Can artificial intelligence provide tangible benefits? Digia competition to win an artificial intelligence roadmap worth EUR 10,000

IT and software services company Digia is launching a competition to win the work required to draw up an artificial intelligence roadmap, a prize worth EUR 10,000. The competition begins today (8 November 2023), and the deadline for entries is 8 December 2023. Enter the competition here. (The competition website is in Finnish.)

The competition stems from the uncertainty observed in companies and public sector organisations around the utilisation of artificial intelligence. Organisations may find it hard to identify how artificial intelligence could benefit them. Consequently, they delay their uptake of the technology. However, many organisations have run artificial intelligence experiments or deployed it in certain limited areas. For some of these, the challenge is to expand their use of artificial intelligence to pursue greater business advantages.

Digia’s message is that artificial intelligence is no great mystery: Everyday applications offer the most significant benefits in any organisation – today. We hope the competition emboldens Finnish enterprises and public sector organisations to embark on their AI journey.

“Although only one organisation can win the competition, simply taking part could mark the first step towards harnessing artificial intelligence for the benefit of the organisation. The competition application asks entrants to answer some exploratory questions about the use of artificial intelligence, prompting them to consider the topic and providing guidelines for the exploitation of AI,” says Juhana Juppo, Senior Vice President for Artificial Intelligence at Digia.

The set of questions is based on Digia’s years of experience in artificial intelligence implementations and the lessons learned about the requirements for successfully utilising artificial intelligence.

Aiming to identify concrete applications for AI

The competition winner will receive roadmap work worth EUR 10,000, including an examination of the topic, a deeper understanding, and the tangible work of drawing up a roadmap.

The background information describes what artificial intelligence is, how it works, and how organisations can put it to use. Everyday examples of tangible AI implementations help to expand the discussion. The content is tailored according to the organisation’s current level of AI expertise.

The aim of the roadmap component is to identify and prioritise tangible applications for development and testing. The outcome will be a roadmap for exploiting artificial intelligence, including prioritised use cases, recommendations for implementation, and guidelines for getting started.

The work will focus on these questions:

•    The processes and services that artificial intelligence could enhance or facilitate and the concrete goals that AI will help to reach
•    The recommended experiments or first steps, or – if the organisation has already begun its AI journey – how to take AI to the next level
•    Ethics, information security and data security considerations
•    The situations in which artificial intelligence is not the most sensible or cost-effective solution, and robotics or another technology could provide greater benefits

“Sometimes it is hard to know which aspects of digital evolution are hot air and what is realistic – and how artificial intelligence can tangibly benefit and support a business. I support a controlled culture of experimentation to explore subjects on an everyday level. This competition is an opportunity and incentive to get started. The journey will be long, but the first step is to get out of the blocks. We hope for a lot of entries and new perspectives on the exploitation of artificial intelligence in Finnish organisations. The world will become a symbiosis of people and intelligent software,” says Timo Levoranta, Digia’s CEO.

Read more (in Finnish) and enter the competition >>

Further information:

Juhana Juppo
Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Digia
Tel. +358 40 172 2859
juhana.juppo(a)digia.com