Mark Esposito, Terence Tse and Danny Goh: Episode 317

Transcript

[0:00:23] RW: Hi, everyone. It’s Rae Williams, host of Author Hour, where I interview authors about their new books. Artificial intelligence will radically change our lives. Just not in the ways you might think. You’ve been made to believe that AI will take your job, when the truth is, AI will deeply change the nature of the work itself and lead to the creation of jobs that don’t yet exist. Our next guests are Terence Tse, Mark Esposito Danny Goh. They’re the authors of The AI Republic. They’re talking to us today about how AI is not an all-seeing master but rather, a functional tool that must be combined with the intelligence we possess in order to be effective. Here’s our conversation with Terence, Mark and Danny.

[0:01:10] ME: We started the work together on an AI company project and Terence and I came from another book with Scribe on the mega trance and one area of the book was on the rising role terminology in our life and we happen to meet and work with Danny who was already in the technology field and he already has several ventures within his portfolio and he was leading the technology from a direct experience. One conversation led to the other. As the experience, as cofounder of the company surge at the same time, we thought, why not just capture all of this into something we could use for training, for academic work, for events? And we wanted to do great and offer to us to engage the number of the people that follow us with some form of tangible piece of work that we can use as a way of leveraging our messages and just make sure that more people are getting informed about the potential on this technology, rather than just on the negative side, which has been a predominant rhetoric in the media.

[0:02:13] RW: Nice.

[0:02:13] TT: We have been seeing a lot of people, having different interpretations of what Ai is, you know, some people are still think, AI is terminator stuff. And that partially pushes us to look at writing a book that can hopefully help people to understand what AI really means. You know, in Europe, a lot of companies are still really struggling, you know as to how to put AI into their business operations and activities. This is another reason why we want to get ourselves, one, the company’s known to the European markets and two, you know, more importantly, get them to be more comfortable with AI and you know, what it is, how can we put it into use, what are the results that they can achieve. You know, what kind of impact they would create on a society. It is all of these urges that I think we push ourselves to write the book despite being quite a bit busy schedule. All three of us were facing.

[0:03:14] DG: Yeah, apart from what Mark and Terence has explained, the biggest reason for me is as technologies, we have been having problems how to explain science to commercial world. And I do realize that this technology is a big breakthrough in terms of what it can do to the mankind. However, there is a big risk in what we can create in the lab and what is actually needed to be aware by the commercial world out there because simply, science cannot be created in a lab without the interpretations of the commercial people to actually use it in the railway. Take for example for us to make a decision of how to actually develop the signs, the station needs to be given so I always use that analogy of let’s say if my mom or my wife falls into the sea, who should I save? As a technologist, we can only create a machine to save one at a time and this shouldn’t be decided by us, it should be decided by the purpose of the business or the person. All these questions prompted me to always be in a lookout to install this creating the signs, how can we actually believe it, the signs to fit the right purpose at the right time? And having known Terence for quite a long time, I’ve always felt that this is the best way for us to bring it out into views, into the commercial world, to the business people that we are not really talking about tomorrow, we are really talking about how can we actually help the business world today to improve the operations through how to help business run better, how to create that innovation.

[0:05:04] RW: All right, awesome. If you guys had to define what AI is and break that down for somebody who might be an entrepreneur or new to business and it’s airing on the side of like you said, it kind of sounds like a terminator kind of thing and you know, they’re fearful of it. How would you explain what AI is to someone like that?

[0:05:23] DG: To me, AI is simply an upgraded version of a computer. First, human created a machine to help us do things better, using a computer. But a computer requires manual input to create a desired result that we want. An AI machine is simply an upgraded version of it can create the input automatically in a much easier way to create the desired output that we want, in a lot faster and more precise way. So, take for example, we used to create a car by using a manifesting plant, machine lines, production line and let’s say, one hour to produce a car. A computer would allow that to process in a lot faster way because within the process, it can’t create a lot different automation tools like drawing out a design, a much easier way creating the quality test in a much easier way. AI actually helps to speed up the process in and even faster way. It’s just a simple term of an upgraded version of a computer.

