One of the key use cases for Cloud services is to adopt AI and apply it to a myriad of business and industry scenarios.
As you might imagine it’s a highly fertile field of technology innovation – All the major Cloud vendors like AWS, Google and Azure have launched rich portfolios of AI services, which organizations can utilize to build powerful new applications.
For example Azure offers a suite of AI capabilities, where you can access high-quality vision, speech, language, and decision-making AI models through simple API calls, and create your own machine learning models using an AI supercomputing infrastructure.
Scottish AI Experts
In their webinar ‘Artificial Intelligence: The Changing Business Landscape‘ Pulsion explore how Scottish businesses might benefit from the technology, by looking at What GPT Can Do for Your Business.
Managing Director John McGuire and Graduate AI/ML Engineer John McGuire Jnr, discussed the impact AI is having on businesses and examples of the work Pulsion is completing with AI. They were joined by special guest Elizabeth Jarvis Managing Director of OneSearch to discuss the AI they have implemented and its impact on their work.
How one specific industry, tourism, might do this was reviewed in a webinar from the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group, hosted by Traveltech Scotland, where they shared how ChatGPT can streamline customer service and provide personalised travel recommendations.
Some believe the technology even has the potential for profound social transformation.
In this Herald article Kevin McKenna interviews Margaret Totten of Glasgow-based Akari Solutions, where she describes how it could tackle long intractable issues of inequality and inequity in Scotland, helping bridge the digital divide for the nation’s poorer communities and empowering them with greater access to knowledge and learning tools.
Scotland’s AI Legacy
Scotland has tremendous potential to punch above their weight in what is now the world’s largest tech growth trend, by standing on the shoulders of the giants who have built the intellectual foundations for the sector.
In their engaging article the Bayes Centre, the University of Edinburgh’s Innovation Hub for Data Science and AI, explores the University’s history of 60 years of computer science and AI. In 1963, when Harold Wilson called for a new Britain forged in the ‘white heat’ of technology, Professor Michie was assembling Europe’s first AI research hub in the University’s Hope Park Square.
His obsession with the idea that machines could learn was sparked during his time at Bletchley Park, following many discussions and chess games with his colleague and friend, the late Alan Turing.
Six decades after computer science and AI were established at Edinburgh, the School of Informatics is now the largest research and teaching establishment of its kind in the UK and is a worldwide center of expertise.
Nurturing Adoption: Supporting Growth of Early-Stage AI Businesses in Scotland
So the key question is what more can Scotland be doing to foster innovation and cultivate more startup businesses in this hyper-scale growth market? This question is explored in this video, which shares a talk from the Scottish AI Summit, addressing how best we can support the commercialization of AI technologies to meet real-world needs.
The University of Edinburgh has programmes to nurture data-driven entrepreneurs at different stages on their journey from the seed of an idea to scaling globally. As well as supporting both technology transfer from academic research and home grown businesses, the University is also attracting high growth global AI start-ups.
In this panel session, Katy Guthrie and Laura Bernal from the University’s Data-Driven Entrepreneurship programme are joined by founders of some the companies they have supported, across different sectors including MedTech and ClimateTech.
The discussion focuses on the opportunities and challenges for companies using AI, how scaling AI driven business can benefit the people of Scotland and the world and what can be done to stimulate activity and address issues.
