Feb. 5, 2024
Seneca News
AI research helps students and companies get ahead
Seneca and Oppos Inc. seize the moment to create a win-win situation
Seneca Applied Research and Oppos Inc., a cybersecurity AI product and services company, worked with the latest technology on a research project to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The project focused on enhancing Toronto-based Oppos’ RegAI product, which automates the process of answering security questionnaires that SMEs need to complete to meet their customers’ risk management requirements.
With Oppos’ direction, the team was able to immediately tap into large language models (LLMs), the generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology underlying chat functions, to enhance the RegAI product.
“We started working on the project just as OpenAI’s ChatGPT came out, so it was sensational,” said Mark Buchner, Professor, School of Information Technology Administration & Security and the Principal Investigator for the research.
Research assistants Mahima Chhagani, who graduated from the one-year Business Analytics certificate program in the spring, and Shawn Lu, who is completing the four-year Honours Bachelor of Data Science & Analytics degree in 2024, worked with Mr. Buchner and James Kwong, Oppos Co-Founder and CAIO, on the project.
The team used generative AI in LLMs to solve some key engineering problems so that SME’s own data could be leveraged to concisely and accurately answer survey questions.
The project built on successful R&D collaboration that Oppos and Seneca have done in the past, Mr. Kwong said, adding the partnership has produced transferrable learnings and findings for the company.
For this project, which received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Mr. Kwong had a rigorous candidate vetting process to put together a good team.
“I knew I could find some diamonds in the rough at Seneca,” Mr. Kwong said.
And he did, as demonstrated by the results that drove key design insights and enhancements to the Oppos product.
Mr. Lu compared the research experience to a pyramid and said his studies laid a good foundation and the project gave him the chance to work with something at the top of the pyramid.
“It allowed me to apply my skillset to the full extent and learn something very new, very useful, very future-ready,” said Mr. Lu, who went on to do work with RBC and the payment system Interac Corp. after the research project.
Mr. Buchner agreed that it was an exciting and rewarding project overall.
“Everybody wants to cash in on OpenAI, but we did it while it was happening. It speaks to being responsive to changing needs.
“We love working with partners like this. It’s a life-changing experience for students to jump from textbooks to working with executives. And it gives partners opportunities to explore innovative solutions and it also is really important in terms of identifying talent.
“This is what it’s all about,” Mr. Buchner said. “It’s success in my eyes.”