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In an interview ahead of the Intelligent Automation Conference, Ben Ball, Senior Director of Product Marketing at IBM, shed light on the tech giant’s latest AI endeavours and its groundbreaking new Concert product.
IBM’s current focal point in AI research and development lies in applying it to technology operations. As Ball explained, “As people try to build applications out in the world, it’s an increasingly complex situation. There are so many tools, there are so many environments that go into building and maintaining an application over time that a lot of teams are just drowned under all of the data that’s involved.”
To tackle this challenge, the company has announced IBM Concert, which will harness AI to make sense of the vast amount of data involved in application development and maintenance. “It’s using AI to figure out actually how your application works, and then provides recommendations about how to make it better,” Ball said.
Upcoming AI opportunities
According to Ball, a current opportunity is organising the unstructured data that feeds into AI models. “There can be a gap between the unstructured amoeba of data and then what you want in AI, which is sorted, ready to go,” he acknowledged. However, IBM is actively working to bridge this gap, with IBM Concert set to evolve and incorporate tools to organise data into a format more digestible for AI engines.
Explainability is another critical aspect of AI that IBM is addressing with IBM Concert. Ball emphasised the importance of not blindly accepting AI recommendations, stating, “We’re actually building in a function that you can question the recommendation so that you can question what the AI comes up with, and sort of dig a little bit deeper into how it came to that conclusion.”
Powering the future of work
Beyond IBM Concert, IBM offers a suite of AI technologies and tools, such as watsonx and AI governance solutions. As Ball explained, IBM aims to provide a “use-case-neutral” approach, allowing customers to leverage IBM’s AI capabilities for their specific needs.
One area where IBM has seen early success with IBM Concert is in addressing the data overload faced by many organisations. Ball shared that design partners have been “amazed at what we’re able to do, the insights that we’re able to show, even at a very basic level.” As IBM Concert’s capabilities continue to evolve, IBM expects to deliver even more profound insights and conclusions, ultimately improving application performance, security, and overall management.
For organisations considering adopting AI for the first time, Ball’s advice is clear: “Be deliberate about what you want to do with it. Don’t come in just thinking that the technology itself is the goal, but have a real use case in mind, a real goal in mind that you want AI to accomplish.”
At the upcoming Intelligent Automation Conference, where IBM is a key sponsor, the company plans to showcase IBM Concert and its potential to transform technology operations through the power of AI.
As the interview concluded, Ball expressed excitement about the possibilities of IBM Concert, stating, “We’re really excited about this, and we think our customers are going to be really excited about it too.”
You can watch our full interview with Ben Ball below:
Gain further insights from Ben Ball as he shares his expertise in his day one presentation titled ‘Leveraging Gen AI to proactively mitigate security vulnerabilities in your applications’ at the Intelligent Automation Conference.
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