Soul of Innovation podcast - Soul of Innovation

Hello and welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. Today is January 3rd, 2018, and this is my very first episode of the podcast. And I thought I'd spend some time introducing myself, but just a little bit of time doing that, but more of explaining as to why am I launching a podcast now in the beginning of 2018. Um, when I should have, or I have been doing podcast stories for on and off all of last year, but I thought now kicking off the new year is the best time because what's happening, or what is going to happen in 2018 that is significantly different in the area of artificial intelligence, or cognitive computing as IBM calls it with their platform, or looking at Microsoft's platform with Azure, or Azure depending upon what part of the world you're in, and Google and Amazon, all that. So these are where my reflections— and that's what we're going to talk about on this podcast today, looking at 2018 and why this year will be so different from an implementation point of view versus the year in the past. So hold on. These are my reflections and my thoughts, and welcome to my podcast. So let me introduce myself. My name is Thomas Anglero. I am the Director of Innovation for IBM in Norway. I am also a public speaker, do a lot of public speaking. In 2017, I did almost 100 keynote sessions, not just speeches, but actually keynotes at conferences around Europe. And in 2018, I am not going to try to break that record. I wanted to see, not only— it's not about if I could have hit 100, it wasn't about the number, it was about can I make a difference in the market. How can a person without sending out one single request get that much of a market attention and then also deliver on the goods? That's probably the most important thing, not the quantity but the quality. And obviously I think the quality was very good because as I did presentations, more and more came in. And my presentations were on, uh, IBM's platform Watson, cognitive computing platform Watson, absolutely amazing platform and I'll touch on that a lot over most of my podcasts because I am a big fan of the IBM Watson platform. As other platforms, but I'm a huge fan of IBM Watson. And I also spoke about my story, what, and sharing my story. I'm a storyteller when I talk. My story, coming from being brought up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, down in the Baruch Projects, we didn't have much money. None of us had much money, but that was kind of cool because if everybody doesn't have much money, then the money is not an issue, but you're all trying to succeed and make it. So coming from that background and then where I am, I am thus far today, and where I'm going is a fun story to mix and match when talking about technology, when talking to companies and employees and people who are— some people trying to find themselves, other people trying to find motivation. We're all in that phase somewhere on that timeline. We're all there. And so in my journey, and from coming from the projects in New York City and now spending 20 years of my— the last 20 years of my life living here in Oslo, Norway. Um, that is one hell of a journey, and I guess I could do a podcast just on that. So when I talk, I talk about technology, I talk about— tell stories, I talk about myself, and, um, a lot of people seem to like it. That's the brief background myself. I don't want to go much into that. Um, do a lot of that often, so, uh, could go into that in another episode if anybody really wants to know. There's a bunch of YouTube videos out there and podcasts out there where people— where I was interviewed for over 2 hours just talking about me. So if you want to hear that, I can find those podcasts and link it and put into my podcast. I guess that's probably a good thing if you want to hear that. But I wanted to spend time on the year 2018. What is actually going to happen in the area of artificial intelligence and cognitive computing? And these things are not the same thing, don't get me wrong. I will interchange the words, but they are not the same. But I'm assuming that you, the listener, um, are seeing these things as the same, and that's absolutely fine. So, and we'll do the journey together. Now, there's a software side and there's a hardware side, business side to all these stories. And if I jump around, I apologize, but I like to have fun and just tell it the way it comes into my mind. I don't like to script these things. I think being raw and making grammatical mistakes as I speak is part of the, well, the rawness and seeing and listening to exactly how I think of things in real time. So 2018, the significance of 2018 is we will finally see implementations. We saw at the end of 2017 implementation of chatbots. Boy, that we see a lot of chatbots. Now, why do we see chatbots as being the— Geoffrey Moore calls it the beachhead segment of artificial intelligence. And, or, yeah, artificial intelligence, you know. And what is a chatbot? I apologize, let me digress and explain that. So a chatbot is a service that is available on a website. You probably used one before, and if you haven't, there's usually a little picture of— usually it's a female saying, hi, my name is Anna. Type in your question and I'll answer it. And you type in, hi, I'm looking for this form to fill out my taxes. Let's say if you're going to the— you're at your national government tax office website, uh, in Norway it's called Skatteetaten, and the United States is the famous IRS. And wherever you are in the world, you know what website that is. So when you go there, you just— this little box is there with usually a person smiling. You say, hi, my name's Anna. Type in your question. You type in, hi, I'm looking for form AF-21 198, uh, can you please send me the link to the form? And it, as you do that, it spins around for a few seconds, comes back, says, here is the link to form AF- blah blah blah blah. And now you have the form instead of you spending all the time searching through the website. The chatbot, right, to chat is you're chatting in text, and the bot is that it's a computer software answers a question. Now these chatbots, we saw in the end of 2017, we saw a lot of them being implemented all over the world by companies. The reason why is that it is a— the probably the minimum investment you can make into