Rajeev: Certain. I believe nowadays none of those conversations might 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 bottom line is approaching this primarily based on the client’s ache factors and enterprise wants after which we work backward to establish what sort of AI is greatest appropriate or related to us. In Cathay, presently, we concentrate on three predominant forms of AI. One is after all conversational AI. Primarily, it’s a type of an inside and exterior chatbot. Our chatbot, we name it Vera, serves clients instantly 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 accessible, 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, however it additionally instantly enhances the worker expertise. And up to now in Cathay, now we have a few hundred bots in manufacturing serving varied enterprise items, 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 group or the info science group has developed about 70-plus ML fashions in Cathay that turned the group knowledge into insights or actionable objects. These fashions assist us to make a greater determination. For instance, what meals to be loaded into the plane and particular routes, by way of what amount and what sort of product affords we promote to clients, and together with the fare loading and the pricing of our passenger in addition to a cargo bay house. There’s loads of exploration that’s being carried out on this house as nicely. And a few examples I may relate is if you happen to ever occur to return to Hong Kong, subsequent time on the airport, you would hear the general public announcement system and that’s additionally AI-powered lately. Previously, our employees used to manually make these bulletins and now it has been moved away and has been moved into AI-powered voice know-how in order that we might be constant in our announcement.
Megan: Oh, implausible. I am going to should 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, once we’re speaking about cloud modernization, cybersecurity could be a roadblock to agility, I suppose, if it isn’t managed successfully. So may you additionally inform us in just a little extra element how Cathay Pacific has built-in safety into its digital transformation journey, significantly with the adoption of growth 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 essential features round my hand, I should be aware of each points, proper? Sure, it is an fascinating one and it has modified over the time frame, 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 perform, but when one thing goes unsuitable, as a CISO we’re held accountable for these faults. I can perceive why the group is so inflexible of their practices. And I additionally perceive from a enterprise perspective it might be perceived as a street blocker to agility.
One of many key points that now we have carried out in Cathay is now we have been following DevOps for fairly quite a few years, and lately, I believe within the final two years, we began implementing DevSecOps into our STLC [software testing life cycle]. And what it basically means is relatively than the core cybersecurity group being answerable for lots of the safety testing and people kinds of points, 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. They usually’re additionally enabled by way of the cybersecurity course of. Proper?
After all, once we began off this journey, there was an enormous resistance on the safety group itself as a result of they do not actually belief the builders making an attempt to do the testing or the testing outputs. However over a time frame 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 handle all of the points of safety, like risk modeling, code scanning, and the vulnerability testing. However on the finish, the safety groups can be nonetheless validating and act as a form of a gatekeeper, however in a really gentle and inbuilt processes. And this manner we are able to be certain that our cloud purposes are safe by design and by default they will ship them quicker and extra reliably to our clients. And on this total course of, proper?
Previously, safety has been at all times perceived as an accountability of the cybersecurity group. And by enabling the builders of the safety points, now you could have a greater possession within the group in terms of cybersecurity and it’s constructing a greater cybersecurity tradition inside the group. And that, to me, is a key as a result of from a safety facet, we at all times say that persons 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 capable of enhance that maturity within the group.