KASIKORN Business-Technology Group (KBTG) has worked with its partners in advancing AI research to the next level. Through its experiments, the company has demonstrated the capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) in providing actionable data to humans for enhanced decision-making via adjustment of factors in various perspectives. KBTG aims to promote AI literacy among a broad range of the Thai public to ensure a positive coexistence between AI and humans, and efficient AI utilization.
Mr. Ruangroj Poonpol, KBTG Group Chairman, said, “In recent years, many businesses have seen AI play a more important role in various work functions. The rise of generative AI like ChatGPT has caused a buzz in business circles that humans may soon be replaced by AI. As a matter of fact, a cooperative relationship between humans and AI will bring about the highest efficiency and sustainability at work. This results in the “Augmented Intelligence" concept, where AI is designed to help enhance humans' work and capabilities, not to replace them. Through the creation of human-centric machine learning models, AI is trained to receive human feedback and turns those data into guidelines to help improve human's decision-making and certain actions to be more accurate and precise.
Guided by the Augmented Intelligence concept, KBTG has invested its efforts in AI and developed products and services for KBank to deliver better customer experiences. Such developments include Natural Language Processing (NLP), which serves as a mechanism for a chatbot to respond to customer inquiries via social media channels and has succeeded in saving more than 300,000 hours in customers' Q&A processes, and the Wealth PLUS feature to offer investment recommendations on the K PLUS application.
Regarding the AI research and development that KBTG has undertaken with MIT Media Lab, the AI platform “Future You" has been introduced, allowing users to talk with their future digital self via a large-scale language model GPT that has been adapted to match the data of the future targets and personal habits of the users. To create reliable virtual conversations, the system will create a synthetic memory of individual users' future selves at age 60, while also providing the users portraits that have evolved with their age.
This research is based on a psychological theory that examines “future self-continuity", or the connection that a person feels to their own self in the future. A preliminary study of 188 participants shows that users who had conversations with themselves in the future through the “Future You" technology were able to reduce their negative feelings, such as anxiety, and increase their positive thinking and motivation for life, including a more positive attitude towards the future and aspiration to achieve future goals.
Additionally, KBTG and MIT Media Lab have further developed AI in a new research called K-GPT (Knowledge-GPT), which leverages ChatGPT's capability to provide in-depth domain knowledge by using more natural language in its conversations, and enhancing its Thai language proficiency so that it can respond to questions and simultaneously offer advice from different angles. KBTG Labs and MIT Media Lab have also collaborated in the proof-of-concept research called “Kookid", with two conversational agents, “Kana" and “Kacha", who offer responses from different angles as needed for users' decision-making.
Regarding these two research works, KBTG aims to experiment and demonstrate AI capability in providing supportive data to humans for improved decision-making via adjustments of factors in the aspects of appearance, language, in-depth knowledge and emotion.
KBTG recently partnered with NECTEC and Thammasat University in discussing the possibility of extensively promoting AI literacy among Thai people. The three institutions are currently preparing a white paper as a guideline for members of the public who wish to wield AI more effectively. Besides AI research and development in the business sector, from the perspective of the public sector, the local AI industry also needs people with enhanced AI skills. The focus is to create AI awareness while ensuring coexistence between AI and humans as well as efficient AI usage.
For anyone interested in advancing Thailand's AI development together, please reach out to KBTG via email: co-innovation@kbtg.tech.
