Oracle is on a mission to become the ‘Netflix of AI’
Viewers who tune in to Netflix to watch the popular “Squid Game” or “Ginny & Georgia” probably don’t equate the experience with building AI models with enterprise tools, but an executive at a tech company says his company has mission to change that.
“Netflix brought shows ‘as is,’ and they gave them Netflix value,” said Elad Ziklik (pictured), vice president of AI and Data Science Services at Oracle Corp. “I want to offer the best AI software and hardware to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and have Oracle Fulfillment for it. You get Oracle security and identity, a single bill, and everything you would expect from a company like Oracle. We want to become the Netflix of AI.”
Ziklik spoke with theCUBE Industry Analyst Dave Vellante during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s live streaming studio. They discussed Oracle’s automation strategy and how emerging technologies like ChatGPT will revolutionize enterprise AI applications.
solve business problems
In recent years, Oracle has pursued a machine learning strategy to drive automation across Oracle’s database portfolio. AI has been integrated into many of Oracle’s business applications, and the company’s MySQL HeatWave platform has in-database machine learning among its many features.
“We’ve built a full suite of machine learning and AI services for pretty much every use case you would expect right now, from applying natural language processing to understanding customer support tickets or social media,” said Ziklik. “What most customers want is business AI. They just want the business problem to be solved by applying AI. Our focus is on making it easy for our customers to put AI where they need it, in the right business context.”
In October, Nvidia Corp. and Oracle jointly announce an agreement to add tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs to Oracle’s AI infrastructure. The deal included the H100, Nvidia’s best-in-class, fourth-generation, purpose-built AI processor.
“We will be the first to onboard the new Nvidia H100s, the new super powerful GPUs for training large language models,” Ziklik said. “This recent partnership with Nvidia is another step in bringing the best AI infrastructure capabilities to this platform, allowing you to build any type of machine learning workflow or AI model on Oracle Cloud.”
Year of the Chatbot
Oracle’s ambitious plans for enterprise AI are part of a broader evolution within the tech world, with 2023 shaping up to be the “Year of the Chatbot.” AI-powered chatbot technology is catching mainstream media attention, thanks in part to recent publicity surrounding OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“General purpose bots are interesting but still limited,” Ziklik said. “It’s about getting things done. Today when I want to automate my expense report in Oracle, we have a chatbot where I can submit my expenses. The key is setting the right expectations for what this thing can do.”
Ziklik recalled a telecom customer he worked with to implement a chatbot that became the only choice to interact with customers via voice translation. The technology wasn’t perfect and the company heard about it.
“Customers said, ‘This technology sucks, it’s no good, I hate it, I hate your company, I hate your support,'” Ziklik said.
But when offered the choice of waiting four hours to speak to a live person or an immediately available chatbot that understood the user’s language, the response was overwhelmingly positive.
“The feedback was amazing, even though it was the same technology,” Ziklik recalls. “The most important lesson I learned from this experience was that it was about having the right expectation and working with the right use case.”
Is ChatGPT the killer app for the right use case? OpenAI’s technology has proven capable of generating credible content, but Ziklik noted that ChatGPT’s reliability may not be prime-time yet.
“Right now it’s a complete black box, sometimes producing magic and sometimes just nonsense,” Ziklik said. “We will see that this type of app offers solutions to specific business problems. Over the next 6, 12, 24 months this will become more reliable and change the way industries are managed.”
Meanwhile, Oracle has focused on building its AI practice with a particular focus on the healthcare industry. Towards the end of 2021, the company acquired healthcare technology giant Cerner Corp. for $28 billion.
“We’re really committed to becoming the leading provider of AI for healthcare,” said Ziklik. “If you have a business problem that you want to solve using AI, we want to be your platform.”
Here is the full video interview with Oracle’s Elad Ziklik:
