The Unexpected Consequences of Big Data

Big Data is the unexpected resource bonanza of the current century. Moore’s Law driven advances in computing power, the rise of cheap storage and advances in algorithm design have enabled the capture, storage, and processing of many types of data previously that were unavailable for use in computing systems. Documents, email, text messages, audio files, and images are now able to transform into a usable digital format for use by analysis systems, especially artificial intelligence. The AI systems can scan massive amounts of data and find both patterns and anomalies that were previously unthinkable and do so in a timeframe that was unimaginable. While most of the uses of Big Data have been coupled with AI/machine learning algorithms so companies and understand their customer's choices and improve their overall experience (think about recommendation engines, chatbots, navigation apps and digital assistants among others) there are uses that are truly industry transforming.

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Can AI Really Be Responsible?

On August 20, 2020, The Responsible Innovation Project, held an academic and industry roundtable on Responsible AI, raising the question: Can AI really be responsible? The goal was to arrive at a collective understanding of the challenges and strategies for building AI responsibly. The participatory roundtable included multi-disciplinary academic and industry leaders, practitioners, and researchers working on technology and AI or at the intersection of technology, policy, and humanities. The diverse group converged on one meta-theme: The need and desire to put society and people front and center of Technology and AI. And the struggle to figure out how.


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How to Survive The Upcoming AI Tsunami

Like it or not we are all going to get inundated by AI, Robotics and Automation opportunities. As organizations or individuals, we will have to decide how we are going to respond. Since we can no longer count on AI going back into another “AI Winter” because it is not going away. We will have to decide on AI as a trend and each AI encounter we will be facing. Our choices on AI will either make us win or lose in the short term and the long run. What are the responses to AI we can exercise?

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8. IoT Connectivity: Digital Transformation Debts post-Covid-19

Part 8 of the ten-part series on Digital Transformation Debt expands upon the Connected World's emergence – through the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT solutions for a Connected World is essential for Digital Transformation. There will be 75 billion devices by 2025. There are more than 600 IoT platforms. Learn from this article - with many practical examples - how the road to IoT success runs through Intelligent Process Automation of Things. All industries struggling with Covid-19 will benefit from IPAoT solutions.

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7. Customer Experience Optimization: Digital Transformation Debts post-Covid-19

This article is the seventh part of a ten-part series on Digital Transformation Debt, post-Covid-19. Part 7 focuses on the most impactful and relevant trend for an essential focus of Digital Transformation: the customer. The customer in the digital era is always connected, tech-savvy, and has high expectations. Customer Experience (CX) Optimization is a critical dimension, especially in the Covid-19 era. CX can be realized through leveraging AI, innovative design, and Automation. DX transformation elucidates the need to shift from bulk marketing, siloed organizations, and ad-hoc experiences to digitally transformed 1:1 connected customer engagements. The combination of AI with digitized end-to-end value streams on behalf of the customer creates this experience through extreme Personalization that leads to concrete business results, such as improvements in Net Promoter Scores (NPS).

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Effective Digital Transformation Requires Shifting Management Attention

There’s so much at stake, yet companies continue to struggle with digital transformation. A recent BCG study found that most digital transformations fail, and only 30% of transformations met or exceeded their target value and resulted in sustainable change. This should not come as a total surprise. Back in 1995, Dr. John Kotter…

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6. Design Thinking Innovation: Digital Transformation Debts post-Covid-19

This article is the sixth part of a ten-part series on Digital Transformation Debt, post-Covid-19. Design Thinking can be leveraged both by startups for faster and more successful Minimum Viable Products or incumbent enterprises on their transformation journeys. Design Thinking Methodology, as described here, incorporates the Design Sprint followed by Minimum Viable Product (MVP) development using Low Code/No Code platforms. This article is relevant especially for innovation with a startup culture for organizations of all sizes that shows how Design Thinking, Design Sprint and Low Code/No Code culminate in viable innovative products and solutions.

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How Will AI Help Me?

We hear a lot about how AI is progressing well these days and how it will help companies with all kinds of efforts from assisting customer pleasing experiences to implementing massive automation efforts. Well, it looks like AI will make it this time and there is a low probability that there will be another AI winter coming. So now we all have to deal with living with AI. I have been contemplating working with AI in my life, so I question how will AI help me and how do I work with it? Will it be like other technology that I have to learn to for life success or will it be more like a person that I have to get along with to thrive in the future? Will AI make our lives better or should we be practicing for those apocalypse scenarios I keep reading about? I think the answer will vary by roles the life that we play and where AI will add value to our lives. I think AI is evolving but in a good way.

