Eric Kutcher, Senior Partner and North America Chair, McKinsey & Company, Zig Serafin, Chief Executive Officer, Qualtrics
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Powering the AI Revolution

Photograph by Michael O’Shea for Fortune

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Eric Kutcher, Senior Partner and North America Chair, McKinsey & Company
Zig Serafin, Chief Executive Officer, Qualtrics
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Fortune

Thank you very much, everybody. So we're gonna be talking about um infrastructure and so much more. Nice to see you both. Uh By the way, um Zig is a former musician, so accordion and Saxe just to kind of level set here we are here, we are, right. So, you know, I wanna start actually, you get into rooms, we don't get to go talking to CEO. So before we get into the, the deeper dives on what it takes to get, you know, to the next stage of the A I of revolution. Um What are CEO S talking about? Where are we right now? And, and, you know, give us some sense of just where we are in this evolution, us and globally, I'm gonna start with you 60 seconds or less. I think CEO S woke up 18 months ago to, this is real, they woke up to 18 months ago. This is real. At the same time, I think they're extraordinarily frustrated by the lack of return on investment. They've gotten so far. But I think they're starting to see these autonomous agents as a mechanism to begin to rewire and rethink and reimagine their business. So the business model transformation as opposed to some of the productivity gains and such. Yeah, I think it'll be both. I mean, I think, I think what you're gonna see right now is the opportunity to completely reimagine the way customer service is done, right? Or, I mean, we can go through examples but you only give me 60 seconds. So, so, so I, I think they're starting to say, wait a minute, there is entire bits of what I do today that I can do completely differently with a much better experience. I'm gonna pull on that thread. So, you know, I get the, the privilege to be able to work with CEO S CMO S coo sc hr OS all around the world, different industries, many of which many of you here representing and uh there's a new framework that's underway for um getting out of the boxes that we've been living in. If you think about the app based boxes that we live in today, we're the ones that are providing the input. We're the ones that are actually the producers of the output that takes place, you know. And so they've been neatly built as CRM applications, website, applications in the future will be one where that entire framework goes away. And there's a new framework where you will have an agent based world where the speed at which you actually end up leveraging an autonomous engine to get something completed will make things very different. And so this isn't just about adding windows dressing to the, to the, to the existing applications that we have today, right? It's not about adding an A I feature to the world that we live in today. It's really stepping back and saying over the next 234 years, how will someone engage with my airline? How do you understand that customer better? How do you actually create a faster way of enabling them in a more personal way as a result of that? That's a huge theme. Now, along with that is responsible A I is a major theme just like we have measures in most companies and organizations today where you have security controls and, and, and and a policy around how you run security. You will do the same thing for how A I uses the data, how you actually create trust. How do you actually engage with people in an honest way, get permission to be able to create increasingly closer personal connections at scale across the way that your business shows up working with the customers and employees that ultimately end up enabling your business. Can I pick up you, you talked about kind of this? I I said re imagine, you know, you talked a bit about the way people are gonna think through customer experience. You made a huge announcement earlier in the year that I that I happened to to get to see a little bit, which if you think about introducing a new product, I, I'm not promoting, I'm just, it really, it just really threw it really, it was really quite, quite remarkable because today, if you're going to, you, you would go do a whole bunch of customer research, right? Unless you're, you know, unless you're Steve jobs, you would go do a bunch of customer research. You figure out what now you literally can type into your A I engine. And because you have this incredible history of every interaction point, you know, what individual customers that very micro segments. And so that information was never existed before. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that capability essentially is called edge and it actually helps companies to be able to tap into knowledge about what's happening in their industry, cost industry uh and get instant answers to some of the biggest questions that might be on people's minds. Uh but also be able to get instant answers to the micro questions and decisions have to be made at a store level. Let's say that your KFC um brands, for example, and you're operating in a far region, we have KFC here in the audience um or if you're in the restaurant industry, uh what is it that your store manager needs to know about that took place yesterday across your competition and what customers care about in order to be able to inform the way that you end up showing up even the next day and of course at a bigger picture level is what trends do I need to pay attention to? And so being able to synthesize that type of data prior to the emergence of where A I is taking things would have been very expensive and very time consumptive, right? And now you're moving into a world where the speed of getting that type of decision making improves and accelerates. So I think what we want to achieve in this panel and I'm glad we're addressing that because we will take a question or two is, is both the potential of A I and the limitations. And of course, one of the potential limitations is that infrastructure problem or issue. So let's let's let's just sort of do a bit of a lightning round here because I'd I like to know how you'd prioritize addressing these challenges. Let's talk about the powering part, the infrastructure