A top official of the Center for AI Research (CAIR) has underscored the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) including businesses of all sizes.
CAIR, which is a newly created agency under the Department of Trade and Industry, is being positioned as a Center of Excellence for AI R&D in the country.
CAIR managing director Erika Fille Legara told the membership meeting of the Philippine Exporters Federation (Philexport) that AI will improve the general business landscape and business operations.
However, Legara said SMEs face obstacles to AI adoption, including data scarcity, culture, no clear business case, cost, capability, and understanding.
“Even for big companies, culture is a problem. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. We’ve been doing this since the 1980s, so why change it? So, if the leadership has that level of culture, it is difficult for us. But these barriers can seem daunting,” said Legara.
“Then there’s data scarcity, especially for SMEs, data are recorded using notebooks or logbooks and it’s not yet digitized so how can we build machine learning models if your data is everything manual?” she added.
Legara said entrepreneurs do not have a certain level of expertise to collect data, they just need to know how to input these data into the computer like in Excel, or from paper to Excel.
“It is digitizing – something that the machine or the computer can readily analyze. If there is demand even from this group on digitization, we are exploring not who will do it, but we will look for partners who can help you digitize and encode all the information as a start,” she said.
Legara is optimistic that in the coming years, CAIR will focus on sector-specific AI innovations to tackle challenges in manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and beyond leveraging AI to create tailored solutions.
“We are housing full-time data scientists and AI professionals; we hired people so we can just focus on defining your use case, giving us your data, and let’s build the solution for you and it’s tailored-fit really for your businesses,” she added.
Legara said the CAIR can share both personnel and computational resources as needed.
She also encouraged SMEs to take advantage of free services offered by a research center harnessing the use of AI to enhance their business operations, boost productivity, and grow significantly.