CORE Roles & AI

There is a lot of hype and fear surrounding AI, but the truth is that AI is here to assist you. If you take chat bots as an example, they seem pretty dumb and just a super charger to search or manage simple devices one at a time. Add some machine learning to these natural language capable devices or software and the game moves up to something more interesting. Add deep learning on top of them both and now the possibilities expand. Add cognitive capabilities to add knowledge and wisdom to information and data, and the game can be changed. AI can have a significant impact on our CORE roles. This blog scratches the surface on how AI helps in our basic roles.

Consumer:

We all play the role of consumer on a pretty frequent basis. Often we have to interact with organizations to deal with their products or services. Often these interactions leave us numb at best and upset at the worst. We have to deal with organizations in generalized way with some pretty antique systems and have to sort through the artificial boundaries created by specialties. Imagine if an organization creates a seamless experience that takes your history and needs into account. AI can help create just this kind of engagement model. Organizations need stop using chat bots to find the right department in replacement audio response units and start using compound AI to treat as you expect and will require. This means that call centers need to boost the knowledge and context intelligence to service you with excellence leveraging AI.

Organizational:

Most of us play roles inside of organizations as employees, management or not. Today we are as good as our skills and experience. Imagine if AI can act as an assist of sorts that handles basic administrative tasks for you like managing your calendar, sorting through your inbox and giving typical responses leveraging machine learning. Imagine if AI could act as a knowledge assistant that could give you expert knowledge, options and actions that consider a balance of dynamic and conflicting goals. AI can make you stronger than your base skills and knowledge which will, in turn add to your experience base. AI helps your role as you act on behalf of an organizations and interact with your peers, partners, prospects and patrons.

Relationships:

We all have a goodly number of relationships that we participate in on a daily basis. Imagine if you had a personal assistant that could guide you through relational and social situations with important knowledge to guide your behavior. Wouldn't we all benefit from becoming a better partner. In social situations, AI could give you options in your ear piece for potential etiquette and suggestions for good topics of discussion in the context you are in at the moment. Even the loner could be given advice on how to develop relationships where it is not a comfortable set of circumstances. This will put people on more equal footing in social situations.


Example:

We all want to be the best at what we view ourselves to be. You might want to be the kindest human on the planet with serving others as your big contribution of your time on this sphere. Service to others can be done on an experimental basis; learning as you go. You can now go to the web and find lots of opportunities to volunteer or even earn a living helping others. AI could help you sort through thousands of readings to net out potential outcome paths to give you alternative plans to reach your goal; done your way. You could have an AI guru and mentor at your side.

Net; Net: 

AI has the real opportunity to assist you in ways that are quite desirable and obtainable in the near future. Let's not fear AI; Let us embrace AI. This is said in the context of being aware and testing AI at all corners. Will AI ever violate it's base rule of doing no harm to humans?  In the wrong hands, it's possible. I believe that level heads will win the day for the near future.

AI Automation Versus AI Assistance

We keep hearing about the momentum of AI and the various facets of AI. AI is hot, but what does it mean for organizations and people? Will AI automate our jobs away? Will AI be the friendly assistant that multiplies our given skill sets and competencies? Will AI be a foe once it realizes how weak humans can be? Will countries leverage AI for defense or offense purposes? These are all questions that keep people engaged or up all night. This post is just one debate that will occur in organizations.

The Case for AI Automation:

Organizations are almost always looking for ways to cut costs while making sure their resources are well managed. AI is great when embedded in robots to handle dangerous tasks, so that is almost a "no brainer" for automation. AI is also good embedded in special purpose robots that save labor over the long haul. We have all seen the videos of robots in warehouses or on production lines where speedy precision is the goal.

These a pretty obvious and proven use cases, but there is far more to tap. There are more complex tasks that are ripe to eliminate. Quality assurance focused jobs that leverage sensory focused AI are ideal for automation. There a goodly number of white collar jobs that are about mining and analyzing data and information. Where speed of pattern sensing is key, AI automation makes great sense. Over time AI will be involved with selecting the analysis techniques that will be applied. More and more of today's human labor focused jobs will be automated except where soft skills are needed. Chatbots are even eating into some of these tasks.

The Case for AI Assistance:

While it seems clear that low skill level jobs or ones that require significant speed to action completion are ripe for automation, it is also clear that AI has a great role in assisting humans in completing their tasks as well. There are a goodly number of low level assistants that can handle simple natural language tasks including fast dictation, information look up, calendar scheduling, and travel advice . These are practical, but low level task support.

Additionally, AI can be used to devour information in a speedy and predictive fashion while incrementally learning faster than most humans. This allows AI to advise humans as they sense emerging patterns, sort out multiple contexts and understand an array of complexities. There are software bots that can handle specialized informational and analytical tasks that can push labor to lower levels of skill. Imagine putting experts next to your people to make them smarter. Examples of human collaboration includes medical advice to underwriters, medical treatment plans for doctors and diagnostics for mobile service professionals.

Net; Net: 

There will be more emerging examples of both automation and assistance leveraging AI. I don't think it is an "either or" situation,  but a combintorial "both" situation. Automation is an econmic necessity, but so is the augmentation of humans to handle more complex tasks and shorten the expreince curve. The debate will shift over time and the exmaples will get more complex but hamans and AI will continue to coperate. Everyones skill levels will have to rise for people over the long haul.

Additional Reading:

Myths of AI

Top Seven Uses of AI 

AI Handling Events 

AI & IoT

AI & Strategy

AI Drives Great Decisions

AI Helps Agility

Process Predictions for 2018

While Business Process Management is an established, traditional technology category, its role in a successful digital transformation cannot be understated. Too often, the important role process pays in digital delivery goes unnoticed, because it is embedded in solutions and therefore, quite invisible, in many cases. For 2018, process will be as integral as ever before, and will require a business model that accounts for and leverages its full capabilities in new ways. In the new digital era, constituent journeys are the important processes even though other processes continue to support operations.  

Pay Attention to Process in All Forms:

Process is just as important as before, but process is not "the next big thing". Business Process Management has grown from simple, path process optimization to dynamic and adaptable paths for better outcomes. As AI and smart resources invade process and development, things will change rapidly. Process range from simple workflow to dynamic self organizing tasks and everything in between. 

By YE 2020, process and work management in all forms will be pervasive and key to digital solutions.

By YE 2019, all forms of process will be contributing to producing digital results. 

By YE 2019, processes will be dynamically aligned to customer journeys, personas, and customizations. 

By YE 2020, process will be smaller in size and will move closer to the edge of digital solutions. 

By YE 2018, vendors who do not deliver digitally focused process capabilities, either by themselves or through partnerships, will be surpassed by competitors that do. 


If you want the thinking behind these predictions, please visit the Aragon Research site by clicking here

4th Quarter 2017 Art

It's been a laid back approach to my art in the last quarter. There was one commission job for a close friend who used to be on the same skate team as Tony Hawk. Don Ho, aka Donnie Crist, asked me to replicate one his favorite scenes while skating recently. I won't spill the beans on his age, but he does amazing things for a guy his age. He had me paint one of his skate boards in the past. I also wanted to make a statement on global warming with another piece called "Melting Planet".


                                     Web Presence: https://www.james-sinur.com/


                                                             DON HO

                                                     Bertlemann Move                                    

   

                                       

                                                      Melting Planet