AI has been a constant threat to many jobs – jobs that are repetitive, mundane and require no great creative skillsets. And that didn’t call for any fretting. Afterall, it allows human workers to focus on more stimulating skills while AI takes over the mundane tasks. 

Or so we have been told. 

But the last few months have entirely ousted our perceptions. Generative AI has already stunned us by doing tasks that are so far perceived to be done only by human beings – creating original content, music, images and videos, writing codes, generating new art pieces and so on.  In essence, human-like creativity at scale. In some cases, AI has produced better outcomes than humans. For example, generative AI has helped us design interplanetary landers that are lighter than the ones humans made. 

Generative AI, its opportunities and dangers have been discussed at length. Commercially available generative-AI tools have been booming in recent times. Chat GPT, Dall-e and Bard are perhaps the most popular tools. Several startups have entered this field with equally impressive products. 

The Bengaluru-based music tech start up Beatoven.ai, for example, uses advanced AI music generation techniques to compose unique mood-based music for video or podcast content. All you need to do is choose the genre, tempo, duration etc and let the AI create the piece of music that can be used as the original, royalty-free background score for your video. 

Generative-AI has been showcasing incredibly cool and impressive (and a bit creepy at times) outcomes which brings us to the quintessential question – will AI replace human creativity? For now, say experts, no. 

“Despite its potential, AI cannot support all human skills that are essential for idea development, such as real-life observations or personal interactions. In addition, exploration without a dedicated outcome in mind, adding new domains of knowledge on the go and improvisation are challenging for AI. For example, a tool that optimises flight routes in terms of CO2 emissions would not simply suggest that we switch to transportation via trains or meetings via video conference,” emphasises a report from GDI Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute. 

Let’s hear what Chat GPT had to say. Slightly verbose answer, yet definitely relevant:

For now, humans can continue to feel greater, for their ability to be unpredictable and for the presence of sentience. But will that be the scenario forever? We don’t know yet. But Artificial general intelligence (AGI) which signals ‘singularity’ – a point when AI surpasses human intelligence – will likely happen in a remote future. 

If we were to borrow the words of none other than Noam Chomsky, Programs such as Chat GPT, Bard and Microsoft’s Sydney “have been hailed as the first glimmers on the horizon of artificial general intelligence” — the point at which AIs are able to think and act in ways superior to humans — we absolutely are not anywhere near that level yet. That day may come, but its dawn is not yet breaking, contrary to what can be read in hyperbolic headlines and reckoned by injudicious investments,” Chomsky wrote in his op-ed for New York Times.

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The fourth annual Data Protection Trends Report from Veeam found that companies are challenged with more complex hybrid IT environments and are raising budgets to fend off cyberattacks as well as keep up as production environments continue to diversify across various clouds. The result is that IT leaders feel they aren’t sufficiently protected. A top priority of organizations this year is improving reliability and success of backups, followed by ensuring that Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) protection is equitable to the protection they rely on for datacenter-centric workloads.

Highlights of the Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2023:

• Modern Data Protection is needed to keep businesses running: Four out of five organizations believe that they have a gap, or a sense of dissatisfaction or anxiety, between what their business units expect and what IT services can deliver. 82% have an ‘Availability Gap’ between how quickly they need systems to be recoverable and how quickly IT can bring them back. 79% cite a ‘Protection Gap’ between how much data they can lose and how frequently IT protects their data. 
• Data protection budgets are increasing: Globally, organizations expect to increase their data protection budget in 2023 by 5%, which is notably higher than overall spending plans in other areas of IT. Of the 85% of organizations planning on increasing their data protection budgets, their average planned increase is 8.3% and often in concert with increased investments in cybersecurity tools.
• Despite the awareness and increase in preparedness, ransomware is winning: Cyberattacks caused the most impactful outages for organizations in 2020, 2021 and 2022, according to the report. 85% of organizations were attacked at least once in the past 12 months; up from 76% in last year’s report. Specifically, recovery is a main concern as organizations reported that only 55% of their encrypted/destroyed data was recoverable from attacks. According to the survey, the single most important aspect that organizations are looking for in a Modern Data Protection solution is the “integration of data protection within a cyber preparedness strategy.”
• Ransomware is the biggest hindrance to Digital Transformation: Due to its burden on budgets and manpower, ransomware and the current volatile cyber security landscape are taking priority for IT teams. This is causing IT resources and budgets originally allocated towards Digital Transformation initiatives to pivot to cyber prevention. 
• Container-centric workloads are growing in popularity: Containers, and more specifically Kubernetes, show all the characteristics of a mainstream production platform, with the same kinds of data protection strategy disparities as seen in early adopters of SaaS five years ago or virtualization 15 years ago. 52% of respondents are currently running containers, while 40% of organizations are planning to deploy containers – and yet, most organizations are merely protecting the underlying storage, instead of holistically protecting the workloads themselves. 

“IT leaders are facing a dual challenge. They are building and supporting increasingly complex hybrid environments, while the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks is increasing,” said Danny Allan, CTO and Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at Veeam. “This is a major concern as leaders think through how they mitigate and recover business operations from any type of disruption. Legacy backup approaches won’t address modern workloads – from IaaS and SaaS to containers – and result in an unreliable and slow recovery for the business when it’s needed most. This is what’s focusing the minds of IT leaders as they consider their cyber resiliency plan. They need Modern Data Protection.”

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Web 3.0 has been hailed as the future of Internet. Making a case for Web 3.0, Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood once said: “Centralization is not socially tenable long-term, and government is too clumsy to fix things,” while calling the current web a “big baby” which “has grown old without growing up”. 

