Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Josh Sutton, Data & Artificial Intelligence Global Head at Publicis.Sapient (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Do you hear similar efforts within the IBM organization to create a layer where people who are mere mortals can work with Watson as a platform?

Josh Sutton: I firmly believe that that is where they’re headed. Full disclosure, I haven’t seen it to the same extent that I have seen with some other companies. I think they will get there. David has been in the role for about a year now. The challenge is just the length and breadth of it. They’re moving in that direction but they have a more diverse asset than everybody else, which means it’s a bit more complicated.

Sramana Mitra: Besides Microsoft Azure and Watson, are there any other platforms?

Josh Sutton: I’m a huge fan of Google right now and where they’re headed.

Sramana Mitra: What do you like about Google and where do they stand?

Josh Sutton: What I like about Google is the tech that they have chosen to release and roll out is extremely solid and it’s very clean and usable and, surprisingly, well-supported. That was one of the initial concerns I had around Google given that they’re not an enterprise company historically. Thus far, I have been pleasantly surprised. It’s been a very good experience working with them and partnering with them on a number of different programs.

The challenge that they probably will have going forward is that they’re making a pivot. They’re trying to be an enterprise company for at least a portion. Diane Greene is in charge of that. She’s doing a great job. They rolled out some amazing things. Fei-Fei is doing an amazing job stepping into the role of leading AI for them. Some of the things that they’re rolling out are things I’m excited about.

In particular, Vision has the ability to do analysis of videos and provide some real best-in-class capabilities of identification of what’s going on in videos and enable that to become searchable. The other thing that I like there is their cloud technologies. They’re really solid. It’s got the same challenges which is they’re figuring out what it means to be an enterprise company and what it means to support and service things. While I’m cautiously optimistic and bullish on their prospects, I fully expect them to trip and stumble a few times over the years as they make that cultural shift. Cultural changes are hard to make in companies.

Sramana Mitra: Have you seen anything from the startup world that’s worth discussing in that context?

Josh Sutton: I already mentioned Luminoso.

Sramana Mitra: That’s very specific to the unstructured data capability, right?

Josh Sutton: Yes, the other one that’s interesting and I like working with because they do something nobody else does well is a company by the name of Cycorp. What Doug has been able to create is a platform that addresses one of the biggest gaps in machine learning platforms. In industries like advertising, being able to provide a logic trail for why you’re making a recommendation isn’t particularly important.

In areas like healthcare or finance, it’s much more critical. People don’t just want to know the answer. They want to know how you derived that answer. That’s one of the things that their platform does very well. They provide that logical trail back and even come up with conflicting answers with logic trails supporting each answer. For specific use cases, that has been one of my go to’s. I don’t think it’s a complete solution in itself but it works extremely well in concert with some of the other platforms out there.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Josh Sutton, Data & Artificial Intelligence Global Head at Publicis.Sapient
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