the area of artificial intelligence from a financial burden point of view. From a risk point of view, it was very minimal because it's not so high-tech. Chatbots are queries against the keyword searches there, and of course some chatbots are more intelligent, but most people wanted very simplistic chatbots. And then from a marketing point of view, they want to say we are using artificial intelligence in our company, we have it in our website, we have made our artificial intelligence robot available— depending upon the country, right? If the IRS made this announcement, we have made our chatbot available to over 250 million plus people. So it rings perfect on all the levels: minimum risk, minimum cost, Maximum marketing message, and the people, the people running the company say, yes, we're innovative, wonderful, that's fine. But that's not what we've all been talking about and waiting for in terms of where this thing is going and where artificial intelligence is going to take us. So understand that chatbots are not it. But they are the first step, the first safe step. And there are many companies out there who completely leaped over chatbots, ignored chatbots and said, I want the full version. I want to have the ability to take my experts in a specific technology or area. I— or it can be more specific, let me be more specific for you. I have an employee in my company he or she has 30, 40+ years of experience. They are priceless to me. I don't want to lose them. I can't afford if they're sick. I can't afford if they pass away, God forbid. This person, their knowledge must stay with the company. So these platforms, artificial intelligence of cognitive computing platforms, are so intelligent that you can sit this person down, they can sit down with the software. This is classic IBM Watson. Sit down with the software and start training the software. The training can take up to a year, but the training now has gotten so advanced, and the advancements come in improvements and algorithms, advancements come in improvements in CPU in terms of the hardware is able to do a lot more quicker. Advancements in terms of just learning, having learned how to teach software better. Now you take all three of these advancements, which are making improvements on a daily basis globally in different R&D departments for different companies around the world, and therefore we've seen in the last year where it's taken, or where it took, excuse me, 1 year of an employee's time and sitting with the software, training the software, and now we pretty much got it down to almost a month. Absolutely incredible. Now think about that. As a company, you would— in 1 year ago, you would have had this employee to take, remove this employee, this extremely— well, the most invaluable employee, one of your most invaluable employees, stop them from what they're doing and being of tremendous value And then you have to have them during their work time sitting down with this software and training it instead of working. Today, January 2018, it's only 1 month to do the same level of training to the point in which the software is almost equivalent of that individual. That's incredible. Absolutely incredible. Put this in perspective. January 2017, only 12 months ago. What was your New Year's— New Year's Eve resolution last year? You can remember that. Well, remember when you remembered— remember when you made that New Year's resolution? You could always remember where you were or something to that effect. That was when, if you'd have started your artificial intelligence project then in terms of putting your expert in front of the software, that individual individual would have been done finally training it today. It would have took that whole year. If you start, if you take that individual or another company takes in their expert and that person starts today, they're done on February 3rd, 2018. We are moving at an accelerated rate that is going to bring and is bringing huge opportunities, huge opportunities, not just for existing companies, but look at it from this perspective. There are many perspectives, but let's look at it from this perspective. Once you have taken an expert, an individual who is an expert, and put all their knowledge in software, So now they're available not only through a chatbot, but if the software has the ability and connected to the right modules in which it has language modules, the software can then talk and answer questions because it has the ability to do translations and things like that in different languages, or just in a native language, say just English to English. And it also has ability to understand dialects. This person is now in software. Now, not the entire person, just their knowledge. Okay? Don't go so far as saying their memories and their past and what they went— what they ate a month ago. I'm not going there. I'm saying their knowledge as an expert. What platforms can you provide and expose that person's knowledge on? Let me give you a hint. Amazon Echo. Voice. 2018 is gonna be a monster year for voice. And one of the things that's gonna make it such an incredibly impactful year is because— now here I'm gonna connect the dots. Excuse me. Because now it only takes 30 days to take an expert and put all their knowledge into software and make it accessible to the entire world through voice. You connect that knowledge to the Amazon platform, which is today the biggest voice platform with Amazon Echo and Alexa. And now that knowledge is available to everyone, everywhere, simultaneously. And that's the thing, differentiator, simultaneously. What are the new models, business models behind that? Let me be very clear, tell you where I'm going. Say you have an uncle. He's retired or going to retire, or he just retired. And his nephew, 18, 19, 25-year-old kid says, hey, um, let's give his name, Uncle Steven, Uncle Steve. Hey, Uncle Steve, do you want to earn some money? What are you talking about, Uncle Steve? Weren't you an expert, 40 years experience at that company you worked with? Absolutely, I was the best. Not just in this country, I was the best in the world. They flew me all over the place. I used to dine with— okay, Uncle Steve, no more stories. You always tell me these stories, Uncle Steve. That's not what I want to hear. Uncle Steve, if you spend a month training this software, teaching it