Slow AI adoption: How businesses can accelerate the uptake of AI (no, the answers in not more tech)

When faced with the question, “Do you believe our society is utilising the full potential of AI?” Ieva Martinkenaite, one of Europe’s leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) advocates, wishes she could answer differently.

“But the truth is, no. A big no. Although the use of AI varies across problem domains, industries, and continents, there is an overarching issue in lack of AI adoption,” she says.

It’s easy to understand the new Head of Telenor Research and Innovation’s desire for a global acceleration in the AI uptake when hearing her speak about the technology’s potential impact on society.

“AI is a set of technologies that can help humans perform specific tasks, such as recognising objects from a myriad of pictures. This can, for instance, be used to detect cancer cells from X-rays instantly. For businesses, AI can improve customer offers, reduce costs, and create new revenue streams. The AI technology is already there. What’s lacking is an overarching understanding among leaders and businesses of what AI actually can do.”

Also read: Ieva Martinkenaite named new head of Telenor Research and Innovation

Need for a culture shift

Although acknowledging that culture shifts are difficult, Martinkenaite stresses that they are needed to pave the way for more AI experimentation in businesses.

“A culture shift is hard because it touches on legacies and people’s ability to change. But it’s vital to capture value from new technologies and data. As businesses and industries, we need to focus on developing new skills and engage with peers and partners in arenas where we share and disseminate knowledge, like the Norwegian Open AI Lab,” she says.

Telenor, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and SINTEF established the Norwegian Open AI Lab (NAIL) in 2017. The lab, which is located at NTNU’s campus in Trondheim, Norway, is a platform for cooperation on AI between Norwegian public and private companies, the government, and academia.

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Sigve Brekke, President and CEO of Telenor Group, says Telenor joined NAIL as a funding partner to actively contribute to developing critical digital competencies.

“AI represents a massive potential for improving lives and businesses for our customers and Telenor's own business. We expect the impact of AI to accelerate with the increasing digitalisation of society and play a crucial role in combatting climate change,” says Brekke, fully backing Martinkenaite’s call for more skill development and partner focus.

“To capture value from AI, companies need talents, software, and an experimentation culture that would enable them to systematically transform data into actionable insights, predictions, and choices, guiding better business decisions and automating processes.”

A description that, in many ways, explains what NAIL has set out to provide its partners.

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Access to the brightest minds

“At NAIL, we work with partners that have data and problems they want to solve. This provides the partners with opportunities to solve challenges by tapping into NAIL’s resources, while we at NAIL build research on the work we do with the partners to develop our methods further,” explains Ingrid Schjølberg, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at NTNU.

Through Telenor’s research and development activities in NAIL, Telenor has been able to dive into real and complex operational issues and challenges.

“We are currently running large research projects on automatic speech recognition and detection of anomalous traffic in Radio Access Network (RAN). Given the fast pace of AI tech advancements, we are very happy to get help from the brightest minds at NTNU. This would not have been possible without investing our time, people, data, and problems in NAIL,” explains Martinkenaite, who looks forward to the next chapter of the lab’s story.

“The first five years have been very exciting, and we have learned how to work with research partners on AI and bring value to our business. I believe the next five will bring even more cutting-edge knowledge and utilisation through high-impact research-industry collaborations for Telenor.”

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