Traditional AI or generative? A hybrid approach wins

As enterprises invest in generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), many don’t want to let go of their traditional AI beginnings. Going forward, investments will continue, but a hybrid approach that involves traditional AI while leveraging generative AI will be a profitable path to go on.

Recently, Oracle CTO Larry Ellison was optimistic about generative AI, countering the fear-mongering prevalent in the tech industry. At the Oracle CloudWorld 2023, Ellison emphasized the importance of generative AI, calling it “probably” the most crucial new computer technology.

Billions of dollars are already being invested in the field. Every company is ready to experiment and implement the technology within its working

Oracle CTO Larry Ellison

“Billions of dollars are already being invested in the field. Every company is ready to experiment and implement the technology within its working,” he said.

Traditional AI Vs. Generative AI

There seems to be a tussle in the minds of organizations taking up AI as to whether continue with traditional AI or reach out to generative AI. The recent Generative AI Benchmark Report by Qlik^® shows that enterprises are planning significant investments in technologies that enhance data fabrics to enable generative AI success, and are looking to a hybrid approach that incorporates generative AI with traditional AI to scale its impact across their organizations. 

Generative AI’s potential has ignited a wave of investment and interest both in discreet generative AI tools, and in technologies that help organizations manage risk, embrace complexity and scale generative AI and traditional AI for impact

James Fisher, Chief Strategy Officer at Qlik

“Generative AI’s potential has ignited a wave of investment and interest both in discreet generative AI tools, and in technologies that help organizations manage risk, embrace complexity and scale generative AI and traditional AI for impact,” said James Fisher, Chief Strategy Officer at Qlik.

The report found that while the initial excitement of what generative AI can deliver remains, leaders understand they need to surround these tools with the right data strategies and technologies to fully realize their transformative potential. And while many are forging ahead with generative AI to alleviate competitive pressures and gain efficiencies, they are also looking for guidance on where to start and how to move forward quickly while keeping an eye on risk and governance issues.

AI is beginning to see adoption in smaller companies in various sectors. For example, in September, Oneglint Media Solutions, a Hyderabad-based photography solutions company, acquired Memzo, an AI-powered photo-sharing product developed by Satya Digitech, a technology solutions company based in Jaipur. AI is the next major stimulus in photography. For example, Memzo, offers event participants the ability to instantly locate their photos by simply taking a selfie, harnessing the power of Memzo’s proprietary Face Recognition AI models.

Read more: AI artist vs. human artist, who’s winning?

Also, in September, Hybrid Shifting Solution India Pvt. Ltd., (Hybrid Shifting) acquired Pikkol, an Indian AI based technology enabled moving brand. This strategic acquisition allows Hybrid Shifting to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to technology, an extensive partner network across 100 cities in India and the loyal customer base of Pikkol.

Creating Value from Generative AI

Even with the market focus on generative AI, respondents noted they clearly see traditional AI still bringing ongoing value in areas like predictive analytics. For example, in October, Prisma AI, a computer vision technology company, expanded its partnership with the Adani Group, the renowned multinational conglomerate. This expansion initiative aims to deliver exceptional airport experiences and promote the values of “AI for Good.”

Leveraging Prisma AI’s proprietary Visual AI algorithms, the system identifies incidents such as falls or unusual passenger behaviour. Equipped with smart tablets, goodness champions stationed at the desk receive real-time notifications about travellers in need, enabling swift and efficient assistance.

Prisma AI and the Adani Group initially collaborated to launch the innovative “Desk of Goodness” system at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport (SVPIA) in Ahmedabad and have been delivered to five more airports. This system has significantly improved passenger assistance and safety in departure and pre-security areas at SVPIA. The system extends compassionate support to passengers with diverse needs, including elderly travellers, mothers with infants, and individuals requiring wheelchair assistance.

However, respondents expect generative AI to help in extending the power of AI beyond data scientists or engineers, opening up AI capabilities to a larger population. This vision of what’s possible with generative AI has driven an incredible level of investment.

In October, Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) and Vianai Systems tied up to accelerate human-centered generative AI offerings. This partnership leverages Vianai’s hila™ Enterprise platform alongside Cognizant’s Neuro® AI, creating a seamless, unified interface to unlock predictive, AI-driven decision making. For both companies, this partnership is expected to enable growth opportunities in their respective customer bases, and through Cognizant’s plans to resell Vianai solutions. 

In every business around the world, there is a hunger to harness the power of AI, but serious challenges around hallucinations, price-performance and lack of trust are holding enterprises back

Dr. Vishal Sikka, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vianai Systems

“In every business around the world, there is a hunger to harness the power of AI, but serious challenges around hallucinations, price-performance and lack of trust are holding enterprises back. That’s why we built hila Enterprise, a platform that delivers trusted, human-centered applications of AI,” said Dr. Vishal Sikka, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vianai Systems. 

“Being able to monitor and improve LLM performance is critical to unlocking the true power of generative AI,” said Ravi Kumar S, Cognizant’s Chief Executive Officer.

Also in October, Crossbeats, an Indian brand in smartwatches and wireless audio technology, announced India’s first smartwatch featuring full integration of ChatGPT technology.

A Gartner survey reveals 63% of marketing leaders plan to invest in generative AI within 24 months amid declining martech utilization, which stands at 33% in 2023. Despite only 56% seeing more reward than risk in generative AI, the shift aims to overcome the challenges posed by the current complex martech ecosystem.

Read more: Indian MSMEs which rush in to adopt AI must comprehend it first

In September, Redis, Inc. integrated Redis Enterprise Cloud’s vector database capabilities with Amazon Bedrock, a service that makes it easy to build generative AI applications with foundation models. The solution allows customers to streamline application development by capitalizing on developer efficiency and scalability of a fully managed, high-performance database, while making it easy to use an array of leading foundation models (FMs) via API. 

Amazon Bedrock enables developers to build and scale generative AI applications using FMs from Amazon, AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, and Stability AI that best suit their unique use case. For organizations implementing Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures or large language model (LLM) caching, this integration eliminates the need to build their own models, customize existing models, or share their proprietary data with a commercial LLM provider.

As a vector database along with Amazon Bedrock, Redis Enterprise Cloud offers hybrid semantic search capabilities to pinpoint relevant data. It can also be deployed as an external domain-specific knowledge base. This allows LLMs to receive the most relevant and up-to-date context which improves result quality and reduces undesirable model hallucinations. The integration will be available in AWS Marketplace.   

Generative AI presents an exciting new frontier for companies to create innovative customer experiences by using FMs for their specific use cases

Atul Deo, general manager, Amazon Bedrock at AWS

“Generative AI presents an exciting new frontier for companies to create innovative customer experiences by using FMs for their specific use cases,” said Atul Deo, general manager, Amazon Bedrock at AWS. “Customers are keen to use techniques like RAG to ensure that FMs deliver accurate and contextualized responses.”

Going forward, investments will continue, but a hybrid approach that involves traditional AI while leveraging generative AI will be a profitable path to go on.