect them to do more than reading text, but to see, hear and feel so that they have a basic awareness of their environment. Furthermore he suggested that in less than 10 years, cognitive systems will be to computing what transaction processing is today.
• Mr. Kurt Solarte from Ernst & Young who specializes in Design-Led technology projects to help transform business shared his experience of Augmented Intelligence. He gave details and examples on the principles for designing human-centric augmented intelligence.
• Mr. San Zaw from TIBCO Software shared his thoughts on augmenting intelligence for business. He further stated, “the power of AI is no longer limited to a data science team or an analytics team, but is unleashed to the rest of the business users”
• Dr Vlad Gheorghiu from University of Waterloo presented and discussed on quantum computing in the age of Big Data. He revealed how universal quantum computing will drive new applications in A.I. such as autonomous self driving, medical diagnosis, etc.

The event concluded with a panel discussion on “Inspiring innovation with data analytics and AI”. The panel was chaired by Prof. Helen Meng from The Chinese University of Hong Kong below were the panel members

• Mr Gao Xinmin (Vice President, Internet Society of China)
• Dr David Chung (Under Secretary for Innovation and Technology, HKSAR Government)
• Dr Peter Yeung (Smart City & Green Technology, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation)
• Mr Lionel Louie (Chief Commercial Officer, CargoSmart Ltd)
• Mr Thomas Tsao (Founding Partner, Alibaba Entrepreneur Fund)

In summary, AI has the potential and it will be interesting to see how AI is transforming industries and raising expectations in businesses globally.