data centers. How big an issue is that it's a huge issue, right? If you actually look at the amount of you heard the number from us before you look at all the growth in the data centers around A I, you don't actually have two issues. One is you got to build the data centers or actually don't have enough people to build them. Second, you got to power the data centers, we don't have enough power. I actually think the power will come from frankly the big hyper scalers and others making massive investments. Um But that still takes time. It'll, it'll be surmountable town. How about you? How, how do you think about it? I think about it in terms of 222 major lenses. Number one is you have the hyper scalar, uh you know, A G I, the people that are building these massive models that will require an immense amount of compute power. They have to be close to the energy sources. They've got to find new forms of sources of energy. And then there is task specific A I where you actually start to build fine tune models. Uh ones that, you know, probably half of you in this audience will end up building and, and, and, and enriching and using a variety of techniques to be able to say it's purpose built, it's specific to this particular task. Uh and that will be highly efficient, it'll be focused on a data set that is specific to what you do in your business. Uh And it would be cost effective as well. And so there's idea of actually building sustainable scalable A I is really a combination of those two major lenses and we have the possibility of a trade war. I know we just had the China panel and obviously that's going to impact what happens with A I. Let's talk about the regulatory front since we're at a global event. Obviously, we've got what's going to happen on the US front with regulation, which we've got some indication of, and then globally, how much is that going to determine what this next stage looks like? Look, the, um, I think every, every geography is gonna do it differently. I, I actually think the US will be much more about a framework for which to operate on and I'll actually put more of the responsibility back on the companies themselves. And I actually think that is not a bad model. I think Europe runs the risk frankly, of over regulating. Um and if they over regulate, will they ST you know, will they ST me the innovation? If you sign the innovation, what happens from the economic benefits? What do you anticipate in terms of policy or regulation? Two things? Um Number one is, um I think in the background, we have to really realize that we are entering into a golden age of A I. OK. Um You know, the, the nature of where A I is headed is probably one of the most um amazing technology innovation moments on the history, you know, of, of, of humanity, you know, and, and if you over regulate it, if you over um policies it to begin with, uh you'll end up stymie the innovation opportunity. So it's more important, Eric and I were talking about this earlier uh that you create frameworks guiding points, right? But ones that are aimed towards uh catalyzing the innovation that can take place, right? And the second thing that's interesting is in that same time frame, I think around the world, we're seeing uh a time where governments are looking to get closer to understanding what's truly on the minds of the citizens and the residents that actually are part of the communities that they live in. Right? And we're seeing this at the micro level in the United States most recently, if you look at the county level statistics that that came about in the most recent election. Um And so what we're finding is that experience is essentially the currency of trust. And if you want to build trust, you have to get closer and closer to the people that you serve, this is happening in the private sector, right? If you think about the companies or the brands that you love and the ones you get closest to that, you feel understood, you feel like you trust them, they're consistent. The same is true for governments. And so A I actually creates an opportunity to use the technology to actually be able to at speed understand how to get much closer to the people that are looking to participate in different programs. Are those programs showing up in the way that you want them to show up. Uh once you deploy the funding, right? So, so I'm gonna ask you if you have any questions and just raise your hand. We've got mic runners here and I'm not sure if we do have any questions, but as we um before I turn to that. I want to ask you who the net beneficiaries are going to be. We've seen the big tech companies obviously do. Well, you are a tech player and a lot of people want are concerned about the, the start up ecosystem and how that innovation flows from here. What do you see? I, I think we will be, I think individuals will be the great beneficiary. I just again, one of the big opportunities is gonna be around customer experience. And if you think about things that are miserable experiences today, we can completely solve that going forward. I mentioned earlier, this sales force announced that at their big conference, this, you know how many we've all this age board, but we all go to the experience where you dial a customer service number and it goes through 18 different ways to make sure you never get an answer. And now what they have is a voice at the other end, that's completely done through agents and it walks you through to get you, you know what you need in a matter of seconds. And I just think that this is early days of this, but you start to go through all these friction points that I don't think will be friction points. 