Why B-School is initiating teaching Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

There is no doubt that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are the two hot buzzwords right now. Examples of how AI and ML based disruptive practices are replacing traditional businesses on one hand while creating new business opportunities, on the other hand, are many.
In a nutshell, AI is the broader concept of machines being able to carry out tasks in a ‘smart’ way while ML prescribes the set of such ‘smart’ rules that the computer figures itself out.

2 lakh new jobs coming up in Artificial Intelligence sector
It is no exaggeration to say the current and the future belongs to AI and ML. It is estimated that in USA, there are more than 10,000 positions available at top employers across the country and additionally, the country is estimated to have 2, 50,000 open data science jobs by 2024.

Elsewhere — in EU, Canada and China — the demand for AI related jobs are not only in high demand, they are a few notches above the median salary.

India too is not far behind other countries in terms of AI hiring. Some estimates expect a 60 per cent rise by this year due to increasing adoption of automation, and the related IT industry will require 50 per cent more workforces equipped with digital skills.

All this translates to around 2 lakh new jobs this year.

Educational institutes need to provide future AI employees
Obviously, where the demand is there, educational institutes are expected to be at the forefront in bridging the gap. The question is — why are AI and ML finding its way into the B-school curriculum when it appears that AI and ML are still the forte of computer scientists, programmers and mathematicians?

Almost all of the top 20 business schools in India are now offering specialisations in Business Analytics while some of them are offering specialisation tracks in AI ML.

The answer is evident if we closely inspect two things:
One – what does AI ML typically do or can do?
Two — what are the expected roles of business schools?

Decision-making based on data inputs isn’t anything new: Benefits of AI and ML
To understand what AI and ML bring, we must acknowledge that decision-making based on data inputs isn’t new. Indeed, the traditional courses offered in B-schools related to decision sciences used computational algorithms as well as statistical models to solve problems.

Most of these algorithms are over a century old. However, our getting to a solution was limited by the way we deemed fit to go about it.

For example, logistic regressions, the favourite technique for many to solve binary classification problems (problems that needed us to correctly predict one group from the other), required us not only to identify the factors but also how they must be related to each other.

Undiscovered and hidden patterns in the data eluded us. ML solved this by letting the algorithms learn on its own, from the data and from itself the best route to classify.
Thus, the various boosting models, ensemble techniques as well as neural network models connected dots in the data which improved upon the results traditional algorithms could not.

The second finesse AI and ML brought are the unstructured data. This is what defines them and has not only gives us additional insights, it helps us address and tackle issues which otherwise we struggled with.
We now solve traditional problems using data obtained from video cameras, speeches, texts, social media interactions, images, satellite images etc. We no longer need to only focus on historical data to gauge stock market sentiments, often analysing texts in shareholder reports gives us better accuracy.
To estimate the footfalls in shopping malls, traditional survey methods are getting replaced by images of cars in car parks, to design agricultural forward contracts, satellite images of agricultural plots provide invaluable information.

Simply put, AI and ML have allowed us to access, process and utilize data in an efficient way to solve complex problems – both traditional as well as those posed in the new ecosystem. This is where B-schools fit in, almost by design.

B-school curriculums have always pride themselves for creating efficient decision makers. Managers are expected to decide and then execute their decisions. Often, such decisions must be made based on limited data and experience and yet must be made quickly.

It is not surprising, therefore, that some of those decisions face ex-post criticism, and perhaps rightly so. Decisions based on AI-ML are likely to reduce such errors.
For one, most of the unstructured data are not open to manipulations, and two, analysis based on that data reduces the human bias largely.

What is missing with AI and ML: the power of human intuition
However, there is an intrinsic part of human decision making that can’t be separated — intuition.
To a machine, a data is a set of numbers arranged in rows and columns where the column headings have no meaning! To a manager, the column headings are the most important. It is his training and experience that allows him to retain what is essential and cull out the rest.
Unlike a data scientist, whose journey with ML techniques is almost entirely about the column headings, he can trade-off accuracy for insight.

For example, an ML technique may always pick up ethnicity of an individual to determine whether he is worthy of receiving a loan, but a manager can use insights to exclude ethnicity as it may violate some fundamental principles!

A successful AI ML programme in B-schools must ensure that this balance stays. Curriculums must focus on ML techniques complimenting the managerial decision and not substitute them.
While Indian business schools were reasonably slow in riding the business analytics wave, it appears they want to remain ahead of the AI ML curve this time.

