“We are really in the business of helping people to understand the future.” - Jorn Lyseggen
From Hong Kong and Singapore, to Sydney and Melbourne, the Outside Insight book made a splash across APAC. Thought leaders in Artificial Intelligence and leading business minds joined Meltwater Founder & CEO, and author Jorn Lyseggen on thought-provoking panels to discuss the impact Outside Insight will have in the future – from corporate boardrooms, to government and policy, to privacy and regulation.
Panelists and moderators spanned the gamut, representing publications like CBNC, as well as both local and international companies, think tanks, AI hubs and organizations, including PolicyPal, Heidrick & Struggles, AI Society of Hong Kong, HKT, NDN Group, AIIA and more in Asia, and Ansarada, IMB & EY, UTS, National Australia Bank, The Centre for Social Economics and more in Australia.
Here are 5 key takeaways from the discussions.
1.
Humans and AI will work closely together in the future.
It won’t be one or the other, and we shouldn’t fear loss of jobs due to advancing AI. According to Jorn, “You can look at AI as a GPS – it helps you understand where you are and where you want to go. But it will be the judgment of the executives that decides ‘Do I want to climb that mountain or do I want to walk around it?’”
In the future, while AI may replace simplistic jobs that can be better done by machines, it will create a need for more skilled jobs that only humans can perform. “While some jobs will be replaced by technology, other jobs will be created at the same time” – Richard Xu of UTS: University of Technology Sydney.
Oksana Goncharova of Ansarada spoke about the rate of innovation and job creation happening, and referenced a McKinsey report comparing the industrial revolution to the AI revolution which concluded that the current AI and machine learning revolution is happening 10x faster, at 30x the scale, at 3000x the input compared with the past.
Rob Fitzpatrick of Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) argued that what people really feared was the word “innovation”, because they feel that means loss of jobs. “But the new jobs that are emerging, that will be created, are really important for us to latch onto. While there’s a critical need to think through what AI can deliver, what are the core collaboration and creativity skills individuals will need to acquire and bring into the workplaces?”
2.
With Outside Insight, we’ll see a shift to daily observations of external insights to facilitate decision-making
Rather than focusing on quarterly reports and historical internal information, those who leverage Outside Insight will be able to make daily observations about their wider industry to inform more forward-thinking decisions.
“The class of software Jorn is talking about makes this sort of outside-in perspective a daily experience. You’re going to be factoring into your decision-making everyday not just your P&L, but what’s going on with your competitors, or with customer data – it will give a much more balanced, daily view on decision-making.” – Dr. Michael Netzley, Heidrick & Struggles
The key to implementing this in a large way, according to Con Cotronis, is all about recognizing use cases.
3.
Access to the vast amount of data available online will facilitate credit and lending where it wasn’t possible before.
Paul Schulte of Schulte Research highlighted the way data has enabled SMEs to receive credit in ways they never could before: “The SME, which has been deprived of credit around the world for years, now can get credit from the public, from crowdfunding. They’re leaving a trail of crumbs, about not only the individual parts of the business, but the footprint of every single director of the company. Their capacity to get funding now is history-changing. While your father had to get money from a loan shark to start a business, that world is going to change. Eighty million SMEs around the world today have access to credit now, because they will leave a credible footprint online.”
The panel predicted this will have far-reaching financial consequences for the previously unbanked, particularly in developing countries. “In Africa, for instance,” Jorn said, “there is so little information that sits in traditional databases and sources. So they go to your behavior online, your behavior on the phone, and use that to create as good credit ratings as those you find here in Asia and other places in the world.”
4.
AI and data are not separate; they can only work together.
“AI is a combination of both data and algorithms,” Jorn explained. “Data beats algorithms and models 7 days a week. If you have insufficient data to train those algorithms, the output won’t be any good.”
“Artificial Intelligence is your rocket, but data is the fuel. You can have the best algos in the world, an amazing rocket, but you’re only going to get as far as your data gets you. Data is fundamental – data is AI.” – Gerardo Salandra of AI Society of Hong Kong
AI is not the solution in itself, and it shouldn’t be followed blindly. Rather, it searches your data for patterns and anomalies to help you analyze it faster than you ever could alone, in order to identify the elements which require further action or investigation. What’s important to understand is where the human fits in and how important having the right data is.
“AI is so mystified,” Jorn posited. “People don’t understand what AI is. There is enormous potential and opportunity in AI, but artificial intelligence actually has zero intelligence. It’s just processing power. It’s a super-fast calculator, and it stops there.”
The key is the input; what you use to train the algorithms, what underlying assumptions are used to produce the result, and how that result is interpreted.
5.
AI will be have a major impact on every industry. But it will favor those who are willing to dive in, take risks and experiment.
“It’s going to favor certain people over others: those comfortable with uncertainty, those willing to dive in and experiment with something will be favored in this context. In terms of talent, today we are no different than the ancient Greeks 25,000 years ago. We have not evolved in a major way, but everything around us has. Who is going to be able to excel in this environment?” – Dr. Michael Netzley
“If you don’t have an AI strategy as a business, you’re going to be dead in a few years.” – Oksana Goncharova of Ansarada
According to Jorn, AI will be a part of every major industry moving forward, but the smaller, more nimble companies who can adapt to new technologies will win first, while the slower incumbents may take more time to adapt. Those who implement this technology sooner, however, will find themselves with an information advantage over those who don’t.
“It’s an opportunity. It’s a competitive advantage you can use within your own organization. So go out there and do it,” – Con Cotronis of IBM & EY
If you don’t have an AI strategy as a business, you’re going to be dead in a few years.