Peter’s Pioneers: Checking the Nordic AI Pulse.
Welcome to the sixth edition of Peter’s AI Pioneers newsletter. Dive in for a roundup of this week's AI news, deals and insights covering the Nordic region.

📚 In This Issue:

1. Special Interview: An AI Founder's Perspective on AI in the Nordics

2. Nordic News Roundup

3. Cool Tools and Companies

4. Podcast Insights: Work, Superpowers - and Therapy

5. Upcoming: Nordic AI Events You Shouldn't Miss

Special Interview

An AI Founder's Perspective on AI in the Nordics

Ruvan Fernando is the co-founder of Switch2ai. The Danish start-up empowers companies, “transforming non-AI enterprises into AI-driven success stories.”

I spoke with Ruvan about his company, their solutions, and how he sees the current and future market for AI in the Nordics. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Peter: How do you see the Nordic market for AI in the Nordics and the area your company focuses on?

Ruvan: AI interest is growing exponentially. Simultaneously, the hype around what you can do with systems like ChatGPT is enormous.

In general, developers have been running at superspeed, trying to solve specific problems with generative AI platforms. Said differently, they have made particular “solution nails” and used systems like ChatGPT as the hammer. The result is ten to twenty new 'tools' appearing every week, including some from the Nordics.

When trying to address specific problems, we continuously encounter complexity in managing the underlying computations and data streams. This complexity is compounded by the fact that few decision-makers are used to working with the associated software tools and data representation formats.

As a result, many (often smaller to mid-sized) companies want to solve X (via AI) but have no idea how to get started – nor have the necessary in-house expertise.

We want to “AI-enable” these companies. The process combines technical know-how and expertise with solid insight about industries and businesses, which informs what processes can and should be optimised using AI.

The processes - AI-based, non-AI-based, and data flows - are displayed and processed in our graphic orchestration tool and platform called Ergasio.

Peter: How would you describe the AI solutions that your company offers - and what kind of challenges do they solve for your customers?

Ruvan: With our platform, the answer is “all kinds of companies with processes/decisions where AI can help.”

For example, in a large catering company, AI can help select recipes based on criteria like season, ingredients, diet, etc. In a travel agency, a chat-based AI can find trips and package tours that combine the interests, destinations and agreements of a traveller or traveller group.

Neither company have in-house AI/NLP developers (and probably never will). However, they have concrete needs that can be solved using AI. With our platform and services, they can integrate AI and, via Ergasio, administer and visualise the underlying data flows.

Peter: What are some of the biggest challenges companies in the Nordics face regarding AI?

Ruvan: Among our customer segment (primarily SMEs), all investments - especially IT investments – come with challenges. Sometimes, dialogues with potential customers reveal that the goal of AI is to solve an existing problem more efficiently, making it more a nice-to-have than a must-have, complicating ROI calculations.

We look forward to when AI solutions primarily create new business opportunities. From our perspective, this makes it easier for companies to justify the investment and, thus, calculate the ROI.

Data security, particularly GDPR, is not a concern yet, but huge issues can arise if customers feed sensitive and personal data into their AI solutions. There are ways of addressing this. Our approach employs a 'local' AI used exclusively to anonymise inbound data.

Peter: What advice would you give people with dreams/ambitions to start an AI-focused business?

Ruvan: Get started as soon as possible. The beauty of the new LLMs is that they make AI accessible to the “ordinary” developer. Integration with modern LLMs is done with straightforward APIs. One side effect is that the friction of switching to a newer, better, and perhaps cheaper, LLM is almost nonexistent.

As more models come into play, there is increased reason to use an orchestration platform for the AI interaction. For example, ours 🙂

Peter: What has the position in the Nordics meant for your company? Does being a Nordic AI company provide specific opportunities or challenges?

Ruvan: Denmark is a small country, and money from venture capitalists generally does not hang on the trees. However, although we have already spoken to a few big players, the news value of being a company 'doing something with ChatGPT' doesn’t hurt.

🎙Nordic News Roundup

• AI is not perceived as a job threat, but companies lack knowledge on how to leverage it. [NO] (Kommunikasjon)

• How Danish company reveals how it uses AI to solve dokumentation tasks [DK] (Børsen) (Paywall)

• AI may add 309 billion Swedish kroner to the country’s economy, according to a new analysis. [SE] (Cision)

• Norwegian consultancy company is freeing up staff time and improving quality through AI. [NO] (e24)

• Future lab director weighs in on what AI will mean for the future of work [SE] (SVD)

• We are facing an AI-driven work-life revolution, but people will still be central, says a new book. [DK] (Berlingske) (Paywall)

• Swedish IT giant Consid enters into a partnership with Danish AI start-up syntheticAIdata. [SE] (VIA)

• Norway’s first “pure” AI accelerator programme opens its doors to start-ups. [NO] (Shifter)

🛠️ Cool Tools & Companies

• Hyphen from Denmark is developing a personal, private AI assistant.

• Talendary from Sweden provides AI software that automates candidate screening.

• Spoor from Norway uses AI to detect, track, and classify birds in wind farms in ways that help industry and nature coexist.

• Front AI from Finland offers a conversational AI and 2nd Generation Services Bot.

Do you know cool tools or companies I should feature in the newsletter? Let me know!

🎧 Listen To

• Kunstig intelligens på arbeidsplassen [NO] - Three-part series that explores AI’s influence on the future of work.

• Skandia [SE]- Futurist talks about what “superpowers” you need to succeed in a future defined by AI.

• Prompt [DK] - AI therapy bots are all the rage - but what can and should they be used for?

📅 Training, Meetups & Conferences

• 31 October: NorwAI Innovate: Norway's most influential event on AI. [Trondheim, Norway]

• 8-9 November: Digital Tech Summit 2023: The heart of Nordic deep tech. [Copenhagen, Denmark]

• 20-21 November: AI Sweden at Internetdagarna 2023: Three seminars on AI in Sweden as part of Internetdagarna. [Online]

• 4-7 December: Human-Agent Interaction 2023: The premier interdisciplinary venue for discussing and disseminating state-of-the-art research and results. [Gothenburg, Sweden]

• 14 March (2024): Applied AI Nordics: Make AI practical and understandable and inspire how to get value from AI in business. [Copenhagen, Denmark]

• 17-18 April (2024): AI+: Get the latest updates from the world of artificial intelligence. [Halden, Norway]

Got an AI story or insight from the Nordics? Share it with me!

Reply to this email or connect on LinkedIn.

Until next time,

Peterhe Futurei