[0:06:34] TT: I fully agree with what Danny was saying, it’s an upgraded version of a computer. I think I would even see it as a more glorified, a little smarter version of a machine. Because after all, AI is like all machines. They’re fine as long as they work. So, it’s like us booking flight tickets, we would prefer to book like a flight tickets using internet, using the laptop. Simply because when it comes to typing in the financial information, it’s a lot easier to enter our personal details. It’s much better than repeating on the phone and then you have to read out your name like to someone. However, when machines are not working and so with AI is like algorithms and machines. They are not working; you would really want to actually talk to a human being. Particularly after you have hand over your credit card details. So, in many ways, AI is very good at one thing and one thing that we human used to be doing and that is predication. They can detect patterns to predict something but you know, their effectiveness and usage. It's still rather limited or at least not as much as what media likes to portray it is. And therefore, there is nothing to be scared of when it comes to AI because as we argue in the book, there is really no intelligence in artificial intelligence.

[0:07:54] ME: Again, Rae, I second on what Danny and Terence and this effect, the subtitle of the book we talk about intelligent automation, I think there is another mission that has served our needs more. But a lot of that, what we call intelligence, nothing more than just a deck in the technology which Danny, you know, consider as nothing more than an upgraded version of a computer. For the kind of needs we have, there’s a lot about intelligence, there’s more that reflected light on what we have become in our sophistication, so clearly, people are smart or they’re dumb, you know, technology itself is just transactional. I think AI just transact things faster, better, it can be a wonderful technology if you’re able to narrowly define what you want it for. But again, talking to AI scientist those people who are behind the algorithm, they will say that there is no intelligence in AI as Terence said before. It’s just a wonderful technology but this is not what people think about it. I guess, one of the major reason why this book became so important for us is because we think we have almost like a roll in the advocacy to educate people about what AI really stands for.

[0:09:00] TT: I have one more example to give which is if we compare between a computer and an AI which reflects to my statement of – it’s an upgraded version of a computer is a computer has a static input and a static output, a desired result that we want to do. For example, a software program in a computer, we need to give it a very clear instruction of one plus one and the output is definitely a two. However, in an AI machine, instead of a static input, it is actually a dynamic input. With these different dynamic input, which could be come in different forms, whether it’s a voice, graphics or images. We still need to be able to have the desired output that we want. And the intelligence that comes from this dynamic input, in various forms and is able to manage these differences between the data which previously requires human to prepare it and still able to give the desired output that we want. And that is the biggest difference between a computer and a machine today or an intelligent machine today that is able to recognize a face rather than okay, “I recognize the face by my own eyes and then I input it this is Mark. This is Terence.” However, AI machines will be able to recognize, this is Mark, this is Terence automatically and then create the automation that we want to achieve. The whole result is simply it’s a lot faster and it’s a lot precise.

[0:10:48] RW: All right. In the book you guys talk about the fourth industrial revolution. What is that and how does AI play into that and how will that help us in business, in our future and everything we do.

[0:11:03] DG: Just the – just really just talks about the fact that technology suddenly became much more integrated and things like digital, biological and physical. I guess the difference from the previous ones is that we had a true revolution in the sense that we were replacing certain way of creating value with some form of automation or mechanization that had to improve the way we were doing things. If you were replacing physical labor with the machine, that was a clear improvement of what people used to do before and therefore, you have transformed that job from physical to maybe other method. In the fourth evolution, not only this happens butt it have been primarily on cognitive areas, jobs, white collars and all of that. But they also happens, with integration of technology that was very powerful. Clearly, it redefines opportunity but they also challenge profoundly what could be considered the tenets of our society. Things about labor, many country are founded on the principle labor but what does it mean to work in a society where some of the most repetitive job now tend to be done by softwares? Many of us, we’re taking for granted the plant because we thought that we have abundance of resources and now we’re facing increased crisis about resources and the fact that the stocks are depleting. We never really messed with genetics because we never thought we could do this and today, we can actually can manipulate the DNA, right? I think the fourth revolution simply exposes us to conversation that we never had before and then now clearly are important for us to consider and I guess it’s the opportunity for us to redefine what could be our global governance in light of the fact that this technology is there and it can be used for good purpose. But the name is an unfortunate name. like AI, we think AI is just another right name because we don’t think there’s intelligence in AI. The fourth does not necessarily follow the third, but I think it’s just an easy way for us to consider a way that we can all conventionally understand revolution and in turn that there is a major disruption. But it’s not necessarily fourth as consequent to third, in the book, we even write that very likely the next one might be called fifth but they might not have nothing to do with how the fourth really look like. That’s pretty much to give you an overview.

