AI's potential to redefine nearly every aspect of our activities is both exciting and challenging. As we harness its capabilities, the focus must be on responsible integration, ensuring that innovation serves to enhance human experience and sustainability. The key lies in aligning AI's transformative power with ethical frameworks and long-term goals. A thoughtful approach to AI adoption can lead to breakthroughs that not only boost efficiency but also contribute positively to society.
AI has the capacity to redefine almost every element of our lives. One that is particularly exciting is Industrial AI, which will optimize how the systems around us work. Paired with IoT, digital twins, robotics and next generation technology such as AR or VR, AI has huge potential to complement and augment our human capabilities and create new learning environments, which will enable much greater safety as well as saved energy, resources and carbon emissions, progressing both our sustainability and business objectives. AI, however, is only as good as the data it is trained on. Data needs to be high-quality and structured, encompassing a full view of the company’s operations, from assets to carbon to energy and resource usage. Data must be, as much as possible, hybrid, available on the cloud but increasingly so on the edge. This is for multiple reasons: latency in real-time industrial operations, data ownership and IP protection, and the reduction of AI’s energy and carbon impact. Data is the foundation on which one can build a digital twin, run AI and in real time, visualize, analyze and make informed decisions on everything happening in operations. The big question though is what’s next. While R&D is deep and ongoing, things will keep evolving. More will happen on the edge. More people will get access to AI with natural language access and low-code or no-code tools. This will allow non-IT users like facility managers to customize AI applications for their facilities without needing a team of programmers. By opening the technology to a wider group of users, the adoption of AI solutions will accelerate, ensuring ever improving investment for owners.