everything you know, Uncle Steve, we can make it available to everyone in the world. We could have our own— you could be your own consultant, global consultant, Uncle Steve. But you don't have to fly all over the world like you've been boring us with those stories. No offense, Uncle Steve, we just told the story too many times. The software will travel for you, and we could charge people to access your knowledge. So, I mean, Uncle Steve, let me be very specific. That means we could provide— Uncle Steve could be a consultant in 3 different time zones simultaneously, charging an hourly rate simultaneously, while Uncle Steve the person, you Uncle Steve, are still sitting in that lawn chair, that You really should buy a new one, but that's okay. What do you think, Uncle Steve? Uncle Steve, why are you getting up out of the lawn chair? I've never seen you get up out of the lawn chair. You get the point? It's a call to action. We are going to see this scenario at a minimum play out in 2018. Watson, IBM Watson's platform will probably be one of the first to implement it and do it. Now it will be the— now understand this, these cognitive computing, when it comes to Watson, these artificial intelligence platforms coming to and using, that's referencing Microsoft, Amazon, and Google and the others. All these platforms are in the background. So the consumer or the user, they will not know about whose technology, nor will they care whose technology is being used to provide this service. The consumer brand name that will be put, and the consumer will start relating to That is where all the attention will lie. The platforms that power all of these amazing capabilities and insights and knowledge to the end user will no longer— and I don't even think they've ever really taken off because everybody talks about artificial intelligence, but not many people talk about the brands or companies that are pushing them other than IBM Watson because they have just phenomenal marketing. And Microsoft because they buy a lot of marketing. So what it is, is a huge opportunity for the, like, like the nephew of Uncle Steve, this young kid, to launch a global company using Uncle Steve, who's now retired, his knowledge, 30 days of his time. Uncle Steve could go back to relaxing, and that company, that virtual Uncle Steve It's just a cash cow, right? It's just a printing money machine. And that's only one idea that I have in my head. How many ideas do you have in your head after hearing that story? This example is combination of the power of connecting platforms. We've seen this. I mean, we've seen this the last 20 years. This is nothing new. This is why the internet is so amazing. But now we're taking human knowledge, connecting it to voice. Again, I'm talking about Amazon and Alexa and Google Home and all those, and Apple Siri. I apologize for not talking about Apple, but Apple before We are now at that point that we can do this, and people are going to do this. Services are going to be available on top of voice platforms, and these voice platforms, you don't have to have a big Echo in your house. All you need to do is have something that has a speaker and a microphone. What has a speaker and a microphone today? If it doesn't have one today, it will be embedded in it tomorrow. And you'll have accessibility to incredible amounts of knowledge. Let me be very direct to you. Just got a picture in my head. If you're like me, you love YouTube. YouTube, when you have a question, it's the perfect place to how to, to get the question, the answer to how do I do this? How do I do that? Imagine being able to, when you watch a YouTube video, to actually speak to that person while the video is on and say, excuse me, hold on a second, stop that. Why did you just cut there? Or that angle? Why didn't you use this type of saw to cut that wood? And that YouTube video answered you back. Welcome to 2018. This is where we're at. Will YouTube be implementing this technology? They should. Or let's put it this way, they should be providing this option to all of these amazing YouTube influencers out there who have thousands and tens of thousands, millions of subscribers. They can provide this type of service now. Today, as of January 2018, It only takes 30 days of your time. We saw one year ago it took one year of your time. 6 months from now it might be take a week. Interesting. Imagine going back. Say you have a YouTube channel, you have hundreds of videos. Imagine going back and redoing those videos, putting all your knowledge out there. Not only are you going to make video money, revenue from those video and advertising, but now you're going to be a valuable asset to this person's life because your knowledge is available to them 24 hours a day, as it was on YouTube. But now you are available to them. You could talk to them. Remember, when a person answers your question, when they need an answer to a question and it's an honest answer, you start building trust. Human beings, we respond extremely strong to trust. I believe YouTube attention viewership may take a hit if it doesn't jump on this, and these voice platforms will be the next massive growth area. Because of voice, because of what you're doing right now, listening to my voice. Podcasts are back because voice. Everything is in the voice. The first time you fell in love with someone, 99% of us, because we have the ability to hear, we fell in love with that person, and a big reason was because of their voice. Voice is back. My name is Thomas Anglero. Very happy to— as per this— spend this time with you in my first podcast. I'm gonna love doing this. I hope you like it a lot. Contact me at anglero.com. A-N-G-L-E-R-O.com. That's my website. And I look forward— just, I look forward to doing this more. Let me know what you'd like me to talk about. I have tons of things I'm going to be talking about, of me interviewing many different people who I work with, who I meet with as I travel around the world. And this is going to be A fantastic experience. And I will continue to share with you my raw thoughts. I really don't want to do this notes-wise. A lot of people do podcasts, take a lot of notes. I love doing raw. I love making my mistakes because then I'm giving you the authentic me. That's how you build trust. Take care. Thank you very much. Speak to you on the next podcast. Take care for now. Bye-bye.