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A Generative AI strategy should be built on data

A Generative AI strategy should be built on data
Amid all the hype about Generative AI, something is often missing: data. Generative AI, without adequate, quality data, can’t begin to achieve its potential. There are seven main aspects of Generative AI that show why data is foundational. Training Generative Models: Generative AI models, such as GANs or autoencoders, require a substantial amount of high-quality training data to learn patterns, distributions, and correlations. The quality and diversity of the data directly impact the model’s ability to generate accurate and meaningful outputs. Adequate and representative data is essential to train generative models effectively.
- Model Generalisation: Generative AI models need to generalise well beyond the training data to produce useful and relevant outputs. A diverse and comprehensive dataset enables the model to learn a wide range of variations, ensuring that it can generate outputs that go beyond simple reproductions of the training samples. A robust and diverse dataset improves the model’s ability to generalise and produce novel and creative outputs.
- Realism and Quality of Outputs: The quality and realism of generative AI outputs depend on the quality and richness of the training data. If the training data is accurate, diverse, and representative of the desired output domain, the generative model is more likely to produce high-quality and realistic outputs. Without sufficient and relevant data, the generated outputs may lack coherence, context, or accuracy.
- Bias and Fairness: Data plays a critical role in addressing bias and ensuring fairness in generative AI applications. Biases present in the training data can be learned and perpetuated by the generative model, leading to biased outputs. By carefully curating and analysing the training data, biases can be identified and mitigated, promoting fairness and inclusivity in the generated outputs.
- Evaluation and Iteration: Data is essential for evaluating and improving the performance of generative AI models. Validating the generated outputs against ground truth data or expert judgement helps assess the quality, relevance, and effectiveness of the generative model. Feedback from users and stakeholders can also contribute to refining and iterating the model, enhancing its performance over time.
- Adaptability and Contextual Understanding: Generative models need to understand and adapt to the specific context and domain in which they operate. Having access to relevant data specific to the application domain helps the generative model capture the nuances, patterns, and characteristics of the domain, leading to more contextually appropriate and relevant outputs.
- Domain-Specific Knowledge and Constraints: Data provides domain-specific knowledge and constraints that guide the generative model’s outputs. By training on domain-specific data, the model can learn the constraints, rules, and patterns that are inherent to the target domain. This ensures that the generative outputs align with the desired requirements and adhere to the domain-specific constraints.
Clearly, a well-curated and diverse dataset is critical to unlocking the full potential of generative AI applications. Plan for success by making data the foundation of a successful Generative AI strategy. Good data enables the training and generalisation of generative models, ensures the quality and realism of outputs, helps address bias and fairness concerns, supports model evaluation and iteration, provides contextual understanding, and incorporates domain-specific knowledge and constraints.
Author
Alberto Calzada
Head of Data Science

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