New opportunities for job creation are evolving with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which is set to become a new growth area that will overturn existing industries.
As a simulation of human intelligence processed by machines in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, AI applications which include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition and machine vision are the new world order.
AI is set to drive a new wave of industrialisation and represents a seismic shift on the scale of the industrial revolution, electricity, and the internet.
However, this depends on how countries will approach this revolution and that will depend on the unique challenges each country is trying to solve and the ways in which AI can assist.
FNB’s chief data and analytics officer Mark Nasila said in South Africa, the problems government and the private sector choose to prioritise and apply AI to will be those that lead to new industries.
“While some industry experts link the increasing adoption of AI to the emergence of tools and services aimed at simplifying AI implementation by addressing data challenges, enhancing integration and ensuring data privacy, there are more driving factors at play,” said Nasila.
“The manufacturing sector, in particular, is finding AI to be a powerful tool for myriad applications and for a wide range of phases of the production process.”
Manufacturing sector
He said machine learning, a branch of AI, is the most used application in the manufacturing sector, enabling companies to modulate the production process and enhance quality.
“Research studies by Capgemini show that there is an increasing trend of AI uses in the manufacturing sector globally, where nearly 29% of use cases are observed in maintenance and 27% in quality control.
“Overall, global surveys indicate that 60% of manufacturing companies have embarked on using AI in their businesses to enhance product quality and achieve faster production in addition to the significant benefits the technology offers, regardless of the type and nature of business operation.”
As the country is also trying to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic that had thrown the globe into disarray, AI’s new systems aim to bring change and new dynamics to rebuild the future of the word.
“AI can help predict maintenance schedules, improve productivity and quality, create custom designs, adapt market strategies and improve supply chains,” said Nasila.
“It can also reduce human error, assist with decision-making, free staff from repetitive tasks, help with troubleshooting and improve safety.”
He added that language is embedded in every process of industrialisation, which is why revolution in how language and AI intertwine is so significant.
“Large language models [LLMs] are powering tools like Open AI’s ChatGPT, which are already changing how people work by helping them summarise text, rewrite codes, and dispense with repetitive tasks.
“Natural language processing [NLP] of the sort used in smart speakers and chatbots enables AI to parse, interpret and act on human-voice commands.
“This means instead of humans having to create languages for AI, it’s able to adapt to them.
“With NLP systems being trained to recognise various languages, it also allows AI to go beyond the confinement of a single language and to be customised to different abilities and problems, as well as different industries.
“LLMs and NLP are already being used to create content, to power chatbots or train them to be better, to serve as an alternative to search engines like Google, for translating text and to augment developers code-writing skills.”
