Are our supply chains Covid proofed ?

The spread of Covid 19 is bringing great fear to the global manufacturing community. Global businesses have not been been at bigger risk than during the Sendai earthquake in Japan in 2011 when the supply chain for Airflow sensors used in automobiles from the Hitachi plant in Sendai that produces 60% of global production was hit badly as the plant was closed.

Why should the world be worried now regarding the Covid 19 virus that is hitting different parts of the world ?

Basically it is because people are being taken off manufacturing and service locations across the infected regions and countries for reducing the risk of mortality and preventing spread of the virus.

While going through interested literature, it was nice to go through the paper by an MIT faculty James Rice from the Centre for Transportation and Logistics. When a manufacturing supply chain is hit by a crisis, the first and foremost resources that need to be taken care of are the people and suppliers.

The area where one runs a risk is in technology, employees, suppliers, facilities and the supply chain.

The HBR article Feb '20 (Rice, James, Prepare your supply chain for Corona virus) talks of protecting your primary assets - employees and suppliers.

•  Employees
• arranging for alternate plans like emergency shifting,
• experimenting with automation,
• rethinking work practices and
•  Suppliers
• spreading the risk with more suppliers,
• identifying vulnerabilities and
• preparing business continuing plans ..

Since such virus attacks, earth quakes etc come more infrequently, once in a decade or so, global corporations need to deliberate more on how coordination and collaboration can happen on a global scale in the event of such disruptions. Engaging with multiple tiers of suppliers helps understand first hand the gravity of the problem and undertake corrective actions. 

More automation can help in especially high risk areas like chemical gas or nuclear irradiated environment etc.

Suppliers are gradually getting more important in global supply chains. Sourcing from more than one local suppliers can help spread the risk and prepare better business continuity plans.

Click here for the paper ..

Daily we hear of the news of the spread of the Covid virus acros Europe and Northern Asia. The humid and hot climate in South Asia may be working as an effective deterrent for the spread of the virus in South Asia for the time being. .

Most of the infections across the world in different countries has been observed because of the extensive supply chain links with Chinese suppliers based on costs and availability, movement of personnel, packaging etc between China and the respective countries. But India for that matter, other than the virus carried by a few medical students from the nerve centre of Covid, Wuhan , has had very less impact of Covid. Experts attribute it to the cold and limited trade relations and technological transfer between the two nations, leading to less exchange of personnel between the two countries.

China and India, the two oldest civilizations of the world has been having very cold relations after the 1962 war between the two countries in which India was flatly defeated leading to annexure of a large territory of Kashmir by China. If one looks back in history, India has always had the upper hand in global GDP dominance till 1700 AD. For the past 300 years China has been having the upper hand, though it is not known how long this dominance will last given the poor human rights record and repression of democratic rights in China and the present emergence of Corona virus.

George

How can we make CSR more effective ?

Toyota is the world's largest automobile manufacturer. Analysing the practical aspects of it's social responsibility programmes will enthuse anybody. During the author's visits to visit Toyota Kirloskar plant in Bidadi, near Bangalore from 2012 onwards, he always used to get impressed and amazed by the various socially relevant programmes Toyota Kirlosakar was carrying out in their campus for the people living in their vicinity and also for the environment.

The Gurukul scheme whereby Toyota Kirloskar Motors India used to select 10th / 12th standard pass students from the locality and train them for three years in the Gurukul and give them the option of joining either Toyota or any organisation of their choice was a great way of empowering the people. Toyota as of 2019 is able to recycle 89% of it's water needs through rainwater harvesting and recycling and generates 88%of its energy from renewable sources preventing the release of almost 68,000 T of CO2 into the atmosphere annually.

Pursuant to this revealing statistics, the author from Alliance University went about creating more awareness and sensitising the students and the public on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The author seriously began researching the subject and documenting the vital aspects.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Wikipedia calls Corporate social responsibility is a type of international private business self-regulation that aims to contribute to societal goals of a philanthropic, activist, or charitable nature or by engage in or support volunteering or ethically-oriented practices.

