According to a recent report, more than 30 AI communities in Africa offer various services in the field. Tunisian AI start-up InstaDeep received $100 million in funding early last year, with the market across the continent projected to grow by 20% annually from 2022 to 2029. But even though AI promises significant business benefits, there are still aspects that companies need to avoid to prevent potential pitfalls.One of the most significant challenges is managing the cost of running AI models.
Considering that it can be almost five times more expensive to run a compact AI model in the cloud than in an on-premises environment, it makes business sense to do so.Every organization must recognize the importance of securing and controlling its data. An obstacle companies must avoid when implementing AI models is violating data security and sovereignty regulations, especially in Africa, where each country has different compliance requirements.
Multinationals must prioritize data sovereignty. With the privacy implications of using AI still under evaluation, a global consensus on governing AI models and the data used to train them is likely. Recent reports about authors suing OpenAI over the ‘theft’ of their copyright work to train AI models demonstrate the importance of addressing this issue.
Answering the questions posed by AI in the regulatory environment will take time to address. In the meantime, companies must maintain control of their data and applications, which is more challenging in public cloud infrastructure that they don’t own.When developing a customer service chatbot, you must include proprietary product data in its training, considering multiple security concerns. This sensitive information is unlikely to be comfortable for organizations to keep in the public cloud.