The Boundless Podcast

💬 “If people are displaced by digital automation, then a leader needs to understand the mindset of the organisation. Things like the scarring effect of this decision on the rest of the organization. This can affect the culture of a business. An automation strategy needs to include technology, culture and impact on moral.” Dr Naeema Pasha
🎙️ My Friday Co-Host is @Dr Naeema Pasha. She works for Henley Business School partly focussing on future strategy, vision and operations of business education. Everything from people engagement to tech adoption.
🎧 In this episode Naeema and I discussed our reactions to this week’s episodes with @Ahmed El Adl, @David Gull and @Liliya Andonova. Our topics included:
💡 1.) The three pillars of trust in business: Organizational credibility, Respect and fairness
💡 2.) The differences between closed systems and open systems of AI
💡 3.) Intelligent process automation
💡 4.) The exciting use cases of AR and VR
💡 5.) The effects of AI hype

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💬 “In the short term, we have absolutely no risk of any loss jobs whatsoever from AI. If we embrace the green economy, we've got trillions of dollars to spend and millions of jobs to be created in the efforts to completely decarbonise our work. That is a massive job that we have to do right now for a decade and it involves everybody. And so, we shouldn't be talking about universal basic income or demonetising necessities or any jobs going away, until we have a completely green, clean and sustainable economy.”

🎙️ I was recently interviewed about Artificial Intelligence and the take-up by businesses by @Liliya Andonova, a masters student at King's College London. I wanted to share our conversation with you, to share my thoughts on this and also to show the journey that I am undertaking to further and deepen my understanding of this complex area of technological and business development. Countless times, I have had to reframe, rethink and adjust my views. This reminds me of the George Bernard Shaw Quote: "Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

I hope you enjoy this episode, 'a primer on business and AI'. Thank you Lily Andonova for your questions and your kind permission to publish this.

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💬 “For virtual reality mass adoption, it's about driving the price points down, increasing the user experience and reducing the friction. Within five years you'll have really amazing worlds to be explored. And then within 10 to 15 years, you'll have simulations that are essentially capable of being indistinguishable from reality.”

This is a conversation with David Gull

🎙️ David is the CEO and founder of Outer Realm. A business helping lead the platform shift from 2D screens to immersive spatial computing in the Real Estate industry. He has a unique combination of Design & Technical Expertise as a Licensed Architect and Technology Executive.

🎧 In this episode David talks about some of the important use cases for augmented and virtual reality including the reduction of waste, enriching our understanding of the environment around us, supporting our design capabilities and helping to make better purchase decisions. He talks about the new information that can be digitally layered onto our world and describes how virtual business meetings are evolving right now using face and emotion scanning technology to represent you accurately as an avatar in the virtual meeting space creating co-presence and connecting. He explains that an abstract avatar is just as convincing as a real avatar, and David sees great applications for this in education. Finally, we talk about the future of virtual reality and immersive, new experiences that we can literally step into.

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💬 “10 years ago everyone talked about big data, how to collect it, store it, secure it, manage it and use it. Today we are not talking about big data analytics. We are talking about how to gain the most insight from the data, which is a different world. It will see businesses move from analysing big data with machine learning to working out how they can apply reasoning capabilities to drive insights from smaller, but more useful data.”

This is a conversation with Dr Ahmed El Adl.

🎙️ Ahmed is a technology and business innovation leader with a proven track record of global scale achievements in envisioning and building intelligent technologies and applying them to solve real-world problems to accelerate the digital and cognitive transformation of businesses, workforce, services, and machines. His main focus is the right industrial and business adoption of AI/ML, IIoT, and the concept of Cognitive Digital Twin (CDT). Ahmed has Ph.D. and Post Doc. in Computer Science with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and Industrial Robotics.

🎧 In this episode, Ahmed explains what it takes to make machine learning algorithms safe and secure, but also how very simple changes to external stimuli, for example in confusing computer vision can lead to at best silly errors and at worst disasters.

For example, Ahmed explains how a rogue actor that puts a heat source near to a sensor in a power plant, could trigger the algorithm into shutting down the plant. He goes on to explain how it is possible to mitigate for this.

Ahmed goes on to explain that currently we are still having to hard code reasoning logic into machines and AI projects fail because project architects can’t connect the different systems and layers, not because the machine learning algorithms weren’t good enough.

Ahmed talks about how valuable TikTok’s data will be to Microsoft and how they may use it if they acquire the platform’s North American user base.

Finally, we come full circle on the point of the episode, that business opportunities with be uncovered when businesses move away from the big data and analytics mindset to the insight mindset. From analytic and big data and machine learning to reasoning.

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🎙️ Insights and observations from Week 32 on the @Boundless Podcast with my Friday co-host @Dr Naeema Pasha.

We discuss the ideas and stand-out moments from this week's shows:

Episode 86: @Dr Jeffrey Lee Funk, Technology Economics Thought Leader: The great technological slowdown

Episode 87: @Jo Bhakdi, CEO of Quantgene: AI and precision genomic diagnostics

Episode 88: @John Thompson, Global Head, Advanced Analytics & AI: Harnessing analytics and AI for business improvement

Episode 89: Ashton Addington, Associate Director TechNET - Immersive: The rise of immersive technologies

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💬 “I'm in the surgery and I'm stood over somebody's spine and prodding around the muscle tissue and the bone structure. I can actually feel, touch and even engage with doing surgery on them. It was absolutely surreal and when I took the VR headset off my mind was blown. When I think back on the experience, it feels like a memory, not a virtual experience, but a memory; that I was actually feeling, touching and interacting with that human body.”