Corporate Social Responsibility is a management concept whereby  companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business  operations and interactions with their stakeholders. CSR is generally  understood as being the way through which a company achieves a balance  of economic, environmental and social imperatives ("Triple-Bottom-Line-  Approach"), while at the same time addressing the expectations of  shareholders and stakeholders. - UNIDO

Carroll's pyramid of CSR (1)

Even though Corporate Social Responsibility has been in the spectrum of business and social world since 1955, it was in 1991 that Carroll came up with deeper understanding of the same with the Carroll's pyramid which highlights the importance of Economic responsibility (ER), Legal responsibility (LR), Ethical responsibility (ER) and Philanthropic responsibility (PR) in any corporate setup.

Referring to the 2015 seminal article that appeared in Harvard Business Review authored by KasturiRangan, Chase and Karim (click here) wherein they studied the aspects of what constitutes good CSR and answered many unanswered questions from the participants of Harvard Business School's CSR programmes for industry executives from 2015 onwards.

The authors divide the whole CSR exercise into three theatres,

• first theatre focusing entirely on philanthropy, charity
• second theatre looking at CSR benefiting a social cause like education, raising skills or standards of living while fulfilling the industry commitment to society and 
• third theatre building new self sustainable business models serving society responsibly.

While Toyota Kirloskar India through it's unique Gurukul programme fits into theatre two of serving societal good and at the same time serving the industry, Hindustan Unilever through it's Project Shakthi and Gururaj Deshpande through it's Deshpande Foundation fits into theatre three, of building new business models helping women benefit from micro-financing, of helping entrepreneurs innovate raising the standards of living of families and societies. The philanthropy programme of India's greatest philanthropist Azim Premji of Wipro falls mostly into theatre one.

India's Ambuja Cement's CSR matrix, courtesy HBR

While organisations pursue CSR for differing duration and different purpose, Harvard Business School's Kasturirangan and others feel, the activities need to be coordinated and streamlined to make it more effective.

The case of India's Ambuja Cements, a part of the global Holcim group, is highlighted in the paper, reporting interventions starting from theatre 2 and which spread over to theatre 1 and theatre 3.  Even though transforming interventions from theatre 2 to theatre 3 is by itself a bit challenging and requires great effort and thinking, it does open up new workable business models for the company. In the present case, the old barren land after mining, using rainwater harvesting was made arable yet again and given back to the same people from whom it was purchased helping them lead a normal life, completing the sustainability cycle - indeed a viable business model for the whole world to follow.

Accordingly the authors, later on in the paper, have come up with four necessary steps, not in the order, which needs to be carried out to have a flawless and effective CSR programme for any organisation.

They are listed here

1. proper coordination and streamlining of programs within theatres
2. developing meaningful metrics to gauge CSR performance in organisations
3. coordinating programs across the three theatres and
4. developing an inter disciplinary CSR strategy

While proper coordination improves the effectiveness of CSR in organisation, using the right metrics, often economic, results in improving the efficiency of these CSR activities. Streamlining the total CSR activities across the three theatres often brings manifold benefits to the organisation, while at the same time improving its brand image and profits.

The research by Rangarajan suggests another great learning, any CSR strategy cannot be caged into any one business functional area. The effectiveness of CSR activities often emerge when it becomes inter-disciplinary , ie. acts across departments of the organisation.

The Indian Ambuja group's goals are to give back more to society than what it takes from it and it to clean the environment much more than how it pollutes. IKEA of Sweden looks as much at growing sustainable forests and developing effective models to use old furniture.

At Alliance University in Bangalore while giving the best to the student community, we believe more in the theatre two CSR, wherein by giving cleaner greener sustainable environment to the students, we are doing yoemen service to the society, while at the same time benefiting economically by reduced utilities bills, promoting sustainable living and are able to improve our brand image.

If organisations across the world take up this process of sustainably giving back to society in right earnest, benefiting societies, communities and people, especially the deprived, sidelined and downtrodden in society, how much more better would it have been to spend our time here on planet earth.

George ..

References : 1. Thacker, Hency, (2019), Understanding the Four Levels of CSR, The CSR Journal, November 2019, www.thecsrjournal.in, Last accessed 23 February, 2019.
2. Kasturirangan V, et al, (2015), The Truth about CSR, Harvard Business Review, January 2015, Last accesed 23 February 2019.

What is the ideal strategy for start-ups ...

I always have thought that entrepreneurs are people who are always on the hurry. They are fast thinkers, they move fast, they motivate people fast and if they find an idea is not going to add any value to their plans, they will be the first to quit. Good .. that's common sense ..

The reason is quite natural, they do not have time to waste with ordinary people with no ideas and who are in no hurry to change the world.

