The AI transformation: how companies and public authorities are becoming more digital

The first step into the AI age is the start. It starts with the question of AI strategy. There are two options, which can also be mixed: Cloud (ChatGPT) or in-house AI. Both have their own advantages. However, the cloud does not deliver the better results. Some also ask about data security and costs.

Introduction

AI offers incredible opportunities. This is why many companies and authorities are thinking about using AI to make business processes more efficient or to enable them in the first place.

In recent weeks, the author of this article has had the opportunity to give numerous presentations, workshops and training courses for companies, public authorities/administrations and at conferences. This has led to the conclusion that an AI strategy is of interest to many. Incidentally, the photo also comes from one of these lectures. It was taken in Düsseldorf/Germany at a meeting of the construction industry, which can also benefit from AI and was therefore keen to find out more.

Part of a AI-strategy is asking whether one is willing to send their treasure trove of data to Microsoft or OpenAI, or if one would rather like to cultivate this treasure themselves. The question can be answered more easily when one knows that an optimized AI not only delivers better results than ChatGPT but also enables full data security.

Which AI strategy suits your organization best? That depends. There are different AI user groups. Depending on the group, a different AI strategy makes sense. The groups are:

• Private user: You don't need a AI strategy and shouldn't read this post. It would be more recommendable to take a look at other blog articles on Dr. GDPR.
• Individual users / individual entrepreneurs: Their economic willingness depends on the benefit. It is assumed that they do not need a AI strategy or cannot implement one. They will land on ChatGPT, unless you trust OpenAI or Microsoft not.
• Small companies: If AI is of great benefit to you, an AI strategy would be advisable. Otherwise not.
• Larger companies or public authorities: An AI strategy is not only sensible, it is mandatory. They are the first target group of this article.

What is an AI strategy?

A strategy is a long-term plan.

They want to achieve business goals. It shouldn't matter whether with or without AI. Only: With AI, many things are possible that were previously either impossible or too expensive or time-consuming.

An AI strategy helps you to find an AI system for a problem that you want to solve. The AI strategy also helps you to find the problems you want to solve.

The first step is therefore: Find the problems you wanted to solve. Instead of problem one could also speak of task, business process, project or application case.

The AI strategy of your organization

We go through the strategy step by step and stick to the important points.

The first step is to identify use cases, i.e. the problems that your company or authority wants to solve.

Recognize use cases

What processes are in place in your company? Since AI works with data, the processes that are to be handled with AI must have a database.

Two cases must be distinguished here:

1. You want to process paper with AI. To do this, this paper must be scanned. It can then be processed with AI. Even OCR works better with AI than before. After the paper has been scanned, we can go to case 2 (which can also include OCR with AI).
2. You want to process existing data, files (especially documents or images) or user input. Let's get started in the AI age.

Digitized data or information is the basic prerequisite for AI applications. This has now been fulfilled. Which use cases are possible?

AI can process all types of data. These types of data are called modalities. Examples of modalities are:

• Text
• Image
• Video
• Audio
• Sensor values

An AI system is based on a neural network, just like your brain. Such a neural network can do quite astonishing things, just like you can. Qualitatively there is no difference between your brain and that in the computer (some see it differently, but do not mention any arguments).

What are good use cases?

Good use cases are those that can be handled easily or significantly better or cheaper with AI than with previous methods. Examples of such use cases are:

• Knowledge assistant for your employees or citizen inquiries: Most people struggle to understand a legislative text or legal regulation. AI reduces this barrier. Another example: Citizens want to know how high they can build in area X: The AI gives the answer based on your documents. Hallucinations are what they should expect from ChatGPT, but not from an optimized AI (Offline-AI).
• Extracting knowledge from documents: That works very well. What do you then with this knowledge? If you don't know that, skip this point. Further suggestions follow.
• Enhance your offers: Your offer lists multiple pages of part numbers with brief descriptions in a Word file. Wouldn't it be better to make everything more tangible and easier to understand? The AI finds images from the manufacturer of the products included in your offer. Long descriptions, product data sheets, and technical specifications can also be automatically inserted into your offer.
• Compress knowledge: You don't want to watch this training video; you don't want to read these 50 A4 pages of text. The AI translates language into text and long texts into a summary. Creating podcasts from texts is also possible.
• Edit images