As Guernsey’s first AI Sprint continues, people have been learning how to use the developing technology to make their lives easier – with experts sharing insights with individuals, charities, and businesses across the island.
This week alone there are nine events showcasing artificial intelligence, with one focused on helping parents understand how their child may use it.
Other events are focusing on the environmental impact and ‘AI in practice’.
The AI Sprint runs from 1 October until 12 November, offering more than 50 free events, including talks, workshops and hackathons for everyone from beginners to digital experts.
It has been organised by Guernsey’s G8, a group of the island’s leading industry bodies, showing that the island is prepared to go “all in” on AI.
You can view events and book tickets ONLINE.
Some events are selling out in advance including last week’s AI workshops hosted by KPMG.
Helping clients, colleagues, and members of the public build their own personal AI agent, the KPMG workshops were hosted by industry specialists leading AI transformation programmes across Europe, the Middle East and Africa: Abdulrahman AlYahya, Preet Udassi, and Simon Karlsfeldt.
Mr AlYahya is Partner and Chief Technology Officer at KPMG Middle East, meaning he is responsible for leading technology, AI, and business transformation programmes across the region.
“Every day it’s a new technology, it’s a new advancement, it’s a new frontier that we have to to go through, and translating that into an enterprise grade solution and building the way we operate as a firm around that technology is not an easy formula to figure out, so it’s a constant battle against that technology, and we have to always be on the front end of it to make sure that we are able to to get the maximum on it,” he said.
Ms Udassi leads AI change and adoption across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa as part of KPMG’s global AI transformation programme, helping organisations turn AI strategy into meaningful business change.
Ms Udassi agreed with Mr AlYahya that AI is a challenging technology – but it is also exciting, she said.
“It is exciting. It’s challenging as well, to stay ahead of technology, but also ensuring that the technology translates into business value for colleagues within the organisation.
“Because remember, we’ve got so many colleagues spread across not just our member firm but globally as well. We make sure that they’ve got the right skills, the learning, the resources that really help them in their role.
“And think about how technology is not just about drafting an email or polishing an email – it’s more than that, and really bringing AI into your workflow, and that’s a challenge, and that’s not an easy thing to really push through into an organisation.”
Mr Karlsfeldt is Technology and Innovation Lead for EMA aIQ. He works with senior leaders across Europe, the Middle East and Africa to drive AI adoption, innovation, and business transformation.
Showcasing new software for building AI agents in Guernsey last week, he said people were very keen to learn.
“The whole idea behind the concept of these workshops is to be at the frontier,” he said. “So the concept evolves.
“We had this workshop a few months ago, then we weren’t using the same software as we used then, which means that you’re rebuilding the concept. But there are a few points that are consistent, and the biggest one is that it’s interactive.”
“We want people to utilise the tools to actually build and create something themselves.
“It’s not just a show and tell session, and our approach is to make it more fun and interactive, allowing people to be creative, so we try to keep away a little bit from the business challenges that we have, and do something that you’re keen on learning.
“If you have a hobby, or an interest, and you start from there it’s usually much more fun, and when it’s much more fun, you have a tendency to be more creative, and when you’re creative, you’re better at learning and picking up how to use the tool. Then once you understand it, you can transform it into your business.”
Teaching a sell out crowd how to build an AI Agent is something the three guests have done before – and they said the Guernsey cohort were as keen as anywhere else in the world.
“The sessions usually start very simple, very calm, and very easy, and in some cases, you’ll see people faces ‘yeah, I don’t see anything exciting yet’, but at the end of it they start actually realising what they are building, and by the end of building an application, building a team of agents, that’s where the excitement comes,” said Mr Karlsfeldt.
“You see people faces light up and see how the technology is actually being translated into a product.”
Mr AlYahya said many people are surprised and impressed by the flexibility and ease of the tools available.
“It could span from something simple like ‘I want a team of agents that can help me in planning a trip’, and you have someone who’s going to be looking into what’s the best route that you are going to take, to someone who is a survival expert to say what you need to make sure that you take if you are camping in this area or that area, a weather expert to tell you if the weather is fine on that trip, all the way to a different team of agents that can actually develop a full-fledged application for you, where you have a developer, an analyst, a designer, a quality assurance person, a testing agent, which is quite complex from a business context.
“So it can span between something that is fun, whimsical, and easy, all the way to something enterprise-grade that actually produces value for higher organisation in a sense, and that can be done by any individual.”
“And they surprise themselves” added Ms Udassi.
“It’s actually really lovely to see because I’ve had people say to me at the beginning, ‘I’m not techy. I’ve never done this before. I just use Copilot, but not very much’ and I say ‘don’t worry, give it a go’.
“If you’re not sure, just put the prompt in and see what happens. I think that just made them open up to just doing it, and I think they surprised themselves.”
