The AI revolution is here. How do you make sense of it?

From chatbots and virtual assistants to even advanced image and text generation, Generative AI (genAI) has captured people’s imaginations and made many things once deemed impossible, possible. Naturally, genAI gained significant traction, but businesses that want to harness the true value of AI will need to dig deeper and cut through the clutter.

The reality is that genAI was not built overnight. For more than a decade now, enterprises have been using AI, constantly improving on it over the years before arriving at what it is today. When used well, genAI has the potential to deliver meaningful societal impact and at the same time transform businesses towards more purpose-driven objectives.

Innovating to solve the world’s biggest problems

With AI, no industry is left behind. Breakthroughs are being celebrated and unique challenges are being addressed daily with the help of AI. In tandem, businesses rely on it to rethink their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies.

At the recent Dell Technologies World, Chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies Michael Dell, stressed the importance of reaping the benefits of AI responsibly. “AI should be trained within the parameters of our morality, beliefs, our laws, and humanity. Because eventually, AI will be at the center of our lives, our security, commerce, education, science, and healthcare, advancing progress at breathtaking speed,” he said.

We take the example of Siemens, which is digitally transforming healthcare facilities by introducing smart infrastructures to hospitals. By integrating AI-driven information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT), it is improving patient care worldwide while addressing cost pressures and staff shortages.

Meanwhile, ST Engineering provides intelligent transportation solutions that leverage AI and data analytics to connect people, devices, and systems. From urban traffic management that improves commuter safety to smart surveillance for real-time traffic reports and accident updates, the organization is harnessing the power of technology to enable a smoother commute.

Recognizing that AI’s development will require large amounts of infrastructure and energy, Dell highlighted the importance of smarter technologies and enabling organizations to do more with lesser impact and underscored the company’s commitment to reducing the energy consumption of its solutions.

“We’re committed to running the greenest infrastructure… sustainable data centers keep energy costs down and minimize usage with more efficient hardware, smart power management, optimized thermals, liquid and air cooling, and using green energy sources,” he added.

Building better efficiencies to spur businesses forward

Alongside genAI, organizations can propel themselves into the next phase of this digital era—both from a business-critical and an ESG perspective—by implementing accelerated computing. As a replacement for traditional computing, accelerated computing can support global sustainability efforts while bringing greater speed and capabilities to organizations.

NVIDIA’s Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang explained: “Accelerated computing is not about driving down the cost of computing; It’s about driving up the scale of computing.”

Significantly faster than general-purpose computing, accelerated computing will reduce overall cost while increasing consumption, therefore promoting sustainability. For example, the Nvidia RAPIDS Accelerator for Apache Spark, a software that speeds up data analytics with accelerated computing, can cut cost and carbon emissions by up to 80%.

One of the key transformative aspects of accelerated computing is its ability to simulate end-to-end processes before creating actual products. By creating a digital twin, product engineers can design, build, simulate, and operate products digitally to identify any gaps before developing the actual product. This improves speed to innovate, saving significant amounts of time and cost.

For accelerated computing to gain traction, organizations must transform their back-end infrastructure to implement graphics processing units (GPUs), which are also needed to support training models for gen AI. With GPUs in place, both accelerated computing and genAI can work together to transform industries in a powerful way, as they accelerate entire ecosystems.

The transformative power of gen AI can already be seen in manufacturing, with businesses running demand forecasting based on historical data, customer buying patterns, and other factors. AI helps organizations identify complex patterns from large datasets and mitigate risk by identifying any changes or anomalies that can support proactive business planning.

If done right, partnerships like the one between Dell and NVIDIA can supercharge innovation across industries, accelerating AI innovation. The combination of expertise across both hardware and software will transform the way we work, with results that will ultimately benefit both businesses and society.