Name: MPW London 2019: A Discussion About Implementing A.I. in the Business World
Uploaded: 2019-06-06
Duration: 13 min 29 s
Description: What it takes to deploy new-tech for a winning company—and a better world.

Welcome. Jillian, of course, is the CEO of booking. com. And Kareen is the co founder of TomTom. So since we're talking about AI, I think as with all things AI, we have to start with some data. So I have some data here that I want to get to. But I want to ask actually the audience to answer These same questions. How many of you believe that AI will be a competitive advantage in the future? Show of hands. Pretty much the whole room. [ LAUGH ] I'm glad you're participating, yes. [ LAUGH ] And how many of you would say your companies are implementing AI? Okay. Pretty good share. So, there's a study by a Boston consulting group that asks these same questions and it found that 85 percent of firms agreed with the first question that AI is going to be a competitive advantage. Just 25 % of firms said that they are implementing it, and 5 % said they were doing so extensively. So I'm curious, we talk about ourselves being in the age of artificial intelligence, why aren't those ladder numbers higher? I mean, what's the hold- up when it comes to Taking what we think is gonna be such a great competitive advantage and actually putting it to work. Do you understand? Yes so if I look at Bukincom, Bukincom has been always already a very dated driven company. So the step for us many years ago To move in to machine learning was a very logical step. And then because also you have all this data sets ready to be use, right? In this [ UNKNOWN ] which is the first step that many companies need to in that text and investment, I think so We did that, and throughout the journey today, people touch machine learning everywhere from the search ads we have on Google to once people land on our products in booking. com towards which agents answers the phone call for certain customer to We translated 2. 2 billion words last year, which is all done by machine learning, for instance, so. And I think, yeah, it starts with the data itself, I always say. All right, so what's the hurdle to getting the data? Yeah well, I think you need to have it. It's all data driven, and not a lot of companies have got that amount of data. It depends on your business. If you look for us, the same thing, I mean for years we've had. You know, we're mapping the world. Every hour, so you got huge amount of data. The data needs to be labeled, and then you need to have a real purpose for it. Often in companies, you have someone who comes to the board of directors, and says well we need to do AI and it's. Not easy to understand what for and people would think AI's about have a chat button or it's AI that's not the case in Buso industries actually that censor everything we do. Right yeah so you're both implementing AI. You mentioned with customer service especially at booking and with automative driving and. Mapping. Yeah we've done it actually for about 15 years. Yeah. So just just to and for you as well. I think the all business are built on the analysis of that data. That's what makes us productive performance predictive and then predictive rooting for example. So do I. So you're a you're advanced now compared to these figures here you're in that latter category when you're really using AI extensively, I'm wondering. Even even though you're at that point, what is your top concern right now when you think about artificial intelligence, the future of it, what sort of keeps you up at night in terms of, you know, how you're implementing it and the future of Those projects. Yeah, for me, it sits in two areas. The first area is if you think about technology and how technology in the future will be the driver of social and economic change, and then if you look at diversity, then you already see the challenge and I think that's something that needs to improve Prove quite quickly because otherwise we get kind of biases in these algorithms and that is something would booking we picked up some time ago where we really started focusing on how we can make sure we bring women into technology for instance. But this is a focus that many companies need to have because otherwise we'll get to other types of challenges in the future. And then the other part. If you think about the travel journey that's quite complex. So. And probably one of the most complex things to do because a trip has so many elements and then. Technology has a huge opportunity to improve these type of experiences but it's also a very challenging one. So we need to take that step by step. Sure. Yeah I think bias is a big problem there and a lot of examples that you should go to only a. All the algorithms are programmed by white male, it's not a good idea and I think [ UNKNOWN ] and I are actually doing quite a lot to promote women in technology. And I think it's just technology in general, education and technology. I'm always a bit flabbergasted by the fact that government don't realize. The whole world is going digital everywhere. And the same time the education system is just not coping. And the fact that, in most countries you're not bringing tech education early on at school, I think that is what keeping me awake at night. I think in the future it's not gonna be between rich and poor. Pool, the divide would be between the digitally literate and the digitally illiterate, or the digitally enumerate. And I think that there's a tsunami about to happen. Everything we do, the way we shop, the way we date, not anymore, but young people in the audience, anyway. [ LAUGH ] And the way everything that we do the way we travel, the way we drive the way we consume news everything is driven by algorithms. And if we don't empower this generation to understand what it is that's behind the decision they're making then they won't be at the table they'd be on the menu, they'll be there with Simply be the victims of that, and I think that's a problem. Right, well, you've actually done something about it. Well, both of you have, [ CROSSTALK ], the education aspect that you mentioned. Can you talk about your [ UNKNOWN ] college? Yeah, I think both of us are I'm putting a lot of effort on our own time as well to encourage people to code. SO I opened a coding school so that not for profit but also very diverse where you don't need any qualification to go into so that's. I really believe that it's important to get that tech education as widespread as possible. All right get funded some scholarships for women? Yeah we do lots of initiatives. We do. We fund scholarships to make sure we get more women into stem subjects. We do to technology play maker wash to recognize women that have changed industries or companies and. And mainly focus on technology as well. So, we do mentorship programs in a lot of the big tech conferences, which there's a high need for. So we bring women and we mentor women that are there on these conferences, so there's lots of [ UNKNOWN ] that we are deploying. Do we have any audience questions? