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Thirty-three percent of utility and energy companies worldwide have begun to pilot generative artificial intelligence algorithms capable of generating text, images, computer code and other content in their operations, according to a survey released last week by digital think tank Capgemini Research Institute.

Almost 40% of utility and energy companies have established a dedicated team and budget for generative AI, while 41% say they have taken a watch and wait approach to the technology. But 95% of utilities and energy companies said they have discussed the use of generative AI in the past year, according to the survey.

A third of survey respondents in the energy sector said they are testing the ability of generative AI to create realistic datasets that can be used to shorten development timelines, but early AI adopters in the energy sector say the industry has only begun to experiment with the AI use cases with the greatest potential.

Utilities are generally conservative in their adoption of new technologies, but they seem to be keeping pace with most other industries when it comes to the rise of generative AI, according to Doug Ross, vice president of data and insights for Capgemini.

Energy and utility companies that participated in Capgeminis survey were on pace in their adoption of generative AI with other industries. Thirty-nine percent of energy sector companies have dedicated teams and budgets for generative AI, compared to a global, all-industry average of 40%, according to the survey results.

Although ChatGPT intensified public awareness of generative AI in recent months, the technology itself has been around in various forms for at least three years, Ross said. Even so, generative AI has attracted growing interest from a variety of industries and Capgeminis survey data suggests utilities are no exception.

Utilities tend to see generative AI as having the potential to accelerate growth, rather than posing a potential disruptive threat, Ross said. And their stated assumptions align with his experience with the technology. He cited a case study of an insurance company that planned to implement AI in its call center to reduce the average call time with customers. Call time did not go down, but the company saw overall sales increase. Ross said he believes this is because the AI reduced the amount of time spent on rote tasks like information collection, which allowed the customer service representatives to spend more time developing relationships.

Fifty-two percent of energy companies indicated an interest in deploying AI on their sales teams in Capgeminis survey. They also showed interest in more technical uses of generative AI, such as using it to generate realistic but synthetic data to support IT and development processes.

But the focus on using AI in these capacities means most utilities are still experimenting with AI at the surface level, said Raj Chudgar, a consultant for data center provider EdgeConneX.

EdgeConneX began piloting an AI service from energy supplier Gridmatic in January to test whether artificial intelligence could help the company achieve the 24-7 clean energy standard touted by Google. The company had been using annual renewable energy credits to offset its energy use for a couple of years, but wanted to take their sustainability goals to the next level, said Anand Ramesh, senior vice president of advanced technology of EdgeConneX.

The companys initial goal was to match 80% of their electrical use with hourly clean energy by the end of the two year period without significantly increasing their energy costs. The AI has nearly achieved that goal within the first few months, and should approach 90% by the end of the year, exceeding expectations, Chudgar said. However, he said it is unlikely the AI will be able to achieve 100% renewable energy given the current resources on the grid without incurring significant costs.

Supplying 24-7 clean energy is just one of three AI use cases that has emerged since Gridmatic began working with artificial intelligence six years ago to optimize bidding in wholesale energy markets, Leesa Lee, chief marketing officer for Gridmatic, said. The company has also seen success using AI to optimize the operation of energy storage assets, and to help manage demand-side efficiency programs. While there is a place for AI chatbots and the like in customer service, AIs greatest potential benefits will be realized elsewhere, Lee said.

The customer-facing, front-line impacts will probably be much more apparent and much more immediate, Lee said. But there will be deeper things that will potentially be more hidden, and will have greater impact.

Ross agreed that there will likely be two sets of use cases for AI in the utility sector more immediate, low risk possibilities like using AI to generate posts on social media, and higher-risk functions related to a utilitys core activities like grid planning. The latter, Ross said, will likely take longer to implement if only because utilities will have to get regulators to sign off on these uses of AI.

And the full implementation of this latter group of AI use cases could take much longer than many expect perhaps 10 to 20 years, Chudgar said. Private commercial entities like EdgeConneX may be able to move a little faster because they dont face the same regulatory hurdles, he said. But even for the competitive markets, number of skilled professionals who can build and deploy AI is limited, according to Chudgar.

