Page 177 - CW E-Magazine (30-1-2024)

Special Report

anyone with any degree of knowledge racy in most processes that are not so Manufacturing and Services
of Ai adding to the data science craze good today. This will be widespread Let’s examine what happens when
that started a decade before Covid. by end-2025, with early adopters act- this technology tide meets the eco-
This is already creating a surfeit of ing in 2024. iT service providers from nomic tide flowing into 2024 from
small Ai start-ups which will rise to india will start offering large global 2023 and lands on our shores. it is
some kind of loud crescendo in 2024; corporations Ai Transformation from estimated that in 2024, GenAi will
not surprising many will bite the dust early 2024 (digital Transformation add a net $2.6-4.0-trillion to the global
in 2024 because business reality will will sound passe) and the world will economy. However, the GdP projec-
catch up. buy. tions by experts seem to ignore it.
Since projections for 2024 even with-
That will not stop the Ai wave. Oil & gas and petrochemicals out the impact of Ai, done by experts
By 2028, including software call centre The oil & gas sector, which seem to vary widely, would you not
agents that can engage with custo- depends upon fossil fuels is expected want to create your projected eco-
mers intelligently in long conversa- to face a crisis in the long term due nomic scenario independently, taking
tions. Each company could deploy its to compunctions related to climate Ai into account, if you were a student
own ‘trained’ software agents at their change – a double whammy of lower of business or a businessperson?
internal call centres, but not all, will prices and lower demand as fuel. it is
want to. Today, commonly deployed a rare industry which knows its next Purchasing Managers’ index (PMi)
technology can allow very brief con- quarter’s cost of production though is a good lead indicator as it captures
versations, but within 12-18 months, not its selling price but cannot stop the expectations of purchasing man-
software bots will pass the Turing and start its operating oil wells. Will agers about the coming quarter. inter-
Test even in long conversations. To they even survive? est rate, inflation, investment flows
add to that, new GenAi tools will not and oil price predictions could be
need an ‘Agent’ to know the language They will be thriving not just useful if they could be predicted.
in which the customer is speaking; because demand for petrochemicals Stock indices are quasi-lead indi-
early versions have hit the market in will offset the loss of demand from cators. S&P Global has created an
late 2023. fuel, but because improvements in insightful matrix of PMi for the 12
productivity and predictability due months ending in November 2023.
The Agent will hear in the lan- to Ai, will create serious operational This heatmap in Chart 1 explains
guage she knows, and the customer efficiencies and better capital expendi- that 2023 was expected to be dismal
will hear in his or her language. ture planning. deployment of Ai tools for Services and Manufacturing at
interestingly, human agents may not has started from the upstream to the the start of the year (a big recession
be required, instead, one Agent bot downstream parts, with encouraging expected), but as the year progressed
will engage with another Agent bot. results. it is a big challenge to predict hopes improved for Services, but
There will be some humans lurking oil price with reasonable accuracy remained patchy for Manufactur-
somewhere in the background to because of huge number variables and ing. Europe and the Americas were
supervise the whole system. This uncertainty about how each of them expected to be dismal with the
will change the face of the call centre will play out because they, in turn, exception of Mexico and Greece, and
industry rapidly from 2024 onwards depend upon other variables. ML and it played out accordingly. These two
because the business case to seek GenAi models trained on an ocean of countries remain islands of hope in
low labour cost countries will rapidly data, will make oil price prediction 2024 too.
weaken from 2025. with acceptable accuracy possible.
The Asia Pacific started out well, but
Many such companies will proac- Use of GenAi Apps is widespread at end of 2023, the expectation for the
tively move onshore because onshore amongst employees, more than half of start of 2024 is neutral. The standouts
outsourcing may not end. Likewise, global CEos want to deploy GenAi in 2023 were China, india, indonesia,
the way manufacturing sector will to become more productive (faster, and the Philippines; they are expected
run their operations very different cheaper, better). Would you, as a busi- to do well, as we move into 2024. The
from now, is a given across various nessperson, academic or researcher, PMi index for Saudi Arabia, the UAE,
sectors due to Ai, which will improve not deploy GenAi now, to avoid being Russia, and Singapore, which are not
efficiency, predictability, and accu- left behind? on the Heat Map, are also positive.

Chemical Weekly January 30, 2024 177

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