AI definitely does not make the developer jobs go away: SAP

SAP TechEd 2023 is here and now! The company is going to make several announcements at the event. At a pre-event press conference, Juergen Mueller, Executive Board Member and Chief Technology Officer, SAP SE, said that the first announcement is about pro-code developers. Digitalization is everywhere! Last year, we announced SAP Build. This year, we are announcing SAP Build Code.

We are also working with generative AI And LLMs. They bring sparks of intelligence. These models have no access to company proprietary data. We help companies with business AI. Generative AI combines LLMs with company data. We extend that with Vector capabilities. Human beings can now be given the context.

With SAP Hana Cloud and Vector engine, we are announcing general availability in Q1 next year. We are also announcing generative AI hub. Putting generative AI into production can be very tough. We will make all the learnings available to our customers and partners.

AI definitely does not make the developer jobs go away! Bangalore is our second-largest hub outside Germany. Developers will see activities shift to that of reviewer and build things to help the customers. Demand will be very large for all sorts of activities.

He added that there are many LLMs available. How do you choose the right one? Imagine like your toolbox at home. In many regards, GPT4 may be the most capable, but not the fastest. We always select the best model, and combine models for use cases. Hallucinations do exist in the world! In generative AI, we can create job postings.

Julia White, Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer, and Member of Executive Board, SAP SE, added that privacy is also super important. We have documented principles of AI ethics. We are now bench-marking ourselves. Mueller added we have 22 models for developers.

Biden ordered AI regulation recently. Should that be self-regulated within companies? White said we believe it is important for companies to shape the right type of regulation around it. We support regulations around that area. EU has been most advanced so far. We are looking at harmonization.

How will AI help businesses use best practices? Mueller said we have business practices across the businesses. It will become part of the best-run any business. SAP also has Joule, so how that will see productivity grow? White said that we are looking at what value creation is happening. One example is transportation logistics. CFOs today have different agreements with different customers. We are looking at their hard dollar savings.

Mueller stated that we need to be on our toes and do our best. We started 8-1/2 years ago with AI and ML. We are working with customers who give us consent to use their data. Compute and algorithms are commoditizing quickly.

Regarding EU's approach to AI, we support the risk-based approach that the EU is taking, said White. We also see other governments following suite. Mueller added that we have been working with AI/ML for 8-1/2 years. In ChatGPT, lot of LLMs are getting to be easily accessible.

White stated that lot of businesses are also working on their business models. As we put our AI into the market, we will announce the pricing based per model. The initial AI capabilities are part of the pricing.

Customers ask questions about privacy and how data is being used. They also want to know the costs and business models. Mueller said we get the most questions regarding it is hard for them to do themselves, and can SAP help them sort that? HANA Cloud has some big customers. We can build AI onto those products. Today, companies would need to deploy newer data. We have data within vector data. It can be very seamless for customers.

And, what do top CIOs demand for generative AI? White said they want to see real dollar savings! They want AI app to be built into their app. We can give them clear guidance. With Microsoft, we announced that we are going to look at all models. We are continuing to build partnerships. We are having a more partnership-based approach. Joule is SAP's own co-pilot experience. It can help in different aspects of your workload.

Mueller noted that SAP is focused on everything. You need license to play! Data may not cross a country, so, data residency is one aspect to look at. We also have multi-faceted approach across all the areas. White said that we are looking at people thinking responsibly regarding AI. Implications also need to catch up. Governments are also looking at how to implement AI responsibly. Mueller stated there is lot of excitement. EU and German companies are at the edge checking all the boxes.