‘AI is the future, early adopters will be winners’

Imran Mojib, Special Correspondent

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the future. People should not just sit at the fence and watch, because the early adopters will be the long term winners, said an expert who is helping institutions across the UAE adapt the technology-based solutions for better results.

Dr Angelika Eksteen, CEO of AI Directions, said that AI is generating new approaches to business models, operations, and the deployment of people that are likely to fundamentally change the way they operate. But, a significant number of organisations are still unaware of the potential AI creates, be that for business opportunities or risks.

“There are many different applications of AI to improve our daily life. People should have an understanding of what is going on through awareness and training,” she said.

The UAE government aims to make the country among the top five happiest countries in the world by 2021.

The Happiness Index, which is a composite indicator that measures an individual’s assessment of his standards of living and satisfaction by using a survey, is a key performance indicator in this regard.

The efforts to ensure customer happiness can be further strengthened by implementing the AI Directions’ solution for Sentiment Analysis. “This solution can be applied in different real time cases such as in measuring customer happiness in a shop or mall, to measure customer satisfaction in a government office or a bank, in monitoring the attention of pupils in a classroom,” said Eksteen.

She pointed out that the UAE aims at becoming a fast adopter of emerging technologies, such as AI, as well as attracting top AI talent to experiment with new technologies and work in a sophisticated, secure ecosystem to solve complex problems.

Besides solution for Sentiment Analysis, the company has also developed a set of models that allow users for efficient face detection in complex environments, forming the basis of other solutions such as Face Verification, Pain Detection and People Flow.

“These Facial Detection and Verification Models work in real time videos and are robust in different lighting conditions. They can be used in complex environments where larger sets of people move in an unregulated way,” she said.

The solutions for Pain Detection work effectively in different conditions and with or without connectivity. It uses facial analysis to provide a pain estimation based on the PSPI pain intensity indicator.