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5. Citizen Data Scientist: Digital Transformation Debts post-Covid-19

This article is the fifth part of a ten-part series on Digital Transformation Debt, post-Covid-19. Due to Covid-19, organizations need to be agile and responsive. They need to understand trends and predict actions leveraging enterprise, sensor, customer, and partner Data. The dream of a Citizen Data Scientist spanning Automation and self-service with drag and drop intuitive productivity tools are slowly becoming a reality.

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Mitigating the risks of Intelligent Automation: Bias, worker displacement and more

Intelligent automation offers much promise to companies to drive efficiencies but it is not the panacea. By adopting a responsible framework for the deployment of such systems, companies can ensure that they are not inadvertently causing individual or societal or indeed economic harm to their business.

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Quantum Trends And The Internet of Things

As a new decade approaches, we are in a state of technological flux across many spectrums. One area to take note of is quantum computing. We are starting to evolve beyond classical computing into a new data era called quantum computing. It is envisioned that quantum computing (still in a development stage) will accelerate us into the future by impacting the landscape of artificial intelligence and data analytics. The quantum computing power and speed will help us solve some of the biggest and most complex challenges we face as humans.

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4. No Code Citizen Developers: Digital Transformation Debts post-Covid-19

This is the fourth part of a ten-part series on Digital Transformation Debt. The Covid-19 pandemic is pushing many enterprises to re-consider their digital transformation and modernization initiatives, especially in accelerating the development and deployment of innovative applications. The emergence of Citizen Developers leveraging Low Code/No Code platforms has profound transformative implications both for Enterprises and Startups.

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Practicing Safe Coboting

Like it or not you will be interacting with either physical or software robots soon. A cobot or co-robot (from collaborative robot) is a robot intended to physically interact with humans in a shared workspace. It’s not just the obvious robots to consider. Additionally, there are software bots that can either assist you with knowledge/data mining or actions that eliminate drone work. While there will be initial interfacing issues and learning curves to get by, there are a number of long term issues to consider when interacting with bots.

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So How Goes That AI Spring?

While AI hasn’t reached its full potential or its eventual impact yet, AI is making good progress in many directions simultaneously. Let’s examine some of the progress to date. While I’m sure that AI is adding value, I’m also sure there is more progress that is not visible yet as it is in the labs or being pioneered in several scientific avenues. Let’s look at the value add of AI to date.

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Differentiating with Algorithms: A Case Study

One can't go anywhere today without hearing about AI, but I would say that half of it is around projecting how AI will be affecting our future and the other half is about data focused approaches. While there is nothing wrong about these discussions and articles, most of us are more interested in the results of AI which represents a family of approaches and algorithms in action to apply to business and everyday problems. Even though there are three major approaches to AI

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Turbo Charge AI with Right Brain-Based Reasoning

AI is blossoming, but the real advantage of AI is yet to come. While organizations are mesmerized by the power of AI on left-brained activities of facts, rules, and logic, the big opportunity lies fallow. It's the right-brained activities that help with insight, interpretation, intuition, judgment, and reasoning where the big benefits can be gleaned. The leverage of general policies, creativity, and constraints is not natural in the world of AI today. Because it is difficult today, many pass reasoning and judgment by these days. What if there was a way to deliver right-brained behavior with left-brained activities? There is, but I'll get to that later.

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AI-Assisted Digital Assistants Really Work

Black & Veatch, an employee-owned, global leader in building critical human infrastructure in energy, water, telecommunications, and government services, is on a journey to leverage AI-assisted bots, called virtual experts, to better capture and interact with engineering knowledge and standards. The goal of this emerging effort is to experiment with ways to better capture knowledge and expertise within the company. Ultimately, this initiative would lead to a reduced amount of time required to locate desired information and create an opportunity for continued innovation to better support the future.

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AI & Big Data; Better Together

Big data, unstructured or structured, fast or slow, in multiple contexts or one is a beast to manage. Big data is growing fast fueled by the democratization of data and the IoT environment. Often organizations simply control what they know they get results from and then store the rest for future leverage. In fact, most organizations use less than 20% of their data, leaving the remaining 80%, and the insights it contains, to be left outside to the operational and decision-making processes. Imagine if you used only 20% of any service you paid for every month and ignored the other 80%! This is exactly what we are doing with data. Fortunately, there is hope as this is where Big Data can start to rely on AI and engage in a “cycle of leverage”. Presently, the interaction between AI and Big Data is in the early stages, and organizations are discovering helpful methods, techniques, and technologies to achieve meaningful results. Typically these efforts are neither architected nor managed holistically. Our work has shown there is an emerging “Cycle of Big Data” that we and would like to describe and share with you where we see AI can help.

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