What impact is the rise of AI technology, and generative AI in particular, going to have on Asia’s growth trajectory? That’s one of the big questions asked at Reuters NEXT APAC, a leadership summit hosted by the Reuters news agency.

Suthen Thomas Paradatheth, Grab’s Chief Technology Officer, joined a panel of speakers moderated by chief marketing officer and head of Reuters Professional, Josh London. Here’s an excerpt of the conversation.

The conversation has been edited for clarity.

Q: What opportunities does generative AI create that weren’t present before?

Suthen: Let’s start with classical AI, like machine learning, that came before generative AI. At Grab, there are many problems we can solve with machine learning. In fact, we have about a thousand models in production. Generative AI represents an evolution from there. We see its impact in three areas.

One, it has increased the velocity with which we can develop AI solutions to improve the customer experience. Generative AI’s foundational models can be viewed as a swiss army knife that can generalise what needed to be done with multiple, more specialised models in the past. They’re kind of like these commonsense reasoning engines.

For example, we build our own maps at Grab. That requires us to do image processing where we take images and decide what that means for the flow of traffic on the road. A “no entry” sign on a fence and on a road could mean different things—this is not easy for machine learning or traditional models to tell apart. What we’re finding is that when you pass this type of image information to foundational models, it’s able to determine what is applicable to road rules. In the past we may have needed to build a bunch of models to do image extraction to identify the road and context and make that decision. Today, you can get the whole output with just one model.

The second area we found improvements is in productivity. That includes tools that help our driver-partners navigate their day more efficiently, and internal productivity tools. We were able to cut down some processes, for example in sales, from taking up a whole day to just a few minutes with the help of GenAI.

The final area is truly transformative and has the potential to uplift the entire user experience. GenAI allows us to use natural language to interact with computers. This is really exciting for us because I think it democratises access to computers. This is an area we are working on, one of the lighthouse projects to come out of our partnership with OpenAI. The goal is to improve accessibility of our application through a voice interface.

Q: What advantage do you think Asia has compared to other markets in driving AI growth and what disadvantages? What are the biggest opportunities in APAC for AI growth?

"GenAI allows us to use natural language to interact with computers. This is really exciting for us because I think it democratises access to computers."

Suthen: Asia and Asia Pacific is home to the largest part of the world’s population. In Southeast Asia alone there are 700 million people.

What stands out here is that for the majority, their most-used computing device is a mobile phone. Often, it is their only computing device. That means there are many touch points throughout the day, because you carry that device with you everywhere, compared to what you might see in other places.

And this translates into a few slightly different attitudes that you’re seeing in the region.

If you look at the Edelman Trust Barometer, you’ll find that there’s greater trust in technology and technology companies in Asia. So there’s a bit more openness in terms of the data people are willing to share with corporations and organisations, with the belief that it’ll be used for the best. 

From a government perspective, given many of the Asian markets are emerging markets, governments see these new technologies as an opportunity to close the gap with developed markets. You see regulatory openness to adopting these technologies. 

One challenge Asia has, which has been widely discussed, is the underrepresentation of different languages in GenAI models. And also viewpoints—these models may not be totally aligned with values in certain countries.

Q: What is your five-year horizon for AI in the region? How entrenched will it become in business and society? Will AI really “change everything”—or are we caught up in a hype curve?

Suthen: I think it’s correctly hyped, it’s absolutely going to change everything! But maybe not in the way it’s often portrayed, which is a journey towards artificial general intelligence. 

I think about the utility of GenAI in several dimensions. These might help us understand where we are in the adoption cycle of this technology.

First dimension, cognition—how capable are these models of reasoning? This is what gets a lot of publicity.

But beyond that, in a more practical sense, I think about the developer ecosystem. How well can you plug these models into your software products today? 

Next, would be cost and latency. Are we bringing down the cost enough so you can scale the use cases? In some cases that are latency sensitive (delays in data or command transfers that greatly affect how a system works), you may not be able to use these models today. But could you use them tomorrow?

Then it will be integrability: can you put these models together with other tools like plugins with ChatGPT?

And the final case: multimodality. Can you change both the possible input streams and output streams that these models can take (i.e. models that can understand, process, and generate information across different types of data such as text, audio, visuals). 

My guess is we won’t see improvements in cognition in the next five years. Well, maybe we will. 

But we’ll certainly see improvements across some of these other dimensions. We’re already seeing more than 2x rate of improvements in cost and latency with the latest series of models.

From my perspective, this is actually a new arc in computing. We had digitisation and the Internet, then we had mobile and cloud—I think this is the start of a new 10-year cycle so I’m really excited about it. 

Komsan Chiyadis

GrabFood delivery-partner, Thailand

Komsan Chiyadis

GrabFood delivery-partner, Thailand

COVID-19 has dealt an unprecedented blow to the tourism industry, affecting the livelihoods of millions of workers. One of them was Komsan, an assistant chef in a luxury hotel based in the Srinakarin area.

As the number of tourists at the hotel plunged, he decided to sign up as a GrabFood delivery-partner to earn an alternative income. Soon after, the hotel ceased operations.

Komsan has viewed this change through an optimistic lens, calling it the perfect opportunity for him to embark on a fresh journey after his previous job. Aside from GrabFood deliveries, he now also picks up GrabExpress jobs. It can get tiring, having to shuttle between different locations, but Komsan finds it exciting. And mostly, he’s glad to get his income back on track.