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A third of utilities have begun to pilot generative AI for customer ... - Utility Dive

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribunewww.newsofbahrain.com

Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), one of the worlds largest aluminium smelters, underlined its commitment to advance in Artificial Intelligence (AI) within its operations with the successful completion of Green Anode Density Prediction -- one of the many joint projects with Nasser Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Centre.

To celebrate this remarkable achievement, an honouring ceremony was held at Albas premises where Albas Chief Executive Officer, Ali Al Baqali, and Nasser Artificial Intelligence R&D Centre CEO, Dr Abdulla Naser Al Noaimi, honoured the Centres team involved in the project, in the presence of the Centres AI Executive Advisor, Dr Jassim Haji, as well as other Alba and Nasser Vocational Training Centre (NVTC) officials.

Commenting, Albas Chief Executive Officer, Ali Al Baqali, said: Artificial Intelligence is a tool we want to adopt as without it, we wont be able to advance and disrupt the norms in our business.

We believe that the choices which we make today will simply give us more data about what to do next. Adding Further, Nasser Artificial Intelligence Research & Development Centre CEO, Dr Abdulla Naser Al Noaimi, indicated that the Centre aims at becoming one of the main pillars of Artificial Intelligence system in the Kingdom through its unique projects and smart solutions that contribute to the digital transformation initiatives in both government and private sector organizations and companies.

The completed project consists of an artificial intelligence model that predicts green anode density based on process variables, in addition to a dashboard that allows users to enter the values of process parameters and get the predicted density, which helps users to optimise the process and achieve the desired density of green anodes.

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Alba joins forces with Nasser Artificial Intelligence | THE DAILY ... - News of Bahrain- DT News

Aidoc

This AI technology will immediately read all imaging studies and look for three emergent conditions:

These conditions have the potential to be life-threatening. If any of these conditions are identified, Aidocs technology promptly notifies the radiology team. This urgent notification enables the prioritization and prompt confirmation of the relevant study by a radiologist, which is vital for maximizing patient safety.

In addition to prioritizing the studys read, if a pulmonary embolism is detected, Aidocs AI notifies the hospitals pulmonary embolism response team so the patient can receive multidisciplinary and lifesaving care immediately.

Aidocs solution also provides access to a leading-edge AI algorithm (Riverain) for detecting lung nodules (potentially precancerous lesions), which increases accuracy and provides radiologists with instant decision support.

This software will automatically generate study impressions from a radiologists dictation. It will also automatically compile and insert follow-up guidelines for incidental findings (lung nodules, thyroid nodules, adrenal lesions, kidney cysts, enlarged lymph nodes and more) from national medical organizations into reports, standardizing recommendations for additional care and evaluation. This process reduces manual data entry for radiologists and allows them to focus on higher level duties to improve patient safety and quality.

When incidental findings (lung nodules, thyroid nodules, adrenal lesions, kidney cysts, enlarged lymph nodes and more) are identified, this software will automatically send follow-up recommendations to the patient as well as their referring clinician and regularly check in with both the patient and clinician until the follow-up appointments or tests are scheduled.

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LVHN to Implement Artificial Intelligence Software Into Radiology ... - LVHN News

Several thousand students worldwide participated in the second annual Day of AI on May 18, yet another sign of artificial intelligences growing significance to schools.

Its been a year of extraordinary advancements in AI, and with that comes necessary conversations and concerns about who and what this technology is for, said event organizer Cynthia Breazeal, who is the director of the Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Americas K-12 schools are already using artificial intelligence for everything from personalizing student learning to conducting classroom observations, as Education Week described in a special report earlier this month. A coalition of influential groups such as Code.org and the Educational Testing Service recently launched an effort to help schools and state education departments integrate artificial intelligence into curricula, and the International Society for Technology in Education has made related learning opportunities available to students and teachers alike.

The RAISE initiative at MIT builds on those efforts by offering free classroom lessons on such topics as What Can AI Do? and ChatGPT in School. Overall, said MIT doctoral student Daniella DiPaola, who helped develop the Day of AI curriculum, the approach is to weave ethical, social, and policy considerations throughout technical explanations. Central to that aim is fostering discussion of the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights released by the White Houses Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in late 2022.

