As a wave of companies rush to embed artificial intelligence into their operations, Matt Wood has noticed the technology’s fastest adopters are businesses more typically described as slow to change.
His observation turns age-old assumptions about innovation and who is open to embracing technology upside down. It comes as nearly every sector is grappling with advances in AI and considering how the technology can increase productivity and profitability. Many regulated companies are sitting on extensive databases, market research and development reports, clinical trial results and patient and insurance records that hold a lot of potential because the organizations are privately held.
“They’ve already figured out … what data they have, what it can be used for, who it can be used by, what tools it can be used with, all those sorts of things,” he said. “I can understand where that comes from. Some folks have played a little, shall we say, fast and loose with the data that has been available to them.”Many companies only use AI with anonymized or de-identified data, while others offer secure digital environments where staff can test AI without the fear of data leaking to the public or training future models.