Artificial intelligence unleashed: Innovation forum to jointly launch the use of AI in companies
VTU invited customers and partners to the Innovation Forum to answer current questions about the successful use of artificial intelligence (AI). Top-class speakers and experts offered detailed insights into various facets of AI, especially with regard to the highly regulated GMP area of the life science industry.
Artificial intelligence has become increasingly important in recent years, and with the introduction of ChatGPT, AI models like these are on everyone's lips. But how can life science companies successfully integrate artificial intelligence into their operations? What data may be used and how? Which legal aspects must be taken into account? These and other questions were comprehensively examined at the Innovation Forum.
Economic and legal aspects
Patrick Ratheiser, CEO of Leftshift One, addressed business development through generative AI and enterprise chatGPT in his keynote speech and presented their development from concept to implementation.
"AI and the legal" was the topic of the keynote talk by Christian Bergauer, professor at the University of Graz. He analysed the function of law with regard to AI applications and addressed the various legal implications for the life cycle of (generative) AI - from the training phase to its deployment.
Jeannette Gorzala, Vice President of the European AI Forum, presented AI as a "must" for Europe and Austria as a business location. In this context, she addressed the existing attractiveness of Europe and Austria, both for AI start-ups and large AI providers, and motivated companies to actively engage with the topic.
AI & Life Sciences
In addition, VTU experts addressed the challenges and opportunities that artificial intelligence offers, especially for companies in the life sciences industry:
Stefan Pauli, Senior Data Scientist at VTU, and Elke Wieser, VTU Team Lead for Computer System Validation, showed how AI can be successfully used in practice in the highly regulated GMP sector. They presented the development in the fields of artificial intelligence on the one hand and GMP on the other hand and mentioned the essential basics for AI validation. Finally, they showed a practical approach for combining AI and GMP.
The possibilities for smart reporting using AI-based data mining were the topic of the presentation by Birgit Krenn, Head of Manufacturing Science and Technology at VTU. She discussed regulatory relevant GMP data and documents and presented AI-based data mining with practical examples. She showed that AI can bring advantages, but that especially at the beginning of AI developments, setbacks and "lessons learned" must also be accepted in order to reap the fruits of the developments later.
Andreas Schumacher, Director Digitalization at VTU, explored the question of whether AI can be seen as an industrial revolution. In his presentation, he addressed the increasing speed of development of digitalisation and AI, but at the same time pointed out that AI still has some barriers in the industrial sector and has therefore not yet fully arrived. The change in the job profiles of all employees of a company will ultimately represent a revolution, which, however, goes far beyond a mere industrial revolution.
"Megatrends like digitalisation and AI are like avalanches in slow motion - after a slow start, they pick up incredible speed and force. We as companies have to make faster and faster decisions here in order to be on top of this avalanche," says Andreas Schumacher.
AI in practice
The Innovation Forum also offered interactive programme items such as experience stations where current AI tools could be experienced live and, above all, tried out by all visitors. In addition, concrete questions and challenges could be raised in an expert panel.
