Actively nurture the next generation of technology talent toAI+Get ready for a new era

Hong Kong, April 29, 2024 /US Communication/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) China Hong Kong Limited held a media briefing ahead of today to share progress made globally and in Hong Kong since IBM launched enterprise-class artificial intelligence (AI) and data platform watsonx last year, and IBM's competitiveness in enterprise adoption of AI Insights and insights. IBM also noted that the rapid development and adoption of generative AI has widened the skills gap, which needs to be addressed by all sectors of society to prepare for a smooth entry into the new era of AI Priority (AI+).

HKIIT and IBM work together to nurture digital talent
From left: VTC Vice President Dr Liao Shi-Lok, HKIIT President Dr Yen-keung Hsu, General Manager, IBM Hong Kong, Pan Fengyao, Chief Technology Officer, IBM Hong Kong Lee, Chief Technology Officer, IBM Hong Kong, Lee-Han TJIOE

IBM believes that enterprises have moved from an era of prioritizing AI (AI+) to enhance competitiveness by helping business operations by increasing AI (+AI). Early adopters of AI are leading the trend, and according to the IBM-commissioned Global AI Adoption Index 2023, 59% are already planning to accelerate and increase investment in AI technologies in surveyed enterprises adopting AI. 42% of large enterprises say they have actively deployed AI, and 40% have not scaled up their deployment due to lack of skills, too complex data, trust, cost, etc., despite actively exploring the use of the technology. Additionally, 38% of enterprise IT professionals say their companies are actively implementing generative AI. Among industries, the financial services industry has the highest percentage of AI applications, reaching 50%.

“Two Big Platforms” Unlock Enterprise Data Value 

AI and hybrid cloud are the two major technological forces driving enterprise transformation innovation. With IBM's “two big platforms” — Watsonx, born for AI, and Red Hat OpenShift, born for hybrid cloud, enterprises benefit from their open, secure and scalable platform characteristics that unlock data value across systems, build and adopt multiple AI models and applications in hybrid multicloud environments To accelerate the digital transformation of enterprises and increase competitiveness.

When considering delivering business value with generative AI, businesses need to evaluate which model is best suited to their business goals: one, using software that embeds generative AI, which has the advantage of being easy and economical, but lack of differentiation; and second, the open source model of querying through an API has the advantage of having a certain differentiating advantage, but It also brings risks such as data governance and privacy; three is to build (and query) your own underlying model using trusted public and private data, which requires long-term investment but can build unique differentiations that deliver long-term returns for sustained growth.

Not all generative AI models are the same, and businesses need to tailor AI models based on their unique needs and their own data. watsonx helps enterprises implement responsible AI deployments and address critical issues including governance, risk assessment, and privacy issues. The on-premise version of watsonx.governance has been launched for industry customers with a large number of on-premises IT infrastructure and data assets, such as the financial services industry, helping highly regulated customers to de-trust deployed AI to accelerate and scale AI Transformation Journey.

IBM Granite, a generative foundation model developed by IBM, has also been launched, allowing enterprises to use decoder-only models designed for generative tasks to complete tasks such as summarizing, content generation, categorization, and accessing insights. All Granite base models are trained and processed by IBM on enterprise-focused datasets, with datasets coming from internet, academia, code, law, and finance five areas, with 10% of training data coming from legal and finance. This unique combination of data enables Granite models to deliver superior performance for financial services, including credit risk assessments, insurance answers, conversational financial answers and summaries, or to provide superior services to clients with legal requirements. IBM Granite alleviates customer concerns about data privacy, compliance, trust and more.

IBM is committed to responsibly building, deploying and using AI models to drive business innovation, announcing IP indemnification (contract protection) for IBM's underlying models, including Granite, to give customers more confidence in using their data to build AI, a critical consideration for enterprises to adopt generative AI.

IBMLee Wing-hui, Chief Technology Officer, Hong KongEmphasizing: “AI governance should not be an afterthought, and we encourage customers to get to grips with their machine learning (ML) models and foundation models from the start. The comprehensive rollout of watsonx.governance is designed to help enterprises implement end-to-end AI lifecycle governance, reduce risk, and manage compliance for the growing number of AI and industry regulations. The flexibility, customer protection, accuracy and trust in the model selection provided by the IBM watsonx platform provide powerful technical support for enterprise-scale adoption and scale-up of AI.”

One IBM“Technology+Consulting” Empowering Enterprise DeploymentA.I.

IBM Consulting is the only major global consulting firm affiliated with a technology company. In 2023, IBM Consulting became the fastest growing consulting company in the world by revenue, embodying the unique value of One IBM (technology+consulting) and proving that IBM Consulting's strategy of “cultivate core customers, grow together with customers” is effective.

IBM Consulting's watsonx practice delivers expertise in the generative AI technology stack, while bringing years of industry insights, enterprise business experience and global vision to clients to inspire new AI application scenarios, providing end-to-end services from strategic consulting to deployment operations, co-creating a future with enterprises AI capabilities and digital transformation pathways for greater business value and continued growth.

IBM clearly understands that customers want to use technology to accelerate business transformation—they require AI to produce accurate, reliable results, scale across the cloud, and be easily applicable to relevant enterprise domains and applications. IBM watsonx is designed to meet these critical needs of enterprise customers。

IBMGeneral Manager, Consulting Services, Hong KongLee-Han TjioeSaid: “In Hong Kong, IBM Consulting is focused on working with IBM technology and ecosystem partners to accelerate enterprise adoption of watsonx, empowering customers to deploy AI; helping customers build robust, secure and scalable hybrid cloud architectures. Energize your business and increase competitiveness.”

