Trustworthy AI: SAP’s approach to smarter AI solutions – News

To build trustworthy AI, the data has to be just as smart as the algorithm.

That’s why SAP SE is doubling down on quality control — not just to reduce bias or sanitize inputs, but to ensure artificial intelligence outputs are genuinely useful, accurate and meaningful. From text generation to service recommendations, it’s not enough for AI to simply “work” — it has to work right. And getting there requires a human-in-the-loop approach, according to Hardy Kuhn (pictured), head of service management solutions at SAP.

“It’s not just an automation, and it’s not just understanding language, but it’s really then conforming and creating text that is meaningful,” he said. “We have the artificial agent that makes a proposal, and we still have a lot of these use cases that serve our human agent as a proposal, as a human in the loop to make sure that we have quality control before it really goes out.”

Kuhn spoke with theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson at the “From Vision to Reality: How AI Is Transforming Work Now” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, News Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed trustworthy AI and the importance of AI quality control for better results. (* Disclosure below.)

Trustworthy AI: Connecting change management and AI quality control

Change management is crucial in AI adoption because implementing this technology isn’t just about installing new tech. It’s about transforming how people work, think and collaborate. As a result, proper frameworks are needed to create open communication channels to address various issues, such as AI quality control, Kuhn pointed out.

“AI is not embraced by everyone right off the bat,” he said. “There’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear, a lot of mistrust, but also a lot of excitement about these things. We’ve seen this is a change management just as much as a technology challenge. We had a very long … testing phase of these first AI use cases just to make sure they don’t fantasize. I think that’s when the first go-live happened when everyone was happy, and ever since we’ve seen a huge uptake in usage of these first AI use cases.”

Given that AI automates repetitive tasks, reduces human error and frees up time for more creative and strategic work, its implementation is essential in the digital landscape. As a result, SAP has already set the AI ball rolling in IT support and service management, Kuhn explained. 

“I think the DNA of innovation was in our company to begin with,” he said. “We’re in the software industry, so it’s natural that this has taken evolutionary steps from early days to today, and we’re really excited about the AI use cases and capabilities that are coming up. I’m responsible for the infrastructure for our IT support and support agents supporting our customers. I think some of these use cases are tailored at making our agents smarter, faster, better in serving our customers.”

Transitioning to Agentic AI

By enabling systems to make decisions and take actions autonomously, agentic AI is gaining steam. The technology is a game-changer, as it goes beyond just following instructions by taking initiatives, undertaking choices and pursuing specific goals independently, according to Kuhn. 

“I think the next step is obviously agentic AI, where we have a use case in mind that is more complex and where agents then autonomously need to decide on certain outcome what the next step is,” he said. “I think that’s where we’re starting to invent and build up these agentic AI use cases as well. We’re still in the beginning of that early stage, so I cannot really say we’ve mastered it, but it’s the next evolutionary step.”

AI innovation is important because it drives progress, solves complex problems and shapes the future in powerful ways. To help realize this vision, SAP has formed a strategic partnership with ServiceNow Inc. and Accenture PLC to accelerate this objective, according to Kuhn.

“I think our ServiceNow journey is now going on for five years,” he said. “We’ve implemented and pulled in a lot of stuff in-house to the ServiceNow platform as a backbone of this, and then we had a platform to innovate on top. We are a technology vendor, so obviously we bring AI capabilities and AI technology with Joule as the chatbot and with our business transformation platform. Accenture was our implementation partner, and that’s where the journey started on AI and gen AI.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of News’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “From Vision to Reality: How AI is Transforming Work Now” event: 

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “From Vision to Reality: How AI Is Transforming Work Now” event. Neither ServiceNow Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or News.)

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