Web3 is considered to be a disruptor in that sense, which marks a shift away from large platforms that centralized control. With its core focus on decentralization and blockchain technology, Web 3.0 or simply Web3 promises to democratize the internet. “Web3 innovations will take the internet into new realms and give rise to applications not previously possible,” said Avivah Litan, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. 

Globally, Web 3 market has been booming, with the Web3 blockchain technology sector estimated to surpass six trillion dollars and continue its growth at a CAGR of 44.6% from 2023 to 2030 (Market Research Future). Closer home in India, Web3 received $30.5 Bn of VC funding in 2021 alone, and over $14.5 Bn in just Q1 of 2022, led by investments in DeFi and NFTs, according to Nasscom. The association estimates that there are more than 450 Web3 startups in India, as of H12022. 

While figures certainly paint a positive picture, skepticism towards Web3 has been high in the recent past. Pundits like Peter Schiff has implied that cryptocurrencies, which is one of the building blocks of web 3, will extinct. 

Nevertheless, experts argue that it’s too early to predict the end of this revolutionary technology. “This industry will not be defined by speculative booms and busts but instead by what it is built on: revolutionary technology that will eventually touch all of our corporations, governments and individual lives,” wrote Jordan Calinoff, VP, Strategy and Revenue at Horizen Labs in a blog for Nasdaq. He believes that 2023 will see more Web3 enterprise adoption. 

Experts also re-emphasize the fact the Web3 is not crypto and the potential of this technology should not be decided by the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies. Interestingly, the Indian start-up ecosystem that focuses on Web3 are in fact focusing less on cryptocurrency trading. 

A Nasscom report says that Indian startups are instead focusing on building diverse solutions across major application areas such as finance, entertainment, infrastructure and decentralized communities. Non-fungible Token (NFT) and Metaverse are the top horizontal use cases that are seeing faster adoption at this stage. 

In the entertainment sector, for instance, startups are combining NFTs and gaming to offer whole new experiences to consumers. In the finance sector, web3 and smart contracts have already made waves in the form of DeFi. 

Web3 will however need to overcome regulatory and privacy challenges and evolve into a more seamless technology that can offer holistic customer experience. Security and fraud will emerge as other major concerns. But as with any disruptive technology, Web3 too holds the potential to transform industries and businesses.

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Prime real estate has always been an important factor for most retailers before starting a business, but things might be different with the emergence of a new virtual platform. The metaverse is a platform combining multiple technologies to enable social and economic activity in a digital world connected to the physical one. 

With the effects of metaverse commerce adoption being felt by retail brands at various stages of the shopping journey, global IT research and advisory firm Info-Tech Research Group’s recently published blueprint highlights some key trends. 

Info-Tech’s research indicates that retailers often struggle to adapt to the evolving needs of virtual shoppers, which can include the use of cryptocurrencies or NFTs. Shopping in the metaverse works differently than in the real world, which has shifted more online since the onset of the pandemic. Retail in the metaverse requires a new outlook, models, and competencies to become competitive.

“The metaverse will fundamentally disrupt the retail ecosystem and take personalization from evolution to a complete revolution,” says Rahul Jaiswal, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group. “Although metaverse commerce is still in its infancy, many retail brands are testing applications like avatar-driven customer services, augmented reality, and 3D interaction to entice shoppers through virtual stores, products, and events.”

The research shows that metaverse commerce transformation is challenging, requiring superior technology journey mapping and strategies to build cohesive client experiences. Forward-looking retailers working to address the evolving needs of shoppers will need a fully comprehensive approach to complete the transformation and be successful.

According to Info-Tech, virtual and augmented customer experiences can drive value in today’s market. However, most retailers are unsure where to start and lack a structured approach to executing technologies for each shopping journey. The firm recommends that retailers identify opportunities across the shopping journey, capture key customer insights, and use technologies like blockchain, digital twins, infrastructure, and virtual environments.

By harnessing blockchain, the metaverse is expected to advance the shopping experience in the following ways:

1. Smart Contracts to Execute Commercial Transactions and Agreements: Smart contracts use blockchain to enforce the obligations of all parties in a contract without the extra overhead of a middleman. They are computer programs that facilitate, verify, and enforce the negotiation or execution of an agreement.
2. Enhanced Data Portability and Reduced Risk of Storing Customer Information:
3. Know Your Client (KYC) statements can be stored on the blockchain to decrease administration problems and costs while outlining the concerns that still need to be addressed.
4. Deliver Seamless Direct Money Transfers and Payments: Blockchain technology can overcome the current problems of correspondent systems and international money transfers. Fee-intensive, fragmented, cross-border non-cash transactions can be eliminated by excluding third parties and enabling direct money transfers and efficient interbank settlements.
5. Decentralized Ledgers for Trade Settlements: Trade settlement processes usually require two to three days for payments and securities to change hands. Moving this process to a decentralized ledger can have a transformative effect on the markets.

Info-Tech suggests retailers validate their strategies, persistently reinforce the enterprise’s core capabilities, and capitalize on the value of this new prospect to be prepared for what’s potentially around the corner.

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In the first of our ‘In Conversation for Innovation’ series, watch Ravinder Pal Singh, well-known innovation evangelist & currently Chief Information and Innovation Officer at Vistara (TATA-SIA), shed light on advance tech initiatives being undertaken by the airline.

These initiatives, at various stages of implementation – embrace facial recognition, blockchain, robotics & AI. The idea – to create better value for stakeholders, ensure a differentiator for the brand & enhance customer delight

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