Artificial Intelligence Meets Football at ABBYY AI Summit
by Catherine Johnson, Senior Director, Brand & Industry Relations
How do professional football players feel about competing against robots? Should we be worried about artificial intelligence becoming smarter than humans? And what percentage of people actually read tech privacy policies?
These were some of the interesting questions discussed at the ABBYY AI Summit, held May 15th in London’s iconic Emirates Stadium—home of Arsenal Football Club.
As the Official Intelligent Automation Partner of Arsenal Women’s team, we had the privilege of hosting our event at this wonderful location where our customers and partners not only saw educational presentations on how AI is changing the world of business but also heard how technology is changing the game for football, too. Following are highlights from the event.
ABBYY + Arsenal. Kicking off the proceedings (pun intended), our CEO Ulf Persson took to the stage along with Arsenal’s Chief Commercial Officer Juliet Slot to talk about our unique partnership. It was great to hear how ABBYY’s culture of innovation, strong leadership, championing of women, and team spirit align with the club’s values, not to mention our joint goals of working smarter and faster. Who’d have thought women’s football and intelligent automation had so much in common?
AI regulations. Many companies are still in the dark about how to address new AI regulations and proposed regulations from the EU AI Act, UK AI framework, and President Biden’s Executive Order. ABBYY’s AI ethics evangelist Andrew Pery has his finger on the pulse of AI regulations and shared sound advice on how business leaders can understand the different levels of restrictions and complexities and ensure their company is compliant. With innovation moving faster than legislation, organizations must embrace a combination of approaches including voluntary codes of ethical AI best practices, risk management frameworks, and AI standards like those provided by NIST.
Andrew also discussed support for the movement toward an independent auditing system. Just like auditors in financial services, subject matter experts in AI assessment will become invaluable in ensuring responsible use of the technology in business.
Jet engine safety. Rolls Royce certainly kept the audience captivated with footage of its use of artificial intelligence and drone technology to inspect the safety of aircraft engines. Bhavik Bhatt of Rolls Royce and Partners Finance showed how they have used ABBYY’s document AI to digitize and improve the lease management of their impressive engines, leading to a more efficient maintenance program and greater availability of engines. With the company supplying more than 50 airlines around the world, there’s probably a time that you’ve relied on this technology to get you to your destination safely.
Large language models. LLMs have been known to create hallucinations and inaccurate information, which has proved costly for some businesses. ABBYY Senior Director of AI Strategy Max Vermeir explained that purpose-built AI using IDP is a game changer that ensures better accuracy and more effective business outcomes for organizations.
Process intelligence. Nothing shows the ROI of process intelligence best than hearing real-world use cases. Two innovations leaders shared how their organizations use ABBYY process intelligence:
- Simon Higgs of Fortune 500 company Emerson showed how they used ABBYY’s process intelligence tool ABBYY Timeline to gain an x-ray view of their company processes and simulate changes to make the appropriate improvements.
- Elias El Ramy of financial services organization Société Générale also revealed the amazing results they had with ABBYY Timeline in addressing challenges, achieving business results, and providing cost advantages.
Attendees were entertained with a fun Q-and-A with Arsenal and England women’s player Beth Mead, who was joined on stage with former Arsenal defender and national player Martin Keown.
As for that question on playing against robots: “I’d still win,” said Martin. “And I’d need better shin pads,” added Beth.
The impact of AI on business operations is ever-growing. Join ABBYY as we continue these timely discussions this summer at our DevCon conference and in September during our Intelligent Automation Month.
Want to listen in? Check out our AI Pulse podcast.