[0:13:13] RW: All right, and then anyone else want to talk about one too or –

[0:13:18] TT: The job scopes change, together with this technology is actually quite significant. Say for example, in the form of this technology, let’s say if we have our Apple Watch and if we have a tag that detects that we have certain problems. With this technology, you will be able to notify the closest hospitals, ambulance to come and pick you up to the closest hospital and treat you even before it arrives. Which means, in the current process of calling the hospitals, calling with the different existing jobs that within the supply change of these action, it would change the whole process drastically with the availability of this technology and that basically changes how a business can provide its service, to the way that the advancing of technology is basically improving how business can deliver its services to consumer how fast, how better and easier for us to receive services that we need. And that is the advancement of a convenience as well as the time and the quality we receive a service, the expectation with this technology will change drastically in the next couple of years and that’s the reason why business should be looking into this technology in a rather very serious way because it fundamentally changes how a business is providing their products or services to consumer.

[0:14:57] RW: All right. What happens if we do not embrace AI, what happens to businesses just to – you know, our development in general, if we’re not embracing and using AI technology and if we’re treating it as if it is something to be feared?

[0:15:13] TT: I think in a short term, there wouldn’t be that much of a problem. Simply because the current system of using people to do the task, they are okay, they’re not necessarily cheap, they’re not necessarily efficient, but they do the work. Having said that, I think going forward, it will be like companies that are – like, they design it to keep on using fax machines and not going into email. One way or the other, you know, when all the other rivals start to actually take on more and more intelligent automations using AI, they will actually fall behind. I guess, the question here is, how complacent companies want to be, they should not be they start – actually they should start thinking about it. Simply because a lot of companies out there, they’re doing a lot of homework in order to prepare themselves and you know, take AI more seriously when it comes to putting this technology into improving the business operations.

[0:16:19] DG: I completely agree with Terence. I have the opportunity to with a few traditional businesses, large corporates where it has been existed for hundreds of years and they really feel the heat of all these startups that they promoted as they can do the same things in a lot of faster way and my role was to basically help them to identify and provide solution to how they can actually keep it up with the competitors while they are still having their competitive advantage in certain areas? Like the branding and the trust that they have built over the last tens of hundreds of years. The business definitely understands that it is a must for them to look into this, but the question is at the moment because they are so big and so stagnant in what they are doing most of them are run by people, not by really the vision of the company that started in the old times. So, they are trying very hard to understand and try to embrace it, but it is not that easy. But they definitely are aware that if they don’t do it, take banking for example. All these FinTech startups, consumers can apply for a bank account within seconds and why do consumers need to go back to the brick and mortar banks to wait for days or weeks to apply to a banking account and this is a very drastic comparison between how a technology can help a company and if they don’t do it in the next few years, they will not be existent anymore. I actually had a call from a chief of staff from a large global bank where he told me that he really feels that in the next five years if they don’t innovate and change they will be non-existent for them anymore because simply consumers would not be tolerate enough to actually still accept their ignorance in terms of the services that they can provide.

[0:18:32] ME: You know before you could argue that there were always elements that were disrupting organizations and sooner or later the disruption could have become either fatal or severely reducing their business. So, I think the same will happen with the adoption of AI in the future. I don’t think that we will have major earthquake from one day to the other but there will be the gradual penetration of this technology around the world and those organization they won’t be able to adapt quickly. Because they are never taught about it, because their valid chain are too analog because they never really started the process of digitalization because they always shifted this over to in the future decision, eventually they will be disrupted. You know making it less and less competitive on the global level and the same will be applied to countries. I know you could argue that what brings investors to a country is the fact that the country is attractive. So, if you have a country that don’t have the potential to this technology, it will be difficult for a country to attract investors to participate in trade. So, we see this as one of those make it break it technology that will not necessarily change everything overnight, but it has the potential to be as disruptive as any of the other inventions such as the telephone, the internet and now we see it is comparable to that but it is coming from an entirely different era but they are comparing just for the sake of simplicity, right? But again, we cannot survive without the telephone or without the internet today anymore and the same will be for that level of automation that we think that AI can of course bring to the value chains.

