Our increasing AI usage - beneficial or not ?

We all are enamored by the mention of the word AI, but are we fully in grip of the potential AI can make in our lives. Why are some of us afraid when there is a mention of AI, while others are upbeat when they hear the word AI.

I have been trying to find out the many AI apps I use in daily life and have been successful to a limited extent. 

The basic purpose of this exercise is to create better AI awareness in the society and for my students, so that they are better prepared to face AI when it hits us with all might in the next 5 - 10 years.  

Are AI apps harmful to society and humanity in general in the long run or are they beneficial to humanity in reducing boredom, strain and wasteful effort ?

To prepare oneself for the AI revolution, it makes sense to know how many AI apps are we using presently for which processes.

• Email replying - Google AI
  
• Searching to get better and relevant search results - Google search AI
• Spam filter - Google AI
  
• Email sorting (smart email categorization) - Google AI 
• Google Maps - Google AI
• Google ads - relevant to my search - Google AI
  
• Google doc - grammar check - Google AI
• Convert from speech to text - Google AI
• Translate from many languages to other languages - Google Translate
  
• Facebook photo upload - suggests friends, Facebook AI
• Image editing - Faceapp AI
• Image editing - Prisma AI
• Online shopping - products suiting my taste at Amazon - Amazon AI
  
• Chatbots at SBI, HDFC 
• Music search and playback at Amazon echo dot - Amazon Alexa AI engine
  
• Music search and playback at Google Home Mini - Google AI engine
  
• Washing machine at home - Haier, Fuzzy Logic
• Website building - Leia app
• Chat companion - Replika app
  

I am constantly trying to find different areas of AI application. Will keep updating this list. I am yet to find an AI financial app that can help me manage my finances well.

George.

Great learning from Covid for Management in the Indian context ..

It's been almost a year since we have been living with Covid virus around the world since the virus erupted from Wuhan, China on 31 December 2019. I remember how during the first week of March, we did a role play in the MBA second semester class in Alliance University Bangalore on the impact of Covid virus around the world. (click here), totally unmindful that the virus would bring global life and activity to a standstill for almost eight months..

After almost a year I happened to interact with my friend and colleague in a reputed Indian tyre manufacturing company on what has been the most interesting and important learning from Covid during the past one year. My interaction with this Plant Manager overseeing installation of a tyre plant in Western India during the Covid time has been very educative and enlightening ..

1. Productive use of time : Collaboration and meetings through MS Teams has brought down lot of unnecessary travel, meetings reducing wasteful time and expenses, leading to higher productivity of managers, engineers and field staff. 

2. Confidence Booster : The experience during this Covid period though challenging, has been a morale booster, helping improve confidence in our own staff than depending on foreign and domestic consultants.  

3. Better Digital collaboration : Project Management is not the same again. We have learnt what were the reasons for project delay and how digital collaboration and communication could effect faster decision making. 

4. Lower overall costs : Reduction of unnecessary travel, stay and avoidable interactions have brought down the incurred costs.Project execution costs have come down leading to better overall cost management  

5. Improvement in cleanliness and hygiene : Visible improvement is seen in factory cleanliness and hygiene, leading to better working conditions, appreciation and better input of effort by employees.. 

6. Better safety standards :   Covid has brought about better awareness and practice of improved employee safety standards both from health and occupational safety perspectives

7. Green standards : There is overall better appreciation and awareness of green standards related to the environment, lowering pollution levels, lowering air and water contamination and improved personnel safety.

8. Permanent changes : Changes are here to stay : whatever changes have come about over the past one year is here to stay and improve the shopfloor and overall organisational management

The industrial workers and leaders will benefit a lot from these new hygienic practices and learnings in the future ..

George        (thanks to Saji Varghese, (ex-CET ''90) Plant Manager, MRF tyres for sharing his understanding and insightful thoughts on how Covid has positively influenced the chemical industry and worked positively in improving productivity and worker efficiency in Indian industry)

Transitioning the company from product to platform ecosystem ..

Nathan Furr in the April '16 HBR article (click here) talks of how to move from a product based company to a platform company and the related steps, relevant issues and challenges.

Maintaining a product based company or moving to a platform, which is better ? Moving to a platform would naturally invite many external players and in turn increase the revenue streams for the company from the many different products that run on the platform. 

Generally tranisition from product company to a platform based company would involve three stages. 

1. internal product R&D and external complementors
   
2. internal product R & D and blended complementors and community management
3. hybrid business model management

We can take the example of Google Youtube for illustration purpose.  

Initially in the first stage, Google saw to it that the internal R&D developed the system well enough to mke it robust anbd agile to accept different formats of video  and resolutions. During this stage they also helped introduce other complementors who brought in viewership to the Youtube video hosting platform

The second stage involved Google subjecting Youtube to more R&D improving the resolution and compression technology of the videos to save on valuable bandwidth during playback. The collaborators in compression technology now become internal to the company with the free platform being opened to organisations and religious institutions to beam, their live events, making it  a community wise much accepted medium of communication.

All this while Youtube developed the revenue streams by offering ads at the beginning and between the videos at fixed time intervals. 

The third stage involved how Youtube started offering Youtube Premium that generated revenue streams for the company by charging Youtube customers and Google Home customers, for a small monthly fee, ad free viewing.

Youtube Premium like Amazon Prime generates committed customers who would not migrate to other video streaming business models. It also helped Youtube create massive first mover advantage and an unassailable lead over competitors in the video streaming ecosystem.

George..

Winning factors in a Multi sided Platform Model ..