We want to make sure societal impact is part of the process, DiPaola said.

Thats exactly what the White House hoped to spur, said Marc Aidinoff, who helped lead the creation of the Bill of Rights during his time as OSTPs chief of staff. Aidinoff spent the Day of AI working with a group of Massachusetts middle and high school students debating potential legislation for regulating the use of artificial intelligence in schools.

Unlike the adults who talk about AI as this unknowable, all-powerful thing and let their fear take over, the students all treated AI as a knowable thing thats complicated, but we can take action on, he said afterward.

Aidinoff said he particularly appreciated the MIT RAISE initiatives focus on engaging artificial intelligence as a potentially helpful companion, rather than a threat or silver-bullet solution. One benefit of that approach, he said, is an emphasis on considering specific use cases and threats rather than getting paralyzed by amorphous fears. Thinking about how AI can best support humans also encourages discussions of general themes and principles such as fairness that teachers are already accustomed to exploring with their students.

That sentiment was echoed by Kristen Thomas Clarke, a literacy and information technology teacher at the private Media-Providence Friends School in Pennyslvania. Now in her eighth year at the school, Thomas Clarke said shes long mixed digital citizenship and media literacy activities into her lessons on coding and robotics. But in the wake of ChatGPT s emergence this year, she and her head of school decided that a broader school-wide discussion of artificial intelligence was warranted.

That included use of MITs curriculum, which Thomas Clarke praised as highly interactive and effective at helping students see both the promise and potential pitfalls of AI, including discrimination that can result from biased training data.

But the most important impact, she said, was on the adults at her school.

I think our initial reaction [to ChatGPT] was maybe a little bit of fear, like what are the kids going to do with this? Thomas Clarke said. But now I think of it more in terms of enhancing their knowledge than doing their homework for them.

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'Day of AI' Spurs Classroom Discussions on Societal Impacts of ... - Education Week

Q. Everyone's talking about artificial intelligence, and how it may replace people in various jobs. Will artificial intelligence replace my doctor?

A. Not in my lifetime, fortunately! And the good news is that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve your doctor's decisions, and to thereby improve your health if we are careful about how it is developed and used.

AI is a mathematical process that tries to make sense out of massive amounts of information. So it requires two things: the ability to perform mathematical computations rapidly, and huge amounts of information stored in an electronic form words, numbers, and pictures.

When computers and AI were first developed in the 1950s, some visionaries described how they could theoretically help improve decisions about diagnosis and treatment. But computers then were not nearly fast enough to do the computations required. Even more important, almost none of the information the computers would have to analyze was stored in electronic form. It was all on paper. Doctors' notes about a patient's symptoms and physical examination were written (not always legibly) on paper. Test results were written on paper and pasted in a patient's paper medical record. As computers got better, they started to relieve doctors and other health professionals from some tedious tasks like helping to analyze images electrocardiograms (ECGs), blood samples, x-rays, and Pap smears.

Today, computers are literally millions of times more powerful than when they were first developed. More important, huge amounts of medical information now are in electronic form: medical records of millions of people, the results of medical research, and the growing knowledge about how the body works. That makes feasible the use of AI in medicine.

Already, computers and AI have made powerful medical research breakthroughs, like predicting the shape of most human proteins. In the future, I predict that computers and AI will listen to conversations between doctor and patient and then suggest tests or treatments the doctor should consider; highlight possible diagnoses based on a patient's symptoms, after comparing that patient's symptoms to those of millions of other people with various diseases; and draft a note for the medical record, so the doctor doesn't have to spend time typing at a computer keyboard and can spend more time with the patient.

All of this will not happen immediately or without missteps: doctors and computer scientists will need to carefully evaluate and guide the development of new AI tools in medicine. If the suggestions AI provides to doctors prove to be inaccurate or incomplete, that "help" will be rejected. And if AI then does not get better, and fast, it will lose credibility. Powerful technologies can be powerful forces for good, and for mischief.

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Will artificial intelligence replace doctors? - Harvard Health