[0:19:57] RW: All right, so in the book, you guys talk about how to prepare our children for the world of AI. How do we do that and why is that so important?

[0:20:06] ME: So, I think the first thing we have to disclaim is that we no longer have the ability to forecast what their future will look like and before we can actually spoon feed them with a lot of really good advices. Technology in the conversation that we had before about the fourth industrial revolution changes not only the way we do things, but it changes us and so how will we relate with the conversation. So, in the book we talk about the fact that we like them to become more and more creative. More communicative, more able to be problem solvers, less dependent on just yes or no answer, right or wrong but much more – and that were driven not really afraid of complexity. Capable of trying and failing, trying and failing and never feeling stigmatized for that. I think we don’t necessarily answer your question directly by saying, “oh let us put them through school of codes or data camp,” or boot camp, right? I mean it is wonderful that we have this opportunity. But I think the idea is just to create a different kind of human beings capable of really work with technology without feeling the technology and people have to be a tradeoff. We like to imagine the symbio-intelligence, rather than having this idea that robot will take over. I mean one of the things that always annoy more and more is when we are hearing people introducing us and they say, “oh will robots take over?” You know that is the wrong conversation to have. The question is how will we build the generation that will be able to co-work with robotics and artificial intelligence and will have to deal with the different kind of problem such as if now we are dealing with five generations at work and how do we reconcile that? We’ll need to be with five generation plus the roll out of technology. That is fine, that is just the way for us to adapt to a different kind of skills. So, I think that is what we need to teach our children.

[0:21:49] TT: Exactly because like what Marco is saying, there is no way we can actually predict what can be happening in the future. I mean my father’s generation, we remember vividly that he wanted me to go into either investment banking or becoming a lawyer, but way back then, my father had the luxury of knowing exactly what types of jobs there would be in the future when I grow up. Now I cannot think that actually I can say the same thing for my two very, very young kids right now. So, the only thing I can do with my kids are basically try to actually instil the necessary confidence that they would need in order to survive the future. They need to learn to make mistakes. As a matter of fact, a lot of mistakes. They need to learn how to handle failure. They need to learn how to go through trial and error because only by falling down and then being able to pick themselves up again, they can actually be the path into the future. So, it is more of what kind of competencies that we should be providing them with right now rather than what kind of jobs or even skills that they would be needing? Like the technical skills they would be needing in the future. So parenting is a very, very different form of bringing up kids these days. It is just that we as adults, we as parents would really, really need to actually think more a lot more over rather than just probably complaining about what the schools are not doing right now. Or there are not enough homework provided and ‘how come my kids are actually not doing advance level of math?’ So, I think it is an entirely different conversation right now.

[0:23:38] DG: I totally agree. I like to use myself as an example, back in the late 80’s when everyone was still using typewriter on their office desk. That is the first time that I got an opportunity to actually get in touch with a computer and play games and that basically started the journey of my curiosity into this world of computing system. But at that time, no one could teach me. Even my parents didn’t know what is the capability of this but they knew that this is something that is going to change the world. And it is the face of research and trying that build up my capability to basically identify the problem and be able to build solutions using any technology that I have at that time to solve some problems. Like for example, using the computer a pinch to create certificates or to type something and print it out rather than going to a print shop to actually print something out, a business card for my dad for example and these curiosity that if we can implant into our kid’s mind, in today’s world and the possibility of technology that can help them to bring forward to the next decade. For example, my kid simply don’t know what is a keyboard and he doesn’t use keyboard anymore, everything he sees it says about touchscreens and he would touch anything that has a screen on it that thinking that this would create an action for him. and in his mind, it is not about typewriter. He has never seen a type writer before. He simply knows that the computer exists in the style of iPhone, an iPad, touch screen, even this laptop that has a keyboard is an outdated form to him. So I think it is our responsibility to build that type of curiosity and a little bit if the capability of what it could become, what the world would become in the next five to 10 years when they grow up and to prepare them these ability to actually identify the problems and create the solutions using the technology that could present to them in the future.

