Carlos Soares, DEI lecturer and researcher in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, took part in a meeting of the Executive Board of Matosinhos City Council on November 6, presenting a seminar entitled ‘AI is dead. Long live AI!’, which served as the basis for a discussion on the opportunities and risks of this technology in the context of public and local administration, but also in society in general.
“Understanding the potential impact of the changes brought by artificial intelligence on the creation of value in organisations and improving the ‘digital IQ’ of the managers involved is the only way to get to grips with the essence of the new concepts of artificial intelligence before they are integrated into processes, allowing governance and management bodies to be more effectively involved in the issues of digital transformation supported by this technology,” says Carlos Soares.
During the session, several questions were raised that allowed the Matosinhos City Council Executive to present the potential, but also the challenges, of applying AI in organisations:
– The current state of AI and the hype surrounding it: recent advances in AI have brought the field into the mainstream media spotlight, alternately heralding a better life for all and the end of the world. The aim is to clarify the difference between hysteria and reality about these advances;
– How LLMs can add value to organisations: the most visible face of progress in AI are Large Language Models (LLM), popularised in systems such as ChatGPT. The aim is to understand what they really are, what value can be gained from using them, but also what their limitations and risks are;
– How to extract value for organisations with other data: LLMs represent a very limited part of the potential of AI, despite their public profile. The aim is to illustrate the potential application of other AI techniques, often with greater potential value than LLMs.
The DEI lecturer adds that “the aim is to present the concepts in a way that is accessible to people who don’t have a technical profile, but at the same time sufficiently in-depth for them to know the general principles of how systems like ChatGPT work”.