18 months from now, two years from now. What do you think, you know a couple of things. One, the analogy that comes to mind is, is the interaction that we have today. With maps, you pull out your phone, you pull up a map, you want to go to a location, we're still responsible for the interpretation of that, right, and make sure the inputs right in the near future. Um You know, the map will be there in the background because the, the, the, the car, the device is actually taking over and it autonomously gets you to, you know, where you need to go from point A to point B. That is the magnitude of, of, of opportunity and change that's underway across every single industry um that, that will take place. And so you reimagine the way that we've done things right as a result. Now, that said, we also don't see a world where there's going to be just a few behemoths that ultimately end up creating these systems. And in fact, what we envision is an ecosystem where um um people will innovate, they'll build fine tune models, they'll build agents that are specific for a certain set of business tasks or outcomes. Uh And, and that will create a whole new world of opportunity that will take place, you know, much like what took place in the industrial revolution. We'll see a similar effect. I see a question from Bob Nardelli here if you could just go in the middle. Um Thanks, Di thanks Diane. Uh This is a great panel. Let, let me ask you a question. Uh Do you see any similarities between a I and electric vehicles because there was the same excitement and euphoria about EVs the mandate that came down. It was range anxiety and it ended up turning charging anxiety, right? No infrastructure. And you mentioned the point, we gotta build a lot of data centers and then we got to be able to supply energy to that. Now in Atlanta, you know, we just built the last nuclear plant, Vogel years over overdue and billions of dollars. So I didn't hear any of you mention about small mobile nuclear reactors where you actually control your own destiny at the data center. I know some of Microsoft and some of the other are, are still out looking for a place to plant a data center. Uh How do you, how do you generally think about is, is energy gonna gonna throttle the rate with which you introduce A I former Ceo of Chrysler I should mention, by the way, I'll, I'll respond real quick and then, and you can talk specifically to nuclear and get what you're what you're seeing. I the, the the old saying that says we often end up uh overestimating what happens in the short run and we end up significantly underestimating what happens in the long run I think is extremely true here. I think that the capacity and level of innovation that A I will bring, it will take a long time for what those new scenarios can be, start to come alive. And if you look back at the industrial revolution, back to the 18 fifties, 18 sixties, when you know the Bessemer steel process was invented and how long it took for people to realize that steel could now actually help you build skyscrapers, took many, many decades later, right? It was initially used in railroads. And I think we are in a very similar stage at this point where people will see, see A I improve substantially, but the timelines will be significant compressed. You go from five year inflection points to three year inflection points. What do you think? So, I agree with that. I mean, in some ways, the internet was, was a very real example of this, right, the first internet boom, you know, happened but didn't really ever deliver the promise and then it took time until we got there. I think we're in that. But I don't think it'll take as long just by virtue of what we can do today and the availability, this question of power is a very real issue. Like it's a very real issue. The question of nuclear, the reality is we can't build even the small nuclear reactors fast enough, right? It's going to take. So I do think that is part of the solution, but I don't think that's part of the solution in the next 5 to 7 years. I think we've got to think about alternatives and frankly, I think that means we are going to end up with kind of more natural gas and more solar and more, you're gonna have more of the available technologies that are out there today that we're gonna have to use as we start building out these data centers, you know, in the near term. But it also presses the need for more efficient ways of using A I and how you end up innovating that. So building smaller models specific to specific tasks, if you don't need all that data, you can be a little more depending upon what you're trying to do. And that's already happening. I think that it's starting to happen. I see we're at the two minute point and I want to give each of you a chance to give some closing thoughts in terms of um rus in the moment, but also give us a sense of both what's exciting concerning, I mean, help us see around the corner bit as to what we'll be talking about this time next year. I'm going to start with you Z Sure. Um I think first off, uh we're at a stage where um companies broadly is not one ceo I've met with over the last year who hasn't said I want to use A I to get closer to my customers and to be able to scale the rate at which we end up differentiating ourselves and being, becoming more personal, more connected, more convenient in time, right? And that's a major theme that said um half of you here in this audience are probably building some kind of an A I capability one way or the other half of you will be consumers and you'll be using it right with that. And in most recent research that we had is, is only about 20 to 25% of consumers that actually trust the companies that are building the A I to actually make the A I perform as it's actually being promised or, and, or you'd be able to trust with how the A I is being used to be able to facilitate them, right? So being able to approach uh the problem with um building trust where experience is the new currency that actually ends up driving how people will engage with your company and your application is going to be core, you know, a core essence in this. And, and I think that is in the context of the fact that a lot of people are just wary of all the hype. A lot of there'll be a big hype cycle that will take place and that we're in the midst of it, right? Lots of claims promises the timing for that. What that horizon actually looks like. I wanna give also a chance for you to give some, I think you're down to a Haiku or a limerick. At this point. We discussed this, I'm just not that talented. I I don't, I think the technology will not surprise us or disappoint us. I think we're gonna see the technology continue. I think the thing that most organizations are gonna struggle with is talent. I mean, this is gonna be the biggest change that talent has to begin to understand and think about how they do their jobs differently each and every day and to reskill generations of individuals. I think that's the challenge we're gonna face. Please join me in thanking our panels. I know we'll discuss today. Thank you again.