Business world meets at Bosphorus Summit in Istanbul with AI under the spotlight

The 16th edition of Bosphorus Summit, with Euronews as official press sponsor, concluded on Friday after two days of panels and meetings that saw intense brainstorming on geopolitical issues by prominent figures that included high-ranking officials from several countries, businesspeople and journalists.

Laura Buckwell, a Euronews journalist based in Dubai, moderated a panel titled "Future of Power: Energy, Innovation and Strategy" which was joined by several high-profile businesspeople.

Among the panelists were Birol Ergüven, Member of the Board at Istanbul-based Limak Energy Group; Zeynep Harezi, Group Head of Commercial Operations and Board Member of Karpowership, a Turkish operator of powerships; and Mehmet Ali Neyzi, Board Member of Wavegenx, which produces onshore ocean power systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

Speaking first, Harezi said that Karpowership decided to expand into the energy sector in 2007 "with something that has not been done before with a global floating power generation fleet."

Emphasising the term "powerships," she said that they send these into more than 20 countries globally.

"In some countries, we are actually providing 100% of the electricity used there. And in some countries we are providing 25 to 30%."

Harezi further added that their work model is "basically building conventional power land-based power plants inside ships and building them in advance so that they can be sent to the host country within a couple of days."

Wavegenx's Mehmet Ali Neyzi underlined that AI has been the backbone of their work and that they "have been able to develop our ocean and wave power technology through predictive analysis."

Before the age of AI, the waves and currents have been too unpredictable to work, Neyzi said.

"It's an untapped market," he said, underlining that their technologies represent an unprecedented way of using AI.

Limak’s Birol Ergüven, in remarks to Euronews after the panel, said "There are many fields where AI can be utilized. Legal departments, people working in research and development, journalism and all other fields imaginable."

When asked about how Limak, the Turkish conglomerate in the fields of construction, energy, cement, and tourism implement AI in its workflows, said "We currently use both general AI and specialized packages. We've been using this for about a year."

"Over time, they have begun to use it more and more in their work. That's one aspect of the job," Ergüven added.

Speaking about the technical side of things, the businessman emphasised the use of AI in power plants.

"How do we use it in our power plants? It goes like this: all the data is accumulated from a power plant, which in itself is a structure with thousands of sensors. It's constantly monitored, and these are monitored using more traditional algorithms to gather information about the plant's status," he added.

"AI has the ability to interpret more signals from this sea of data than you can with fixed algorithms. Naturally, this is what we're working on right now," Ergüven said.

"We're also using AI to understand the health of all the panels in solar power plants. We're trying to use it on a larger scale. It's inevitable. As I mentioned, we have such an efficiency-enhancing tool at our disposal."