Friday Fives
Friday Fives
A round up of five things that have caught our eye (or ear) this past week.
1. BEYOND TASK STEALING AI - REFRAMING THE NEAR FUTURE OF WORK
Visiting speakers always tend to spur plenty of conversation, and so the recent Gary Bolles keynote has been a topic of thought, reading and quipping within the team here at O/TG. At his talk at AUT Garry painted a picture of the near future of work that stepped away from conversations about tasks we complete day to day, and instead focussed on problem solving. This way of viewing work at its core moves the conversation away from fear of AI stealing tasks, instead re-framing the future of work as an opportunity for creative, entrepreneurially driven problem solving.
While it was a positive view of the future it was not without its challenges. From thinking about how we create our organisations, through to challenging businesses to craft work that allows people to thrive. Perhaps robots and AI will save us from our drudgery after all?
Read more here
2. HUMANITY AND A.I -THE STRENGTH OF ESSENTIAL HUMAN-NESS
Dr Kai-Fu Lee’s latest book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, is at the top of the reading pile for the team at the moment.
Across the world investors and technologists began a race to utilise AI to drive efficiencies both in effectiveness of outcome and cost of production in a range of fields. But in China? They are not only winning the race, but contextualising what the race in-fact is.
Lee, VC and former president of Google China, essentially lays out a history of AI in both the U.S.A and China, and points out how differences in approaches to coding, access to data and government buy-in has put China in front on AI and what that means as nations tousle for competitiveness and job security.
The book, like so many tech titles could have devolved into another piece of prose about how quick moving, lean and adaptive organisations lead the way. Or decry the sloth like take-up of AI in the west, in an America vs China battle of the tech giants. But Lee side steps both of these possibly expected plot lines. Instead the conversation shifts; if this is the future that is being made - where do humans stand amongst it? What makes AI so much better than a human completing a task? And what can we as people bring to the table that ‘the robots’ canno? Kai-Fu goes on to highlight what makes humans better than computers; laying out a challenge for how we may meet the future with a holistic, people focussed approach.
Great reading, pick up your copy here.
3. DIGITAL HUMANS HAILING FROM DOWN-UNDER
Although sometimes referred to as being ‘old fashioned’, the proliferation of Digital Humans being used in both commercial and government sectors in New Zealand may challenge just that. Driven in part by being the home of two world leading AI startups - Soul Machines and FaceMe, New Zealand customers wanting to buy cell-phones, or set up bank accounts may be just as likely to converse with an avatar as they would your regular run of the mill human.
“...FaceMe CEO Danny Tomsett suggested that digital human technology is most useful when replies need to go beyond a set script. Digital humans are helpful “when it comes to coaching or advisory roles, or experiences where emotion actually can influence – where persuasion might be needed, or empathy is needed because of a customer service inquiry.”
Read more from Richard MacManus here: “The digital humans being developed in NZ”
4. A LOT OF US DO NOT CARE IF WE ARE TALKING TO A BOT
The recently released Chatbot statistics cheat sheet is ripe with data for those contemplating putting a chatbot in place. And it would make sense to do just that, as 47% of consumers surveyed would buy items from a chatbot, 28% of top companies use AI for marketing and 48% of customers don’t care if a chatbot or a real person helps them. Beyond the obvious applications in customer facing environments, chatbots can help collect data for government projects, dispense information in an NGO setting, and can even act as a guiding hand in project management.
We were particularly interested to read that 34% of executives say the time they freed up using chatbots allows them to focus on deep thinking and creating; which shows that using bots as an internally facing tool within your organisation could be just the ticket too.
Click here to read more
5. FACEBOOK IS DUST WITHOUT A.I
From machines as moderators, thoughtful advertising placements, auto captioning and translation, and auto generating descriptions of your images - the AI that drives Facebook is immense. It is also incredibly topical, as news stories swirl around moderation failures, fake news and control of the media that you and I touch every day.
This week two pieces of coverage caught our eye that touched on A.I and Facebook. The first, a short piece with Yann Lecun head of AI at Facebook who states “If you take the deep learning out of Facebook today, Facebook's dust”. The piece, published on CNN also features a video highlighting how Amazon are approaching AI too from their Go Market - cashierless store, through to the process of delivering a package. Peter Larsen, VP of Delivery Technology waxes lyrical about “working from the customer backwards”, which those critical of AI may argue serves customers now but may in-fact harm us in the long-term. Amazon says their increased use of A.I has actually driven increased reliance on their ‘associates’ or workers, increasing their team of associates across the globe to date. This is not without it’s issues too however.
Over on Fast Company, CTO Mark Schroepfer details where Facebook is today, five years into its artificial intelligence journey. The bit that caught our eye? The hiring of robotics experts.