Asia Pacific’s AI Edge Makes it the Region to Watch
The AI race is not about how smart your AI is but what you connect it to.
I am immensely proud to be a major contributor to this Harvard Business Review paper that explains why Asia will have an edge over the West in AI, even if the US has the smartest AI.
APAC’s edge starts with the money:
“APAC plans to increase spending on gen AI by more than 140% to $3.4 billion in 2024—well ahead of Europe’s forecast growth rate of 115% and more than double the growth expected in North America (70%).
However, APAC’s biggest strength will be how fast it moves AI into the marketplace and how it can interface with existing digital systems like superapps. APAC, especially India and China, will tie AI into existing digital payments and services to become major AI powers.
👉MY FAVORITE QUOTES:
🔹According to Turrin, how organizations choose to use gen AI is the deciding factor in whether they reap the benefits they expect. “There is a common misperception that those with the best artifical intelligence will win in this great AI race. But this is missing something. And what it is missing is that it’s not just about how good your AI is. It is how you use it, and what you’re going to connect it to,” he says.
🔹“In combination with Asia’s global role, and as the highest GDP generator on the planet right now, I think that we’re looking at something very significant,” says Turrin. “Even if the U.S. is leading in the gen AI race at the moment, I think how quickly gen AI gets put to work, adopted, implemented, and tied into other digital systems in Asia will be something to watch.”
🔹This ethical mission matters in banking, which is an industry that touches everyone’s lives. “Banks have a higher social responsibility for trust and privacy than most others and need to get gen AI right, the first time and every time,” explains Turrin. “Early users of software are beta testers, and basically, gen AI has been pushed off into the open arms of society. We are all beta testing this.”
🔹The banking industry hasn’t been as caught up in the gen AI hype as other sectors. “If you read the management consulting reports, you may think that gen AI is ready to go. But financiers and bankers are taking their sweet time on gen AI because they’re being asked to beta test a software,” Turrin explains. “They are the guinea pigs. And if the software goes badly or has an error or an issue, the bank is the one that pays, not the consulting company and not the large tech companies that built the AI. Banks are taking gen AI on their own time schedule and their plan, not on management consultants’ or big tech’s plan, and that’s a good thing—for all of us.”
🔹“I look forward to more open-source software out in the open market, particularly for gen AI,” says Richard Turrin, author of the books Cashless: China’s Digital Currency Revolution and Innovation Lab Excellence and a fintech, artifical intelligence (AI), and innovation consultant. “If you look at the growth in digital in APAC since 2015, it’s exploded. The region has prospered, and a large portion of this prosperity has come from digital. Without open source powering behind the scenes, the development of countries in the APAC region, particularly in gen AI, will be withheld.”
🔹Turrin is a strong supporter of a hybrid-cloud approach for enterprises exploring gen AI. “Hybrid cloud is great stuff, keeping some data in your own data centers and pushing some off to the cloud. It saves money; you manage and run some of the data servers, and you ship some of [the data] off on the cloud. And you can balance the amount that’s on cloud into a financially viable equation that makes sense for your company,” he says. “The reality is that right now, no one is running gen AI on their own server other than the very largest companies. Except for a couple of banks and big tech companies, nobody can afford the chips [graphics processing units, or GPUs].
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