Driving real impact with AI Agents: A blueprint from Högskolan Väst | Högskolan Väst

[intro jingle] Thank you. So, great to be here in Copenhagen. Before we get started, I really like to get to know my audience just a little bit before we kick off with the implementation and all the technical stuff. So, a quick show of hands. How many of you have ever studied at, taken a course at university? That's excellent. Keep them up. Don't be afraid. Just one more. Just one more. And it's okay to lie on this question if you're feeling, but how many of you have ever failed an exam? Keep your hand up. Yeah. Okay. So, this solution is for all of you. Yeah. This is for our students. [Peter:] Let's talk about who we are. - [Tobias:] Who we are. Yeah. So, my name is Tobias Ekenstam. I've been with University West, Högskolan Väst in Swedish, for about almost 30 years soon. I do a lot of work with collaboration, innovation, with always a focus on efficiency. I love the Agile values, which means that I really like working with our students and our teachers and our researchers. And right now, of course, a lot of focus is on AI and what to do with this technology. And I have with me my friend Peter. [Peter:] My name is Peter Drougge. It's not Druggie. Although every time I go to the US, that is unfortunately what they do. Mr Druggie! Like, no! [audience chuckles] I've been a development architect for the better part of 27 going on 28 years. Still learning every day because we are in the best business there is. Free learning, and you get paid for it. I have the benefit and fortune of leading a great team at Eficode that does Azure and AI. And they are phenomenal. [Tobias:] So, a little bit about us. This is kind of mandatory, we have to tell you who we are. But we're actually quite a small university in Sweden. We're the fifth smallest. And like it says here, we have about 700 employees, 14,000 students, four institutions, et cetera. One of the things that we are really, really proud of is that last point there, that 86% of the students have a job after graduating in about one, one and a half years. Which is actually quite a high number. So, we're really proud of that. And that's kind of a sign telling us that our educations are appreciated by the industry, that our students are prepared for work life when they come out. So, that's something that we really like. We are situated in Trollhättan. Trollhättan is about 100 kilometres north of Gothenburg, so we're on the west or the best side of Sweden. [Peter:] I live in Stockholm. [Tobias:] There's a friendly rivalry, if you didn't know it, between the west side and the east side, and the west is the best side. [Peter:] I actually agree with him, so that's a problem. [Tobias:] [chuckles] That's good. Thank you. Our motto at University West is that together we change. And that's kind of our philosophy, working together with the surrounding community, and of course, within ourselves, working together, collaborating between teachers, students, technical staff, et cetera, that's the key to success. So, we are very much focused on learning together with everyone else. When we started looking at how can we start looking at AI and what's happening in the industry, of course, it's a rapidly evolving technology, but looking back, it's nothing new for us. We have adapted to new technology all our lives. Going back to the calculator, to the computer, to the modem, to the internet, and now it's AI. It's just another tool, right? But with AI, it kind of feels different. It used to be that with all of these other technologies, we watch the landscape, we watch what's happening around us, and we think, okay, that's new, that's hot, that's shiny, let's wait a bit. Let's ... [middle portion omitted for brevity] ... stability is also a very hard thing to do, even in cloud and local. There is no SLA. There's no service level agreement for throughput, unless you go a really enterprise way and start paying much, much more money for doing P2's planned throughput units. So, it's a bit of trade-off in between that. And the third one is that compliance is not a game just for the governance and the legal teams, the GRC teams. It's for everyone. This EU AI Act is already implemented halfway, and it does require everyone to be transparent about AI-generated answers. Build this from day one instead of trying to adjust for it later on. There's no... I want to talk. - [Peter:] He really does want to talk. He does. - Keep quiet for a minute. - [Peter:] I'll step back for you. - No, but the future is so great here. There are so many possibilities. But I took something away from Camille today as well. Just because we build it, they won't come. So, even though we can build it, and we are really having fun building it, maybe we shouldn't, because we have to make sure our users actually will want to use it. But I think our main challenge right now is looking at this. It's very promising, but I think we have some challenges going forward in how to scale it. So, that's the really big thing for us. How do we scale it efficiently and without getting lost in creating thousands of agents for each course and having millions of kronor every month in costs? [Peter:] That sounds great. - [Tobias:] Yeah, I know, for you. But not for us. So, yeah, the future is very, very interesting. We'll talk about it more later. And of course, we are happy if you want to contact us. Like I said, sharing is caring. We are more than happy to show you more and talk more about this. Feel free to reach out. Thank you very much. [applause] [outro music] [music stops]