Company bosses in North Wales have been urged to explore how the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be harnessed to boost their profits.
The plea came from AI innovator Henry Platten who told members of Wrexham Business Professionals that anyone who “buried their head in the sand” over AI risked “burying their business” at the same time.
At the breakfast meeting, held at Hotel Wrexham, Mr Platten dispelled some of the myths around AI, and said the technology offered a huge range of opportunities for businesses – if it was used correctly and cautiously.
The other keynote speaker was Detective Constable Roheryn Evans of the North Wales Police’s Cyber Crime Tea, who urged companies to stay alert following a sharp rise in cybercrime and gave advice on how to protect themselves
Mr Platten, a former police sergeant who hails from Hawarden in Flintshire, has worked with global companies, the UK government and sports organisations including Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and the Football Association on AI projects.
He said: “For me, if you’re a starter, if you’re a growth company, if you’re a family-run business that’s been going for 40 years, AI can play a part in your day-to-day life.
“It can improve costs, it can help to speed up production or decision-making.
“Not only has AI changed the ball game and rewritten the rules, it has changed business into a whole different game altogether.
“Every business now needs to explore how AI can help them.
“And AI is now so accessible, going back even just three years ago it wasn’t as accessible as it is now.
“My advice to every business is explore AI, go at your own pace, and make sure you get the right advice and support.
“The key thing about AI is understanding the problem you want to be solved.
“Using AI can be everything from processing your invoices to generate and get them out quicker to using a chatbot on your website to deal with high volume, high repeat questions that you get, and that means you don’t have to lose staff time.
“There are lots of different efficiencies which exist with AI.
“It’s not a magic silver bullet, it is something which does need humans to make sure the right information is going in – the quality of the data is key.
He added: “We need to know what AI really is, because we hear about all the scare stories, we hear about Terminators taking over the world.
“But AI in its purest sense is about solving problems through maths, it’s looking for patterns, that’s it basically.
“Despite what the Daily Mail says, we are still far more intelligent than what AI is.
“Basically AI is still not perfect.
“Would I ever trust AI 100 per cent to make a decision on my behalf?
“No, I never would, not now, not in the next 20 years.
“I would still always have a human in the loop to have some role when looking at the data that is produced.
“If you’re looking at using AI within your organisation, the first thing and the critical thing, is to understand what are the problems that you are facing that you want to solve.
“The second thing you need to look at is what data you have available.
“The third step, which is critical, is ‘human in the loop’.
“Once we know what the problem is that we want to solve, once we know we have got the right data, and we know what we’re expecting to see, this is where AI comes into its own.
“It can process huge amounts of data, it can look at patterns and models we may not normally see when we as humans look at it.”
The meeting also heard from Katie Skellon from the Wrexham Business and Community Awards and the awards’ board members Sophie Davies and Gareth Walsh who urged people to nominate firms for the awards which take place on November 21.
Ian Edwards from Wrexham Business Professionals said: “It was fascinating to hear about how AI can benefit businesses.
“Henry’s presentation was an excellent opportunity to learn that if done correctly, AI can open up so many opportunities for growth.”
Louise Harper from the group added: “More and more businesses are turning to AI and it has become a useful tool in so many firms’ everyday work.
“I’m sure our members found Henry’s insight incredibly useful as they look to see how they can use this evolving technology.
“The presentation from DC Evans was also a huge eye opener and a warning to all of us to be on our guard for cybercrime.
“We’re also very grateful for the helpful advice of what businesses can do to avoid online threats.”