Hard work, day in day out .. Courtesy Pinterest.

The seven characteristics of entrepreneurs are given in short in the following passage.

7 Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs (www.due.com)

• Self-Motivation - one of the most important traits of entrepreneurs is self-motivation. 
• Understand What You Offer - as an entrepreneur, you need to know what you offer, and how it fits into the market and customer aspirations
• Take Risks to enter the market before anyone else does
• Know How to Network with the right people who can contribute to the startup
• Basic Money Management Skills and Knowledge to handle the basic transactions to get the financial model running
• Flexibility to be able to move from one idea and business model to another idea and business model in as short a time as possible.
• Passion to go to any extent and spend any amount of time to achieve one's goals.

The problem with this approach is that more often than not, when one tries to get on the best workable idea that comes through, not thought out, it sometimes happens not to be the best idea. The entrepreneur may not have evaluated the idea on it's proper and correct, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats..

But research published in HBR of May 2018 have tried to highlight what could be possible strategies startups should take up. 

Courtesy HBR May 2018.

Gans, Scot and Stern (HBR May 2018) have come up with an exciting paper on the strategy that startups should take,. (Click here..).

How can a strategy at the initial stages of a startup help the startup to evaluate options, alternatives and models to take forward. A false move and the entrepreneur loses a couple of years, a great opportunity and possibly he would pay dearly. The entrepreneur may lose an opportunity to hit it big or go down the drain.

The authors have tried to organise the startup strategies as a matrix, where the x axis is the willingness of the company to collaborate (with a large company, not very confident of the technology or the market) or compete (usually a technology product with a clear domination of the market and no likely competitors) and the y-axis is the attitude of the company either to build a moat (be by itself as regards technology and market and hope for the best) or storm the hill (publicise the strategy, tech, and get maximum share of the market as quickly as possible) ..

Accordingly the authors have come with these four strategies a startup should resort to in the initial stages with proper thinking and planning.

• Intellectual Property (IP) strategy (top left, collaboration and maintain control of innovation, maintain total control of IP)
• Disruption strategy (bottom right, compete with incumbents and take them by surprise with fast execution)
• Value Chain strategy (bottom left, collaborate on creating value with partners and execute fast) and
• Architectural strategy (top right, create and control a value chain, protecting IP).

An example for the IP strategy is Dolby Noise reduction system, for disruption strategy, India's Jio telecom network, for value chain strategy, Foxconn Manufacturing in China and for architectural strategy, Google ..

If we ask successful entrepreneurs, whether they had the luxury of time to decide on what their strategy would be or whether they would grab the first plausible one that came their way, I am sure, more often than not, they would confess to the second approach. It gave them the comfort that they were working on a plausible idea. For them the learning came on the way, from repeated failures and minor adjustments that happened on the way.

The other option as given by the above quoted HBR paper, looks at being on the right track, one is more interested in knowing what are the options available before them, how to weigh the options before weighing the chances of success for each of the options.

Do entrepreneurs at the start of their career have the luxury and liberty to exercise options ? Do startups think in a detailed manner or grab the first plausible opportunity that comes their way ? If you ask any entrepreneur, more often than not, they would mention how they first blindly went about the first idea that came their way and later on with experience and maturity, exercised discretion, differentiated their areas of work and expertise.

George.

Green credentials of Toyota Kirloskar Motors Bidadi , Bangalore.

Green credentials of Toyota in India

During 2018-19, in Toyota Kirloskar Motors' (TKM) Bidadi Bangalore,  

• 89% of  water demand was met from RWH and recycled water while 
• 88% of energy was met from renewable sources, 

saving 5,68,000 cu.m.of fresh water and offsetting 68,000 tonnes of CO2 from being released to atmosphere annually ..

While big corporates in Karnataka take pride in blatantly exploiting fresh ground water resources, Toyota sets a role model for industry as a whole by using conventional methods of RWH and recycling to set new standards of green corporate governance..

A perfect example of the environmental sustainability initiatives from a great and responsible global automobile company having a 4.5% market share of the Indian passenger vehicle market of total 34,00,000 in 2018. 

Source : Toyota Kirlosksr Sustainability report 2019.

Making life more productive with Artificial Intelligence..

Artificial Intelligence is bound to change our life in myriad ways in the coming years. One of the greatest impact will be on ways AI will influence the ways people will lead comfortable lives in old age.

