Seeking a Higher Public Awareness for AI

Károly Balázs Solymár

Local stakeholders are increasingly seeking visibility and cooperation to benefit from the tremendous potential Artificial Intelligence offers. One of the latest demonstrations of such efforts took place at an interactive exhibit by AI Coalition Hungary, a platform that brings together business, academia, research and government to find synergies in relation to AI-based solutions. Twenty exhibitors put their tech on display.

“Artificial Intelligence can turn into an important engine of the Hungarian economy, securing a strategic position for Hungary in the field,” said Károly Balázs Solymár, deputy state secretary for ICT at the Ministry of Innovation and Technology.

He was speaking at the AI exhibition at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics on May 9; there are hopes it will becomes an annual event.

Noting that the value of global AI markets is set to hike by an annual 50% between now and 2025, Solymár added that data policy deserves a special focus from the government, since it is imperative to allow public data to be used for AI purposes.

The exhibition gave a taste of the wide range of use cases from robotic assistants to speech recognition. A great example of the latter is Clementine’s solution that turns hundreds of hours of call center recordings into text overnight. It also analyzes their content by the next morning, so performance reports can give a lot more detailed picture of how customer service works.

“The system has shown that a lot more valuable information is created during customer interactions than you might think,” said György Körmendi, Clementine’s CEO. Since they also hand over the know-how of the product, internal staff of clients trained by Clementine can add new features as they see fit. “Feedback says that quality assurance of customer service has improved,” said Körmendi.

Virtual Loan Officer

Clementine has something innovative for handling loan applications in a more sophisticated manner as well. Its virtual loan officer assesses risk factors by reviewing not only all application-related documents but also previous relevant online conversations between flesh-and-blood fellow officers. It can even ask colleagues questions to clear any concerns and to vote on whether the loan can be granted or not.

Fókusz Takarékszövetkezet is an early adopter of that solution. “The biggest assets of the system are that it’s tireless and unbiased,” CEO István Sebestyén says of its first-hand experience.

“This is important since we put extra emphasis on assessing loan applications within the shortest possible timeframe. On the other hand, the judgment of the automated system is not clouded by any bias, which ensures that every loan application is subject to the same evaluation process.”

Logistics is another industry that can benefit from AI-based cost optimization. Dmlab’s application gives permanent feedback to drivers on how cost-efficiently they drive under any given conditions, and it also advises them when to use cruise control. The technology has earned Dmlab’s client Trans-Sped annual savings of up to HUF 60 million.

As Dmlab CEO Csaba Gáspár pointed out, big data, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning solutions create real value and advantages for businesses.

“At the exhibit, those who have assessed their own sheer volume of data assets came to our stand with specific questions in mind,” he said. “In a way it was surprising to see how many were interested in the technology, but it is also somewhat understandable given the huge number of devices and processes out there that run on AI.”