AI, enabling humans to be more human

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

There is no reason for the world to get intimidated nor frightened of Artificial Intelligence (AI), said an official from the Middle East and Africa (MEA) office of a Finnish company, which began as a single paper mill in 1865 and transformed the world’s telecommunication system with the introduction of the first GSM mobile phone in 1991.

Dubai-based Nokia-MEA chief technology officer Aji Ed said: “Any technology must be used judiciously. There is no exception to this rule in the case of AI. We believe AI is a boon for automation and efficiency as long as we are the master of it.”

“We believe that we are at the cusp of a new productivity revolution powered by what we call Networked Augmented Intelligence, an era of human and machine collaboration that will result in ‘economic benefits and ‘creation of time,’ enabling humans to be more human,” he added.

Gulf Today interviewed Ed as Nokia would be among the 130 globally-known and small-medium enterprises (SMEs) from Finland participating in the “Expo 2020 Dubai.”

Construction of Finland’s “Snow Caped (Lumi)” Pavilion situated at the Mobility Sector of the Expo 2020 site commenced on Aug.28, according to Finland at Expo 2020 Dubai-Communications and Marketing director Pirkko Autio.

At the world Expo, a landmark in the region, the company will “demonstrate its technologies and professional services to Communications Service Providers as well as public and private sector enterprises and help them realise their vision towards a fully digitalised world.”

Five journalists from the UAE, Bahrain and the UK were given a snapshot of this strategy during the Aug.20, 2019 Press Visit of the corporation’s Espoo headquarters in Finland.

Discussed at the tour was the entry of the “5G Technology” which according to Nokia-Dedicated Wireless Networks head Jane Rygaard Pedersen, through and with AI, will be a lot of help in areas such as air and water (sea) pollution measurements and patient-centric services, as achieved as well, is “faster decision-making” through all industries.

Followed through, Ed said: “There is no bound to the number of machines getting connected. There is a need to hyper-scale tomorrow’s networks.”

He explained: “AI is part of digital transformation together with big data, analytics, automation and customer experience. It has a huge potential for economic and business value creation. It provides dramatic cost reduction of prediction and brings a new business model with learning. Its applications create user value in multiple dimensions including reducing the waste, saving/creating time, creating personalized experiences and creating new knowledge. AI can open new unprecedented opportunities in this highly complex digital environment as there is a huge amount of information available to process and by processing this information, AI can enable personalised services delivered in digital time.” He echoed Pedersen on the company mission:”We create the technology to connect the world.”

Recently, at a forum, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence Omar Bin Sultan Al Olama said: “Add artificial intelligence to every single sector and you will find a successful model that is going to change the world.”

Meanwhile, asked by this reporter regarding the rise of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial spirit across Finland, the country’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment-Undersecretary of State for Economy Petri Peltonen, at the Aug.19 Press Meet in Helsinki, said the phenomenon is a “spin-off from big companies such as Nokia and current SMEs at 300,000: “It is a very straightforward set-up. There have been a lot of digital start-ups. Government policies are supportive of SMEs such as restaurants, construction, cleaning and all kinds of business.

Among the entrepreneurs is Ricky Carranza, a permanent resident from the Philippines who first established a dance school in Helsinki in the 1990s and have been into various businesses related to the arts and film industry.

He said that among the 10,000-strong Filipino community, five so far set up their own Philippine restaurants.