from hype to impact: applying this year's sxsw highlights to business transformation

From Hype to Impact: Applying This Year's SXSW Highlights to Business TransformationM A R C H 2 2 , 2 0 1 7

C OPY R I G H T S A P I E NT RA Z OR F I S H | C O NF I D E NT I A L 3

A G E N D A

1 Overview2 The Hype

Accessibility & Affordability Augmentation & Replacement Social Impact & Ethics Culture & Tech

3 The Impact Readiness Reliability Education Purpose

4 Questions & Answers


Our leading collaborators span our capabilities as much as they span the globe, bringing a holistic and cross-discipline view to this year’s trends.

SHELDON MONTE IROGlobal Co-Chief Technology Officer

Chicago, USA

S IMON JAMESGlobal Lead for Data Analytics

London, GB

MEL AN IE COOKHead of Strategy & Consulting, SEA

Singapore


S E C T I O N 1

Overview


We hosted our very own Innovation Day, where our speaker line-up was packed with some notable names and topics:

Augmented Intelligence: The Next-Gen AI with Melanie Cook, Head of Strategy & Consulting,

Southeast Asia, SapientRazorfish The Future of Content Creation with Ron Nagy,

Senior Evangelist, Adobe Building the Cognitive Business

with Simon James, Global Head of Performance

Analytics, SapientRazorfish HeyMap: Blending Social Media with the

Real World with The Community’s Andy

Amendola, Director of Digital Strategy, Juan

Aguilar, Art Director, and Lindsey Stormer,

Copywriter

Same, Same, Different: A Conversation on Changing the Ratio in Creative Technology with moderator Keri Elmsly, CCO, Second Story

and panelists Ian Sefferman, GM, TUNE Marketing

Console ; Julia Kaganskiy, Director, NEW INC at

New Museum & Aina Abiodun, Head of Strategy,

Sideways Inc. Lessons Learned from Birthing a Bot with

Chris Messina, inventor of the hashtag, former

Googler, and proud participant in the open

source/open web communities


Innovation Day


Our presence at SXSW didn’t go unnoticed…

One of the highlights from our presence on the ground came in the form of media attention. Most notably, our Innovation Day session with Chris Messina found its way onto CNBC thanks to reporter Michelle Castillo.

We also had encore versions of our sessions. Melanie Cook, for example, saw a full audience both times for her session on AI vs. IA, not to mention getting featured on Forbes!

Our efforts were also bolstered by social media, where our strong focus on Twitter (and the #SXSW hashtag) generated noteworthy impressions and mentions.

TOTAL IMPRESSIONS TOTAL MENTIONS

1651.7M

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelarthur/2017/03/20/from-automation-to-empathy-ai-dominated-the-sxsw-conversation/#c8afc1c40499


S E C T I O N 2

The Hype: Accessibility & Affordability


Artificial intelligence has reached the state of “the idiot savant.”

40 years ago, AI was a common conversation in academia. Now, the technology has broken out of labs and is being increasingly commercialized.

These are some of the most coveted AI applications today: Virtual assistants (Alexa/Google Home) Insight generation (e.g., advanced analytics) Business acceleration (e.g., personalization)

That being said, we’re still decades away from generalized intel. Google, for example, may be able to tell you the time, but not how long until something happens.

That future is still being pieced together…


Chatbots are still a testing ground.

Yes, you can build your own bot, but should you? Chris Messina did and it saved him 320,000 messages that he would have had to send himself.

Supporting his choice, he highlighted the following: Social media and the Internet of Things are causing

connections to grow exponentially. Messenger bots allow for context and history (unlike

webpages). Bots aggregate info from various sources that you publish to

from across the web.


Personal assistants are here to stay.Across multiple verticals, leaders are experimenting with voice-activated assistants, asking: What portions of the

experience can be automated and how?

What does search sound like and how are results communicated?