This is a conversation with Ashton Addington.

🎙️ Ashton is an Associate Director of @TechNET Immersive. He is aligned with the specialised needs of the XR industry and is passionate about the potential of spatial computing. The XR industry incorporates Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Volumetric Capture, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision and Gaming.

🎧 In this episode, Ashton talks about the evolution in remote communications from Zoom and Teams to interactive 3d avatars. How the game Fortnight could be the leader in virtual spaces in the future and he speculates on what we may do inside these virtual worlds. Ashton explains what XR is and the industry and hiring trends in this space. Finally, he talks about the trend of computer game developers crossing over into augmented and virtual reality businesses as the need for real-looking worlds becomes more important.

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💬 “McKinsey has done some intriguing research showing that the early adopters of artificial intelligence are reaping outsized benefits from it in revenue, customer retention and efficient operations. But the laggards say there is little to no benefit to using AI. So we’re seeing the leaders accelerating and the laggards falling further behind in AI because they're trying to justify their lack of engagement and investment.”

This is a conversation with John Thompson.

🎙️ John is an international technology executive with over 30 years of experience in the business intelligence and advanced analytics fields. Currently, John is responsible for the global Advanced Analytics & Artificial Intelligence team and efforts at CSL. Prior to CSL, John was an Executive Partner at Gartner, where he was a management consultant to market leading companies in the areas of digital transformation, data monetization and advanced analytics. Before Gartner, John was responsible for the advanced analytics business unit of the Dell Software Group. John is the author of the new book – Analytics Teams: Leveraging analytics and artificial intelligence for business improvement. The book was published in June 2020 and outlines how to hire and manage high-performance advanced analytics teams.

🎧 In this episode, John talks about the failings of country leaders to understand and interpret COVID-19 data and the impacts of this. I asked him to compare country leadership to company leadership on data literacy. We talk about data collection devices related to COVID data and John talks about some success stories. Our conversation moves to business and how in some cases the line of business managers are moving faster and smarter than corporate leaders to find ways to make better decisions based on data. John shares the processes he used to write his bestselling book and is very open and honest about what it took to write it quickly and efficiently, but also how he used social media to crowdsource ideas and sense check some sections with the analytics community. Finally, John shared his thoughts on some of the failings in how we are educating our youth and how this is a shared issue for all leaders in society that needs to be solved through collaboration and fresh thinking.

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💬 “I encourage everyone to think twice about who you work with in the genetics field. The data that your genes contain can save your life, but it also contains all the secrets about your body. It comes down to the question; what do you think about the moral and ethical framework of the company that has your data? Ask yourself, to what extent can I trust this company and do they really have my back?”

This is a conversation with Jo Bhakdi.

🎙️ Jo is the founder and CEO of Quantgene. His work in machine learning, sequencing technology, and DNA extraction procedures defines the cutting edge of genomic diagnostics, early disease detection, and precision medicine. Jo holds a Masters in Economics and Psychology from Tubingen University, with a focus on financial theory and statistics. Beyond his focus on technology and the future of medicine, is dedicated to bringing together the best and brightest and transforming them into pioneers, pushing the boundaries of health, life, and innovation for all.

🎧 In this episode, Jo talks about the journey from the human genome project to today’s work in precision genetics and diagnosis. He explains what genetics data is available and for what purposes it is used and the way he is building his company called Quantgene so that there is transparency for all users as to how, where and for what their data is being used for. In this case, he makes it very simple, to keep you healthy and nothing else. Jo gives us a guide as to how to recognise a trustworthy company. Our conversation turned to how soon your genetic profile will affect your chances of dating and mating and we discussed life extension and even the eradication of death.

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💬 “Today's startups aren't doing as well as they did in the past because there are fewer breakthrough technologies. For example, rideshare is not a breakthrough technology. It's a taxi service that is a little more convenient, but it's still using the same type of cars on the same kind of roads. There's no productivity change. These cars are not handling more people, they're not travelling faster. There's a lot of these “technology” companies that probably should never have achieved the valuations that have.”

This is a conversation with Dr Jeffrey Funk.

🎙️ Jeff has a PhD from Carnegie Mellon working mostly as a professor but also as an engineer and consultant in the U.S., Japan, and Singapore. He was one of the first to recognize the potential for smart phones during the late 1990s and early 2000s in Japan, and helped several mobile service providers succeed.

🎧 In this episode, Jeff talks about the reason that so many modern start-ups are not turning a profit and far fewer are becoming unicorns that in previous decades. The reason, he says, is that we are not getting the major technological breakthroughs any more like we used to have with chips and transistors. He uses the example of how the predictions for autonomous vehicles were overhyped and how this may have prevented Uber from achieving profitability. I asked Jeff if this could change as new technologies come out of the lab and into businesses, things like 5g, Massive IoT, Virtual and Augmented Reality. I also challenged him on whether we even want unicorn businesses anymore. He had a great answer.

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Reflections and insights with Richard Foster-Fletcher and Dr. Naeema Pasha on this week's podcasts:

Episode 81: Dr. Daniel Araya, Consultant and Policy Analyst: The velocity and scale of AI-driven disruption
EP82: Irena Cronin, CEO at Infinite Retina. Robert Scoble, Founder, Scobleizer.blog: The future of spatial computing
EP83: Prashant Natarajan, Analytics & Data Science Translator: The magic of thinking big using data
EP84: Ivana Bartoletti, Data, AI and Privacy Leader: An Artificial Revolution: Power, Politics and AI

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