Since watsonx launched last year, more than 2,500 enterprises across the world have participated in test and technical preview projects on the IBM watsonx platform, including more than 700 pilot projects, signed more than 500 deals, and shared success stories with more than 150 enterprise customers. There are also many successful cases in Hong Kong, such as:

• A public affairs departmentGen AI is used to improve work efficiency. Using IBM watsonx Assistant-powered incident reporting chatbots, with Gen AI technology powered by watsonx.ai, engineers can log details of accidents through messaging software and produce standardized reporting templates by AI, including press releases to improve the efficiency of engineer reporting incidents.
  
• A Wealth Solutions Team in the Financial Services IndustryUtilizing digital people from watsonx.ai, watsonx Assistant, and partner Soul Machines, Wealth Digital Assistant Avatar builds on features such as natural language processing, human conversations, workflow automation, and retrieval enhanced generation (RAG) to help client managers understand the dynamics of HSBC financial products and financial markets to enhance their Work efficiency.
  
• A large enterprise in the transport industryWorking with IBM consulting and customer engineering teams to become early adopters of the watsonx.ai Gen AI model, creating Text-to-SQL and JSON (using text generated code) and integrated data generation self-service tools to enable tech-savvy business people to reduce data synthesis by up to 50% with reliable AI outputs Quantity, which achieves a reduction in potency.

In addition, IBM isA large enterprise in the local entertainment and sports industryDeploy AI solutions that leverage Gen AI to deliver a better experience and engagement to their end customers.

IBMInvesting in future talent forAI+Get ready for a new era

A study published in September 2019 by the IBM Business Values Research Institute predicted that AI will change 100% of jobs; in the age of AI and intelligent automation, by 2022, more than 1.2 billion corporate employees in 12 major economies around the world will need to learn new skills or receive retraining; and by 2024, global production is projected to be surging More than 1,600 million “new” job opportunities. “New Leaders” are a new career form in the digital age first proposed by IBM a few years ago. Unlike “blue collar” and “white collar”, “new leaders” jobs focus more on skills rather than education, especially the diverse skills needed by AI-era enterprises, including professional technology and soft power in the workplace. According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Work Report 2023, employers estimate that 44% of staff skills will be disrupted between 2023 and 2027, an increase of 9% from the previous five-year forecast, and that artificial intelligence may increase this number further, with many staff unable to obtain relevant skills training and upgrades. Will be phased out.

IBM advocates and leverages a skills-first, connected ecosystem approach to addressing the challenges of talent transformation, focusing on improving learning outcomes, delivering reputable and recognized certifications, and increasing education and training opportunities. IBM works closely with schools, universities, nonprofits and industry partners to cultivate a diverse range of job candidates for technology-related work across industries.

IBM is committed to meeting the needs of different learners through the Social Impact Program. In the area of talent development, IBM has strengthened its partnership with the Vocational Training Council (VTC), the first IBM SkillsBuild partnership to promote digital skills training in Hong Kong, and announced the provision of the IBM SkillsBuild free education platform to the 14 VTC institutional members — the Hong Kong Institute of Information Technology (HKIIT).

IBMGeneral Manager, Hong Kong, Pan Fung-YaoSays: “IBM has always been committed to bringing advanced technology to the world. At the same time, we advocate actively addressing the talent challenges posed by these new technologies through a skills-first, interconnected ecosystem approach. We are proud to be the first partner of HKIIT to teach classes in AI and Data Science curriculum units in collaboration with the teaching team. As part of this collaboration, content from IBM's iconic education platform SkillsBuild will be deployed to the course. IBM experts will participate as guest lecturers to help students understand how new technologies can address different business challenges. In addition, we will offer VTC and HKIIT students internship opportunities in the IBM Summer Internship Program, enabling them to master the skills needed across industries in this technology-driven era.”

Hong Kong Institute of Information Technology (HKIIT) Dean Dr. Hsu Yan KeungSaid: “HKIIT is committed to nurturing digital technology talent from the IT industry to all sectors, while providing skills retraining and improvement programmes to employees to meet the development needs of Hong Kong as an international centre for innovation, filling the industry's talent and technical gaps. We are grateful to IBM for supporting the education of career professionals and providing HKIIT with a wealth of online learning resources, including new AI and IT-related training, to help drive the long-term development of the IT industry and innovation.”

Dr. HsuIt added: “Today's world is changing rapidly, and the pace of updating traditional curricula is not keeping up with the development of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and data science. To this end, we plan to incorporate the elements of guided self-learning into teaching, guiding students to use rich learning resources such as IBM SkillsBuild, master self-learning skills and plan learning processes to help them achieve optimal learning outcomes. “HKIIT is committed to promoting the I+I (Enterprise - School) collaboration, and IBM, as HKIIT's key industry partner, will work together to pursue excellence and contribute in the field of vocational education and training.”

IBM will provide HKIIT with a SkillsBuild software download platform that will give learners and educators free access to selected course materials for self-study and classroom instruction, and for students to pass exams and earn industry-recognized IBM Digital Certificates. SkillsBuild contains over 1,000 online tutorials covering AI, Sustainability, Capstone, Data Science, Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, IBM Engineering, Red Hat College and other popular technology disciplines in the AI Priority Era, as well as workplace skills courses such as Design Thinking.

The IBM New Leader Talent Development Program provides training for young people focused on skills rather than college degrees to help them prepare for skills-first positions. According to the just-released IBM 2023 Impact Report, IBM has invested more than $1 billion in skills-first education such as the “New Leadership Program” since 2022; as of 2021, IBM will provide free IBM training content to more than 1,100 million learners worldwide, and expects to deliver skills training to 3,000 million people by 2030 Noah.

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