[0:26:04] RW: So, if you guys had to issue a challenge. So, people who are going to be reading your book, to future users of AI, people who are just interested, what would that challenge be?

[0:26:15] DG: In my mind, there is actually two things that in today’s situation, where the technology is still at its new stage, is simply clearly identify the problem that we have today in a very detailed level. Like what exactly do I want to improve my life better than yesterday? So, this is number one and number two is the ability to understand the capability of these technology or any technology that can potentially help the problem how to create the solutions to help the two problems. Although these two statements are very broad but exactly displays the challenge in today’s big landscape of AI understanding, people think of AI as too big of an robotic automation machines but it is actually not because it is still at its infant stage where nobody can clearly define what AI can do that means if I have a client, I cannot exactly carve it out in a contract that what I exactly do I believe I’d do to the client nor the client can exactly identify what the solutions can help them in a very detailed way in a contract that is simply non existent However, in a pure mutual collaborative researched mindset, we are able to then identify this is something, let’s say a problem, a repetitive task that the person is having. He’s been doing these things repetitive task every day and he likes to change that situation. The AI technologies would then be able to say that you know or the person that understands the capability of today’s technology in AI would then be able to say that, “hmm maybe this is something that can help me do better,” and to be able to then engage a real professional or scientist to solve that problem.

[0:28:20] TT: To me, if there is one challenge that I would challenge people to is this try to have a deeper understanding as to what AI can do. Our understanding of AI or like many this is including us, our understanding of AI is still very superficial. What we need to actually ask our self is not just the technical aspects of AI, but also have a deeper understanding and probably association of these social impact of AI. The problem with AI like with many technologies is that we can easily come up with a lot of benefits that they can create. But ultimately, a lot of the time what we have seen with past technologies is that they ended up create a lot of unintended consequences. And I think that AI has like a due to its ability to do things that other machines could not do before. It also has the bigger potential of producing a lot more unintended consequences. I mean automation for instance whether it is AI or basic algorithm, what we have seen is that it is in many ways already automating injustice or discrimination. So even if we do not really have a very deep knowledge in the technical side of AI in how to program, how to actually build AI models, we should all as members of society should really think about what are the social impacts that this very technology can actually be having in our lives in general.

[0:30:06] ME: Right for my side, I’ll be brief because Danny and Terrence have already shared a lot. I think the challenge I would actually raise would be how do we use the alibi or the skews of AI to build even more humancentric societies? One of the things I see is that AI has simply reveal or actually even make it more visible how unequal our society have now become and this is not because the technology only, there is many factors to this. But I guess it is easy to look at technology as one of the factors. So, we’re clearly now that we have the ability with data to see things that we might not be able to see before. I think if we could raise a challenge is how do we now make sure that we’re redesigning our governance structure to be much more humancentric? Because I think that is what AI has the unintended benefit or any collateral to do and then I think it would be great to think about that. Because of this technology that we can improve condition of people not deprive them of condition. And I think this goes back to the educational of our role that we would like to have.

[0:31:09] TT: I totally agree with Mark in this regard because these technology actually has the ability to withdraw how we actually want things, which means it gives the opportunity to governments, companies, people to actually rethink of how we can actually build our lives in tomorrow. However at the same time, it also gives us the challenge of those people who are content with what they have today into how they can actually improve themselves to fit with tomorrow?

[0:31:45] RW: All right, perfect and how can people contact you if they want to learn more?

[0:31:51] TT: As Mark mentioned in the beginning, the three of us actually has a company called Nexus Frontier Tech. We are happy for them to contact us through our website, www.nexusfrontier.tech or they can actually reach us individually on our LinkedIn network.

[0:32:10] RW: Okay, so once you understand this whole AI think, it really isn’t something to fear but something to embrace. Read up more in the AI Republic out now on amazon.com. We’ll see you next time on Author Hour.