AI is set to be all-pervading ..

The present days we find computers and Information Technology with the Internet has made life comfortable as regards shopping, banking, communication, learning, etc. Regarding healthcare, computers and IT has made telemedicine a reality and medicine delivery possible. For maintaining health we still have to do physical exercises and exercise diet control.

In the coming days because of IT systems and Internet people have become more independent and self-reliant. This tendency will be more pronounced in the AI era. We will find processes that have been optimised as regards physical engagement have been optimised with respect to physical activities by making use of Internet apps and so on. The mind still needs to work.

We can expect in the coming days AI playing an important role in relieving the mind of many of the routine chores and be freed to carry out more creative activities.

Some examples are given here

1. AI daily planner

2. AI weekly planner

3. AI social activity planner

4. AI powered MOOCS for more effective knowledge collection and dissemination

5. AI enabled elder hand-holding program

6. AI powered apps like REPLIKA will help remove boredom, loneliness and monotony in daily chores 

7. The AI based web designing software LEIA makes getting on the web so much more easier for anyone in the world. 

8. Google maps, Gmail, Google search all of these have very advanced and useful basic AI incorporated already.

As is evident from some of the programs and applications listed above as Computers, Informaton Technology and the Internet made life easier for the modern generation, AI and AI apps will make life easy, interesting and creative for us humans in the coming 50 years removing mundane activities and helping us experience higher cognitive senses of human intelligence and interaction ..

Let us wait for those days.

George.

Speaking on Artificial Intelligence at the SME CEO conference ..

Yesterday I got an exciting opportunity to speak at the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) CEO Conference at 91 Springboard, Near Forum Mall, Koramangala, Bangalore on the topic of Artificial Intelligence and it's impact on Society and Businesses in general..

AI progress is happening at a deadly pace ..
If we are not prepared, be ready to be run over .. 

The SME CEO conclave is an interesting and passionate gathering of SME CEOs who meet once a month and are much interested in exploring new frontiers of knowledge and experience to help the small and medium enterprises in South Bangalore.

Why did I choose to speak on this topic ?

Let me explain my journey from an analog native to a digital alien along with my friends, seniors and juniors. The first time I got introduced to computers was at the Govenment College of Engineering, Trivandrum, Kerala, India, popularly called CET, during 1981-86. Under the guidance of Prof. Dr. PV Ramachandra Menon (cannot forget Sir's much lucid teaching style !!), we got great knowledge on basics of Computer Programming and Numerical Methods, with the concepts of algorithms, flowcharts repeatedly stressed.

For the practical sessions, all of us were very fortunate to work on the IBM Mainframe computer in our Computer Centre. With punched cards, it was great learning and a rare exposure too. In 1986 while leaving College, I saw the first desktop computer in the Lab. We are very thankful to the Kerala govt, it's people and the Travancore royal family for being so generous with funds for our college and its computing facilities.

We were analog natives becoming digital aliens, entering the field of digital computers, thanks to the efforts of Claude Shannon and team from MIT and Bell Labs for introducing us to the digital world ..

Are we prepared ?

Our kids who were born during the nineties were already born into a society with digital computers and take pride in calling themselves digital natives. 

My experiences with Amazon's personal assistant Alexa over the past three years has been has been sort of mixed and interesting. As we pass through the twenty first century we find digital initiatives plateauing around the world and Artificial Intelligence picking up.

AI is going to impact human activities in the coming decades like never before. And we need to understand how to prepare ourselves with the needed skills and knowledge to swim through it's vast waters, aided by very powerful computers and networks presently in use. 

Over the past six years we have got used to a great companion for all our traveling expeditions, the Google Maps. Were it not for this AI assisted map service, we would have got stranded at many a place for want of directions and advice on roadways wading through heavy traffic, telling us which routes to take to avoid waiting and to reach destinations as early as possible.. I have additionally introduced my students to the wonderful AI assisted chatbot to be their permanent friend, REPLIKA and an AI based web site designing app, LEIA. 

Google takes great interest in popularising the popular apps using AI, besides Google maps, for the benefit of humanity. The  moment you have received a Google mail and want to send a reply, Gmail already has three most appropriate replies lined for you, easing your job of replying.

The present generations of people living on planet earth are the AI aliens.

