What companies should be thinking about when they think about AI

A Q&A on AI and business with Shlomo Agishtein, AI lead at Trullion

As artificial intelligence (AI) tools are increasingly becoming part of the daily processes of nearly every company and AI regulations are bearing down (we’re looking at you, AI Act) it’s more and more important to understand how to utilise and develop these tools ethically and effectively.

VinciWorks sat down with AI expert Shlomo Agishtein to discuss what companies need to understand about AI, how these tools can be used, why an AI company policy matters and how worried we should all be about AI regulation.

How significant a role does Shlomo think AI tools will play in business growth? Basically, he says, any business that’s not trying to formulate some sort of AI adoption or AI strategy is going to suffer.

What tools should companies be looking at? It depends on every company’s use case and industry. Every industry has AI tools being developed to address their common pains. “It’s rare that you’re going to have a general out-of-the box tool – and those also tend to be risky because you don’t know what’s happening to your data,” he notes, adding that ChatGPT4 is very powerful, especially if you just have a subscription.

We discuss if GDPR will impact AI growth in companies and how the increasingly regulatory environment will impact AI’s development. Shlomo’s hot take: “The problem with the Sam Altmans and the Googles of the world going in there and saying AI could be super dangerous and we have to regulate it is that, in some sense, it’s self serving because if you regulate AI, you are limiting who could build it.”

We cover how companies can avoid discriminatory practices in implementing AI tools, how they can protect themselves from bad actors and why they need to train their employees on using AI safely. Significantly, we look at why companies need an AI policy and how they can set one up. Finally we look at what the future holds for companies in AI. As Shlomo notes, “Anybody who tries to say they know where this is all going is lying. AI is going to change the world and change itself in a way that we just don’t know what’s going to be possible in a year.”

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How are you managing your GDPR compliance requirements?

GDPR added a significant compliance burden on DPOs and data processors. Data breaches must be reported to the authorities within 72 hours, each new data processing activity needs to be documented and Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) must be carried out for processing that is likely to result in a high risk to individuals. Penalties for breaching GDPR can reach into the tens of millions of Euros.

“In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.”