Generative AI technologies will enhance productivity: Oracle's Singh

Generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT are poised to enhance human productivity, says Sonny Singh, executive vice president and general manager, Oracle Financial Services. 

Singh believes that these AI models will not only enhance human experience but also boost productivity by transforming current systems into intelligent applications. He foresees improvements in customer service and relationship management, leading to increased efficiency of business operations.

"In all the things that we are doing in the marketplace, we are actually enhancing the human experience. These technologies are going to enhance productivity. They will make the applications that are systems of record today, intelligent applications. They will allow for better customer service. They’ll allow for better relationship management. So the coming years will basically improve the productivity of human beings," says Singh in an interaction with Fortune India.

This comes amidst the sweltering debate on the reliability of generative AI models such as ChatGPT, Google Bard and Google Gemini, and their potential impact on human life. While some observers have vehemently criticised, thus cautioning against the use of generative AI models, organisations, on the other hand, have taken a positive approach towards generative AI models and technologies.

Singh, however, believes that these technologies will create opportunities for more utopic outcomes. "There will be repercussions associated with ChatGPT like all technology changes have. What are the new types of opportunities it creates? What are the new jobs that it’ll create? How will work change to take advantage of this? We've seen that happen with every generation. So the hope is that we will be smart as human beings and we'll continue to take advantage of these technologies and head towards more utopic outcomes," says Singh.

'Need thoughtful investment towards talent'   

Over the past year, the consistent and continuous layoffs, beginning in Covid-19-hit years, have crippled the technology industry globally. Several reports attribute cash crunch to be the primary reason behind these layoffs. Singh blames mismanaged strategies by companies as the primary reason behind layoffs as several companies hired "indiscriminately" and during macroeconomic events, started laying off employees "indiscriminately" as well.

"Companies have to be thoughtful about how they invest in talent and how they retain that talent. And then one of the key aspects of retention is companies don't have these knee-jerk reactions (macroeconomic situation and geo-political tensions) to any change in the economic environment because employees don't trust them as much," says Singh.

Cloud computing paves the way

Following the covid-19 pandemic and with the introduction of hybrid work, organisations, globally, have shifted from storing the data within the premises to cloud computing infrastructure. According to a report by Acumen Research and Consulting, the global cloud computing market size accounted for $495.3 billion in 2022 and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 17.8% to achieve a market size of $2,495.2 billion by 2032.

"The  notion of cloud computing and its benefits are very clearly evident to all industries. There are certain factors in certain industries and the jurisdictions that they operate in that facilitate the ease of cloud adoption or provide obstacles to the ease of cloud adoption," says Singh.

Singh notes that while unregulated industries have readily adopted cloud computing, regulated sectors such as energy, utilities, financial services, and healthcare face challenges due to regulatory scrutiny regarding data security and privacy.

US, India leading AI-cloud computing boom

Cloud computing has become a crucial part of organisations' everyday operations. However, the use case of cloud computing has been further amplified with the introduction of AI models. Explaining this further, Singh says that startups use large language models to train hundreds of terabytes of data for research and innovation. Nonetheless, they require a lot of computing, networking and storage.

"This is where cloud computing makes a big impact because imagine that companies could get access to very large complex compute on which they can cluster huge amounts of GPU, huge amounts of network capability to accelerate the movement of data between the GPUs. They can actually solve for these complex training models, but it's not easy to put that together and that's where cloud helps," explains Singh.

According to Mordor Intelligence, the cloud AI market size is estimated to reach $274.54 by 2029, at a CAGR of 32.27%.

Notably, two vectors—availability of infrastructure and talent—are are tendering the cloud AI market increase. This is particularly spearheaded by countries such as the United States, Western Europe, India, China and Russia that have state-sponsored enterprises in this (AI-led cloud computing) area, according to Singh.

Emphasising the transformative potential of technologies such as cloud computing, Singh urges businesses to embrace such technologies to stay relevant and competitive in the ever-evolving technological landscape.

"I don't think this (AI-led cloud computing) is one of those things that you can stay out of. So any company that hopes to remain relevant in the future is already thinking about it. They're just finding mechanisms of how to start to do more of this so that they can stay relevant in the business domain," says Singh.