Rajeev: Positive. I believe as of late none of those conversations could be full with out speaking about AI and gen AI. We began this early exploratory part early into the sport, particularly on this a part of the world. However for us, the secret is approaching this primarily based on the shopper’s ache factors and enterprise wants after which we work backward to determine what kind of AI is greatest appropriate or related to us. In Cathay, at present, we give attention to three most important kinds of AI. One is in fact conversational AI. Primarily, it’s a type of an inside and exterior chatbot. Our chatbot, we name it Vera, serves clients straight and may deal with about 50% of the inquiries efficiently. And nearly two weeks again, we upgraded the LLM with a brand new mannequin, the chatbot with a brand new mannequin, which is ready to be extra environment friendly and way more responsive by way of the human work. In order that’s one a part of the AI that we closely invested on.
Second is RPA, or robotic course of automation, particularly what you are seeing is through the pandemic and post-Covid period, there’s restricted assets out there, particularly in Hong Kong and throughout our provide chain. So RPA or the robotic processes helps to automate mundane repetitive duties, which does not solely fill the useful resource hole, but it surely additionally straight enhances the worker expertise. And thus far in Cathay, we have now a couple of hundred bots in manufacturing serving numerous enterprise models, serving roughly 30,000 hours yearly of human exercise. So that is the second half.
The third one is round ML and it is the gen AI. So like our digital crew or the info science crew has developed about 70-plus ML fashions in Cathay that turned the group information into insights or actionable objects. These fashions assist us to make a greater resolution. For instance, what meals to be loaded into the plane and particular routes, by way of what amount and how much product provides we promote to clients, and together with the fare loading and the pricing of our passenger in addition to a cargo bay area. There may be loads of exploration that’s being achieved on this area as effectively. And a few examples I might relate is for those who ever occur to come back to Hong Kong, subsequent time on the airport, you could possibly hear the general public announcement system and that’s additionally AI-powered not too long ago. Up to now, our workers used to manually make these bulletins and now it has been moved away and has been moved into AI-powered voice expertise in order that we may very well be constant in our announcement.
Megan: Oh, incredible. I am going to must pay attention for it subsequent time I am at Hong Kong airport. And you’ve got talked about this matter a few occasions within the dialog. Look, after we’re speaking about cloud modernization, cybersecurity is usually a roadblock to agility, I assume, if it is not managed successfully. So might you additionally inform us in just a little extra element how Cathay Pacific has built-in safety into its digital transformation journey, notably with the adoption of improvement safety operations practices that you have talked about?
Rajeev: Yeah, that is an fascinating one. I take care of cybersecurity in addition to the infrastructure providers. With each of those crucial capabilities round my hand, I must be conscious of each elements, proper? Sure, it is an fascinating one and it has modified over the time period, and I absolutely perceive why cybersecurity practices must be inflexible as a result of there’s loads of compliance and it’s a extremely regulated operate, but when one thing goes improper, as a CISO we’re held accountable for these faults. I can perceive why the crew is so inflexible of their practices. And I additionally perceive from a enterprise perspective it may very well be perceived as a street blocker to agility.
One of many key elements that we have now achieved in Cathay is we have now been following DevOps for fairly quite a lot of years, and not too long ago, I believe within the final two years, we began implementing DevSecOps into our STLC [software testing life cycle]. And what it basically means is somewhat than the core cybersecurity crew being accountable for lots of the safety testing and people kinds of elements, we wish to shift left a few of these capabilities into the builders in order that the individuals who develop the code now are held accountable for the testing and the standard of the output. And so they’re additionally enabled by way of the cybersecurity course of. Proper?
After all, after we began off this journey, there was an enormous resistance on the safety crew itself as a result of they do not actually belief the builders attempting to do the testing or the testing outputs. However over a time period with the introduction of assorted instruments and automation that’s put in place, that is now getting right into a matured stage whereby it’s now enabling the upfront groups to deal with all of the elements of safety, like risk modeling, code scanning, and the vulnerability testing. However on the finish, the safety groups could be nonetheless validating and act as a form of a gatekeeper, however in a really mild and inbuilt processes. And this fashion we will be certain that our cloud functions are safe by design and by default they’ll ship them sooner and extra reliably to our clients. And on this total course of, proper?
Up to now, safety has been all the time perceived as an accountability of the cybersecurity crew. And by enabling the builders of the safety elements, now you may have a greater possession within the group in terms of cybersecurity and it’s constructing a greater cybersecurity tradition throughout the group. And that, to me, is a key as a result of from a safety side, we all the time say that individuals are your first line of protection and infrequently they’re additionally the final line of protection. I am glad that by these processes we’re in a position to enhance that maturity within the group.