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Not yet. I wanted to I'm sorry, we have one right in the middle. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Can you introduce yourself? Thanks very much. Hello, Nina Dos Santos, Europe Editor at CNN. You talked about coding schools for younger people and the need for education around the world. To incorporate technology inside syllables. But what about technology in the older generation, and how AI can be used to help people at that end of the age spectrum. Thanks. Yea, I think it has to be everybody needs to think a little bit of the journey so it's primary education the school that has started is eighteen plus, and there is no age limit actually, so anybody can train When you have big workforces like us, Gillian's got a lot, many more people than I have. How many people do you have? We have 17 and a half thousand. Yeah, I've got only five. [ LAUGH ] But anyway, not five people, 5, 000. But The issue we both face is how do we train our workforce for the future as well. So it's a lot of the job that exists today won't exist in ten, 15 years time. So a lot of the thing that we're working on this is and we're in an extremely competitive environment driven by technology. So one of the core. Thing we do within the business is actually training, constantly training our workforce. You probably have similar. Yeah. It's across the spectrum. When we talked earlier, Grin, you said to me that tech is a bad news story right now. We see this, you talk about the automation of jobs, and the potential loss of jobs. Data privacy is obviously a big issue. We see pushback from employees against the use of artificial intelligence and things like weaponry and, we hold drones, that sort of thing. I'm wondering how you think that you can change that narrative what needs to happen to sort of changed the tone around tech and it kind of gets to the point about Reaching other populations that aren't always talked about in these conversations. You want to talk about tech for good. I'm a great believer. I've been in technology for 30 years. I'm a great believer in technology's actually solving huge amount of problems. And I think we need to look at technology in that concept and I think we need to change perception Explaining. Technology is gonna revolutionize health, for example, and travel and the way we drive and the way we-- It's gonna reduce death on the road as far as we are concerned and make the world cleaner, safer. So there is a lot of good side of technology as well. Yeah, and I think GDPR is actually, I think a good example of what Europe has brought in legislation. And I think even with GDPR companies still can can use a lot of data sets to improve their experiences. And I think coming together like you're dead is actually a very positive change. And it brings a lot more clarity to consumers what happens with their data. I think it's often the unknown which also drives that people have this fear. Yeah that's a really that's a really good point. The fear of the unknown. I think we have a question. Another question right in the middle. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Thank you. Alice Hawthorn, you've already alluded to gender bias being a problem in AI. What are the solutions? Because as you've explained, so many of these systems are driven on historic data. What sort of measures can be put in place to minimize The impact of gender bias in systems from historic data, and what needs to happen going forward to make sure that it is more diverse and inclusive, and more accurate. Yeah, so it's a few elements. So, if you think about the algorithms are basically as good as the data is, and then If you think about the algorithms today. They're written by people so it starts by bringing more diversity within technology in my opinion and then it starts with HR and then it starts with how can you make sure and that's even you can use AI within HR. So we already do it for instance when we put our job efforts to make sure there's no bias in that and you can use. Data even to make the stuff of improvement, but that's where it needs to start. And we realized that there's even not enough women out there and that's why we started to stimulate through sponsorship scholarships and these type of initiatives but they're still A load of work to do because today there's not enough women that are choosing even the subjects to study. Give a final thought. Yeah. And also same with So generally, especially in Europe, it's not the case in the us so much in Asia but especially in Europe and also in the stirrups a bit different that women don't embrace technology in terms of coding and Falco Dam, I spent a lot of time I want fifty percent of women I've got thirty percent. I'm not there yet but we've done a lot of work in the way the school is bright and lots of colors everything we advertise and the way we, we do lots of gross hacking we go. And of personas of women we and we talk at them in evening we invite only women with women speakers in cyber security. We make it look sexy and you know what happen? We get them. Yeah. [ LAUGH ] [ INAUDIBLE ] So well and it's really question perception. Because it it formed because you cannot impact and coding is about creativity. I was saying to Gedion, we have some young women who did, who just created from academy and join a coding school. So, it is very much in the mind. It's about solving problem by creativity. So we can all change perception. Great, well, we're going to have to leave it there. I think our even our next panel might talk about this but thank you so much grant and Gilliam for being with us. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

MPW London 2019: A Discussion About Implementing A.I. in the Business World 

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What it takes to deploy new-tech for a winning company—and a better world.