From evolution to impact: game-changing AI for planners

Tracing the evolution of AI, its challenges, and how it will impact the MICE industry were discussion points at M&C Asia Connection’s panel session, “Is AI Changing The Game For Event Planners?”

The audience heard the latest trends and advice from experts in the AI field at Marina Bay Sands' Hybrid Event Broadcast Studio. It was moderated by David Blansfield, executive VP and group publisher, Northstar Meetings Group. Panel speakers were Glenn Gore, CEO, Affinidi; Ong Wee Min, VP sales and MICE, Marina Bay Sands; and Veemal Gungadin, CEO and founder, Gevme.

Affinidi, a company which builds privacy preserving apps and solves business problems related to data ownership, gives customers more control over how their information is used and shared. Gevme is the creator of Project Spark, an AI productivity tool specifically designed for event planners which was launched at IMEX Frankfurt 2023.

The evolution of AI – from industry to home

Gungadin compared the evolution of AI with that of the Internet, which came about in early 2000. At that time, researchers in the academic space had already been sending email for the past 20 years, but when the Internet came into homes, tech experts said it would change everything, such as the way we shop, learn, and do everything. They even touted that we would buy pet food online. Following the dot com crash, many then doubted that the online scene would take off as predicted earlier.

Nothing new

Gungadin said: “But now, look at the world today. Everything that was predicted back then actually happened. I think we are living through this right now in the context of AI. AI has been around for a long time now.”

AI is not new since pharmaceutical companies have already been using AI to discover new drugs and the New York Stock Exchange uses AI for at least 70% of its trades. So big companies have already been spending a lot of money on AI, but what has changed is that AI is now in our homes with the availability of Chat GPT. Not only that, there will be widespread adoption of AI because the costs have gone down drastically, he added.

Application of AI

Ong shared that when the Hybrid Event Broadcast studio was conceptualised in November 2019, it then progressed to launch The Virtual Meeting Place with Gevme, where different AI-driven elements were incorporated to automate some of the mundane tasks and questions to drive better engagement for delegates. The platform is fully customisable, allowing organisers to build their virtual venue set to replicate a real-life event space. Key spaces include The Plenary, which serves as an exhibition space modelled after a ballroom at Sands Expo and Convention Centre; The Library, housed at the Hybrid Broadcast Studio; Breakout Rooms for attendees to form one-on-one and group meetings for knowledge and idea exchanges; and other unique venues such as ArtScience Museum, Sands SkyPark Observation Deck, among others.

Said Ong: “In the past, what was done in hours is now done in seconds through AI. We are also looking at how to check the mood of the room, for example, using cameras powered by AI in the back. If you frown and you all look bored after I speak for five minutes, it picks this up and drives certain messages across to the panel. So innovative use of AI is going to be increasingly penetrative in the whole industry, not just in conventions, but in exhibitions as well.”

Analysing the battle on the Internet

A huge battle is going on the Internet, said Gore, with some battles being very visible: Twitter rebranding to X and trying to shut out Microsoft, Amazon and Google; and Reddit changing its entire moderation around the social side of content.

Added Gore: “This is happening because AI needs access to data and the better the quality data it gets, the better the insights and inference that AI does. The problem is, it takes everything and attributes nothing.”

Since a lot of this content comes from humans, society is now facing an intersection around who has access to the data. Some 80% of this world’s information is created by individuals, but 80% of the world’s information is managed by just four companies.

The race is on among big tech to see who can best train their AI models. Hence, the world is seeing this disconnect occurring between our rights as individuals as to what others can do with our data, whilst at the same time, we are also seeing huge advancements in AI that can really help us.

Changing data ownership for good

Gore shared how Affinidi steps in to mitigate this issue, where humans own their own identity and are provided with a holistic view of themselves to interact across different platforms for different experiences. By doing so year after year, this will create a good set of data about individual behaviour, activities and skills.

(Background example: Affinidi is working with Filipino company, FilPass, to jointly issue verifiable credentials (VCs) to access and verify credentials of their job applicants easily. As VCs can be verified digitally, instead of manually checking hard copy documents and certificates, this improves productivity, reducing the need for companies to contact users to verify individual credentials. Affinidi will provide its expertise in digital credentialing through its mobile app and digital wallet Ceal - users will be able to promptly receive their VCs and store them securely on their mobile phones. They can then build and manage their digital identity on this platform and control how and when they want to share it.)

Added Gore: “There’s a lot of value in that and if we can collect that, give that to you, allow(ing) you to share that with strong consent management and privacy.” He cited an example where an app can provide ready access to one’s health records when one makes a visit to a physiotherapist.

“So Affinidi sits at the nexus of this, providing technology that allows greater ownership of your data, and the ability for you to actually monetise it and shift the balance the other way around, and as we like to say it, changing data ownership for good,” said Gore.

Webinar with Northstar

Another example of how AI is useful is Gevme’s Project Spark. A video recording can be repurposed into different formats such as blog posts, or a LinkedIn post within a few seconds using Project Spark, resulting in productivity gains.

A recent webinar that Gevme conducted with Northstar Meetings Group was used as a case example by Blansfield. He posted the Project Spark transcript of the webinar by taking the 45-minute webinar in video format and dropping it into Project Spark. A good quality post was generated, and this was then re-entered back into the system again, where it regenerated a summary of the transcript. Said Blansfield: “The interesting thing is that it just gets smarter the more you use it. It can save us a considerable amount of time, freeing us up to focus on more strategic and important activities.”

Gungadin added some people do not want to adopt new tools because of the fear of change, and that it will replace their jobs. “But what we need to understand is that these are just tools. For example, when we moved from paper to typewriter to computer – it never eliminated the need of the person, it’s the same thing here. Just like now, we have tools that make things faster and better,” he added.

Hyper-personalisation

Ong said that the age of hyper-personalisation has arrived, whereby a great amount of data needs to be secured in order for the AI to learn all this so when guests come into a hotel the next time, AI generates their portfolios, and tells hotels exactly what guests like for greater customisation.

He added: “The challenge is not AI but how we utilise AI. The concepts behind how we use it in a better, faster and more personalised way. AI is the key to that because it allows us to crunch data in seconds, come out with an output which can get better and better every single time you come to the property.”

Who is at risk because of AI

Gore said that those who can work remotely and work in isolation are most at risk of being replaced by AI because their jobs are effectively task-driven. Conversely, things that require a high degree of collaborative working style are the hardest to replace. Whilst the world will undergo one of the largest and fastest skills shifts it has ever seen, it is not all doom and gloom because no matter what, humans are going to be seen as a “luxury resource” - the human connection cannot be replaced.

He added: “That’s why we come to events - to network, to have the experience, it’s the accidental collisions in the hallway. You can’t do that virtually.” AI will complement jobs which will be “informed” by the best AI systems. To drive home his point, Gore added: “I will trust the human, not the AI. I’m going to ask David if I should go to the next event and I’m watching his body language. He might have access to AI that has curated 1,000 events around the world and he’s using his expertise. This is the future – humans will become the curators of experience. And there’s huge money there. We’ve gone from consumerisation, to being content producers, to content influencers. The next stage is content curators.”