Create Date: 5/02/2024
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The adoption of generative AI has gathered pace in Asia-Pacific, as businesses in the region seek to quickly harness the power of transformative technology.
Research firm IDC found in a recent study that 85 per cent of IT leaders across Asia-Pacific agree that AI and GenAI will significantly transform their industries. Eighty-two per cent also expect greater human-machine partnership within the next five years, it revealed.
At the same time, risks are emerging as well. From accidentally exposing one’s data to unwittingly injecting bias in analysis, AI could yet invoke various regulations across the region over time.
While some countries, such as Australia, Japan and Singapore, have been forward looking in providing guidelines and best practices, others have adopted a wait-and-see approach that appears for now to be open to the technology.
" The data landscape in APJ is notably fragmented, influenced by diverse regulatory environments stemming from varied political landscapes. Consider the multitude of languages and cultures, each playing a role – organizations will need to be highly sensitive to these nuances, for their solutions and innovations to be sensible and progressive," said Chris Kelly, Dell Technologies’ senior vice president for data center solutions in Asia-Pacific and Japan.
“Ethical considerations and expectations vary widely across different regions. An understanding of these cultural differences must be deeply ingrained into AI's fabric, particularly concerning fairness, ethics, biases, and intellectual property. Without alignment, AI's credibility may falter among broader user demographics,” said Dr Christopher Lee Marshall, vice-president for data, analytics and AI at research firm IDC.
Embracing GenAI despite regulatory uncertainty
It would be a mistake for businesses to see the uneven – even fragmented – regulatory situation in the region as a reason to pause or slow down their AI efforts, said Dr Marshall.
On the contrary, Asia-Pacific businesses need to start mapping out how they will deploy AI across their organizations with the right safeguards.
“The challenge for them is developing the safety guardrails while being flexible to adapt to change in the fast-evolving field. Each use case may involve different technologies or services, which may in turn enable other use cases and bring new problems or issues,” he pointed out. “There’s no point establishing governance ahead of actual deployment – they have to be in lock step.”
What is clear to any government or business is that a failure to adopt GenAI effectively could lead to organizations falling behind their competitors and missing out on the significant productivity and innovation gains these technologies can provide.
Without access to the right compute power and AI-optimized infrastructure, businesses risk being unable to capitalize on the growing opportunities presented by GenAI.
“Time and again, transformation waves have come through in our region – and that all starts from bravely making the first move. You cannot avoid kicking off the process today just because you do not know how things will play out,” said Dell’s Kelly. “Early adopters doing it with the right frameworks have universally been the ones that succeed over time, and who manage to expand and pivot their business to new opportunities.”
Starting small when building AI capabilities
Like with many new technologies, it is important for both business and IT teams to start small with AI, create a safe space for testing, and learn from mistakes that are not “fatal”, Kelly added.
And with a shortage of AI talent, businesses must begin immersing themselves in the technology early to get a grip on how to fully use it ethically and fairly in future.
One way forward for Asia-Pacific businesses is to have access to flexible, high-performance AI infrastructure that can be easily configured with programmable guardrails to address the region’s unique governance requirements.
For example, AMD is driving open-source innovation for AI ecosystems to enable the best applications and use cases to be created by AI developers.
“We believe that this is the best way to accelerate innovation and make AI more accessible to everyone,” said Peter Chambers, AMD’s managing director for sales for Asia-Pacific. “We are committed to working with our technology partners to continue to grow the ecosystem and make it easier for developers to build and deploy AI applications.”
“This is why we’ve also joined key partnerships, like the AI Alliance, which consists of companies, startups, universities, research and government organizations, as well as non-profit foundations that are working to innovate across all aspects of AI technology, applications and governance—in an open and transparent way,” he added.
Dell’s Kelly further remarked – “When integrating generative AI into a business, it necessitates a complete overhaul of fundamental processes and functions. This shift cannot be solely dictated by IT; it is essential to engage key business stakeholders, units, and corporate functions from the outset when conceptualizing these generative AI projects. Achieving this effectively demands collaboration across a spectrum of leaders and fields beyond just the technology teams.”
Flexible ecosystem for controlled GenAI adoption
An open ecosystem, powered by on-premise AI infrastructure from trusted partners like Dell and AMD, enables businesses to fully harness the capabilities of GenAI while maintaining complete control and alignment with defined business needs, data privacy regulations, and cultural norms across diverse markets. On-premise solutions offer greater data security and compliance with regional regulations, a crucial advantage in the fragmented regulatory landscape of Asia-Pacific.
The strong partnership between Dell and AMD exemplifies the evolutionary flexibility required to navigate the GenAI journey successfully. The combined offering of Dell's PowerEdge XE9680 server, AMD's high-performance Instinct MI300X accelerators built on the 3rd Gen AMD CDNA architecture, and the ROCm 6 open software stack provides an open, high-performance foundation that empowers organizations to innovate and adapt their GenAI solutions as needs evolve.
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Download NowWith deep expertise and capabilities in AI solutions, trusted partners can guide companies through the complexities of integrating GenAI into their businesses, ensuring a smooth transition and effective implementation. This holistic approach, combining cutting-edge hardware and software with experienced support, enables businesses to confidently embark on their GenAI journey, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and stay ahead of the competition while adhering to evolving regulatory and cultural requirements.
Charting the path forward
However, businesses cannot simply dive headfirst into the latest cutting-edge technology. Before embarking on their GenAI journey, companies should start with principles, guidelines and best practices that are useful for new technology, said Dr Marshall. “But soon you have to move to risk-based frameworks.”
“This means figuring out what could go wrong, what the downside of AI might be,” he added. “If that can be mitigated, we do that.”
For many businesses in Asia-Pacific and Japan, AI is an agenda that is increasingly in boardrooms, just like sustainability is on their radar today, which means there is no time for hesitation, said Dell’s Kelly.
“You need to have a point of view on it – and that includes how you use and control that technology,” he added.
The challenge for most organizations will be to move from defining the governance elements to creating an operationalized approach across the company to guide and evaluate its responsible AI development and deployment, said AMD’s Chambers.
“AI will undoubtedly be pervasive, and it is imperative that organizations ensure they not only have the compute engines to deploy the technology but are playing an active role in supporting the development of an open ecosystem to ensure that AI will flourish further.”
To learn more about Dell's powerful PowerEdge XE9680 server and other XE servers that are acceleration-optimized, purpose-built for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI (GenAI), and High Performance Computing (HPC), visit this page. Additionally, explore further details about the high-performance AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators, which form the core of Dell's next-generation AI-focused hardware solutions.
