In the first sixty-five episodes of IT Visionaries, countless experts who are working with some of the most advanced A.I. technology in the industry have come on the podcast to discuss all the cool details of their projects.
Here are some of the top moments and revelations from a few of our favorite IT Visionaries.
Ali Bouhouch of Sephora:
Ali cautioned that there is still a lot of hype surrounding A.I, and that overcoming that hype and actually producing something cool is the biggest challenge.
“The potential of A.I. is in bringing a higher degree of intelligence and decision-making capabilities to what machines can do now.”
At Sephora, Ali is putting his words into practice by using A.I. in their app to simulate a real human conversation.
Marene Allison of Johnson & Johnson:
At this point, Marene believes that A.I. still has a long way to go before she, as a security expert, can trust the technology with private, personal data. “Artificial Intelligence sounds so good, it sounds so sexy. But it’s a marketing term at this point,” she says.
Marene also cautions that no matter how smart artificial intelligence gets, it’s still subject to the biases of whoever programs the machine. “I trust the data more than I trust the programmer,” she says.
Eric Tan of Coupa:
According to Eric, we are still in the beginning stages of A.I. – but the future is bright. When you think about the sheer amount of data that has been collected over the past decade as well as the potential power of A.I. to parse and use that data for various predictive, prescriptive or automated tasks – it is truly remarkable.
Julien Sauvage of Salesforce:
Salesforce has been implementing A.I. and machine learning in a number of their products, specifically their Einstein Voice technology. Julien explains that Salesforce uses four main benefit statements when it comes to A.I.: Discover, Predict, Recommend, Automate.
“The jury is still out on A.I.,” he says. “We believe that people don’t buy A.I. for the sake of A.I., they buy A.I. for CRM. They want their CRM to be smart, to be automated, and they want it to be A.I.-powered.”
Vijay Doradla of Sparkcognition:
Sparkcognition is attempting to solve the world’s most complicated problems with A.I., so it’s no surprise that Vijay is excited about where the technology will go in the future. “I predict that in the next five to ten years, we won’t be talking about A.I. because A.I. is already working its way into the way we operate,” he says.
Vijay encourages people to think back to ten years ago and remember the technology we were using, and then compare it to what we have today. The things that are standard on a cell phone today would have been thought of as ultra advanced back then. Vijay believes the same kind of product journey is likely to happen with A.I.
Andrea Brugger of United Rentals:
Andrea comes from the sales side of technology, and she believes that A.I. is going to be a useful tool for customers when it comes to getting what they need with less hassle. But to put the right technology in place, there has to be strategic thinking that happens before implementation. Asking the right questions is important.
“How do we make sure we’re getting to the right customer at the right time with the right message?” she says. “We’re using A.I. in that way to make sure we’re going to the right market and we’re serving our customers.”
To listen to the entire mixdown, click here.