A great example is Lonely Planet, who has successfully shifted from physical publisher to being a digital-led brand. Case in point: they’re now looking into architecting (and monetizing) the planning of entire family vacations via Google Home.


S E C T I O N 3

The Hype: Augmentation & Replacement


Our goal should be to ensure that we’re augmented rather than replaced.

Norbert Wiener’s concept of the negative feedback loop – that in which technology works better than and, therefore, replaces us – was a common discussion being had at this year’s SXSW.

However, the idea of a positive feedback loop is more beneficial and, lucky for us, more plausible. In this case, exponential technology allows us to work less by automating only certain portions of our actions.

We must build technology to be a complement to our humanity, and evolve our interactions with it as it evolves its interactions with us.

Take coding, for example. A significant amount of coding will be done by robots, and coding efforts will have to shift into a process of developing products that complement human roles.

AI:IA


Automation is collar blind.

Any tasks that can be automated – that can be codified in standard steps and where decisions can be made on perfect information – will be.

Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance has replaced 34 of its human claims clerks with IBM’s Watson Explorer, saving the company $1.1 million a year.

Chatbots will replace up to 90% of public sector workers in the UK, as well as tens of thousands in the health sector, by 2030.


Is your job at risk of automation?

Drag and drop image or click icon to add

If the answer to the above question is yes, then what can you do to drive technology towards being centered around our human strengths and values?

The following are four courses of action that we can take as technology reaches superintelligence: Disconnect it from the world (i.e., Faraday Cage) Give the technology only binary responses Build an AI verifier (always have an anecdote, remedy, vaccine,

etc.) Create a derived value system in which humans hold the

values while machines execute (i.e., the tech watches and learns from you)

Therein lies the difference between Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Augmentation.

“(Collaboration between humans and machines can) amplify human power and

release people from the repetitive drudgery of manual labor, in favor of more creative pursuits in knowledge work and the arts.”

N O B E R T W I E N E R , F A T H E R O F C Y B E R N E T I C S


S E C T I O N 4

The Hype: Social Impact & Ethics


There’s no doubt that we saw a significant number of “human” sessions.


Brexit and Trump showed us that profiling is back in a big way – and that technology can place us in some uncomfortable situations if we continue to “sleepwalk” in terms of allowing our data to be accessed and used.

Power without controls is dangerous. Technology can certainly help society, but it can also leave many people behind. Social impact and ethics have become key to the conversation.

For example, M.I.T.’s Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson show that technology is widening the gap between the rich and poor in a phenomena called “the hollowing out” of the economy (specifically, the middle classes).

So, who is going to be disenfranchised by technology and who will be empowered by it?Who will decide the regulation around ethics when it comes to evolving technologies such as autonomous cars and data application?

Not sure what image to put here…


Autonomous cars are sparking debate.

As the autonomous car industry grows, so too will the need for legal, political, and ethical conversations and analyses.

Danny Shapiro (Senior Director of Automotive @ NVIDIA) states that the government needs to start viewing autonomous cars on public roads similar to the pharmaceutical industry.

Automakers will also need to take the responsibility for potential (albeit rare) crashes rather than having fault attributed to the vehicle’s user.

But the biggest elephant in the room is this: What happens when people can hack into your vehicle (as folks from WIRED were able to do with a Jeep)? Will it be possible to “design accidents” for malicious purposes?



Open APIs stand to change the game.FinTechs have changed what safety and security means – being in the cloud was a deal breaker until a few years ago.

Going back to cars: Are car companies morally obligated to share information if it could save people’s lives?

Now, consumers are required to understand more and more where their data is going.


T H E R I G H T T O R E P A I R B I L L

Whether they be tractors or smartphones, if you don't own the software in your products, then what do you really own? Hardware is inanimate and useless without the software you merely license. You currently don’t have the right to repair most devices. But if you cannot repair it, adapt it as you see fit – like you can with clothes, for example – then, do you really own the item?Legislation, entitled “The Right to Repair Bill”, is currently tackling this in the US and getting quite a bit of opposition from tech companies.


