AI賦能營運 成就業務突破 (English Only)

An opening ceremony kicked off CITIC Telecom CPC's Solutions Day 2024.

CITIC Telecom CPC’s Solutions Day 2024 ushers in a new era of artificial intelligence (AI) innovation, forging a dynamic AI ecosystem in business intelligence and delving into the untapped potential of AI applications and solutions in a vast range of industries.

What was deemed unfathomable decades ago is now an everyday reality: integrating AI into complex tasks and allowing professionals to take their hands off the wheel. The leap from applying advanced machine learning models, such as data analysis and chatbots, to harnessing generative AI in business operations can transform enterprises profoundly.

Themed “From +AI to AI+”, CITIC Telecom CPC’s Solutions Day 2024 explores the progress from technology empowerment (+AI) to data empowerment (AI+) across business models. In a series of keynote presentations and panel discussions, technology leaders and industry experts assemble to offer insights on leveraging AI to reshape businesses while navigating the risks of the evolving AI landscape.

Convening the event, Brook Wong, CEO at CITIC Telecom CPC, states that the company makes great strides in AI-driven digitalization: “As a leading DICT service provider, we are dedicated to mapping out technological enrichment and innovation strategies. With the synergy of digitalization, algorithms and big data on our service platform, we embrace the global paradigm shift to generative AI, striving to integrate large AI models with diverse AI applications in small-scale scenarios, empowering customers to enhance their intelligent capabilities and unlock a realm of new possibilities.”

Paving the way for business innovation with AI

In the panel discussion “From +AI to AI+: Revolutionizing Business for the Future”, moderator Sheila Lam, highlights the potential of AI, from elevating business performances to reshaping industries. “The past few years have seen a widespread use of AI across various lines of work. For the technological sector, transitioning to generative AI in business models entails endless possibilities and new challenges.”

Prior to the prevalence of generative AI, several corporations had already utilized traditional AI models — systems with predefined data sets and rules – to automate repetitive tasks. Alex Wong, Designated General Manager, Corporate Information Technology, The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited, points to the company’s implementation of AI in customer service and routine checkups.

“Since 2018, we have been applying non-generative AI in our chatbots to clients. Another AI application is detecting the degree of corrosion in gas pipes through video clips, which eliminates the time for manual labor and ensures an objective analysis,” Wong explains.

In addition to boosting productivity and facilitating data analysis, AI technologies have proven valuable in pattern recognition. Raymond Lam, Executive Director at Omron HK, remarks that identifying patterns and trends is particularly crucial in healthcare.

“Our primary aim is to achieve prediction and prevention in AI analysis of medical data,” says Lam. As industrial automation is also a core business of Omron HK, “AI models and big data can work together to provide predictions on production process, and demand and supply rate.”

The strengths of AI, however, come with a new set of risks and challenges. In a live poll on major concerns for businesses to employ AI models, 38% of attendees chose cybersecurity exposure.

Perry Lai, Vice President, Information Technology at Langham Hotels International, says that AI chatbots help increase customer satisfaction and engagement. “When guests ask specific questions, our employees would check the AI’s answer first.” Yet, using AI in hospitality risks data breach. “There’s also a chance that employees might turn to free AI models like ChatGPT to answer customers’ questions and analyze data, which poses security risks,” he says. For generative AI, the company is concerned about the lack of accuracy and governance.

Colin She, Cybersecurity Consultant at Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., shares the same view on the internal and external usage of AI models in business. “The risk of shadow AI – when employees use AI tools at work without internal technological governance – warrants our attention,” he says.

Yet, there are strategies to mitigate the risks and threats when integrating AI into business operations. “Employing AI itself to detect inappropriate responses, for instance. This enables employees to explain an incident and examine the triggers,” says She.

Brenda Lin,  Director of Innovative Research & Development and Information Technology Department at CITIC Telecom CPC, chimes in: “Undesirable data can be filtered out for AI models and enterprises can set specific questions for external users. Leveraging our decades of ICT and industry expertise, we drive intelligent projects from ‘large model development’ to ‘industry-specific deployments’, empowering businesses to accelerate their AI+ journey.” Lin further adds that promoting data awareness and strengthening security when employing AI “The key focus is on training employees to elevate their self-assessment capabilities.”

Rising to the challenges of the digital age

The second panel discussion “AI+ Banking – Will machines replace humans in securing banking operations?” turns the spotlight on the growing shortage of IT (Information Technology) talents, notably cybersecurity professionals. Sheila Lam, moderator, begins by posing the question of whether AI technologies can make up for such a labor shortage.

Welcome Chan, Head of IT Security at Chong Hing Bank, offers an overview of the market: “Cybersecurity development has undergone drastic changes in the past five years, to the extent where there is constantly a host of emerging technologies such as Network detection and response (NDR) solutions and Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) technology.”

Among the various fields in cybersecurity, the digital forensics one might have been hit the hardest by  talent shortage. “In Hong Kong, there is a tiny pool of professionals that specialize in digital forensics and incident response – less than a hundred,” reveals Tim Toa, Regional Director of Digital Forensics and Incident Response at Blackpanda.

This is where AI automation comes into play. Andy Hui, Manager, Security Solutions at CITIC Telecom CPC, remarks: “By leveraging AI models, productivity is enhanced through the automation of time-consuming tasks. In Security Operations Centers (SOC), for instance, it used to take one to two days to establish rules, but it has been streamlined to just half a day with the assistance of AI.”

More on AI’s impact on employment, Chan says that “AI models can detect Indicators of Compromise (IoC) and block them successfully, which is a fairly routine practice in the first place. But what we need to understand is that not everything can be automated. Manpower is still needed to study, analyze and monitor operations.”

As seen in the surge of AI-driven cyber attacks, the technology has proved to be a double-edged sword. “AI certainly helps with defense but it is also AI that drafts phishing emails, installs malware and bypasses solutions,” notes Toa. Hui agrees, explaining that it has become “difficult to distinguish AI or humans in digital assaults.”

While there is growing concern over AI taking over fintech jobs, Chan advises tech professionals that “AI ought to be used as a tool. It is our responsibility to determine whether employing AI is suitable in different contexts and, above all, to avoid an overreliance on AI.”
One thing is certain – the future is AI. What emerge from CITIC Telecom CPC’s Solutions Day 2024 are unprecedented opportunities to revolutionize the tech industry and tools to confront the risk of AI technologies for enterprises to rise above.