These are some of the earliest ways humanity finds AI to be of benefit to mankind. We have to yet explore ways and means by which AI will assist us, interfere with our lives and livelihoods and make us all the more productive and resourceful.

Can we turn AI to be totally useful to mankind ?

I was referring to an HBR article on Collaborative Intelligence considered to be among the top ten management articles from Harvard Business Review of 2019 by Wilson and Daugherty, Aug 2018. (click here for the article) .

These are some of the steps I have been taking of late to know more about AI and talk and teach about it to the people of the immediate society around me. Hope I get to talk to large audiences and help them be better prepaed, with my friends, college mates and colleagues to tame this helpul, yet deadly giant AI, staring at us in  the beginning of the third decade of the twenty first century.

George

PS: I am thankful to my former colleague Raju Gundala for inviting me to this conference arranged by the Small and Medium Enterprises of Bangalore to talk on AI on 15 Feb, 2020.

Role play of Corona virus economic impact in MBA class

Corona virus, picture courtesy BBC.

Corona virus we know is taking a hit on the Chinese economy now. The city of Wuhan and the province of Hubei is taking massive hit.

To understand the global impact -  social, economic, political, health, business, supply chain, travel, students on the Chinese society, business, global community etc. in greater depth and detail, we did a role play in the Operations class yesterday, 7 Feb 2020.

Our way of carrying out role plays, is different from how the leaders and the best in the field does it, Harvard University ... (Click here to understand how Harvard does it).

Our methodology for doing the role play is based on my earlier experience doing similar role plays in the class. We identified the major objectives of the role play which were

1. to help the authorities control the spread of the virus, to prevent infection and

2. chalk out strategies to help the infected

As the second step we identified ten major stake holders in the Corona virus scare case.

1. Communist govt of China

2. Infected Patients of the novel Corona virus in China

3. people of China who until now and even now is subservient to the Communist rule with no freedom of expression

4. Medical fraternity comprising of doctors and supporting medical personnel

5. United Nations / World Health Organisation (WHO)

6. Airlines of different countries operating into and out of China

7. Parents of students studying in China

8. Operators of major supply chain facilities like warehouses and transporters of medicines, food,

9. Utility operators like power, water and Internet

10. Global media, TV and newspaper

The class of 29 was divided into 10 groups of 3 each (one group had 2) and they had to formulate their strategy in the following areas -

1. to contain the spread of the novel Corona virus

2. to alleviate the fear among the Chinese public

3. to ensure the basic utilities like power, water , basic transportation, hospitals etc are kept running

4. to ensure medical personnel are available to the needy patients across the city of Wuhan and the province of Hubei

5. to ensure proper information dissemination was happening to the public with no room for rumours.

After doing an initial analysis of the different supply chain drivers and how the virus scare is impacting the primary drivers like facilities, transportation, inventory and information, as also the secondary driver of demand, the exercise started with the representative for the global media, myself, asking questions to the Chinese government as to how they were trying to contain the spread of the virus across the country and to different parts of the world.

An invigorating hour later with lot of interesting and informative exchanges happening across the different stakeholders and more importantly the passionate pleas from the doctors and parents of the students stranded in Wuhan with no prospect of flying out, the role play came to and end.

The most gratifying aspect of the study was the fact that all the students while playing out their role in the role play, got to empathise or understand the emotions and feelings of the other stakeholders of the play and how their individual decisions would have an impact on the other stakeholders.

Our students in future when they get into senior decision making roles in industry and government across the world, these experiences will definitely help them to empathise with the different stakeholders and make effective decisions.

The other big advantage is that our students are well informed of all measures to contain the spread of the virus in India and can to a limited extent advise senior government functionaries on controlling the spread of this virus.

We continued with an extension to the role play called JIGSAW, where each member of the stakeholder group was formed into a separate GENERAL group, there were three general groups in total, and after heated discussions they suggested excellent strategies to help counter the Corona virus scare in China. Notable among it was airlifting medicines and food across China, using drones to deliver food, vaccines and medicines for the last mile. 

George.

History of paper and its global usage ..

*2100 years of the history of paper*

Paper was invented in China around first century BC. It took 800 years before Arab traders took the know -how to Arabia in the 7th century AD From Arabia it spread to India and Europe around the 13th centuryand later to Africa and Australia. 

