AI Shifts from Answering Questions to Carrying Out Complex Tasks

Artificial intelligence is evolving beyond its current capabilities of generating text and images to performing complex tasks on behalf of users. This shift towards 'agentic AI' was highlighted at the Google Cloud Summit in Doha, where the company marked three years since opening its cloud infrastructure in Qatar.

Alex Rutter, Managing Director of Google Cloud's Artificial Intelligence business across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, explained that generative AI creates content in response to a prompt, while agentic AI focuses on working through steps needed to complete a task. He gave the example of invoice reconciliation, where an agent can check information against different systems.

Businesses are looking at repetitive work that involves checking information across different systems, and Rutter said that agents are well-suited for this type of highly repetitive database work. However, he emphasized the importance of human oversight in verifying AI results, particularly in areas such as medicine where AI should support rather than replace clinician decision-making.

Google Cloud is expanding its services to accommodate agentic AI and has announced a new national skilling programme with Qatar Digital Academy, which aims to provide over 50,000 learning opportunities by 2030. The company is also developing an innovation lab with Qatar's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) to test AI projects before implementation.