SECTION 5

The Hype: Culture & Tech


This year was all about bringing diversity from the individual level up to the systematic.

A lot of companies talk about diversity, but they don’t do it. In fact, they don’t even know where to begin – an unfortunate trend that was overheard across multiple sessions at this year’s SXSW.

Now, more than ever, the lines between company and community are blurred. People cannot be expected to check themselves at the door and are entitled to certain expectations of their leaders when it comes to support.

There will always be opposing points of view, but employees are increasingly expecting the CEO to be a caretaker, listener, and comforter – to take a stand in a way that aligns with the company’s culture and values.

We’ve seen this lately with gender discrimination and sexual harassment allegations brought against Tesla by AJ Vandermeyden and against UBER by Susan Fowler.


How? What’s different now?

Shari Slate (CDO at Cisco) and Adam Quinton (Founder/CEO of Lucas Point Ventures) were at SXSW last year talking about unconscious bias at the individual level. This year they showed up to talk about systematic diversity.

They agree that diversity will not be solved by hiring someone or asking human resources to do it. If the CEO doesn’t have the time or resources to drive diversity, then he/she is not really taking care of the people. People want to hear it coming from the top – to know that it matters.

Picture of women working together


Culture Is More than DevOps.

SXSW speakers had much to say about building high performance software teams and delivering software. These sessions were good refreshers on well understood Recruiting, Agile, and DevOps practices.

One of the more offbeat sessions, “The Pervert’s Guide to Programming Languages,” took us on a fascinating journey applying psychoanalysis to software development – we learned that software architects and developers make choices amongst the over 1000 programming languages in use today for reasons that go beyond the rational.


W H A T A B O U T C R E A T I V I T Y & T H E A R T S ?

AI can achieve various levels of creativity and, in turn, strengthen a human’s ability to reimagine. Google’s Deepmind machine

learning can be visualized as an art form (in this case playing Atari Breakout)

The AI-created film done for Saatchi & Saatchi’s 2016 New Director’s Showcase at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity

Autodesk’s Dreamcatcher can generate hundreds of unique designs in a matter of hours


SECTION 6

The Impact: Readiness


Are technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented reality ready for prime time?

Novel technology is not just a shiny object, but rather represents a spectrum of possibilities. The question you must ask yourself is whether the technology is ready to solve your specific industry use case.

Artificial intelligence, for example, is a practice that can be used to do something as traditional as structuring data and gathering insights. This is what we see with the opening of APIs to better the customer experience.

While many companies are experimenting with this technology, it is the movement of that behavior to actual production that needs to happen in order for the technology (and usage of it) to evolve.

For example, what do we make of IBM classifying Watson as a platform for microservices architecture?


Where can you see this apply?

Brands like L'Oreal are deepening their communications with consumers in virtual and augmented reality. L’Oréal’s “Matrix Academy,” an educational program for its Matrix beauty brand reduces costs and increases scale by replacing in-person training for hair stylists with advanced styling techniques taught via high resolution VR experiences.

Another example stems from sports, where virtual reality is being used to test players’ decision making within the context of certain scenarios.

And, in Australia, the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) has created Nadia, an online virtual assistant (voiced by Cate Blanchett) that can speak, write, and chat online while answering questions about the NDIS in a “natural way.”

“Initially Nadia will be used to answer the most common questions people have

about the scheme, but over time, with your help

shewill develop the capacity to provide

detailed responses to a wide range of queries.”

L O U I S E G L A N V I L L E , D E P U T Y C E O @ N D I A


To drive your use case forward…

Consider and speak to some of the most common obstacles in (multiple) industries today: Lack of insight Sluggish attitude in the

industry; inability to see the advantage

Complex, expensive manufacturing process

Broken industry model Lack of product/application

utility Not competitively priced Not sustainable, and at times,

downright indulgent and wasteful

“We need another Lycra to revolutionize the industry .”C O N S E N S U S O F P A N E L I S T S D I S C U S S I N G T H E F U T U R E O F F A S H I O N


SECTION 7

The Impact: Reliability


When you make a commitment to production, you make one to ongoing support.