Presently of the 423 million tonnes of paper consumed annually in 2019 around the world,  almost 265 million tons (63%) is consumed by the top 10 paper consuming countries of the world and the rest 37% is consumed by the other 190 countries of the world. At 103 million and 71 million tonnes consumption annually China and US top the world.  

In per capita annual usage, while the global average paper consumption is 55 kgs, in  US, average annual per capita paper consumption is at 215 kgs, (4x global average). China remains  at 74 kgs (1.5x) and India at 13 kgs (0.24x) annual usage respectively. 

Worldwide consumption of paper has risen by 400% in the last 40 years with 35% of harvested trees being used for paper manufacture (The Paperless Project, 2014). In the last 20 years, the usage of paper products has increased from 92 million tons to 208 million, which is a growth of 126% (The Paperless Project, 2014).

The usage of paper has declined in the printing industry (efficiently supported by the digital storage world) while it's usage has increased in packaging and personal hygiene sectors around the world. 

George..

Greenest Grand Slam - Australian Open 2020

The world is getting more responsible and aware of sustainability and green issues .. 

Watch this video of Novak Djokovic best shots in Australian Open 2020 (click here for video) .. Have you observed the ball boys and girls and the officials, their light green and blue dresses .. They are processed from about 1,89,000 used PET bottles from Tirupur in Tamil Nadu, the textile capital of india .. Also 40% of the energy used in the tournament comes from renewable solar and wind energy.. In short, the Australian Open in 2020 for the first time in the history of tennis is a Green Grand Slam.
 

AO 2020 officials and ball boys and girls in Tirupur PET dress ..

This is a example of how the world is committed to promote green practices in all spheres of life. The Australian Open authorities deserve big kudos for that.

The term 'Green Supply Chain Management' (GSCM) refers to the concept of integrating sustainable environmental processes into the traditional supply chain. 

This can include integrating sustainable processes and practices into supply chain processes such as 

• product design, 
• material sourcing and selection, 
• manufacturing and production, 
• operation and 
• end-of-life management.

One of the best ways to start this activity is by administering a class quiz on green sustainability practices ... (click here, open for students from 8 PM IST on 4 Feb 2020..)

Courtesy United Nations..

The next step to get the class interested in knowing more about the supply chain was to ask the students to practice something in their own life, by asking the class to observe a NO IMPACT WEEK. 

No Impact Week is a UN mediated and recommended week held in many of the world's top organisations and top-tier educational institutes to create better awareness of the 2015 UN Paris Treaty which brought out the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015-2030) to look at different ways and means to contain global warming to less than 1.5 degrees C by 2099 AD.

The intention of observing the No Impact Week besides addressing SDG goals 10,11 and 12, is to make the earth a better place for our future generations.

• create awareness of green practices among the public
• help understand impact of our activities on the environment 
• identify and blacklist industries that pollute the environment, Coke and Pepsi are the world's two top polluters
• identify how individual carbon footprint can be reduced
• promote a sustainable personal lifestyle
• reduce inequalities around the world and give the less fortunate better living means (SDG 10)
• promote responsible production and consumption (SDG 12)
• building sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11)

Links .. 

A brief report on the No Impact Week organised in Alliance School of Business ..

Click on a link here on what is the No Impact Week ..

Click here for a National Geographic quiz to find how much you are aware of green policies..  

Click here for a Green quiz from How Stuff Works ..

George..

Deepfakes ..

Deepfakes (a portmanteau of "deep learning" and "fake"^[1]) are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness using artificial neural networks.^[2][3] They often combine and superimpose existing media onto source media using machine learning techniques known as autoencoders and generative adversarial networks (GANs)  

Click here for an interesting video.. 

Click here for another deepfake video ..

Click for a good paper here 

George..

Google Meena

Any intelligent chatbot should

1. be able to *hold coherent conversations*, 

2. *maintaining context over multiple turns* and 

3. *conversing on just about any topic*

With learning from 341 GB of social media chatter and a *Sensibleness and Specificity Average* of 79 %, *Meena*  will be a huge hit when this new intelligent chatbot will be released by Google soon.

These neural network powered AI systems are modeled on biological neural networks that power human and animal brains. They  *learn to perform tasks from examples* and not being programmed with task-specific rules ..

Over time Meena will be able to provide sensible and logical answers (not only knowledgeable) to all your queries on any topic under the sun ..

https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615118/google-says-its-new-chatbot-meena-is-the-best-in-the-world/