"We need artificial intelligence to solve the climate crisis" | Sitowise
Sitowise's AI development will be steered through the Group-level AI Center of Excellence. Innovation Director Sami Lankiniemi is in charge. At the turn of the year, Sitowise established the Group-wide AI Center of Excellence. Sami Lankiniemi, Sitowise's Innovation Director, is responsible for the work of the team focusing on the development of artificial intelligence. He sees the new centre of expertise in the design and consulting field as exceptional. We have a core team of 15 people in Finland and nearly 40 AI experts at Group level. The development work related to artificial intelligence is under the guidance of the top Group management, our experts are incredibly talented and our board also includes top experts in the field, such as Anni Ronkainen, former Country Manager of Google Finland.
Sitowise's Innovation Focus
In the next few years, Sitowise's innovation activities will focus on two paths. The foundation will continue to be laid by the development of new commercial solutions in The Smart City Lab. Our strategic goal is to increase the share of continuous invoicing services to approximately 10 per cent, Lankiniemi says. The second path is technology development as a whole, which also includes the AI Center of Excellence's AI development. To date, numerous promising use cases have already been identified. We are constantly assessing whether different tasks can be solved with artificial intelligence or, for example, by changing people's actions or standardising information and processes.
Artificial Intelligence for Climate Crisis
Personally, Lankiniemi is confident in the most important application of artificial intelligence. There are not all the necessary solutions to the climate crisis, so all modelling, calculation and simulation assistance will be needed. I believe in the power of sustainable green technologies! Without AI development, we will not have the opportunity to adapt to the changing climate, mitigate negative impacts and preferably also reverse the trend, i.e. start restoring and restoring the natural values we have destroyed. Of course, at the same time, the societal impacts caused by artificial intelligence itself must be managed.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Industry
Until now, at least in the built environment, digitalisation has largely focused on the digitisation of information and tools, not on the digitalisation of operations as a whole. It will take time before various useful technologies, such as artificial intelligence, can be deployed widely enough in the industry. That is why Lankiniemi is also interested in change management: changing people's thoughts, companies' strategies and ways of working. It requires many different stakeholders to change at the same time. Large systemic changes are slow, but possible.
