Sramana Mitra: If you were starting a company today with AI, what kinds of open problems would you want to solve? Paul Daugherty: There’s a lot of areas that I’m actually really interested in. One of the issues that is a great one to solve with AI is around the identity issue. How do we
Sramana Mitra: Can I tell you a little bit about my interpretation of what’s happening in this realm? Paul Daugherty: Sure. Sramana Mitra: I think there’s going to be so much experimentation in this area in various applications of AI that it’s going to be completely unmanageable. I don’t think it’s going to be possible
Sramana Mitra: What is your estimate of the timeframe for all this to come into society? Paul Daugherty: It’s a 10 plus year transition. We’re at the very early stages of applying AI. It’s going to take a while for the technology to mature in a lot of areas. It’s going to take time to
Sramana Mitra: What about in healthcare? Paul Daugherty: Healthcare is huge. Sramana Mitra: How far are we in enabling doctors with AI capabilities? Paul Daugherty: Just scratching the surface, but there is huge potential. One example people use a lot is machine learning for detecting patterns in radiology and doing diagnostics more effectively. Companies like
Sramana Mitra: What format does that take? Is this like an online chatbot where there are three entities interfacing? Paul Daugherty: The only people conversing are the customer service agent and the customer. The chatbot is advising the customer service agent. Sramana Mitra: Behind the scene. Paul Daugherty: Right. It’s allowing the person to be
This interview explores the machine augmented human capabilities of an AI-driven future that we’re marching towards. Sramana Mitra: I want to double-click down on some of the work that you’ve done in human-machine interaction and where that is going. Where are the new jobs going to be? What would be the types of new jobs?
Sramana Mitra: There is an IT gap that is complicated to bridge. I’m originally from India. I track the evolution of the Indian IT industry. A large part of that is in low-end business process outsourcing. I have seen so many applications where you put a piece of software in and 4,000 people are out
Sramana Mitra: In some of your ideas that you’ve presented in the book, you are talking about AI being an augmentation factor as opposed to displacement factor in various workflows. I think the classic one that fits that bill would be in healthcare with doctors working with patients and electronic medical records. It’s actually a