Artificial Intelligence-driven disruptions are increasingly becoming pervasive and are expected to change every industry. The high-tech sector can gain significantly from adopting AI at scale to stay competitive. As companies are constantly seeking to launch innovative products at speed, optimise costs, and enhance customer experience, The following technology trends make AI a lucrative investment for high-tech:

AI is becoming better and more affordable: Per the 2022 AI-Index-Report by Stanford, since 2018, the cost and the time to train ML (machine learning) tasks have improved, encouraging widespread commercial adoption of AI.

Robotic arms are becoming cheaper: An AI Index survey shows the median price of robotic arms has decreased by 46.2 per cent in the past five years, making them more affordable.

Large models are doing much more: Large language models trained on enormous data are setting new records on technical benchmarks. These pre-trained models can do many things without any additional training data. Example, Open AI’s GPT3 can generate code from simple English to create an article with no additional training data.

Rising adoption of 5G, connected smart devices, and evolution in immersive technology: Per a McKinsey report, the global immersive reality market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 24 per cent until 2035, facilitated by an increase in the use of smartphones, connected devices, and 5G networks, among other factors.

Successful entrepreneurs in the hi-tech industry can seize the moment created by these trends. Some market leaders are efficiently addressing these challenges with the effective adoption of AI at scale.

Tech giants like Google and Apple have built sophisticated algorithms to support their AI journeys. Digital natives like Amazon and Netflix have also successfully leveraged AI to emerge as industry leaders in their respective sectors.

Besides technological trends, the market is also pushing for AI adoption:

Growth in 5G-enabled solutions due to increased demand for streaming content, gaming, and connected experience via the rise of the metaverse.

An explosion of smart devices and edge computing applications.

Heightened macro-level instability due to geopolitical tensions and new trade policies.

Shift to services/subscription business models to drive long-term value for customers.

These market conditions are encouraging high-tech industry leaders to leverage AI to enable business model innovation. AI is helping the industry meet the growing demand for customer-centric and personalised solutions by moving towards the services/subscription fee model, reinventing the operating model (digitisation of supply chain), and finally delivering hyper-customised experiences.

The value of AI extends from research and design to production

To understand how AI can deliver more, let us consider the semiconductor sector within the high-tech industry, which typically has high capital and operational expenses. It is always striving to minimise its product life cycles. Automation in chip design and verification can reduce production costs and deliver operational efficiency by predicting failures in integrated circuit designs and proposing optimal layouts.

Other use cases that benefit from AI include supplier risk management, inventory optimisation, procurement, material planning, predictive maintenance of equipment, and sales and marketing. With the advancement in AI and immersive-reality technologies, product design can be reimagined in high-tech manufacturing. The use of digital twins enables virtual walk-throughs of physical environments supporting early-stage amendments and powerful visualisation, thus shortening time-to-market, reducing costs, and supporting rapid prototyping.

Integrating AI into 5G networks can improve customer experience through faster and personalised services, enhance network performance, and reduce cost; it can also accelerate the push towards Industry 4.0 by enabling smarter factories. AI has the power to completely transform the high-tech industry that faces a range of challenges and opportunities. At the same time, one needs to acknowledge that AI is young and there is room for improvement.

The writer is Associate Vice President & Global Head - AI and Automation Services, Infosys

comment COMMENT NOW