Product-based companies should (and are) shifting to more service-driven mindsets. For example, as artificial intelligence permeates more and more of each industry, things like cars will need to get more regular updates – a concept that is difficult for product lifecycle companies.

And it’s not just about the software, but the infrastructure, as well. We need new modes and media for rapidly changing technology.

Take IBM, for example, whose plug and play model allows for laudable modularization. This leads to increased reliability and sustainability – not only for the product, but for the business model and customer relationship, as well.


DevOps strikes again. You ship it. You support it.

As Capital One mentioned, software delivery (speed incentive) and operations (stability incentive) have traditionally been two separate sections. These silos have been known to create some animosity at the organization level.

Key leaders including the CIO and CMO need to work together to combine the existing focus on speed and agility with consideration for scale and reliability, as well.

It’s more than just tooling – it’s an actual cultural change. And it requires the organization to stand by their products with adequate support (not just tech teams, but also information security, legal, finance, etc.).


SECTION 8

The Impact: Education


Brands and consumers are learning simultaneously.

Chris Messina mentioned that it’s really hard for users to know what to do with chatbots. There is no general awareness of messaging apps/bots and, if there is, it tends to be quite negative.

And chatbots are just one example of a lack of comprehension on the user end when it comes to artificial intelligence, its power, and the introduction of it into people’s homes (and lives). Some users are testing the waters with chatbots, but so are brands – they’re using these bots to see what AI can do.

So, how can you educate the larger population on the breadth of actions supported by AI? And on its safety?


What about the designers behind this revolutionary tech?

AI offers substantial potential because of the insight that it can provide designers; however, there's still the equal challenge of educating designers on its capabilities.

One thing that is certain is that we have yet to establish some design principles for conversational user interfaces – and we should. These principles should take in things like: Consumer expectations: Does Alexa give you the straight

(binary) response to your question or try to answer the question that it believes you are trying to ask?

Platform neutrality: These principles will have to be executed the same across platforms in order to maintain a certain level of customer experience and comprehension – not to mention usability.


SECTION 9

The Impact: Purpose


Purpose is the ultimate platform for internal and external transformation.

Business transformation is achieved through a combination of both internal and external efforts. And with AI becoming more like the Web circa 1996, the brands that survive will be those that build purpose into their work and their teams.

The concept of purpose is not a new one, but never has it been so prevalent as it is in this moment of proliferation, data access and application, and societal uncertainty. But purpose is not something that leaders deliver

via pep talk. It is a combination of those who interact with your consumers, roam your offices, and build your products.

Here’s a great example: There will be an increased need for understanding humanities and social sciences in order to collaborate with developers to produce AI that interacts well with people. Once again, humanity can be augmented and scaled rather than replaced with a rationality that lacks semantic understanding.


When considering a set of internal organizational needs, Marty Weiner (CTO of Reddit) mentions the following key components:

#1S AFETY

S A FE T YDiscomfort about funding, company trajectory/mission, job security, or

physical/emotional safety.

#2TRUST

T R U S T Lack of communication, inconsistent

delivery on promises, subversive individuals.

#3RESPECT

R ES P E CTDisrespectful or offensive people –

sometimes miscommunication can lead to the same effect, as well.

#4MOTIVAT ION

M OT I VAT I O N“Autonomy, mastery, purpose." Too much

or not enough autonomy or unclear purpose.


Five next steps to consider.

Redefine success and value creation in the company

Own inclusion and diversity as business leaders

Communicate your company’s values and your values as a leader

Expand your mindset to expand your talent pipeline

Exercise your strengths and build your muscles


I N S U M M A R Y:

The Hype Accessibility & Affordability Augmentation & Replacement Social Impact & Ethics Culture & Tech

The Impact Readiness Reliability Education Purpose