Multi sided platform models are catching up these days.  

 

Click here for the Sloan Management Review link, Leslie Brokaw, May '14

1. Aim for volume

2. Aim for Economies of scale

3. MSPs are a chicken and egg proposition

4. Answering strategy questions are  vital to success like

•    how many sides will  be part of platform
•    what should the platform design be
•    what is the pricing / is it free to one side ?
•    what governance rules are need to ensure fairp[lay among participants ?
  

5S quiz, EPGDM sem 4, Jan 2021 batch.

 Pl click on this link and answer this quiz.  Click here..

For the answers click here ..

George.

Building and Managing AI powered organizations . .

Most large organizations talk big about their AI initiatives,  but fail in managing these initiatives well. We know of small organisations that want to implement AI, but find the AI initiatives are too expensive and hence is beyond the reach of the common industry or organisation. It is indeed a fact any organisation would need AI intervention only if it becomes unyieldy in terms of operations.

While reading an HBR July 2019 article in this regard Building the AI powered Organisation, click here, the authors Tim Fountaine, Brian and Tamim Saleh, have tried to understand why AI projects are generally not as successful as other industrial projects.  

 

The AI area as the cutting edge technology breakthrough that will influence how cognitive work gets done in future, will contribute about $ 13 trillion this decade from 2021 to 2030. The authors while working with thousands of executives in the cutting edge of technology were frank enough to admit that only 8% of them are engaged in research and applications in the AI area. 

The following three points the authors feel can help organizations running AI projects turn successful 

1. Inter-disciplinary approach : Instead of a siloed approach, promoting inter disciplinary collaboration 

2. Data driven decision making mindset : From experienced and leader based decision making to data driven decision making mindset and 

3. Agile, experimental and adaptable work environment : From a rigid and risk averse setup, moving to an agile, experimental and adaptable working environment 

The authors of the paper also feel that for successful AI launches in organizations, attention should be focused in the following areas.

1. Explaining to the stakeholders as to why the AI project is necessary 

2. Anticipating unique barriers to change, workers fearing losing jobs 

3. Budgeting equally for integration and adoption as spent on technology acquisition  

4. Balancing feasibility, time investment and value - investing in projects that are tough and time consuming initially can sabotage project success 

AI projects like any other projects need effective and refined project management skills to be successful in the long run. In the initial stages small AI projects that are easy to implement should be taken up before attempting ambitous ones.

 

Daniel Newman writing for Forbes in Feb 2020 (click here) stresses on why one needs to focus on the positives of AI adoption than on the negatives and job losses resulting from AI adoption.  

 

As we know, 

• promoting automation, 
• augmenting human based decision making and 
• enabling AI promoted improved awareness of the environmental context in which we live        are three areas where AI apps can benefit humans. 

Usually we find it hard to do repetitive tasks like washing. Using the washing machine eliminates the hard work of washing clothes for humans. The whole washing cycle is programmed in the washing machine making it easier to finish the washing without bothering humans. The advanced GE-Haier washing machine helps by telling the amount of detergent and the length of the washing cycle, all the while using optimal quantity of water. Earlier these were human based decision making processes, now replaced by the AI fuzzy logic capabilities of the washing machine. 

Future applications of AI in our normal lives will find AI assisting in helping the workers in engineering construction site or in potential hazardous environment being warned by sensors of the inherent danger, democratising healthcare making it possible for patients in remote areas have access to high quality medical care year round,  helping the aged age in their own homes safely and being reminded by alarms and sensors when to take medicines etc.

Humans while not allowing AI to have the upper hand, should incorporate AI into their daily lives that will make our daily living and business tasks more enjoyable, safe and interesting.

 

George (Image courtesy Forbes)

Impact of AI experiment on Chinese students . .

Preparing tor the management classes that are coming up from Monday 4 Jan '21, the new topic of Management of Artificial Intelligence and its varied impacts, besides being advanced is at the same time challenging too for classroom discussions. 

Placing headbands on school children's heads and monitoring their concentration levels with 3 sensors,  one on the forehead and 2 others behind the ears to help monitor concen6and attention spans is in itself a draconian exercise. Why ?

 

Wall Street Journal in October '19 came out with this very controversial video. It shows Chinese school students with headbands attending school.  Click here to watch the video ..

Watching the video, educators around the world are besides shocked, very alarmed at how Chinese school students are being made the items of experimentation. What will happen if in future these students are adversely affected out of the experiment and develop adverse negative reactions and are unable to cope up with adolescence and adult hood peacefully ? Inside the class, the willingness to concentrate or not is personal. Having a machine through sensors individually monitor each student all the time in the class is no doubt, invading student privacy.

Some questions that arise in our mind are the following : 

• Do we really need such monitors to constantly keep track of activities ? 
• Will the improvement in productivity and performance be compensated by the deterioration of mental health ? 
• Will it result in a sort of phobia for machines and AI in children that could develop into mental health problems for future generations of children  ?
• Will it cultivate a slave mentality in children compromised at the altar of high academic grades ?

Variety is the spice of life. The inherent variety and diversity in class student performance adds flavor to school performance . If all students consistently give high academic achievements and performance,  where is humanity heading to ?

Is successful life solely dependent on one's academic grades ?

Will this experiment have any long term impact on mental health of the students or into the future into adolescence? Has any initial experiment been done to assess the long term impact of this experiment on students  ?

On the face of it, the study appears very wrongly oriented, planned and timed.  The world would be very interested (if and when China discloses it), in knowing the immediate positive and negative impact of this experiment on student population and on the future personality development of these students. 

George ..