AI to enhance new job and employment engagement

Contrary to popular belief, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will have a “positive impact” on workplaces as it would create new job roles besides enhancing employee engagement and decision-making, a report said on September 6.
Artificial Intelligence to diversify human thinking
According to a Tata Communications’ study based on inputs from 120 global business leaders, Artificial Intelligence will diversify human thinking rather than replace it.

Artificial Intelligent: Statistics
As per the study, 90 per cent leaders agree that cognitive diversity is important for management

  • 75 per cent respondents expect AI to create new roles for their employees
  • 93 per cent believe that AI will enhance decision-making
  • AI to help people become more productive
    “While AI will replace some tasks, it will also create new ways of working, new jobs and new roles in companies. AI will also help people as well as organisations become more productive. It’s not man vs machine, rather man and machine working together,” Tata Communications CEO and MD Vinod Kumar told PTI.

The report further noted that Artificial Intelligence has the potential to assess each employee’s skills and innovation priorities, and suggest activities to spark creative thinking throughout the organisational hierarchy.
This can democratise the creative process and increase engagement of all workers.

More focus on communication and innovation
AI will also free employees from most tedious repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus more on communication and innovation.
“Work will move from being task-based to strategic, enabling workers to enhance their curiosity and creative thinking,” it added.
According to Professor Ken Goldberg, a leading AI researcher at UC Berkeley, there is fear now that AI will surpass human thinking and that machines are superior to humans.

“Robots and AI are not going to take away this creative, insightful, empathetic aspect of almost every job,” Goldberg noted.

The Promise of AI is in Assistive Intelligence

This is a contributed piece by Francois Ajenstat, chief product officer at Tableau Software and has been written in response to a recent piece by our senior staff writer, Dan Swinhoe

As artificial intelligence surges to the forefront of modern society, research and debate swirls around the power and role it should play. More often than not, a cloud of skepticism looms over the topic of security of jobs in the workforce. However, if we consider AI as assistive intelligence rather than an asteroid on a collision course, humans can take advantage of the opportunities presented through its advancement. With this approach, humans enhance, rather than replace skills, leading to increased benefit from technology and improvements in quality of life.
Applications of AI have the ability to empower workers and increase efficiencies across industries and every aspect of the supply chain. To put this into perspective, a recent study from PwC argues that machines will “increase productivity by up to 14.3% by 2030” and the UK’s GDP could be up to 10.3% higher in 2030, equivalent to an additional £232bn ($307bn).

Yet the advantages of AI are not exclusive to a macroeconomic level. Benefits also extend to the individual level by fundamentally changing employee responsibilities. Workers are liberated from daily mundane and menial tasks to explore a higher level of thinking and creativity, ultimately expanding their job roles. Of course, this in turn will translate into positives for their employers as a more engaged workforce leads to increased sales, productivity and employee retention.

In fact, a recent Deloitte Insights study of workers in the public sector showed that many tasks could actually be handled through automation. The study found that documenting and recording information is the most time-consuming for employees, sucking 10% of work hours, which could be saved using technology like AI.

However, AI is not a replacement for tasks simply because they are time-consuming. The same Deloitte study concludes that tasks, like caring for patients, simply cannot be replaced by AI. For example, cognitive technologies cannot assess a patient’s mood or administer medicine, and therefore are not advanced enough to replace the role of workers carrying out such responsibilities. Currently, the reach of AI extends only to enabling human workers with more of the time and resources needed to provide exceptional patient care. Ultimately, AI compliments human intelligence, enabling workers to focus on tasks that require insights and experience beyond what goes into an algorithm.

This brings us to the fact that true business value comes from the capitalisation of uniquely human skills. Individuals fluent in the language of data are already in high demand across the corporate world. While machine learning backed algorithms and AI assist decision makers in accessing and analysing relevant data, some tasks are abstract or situational and require an amount of intuition and experience to make the best decisions. Humans are uniquely qualified to ensure the encoded assumptions are reasonable and then to ask meaningful follow-up questions that link answers back to business problems.

While AI can find unexpected outliers and identify patterns within the data, human analysis plays a vital role in gathering useful insights from what they find on the screen. This is especially true when those problems lie in industries such as marketing, where success is often related to one’s ability to make a personal connection between brands and consumers – human to human. AI can be used to sort through data and identify a target audience, but only humans have the emotional intelligence to create a story that will resonate with the right audiences and deliver results.

Just as any mammal adapts to a change in its environment, so too will the human race. Machines have yet to match humans in regards to solving contextual business problems with big data. They lack the ability to draw from personal experience, context, emotion and the ingenuity required to go that next step. Exploring this scope is therefore paramount in acquiring job security and increasing workers’ purpose.

The debate surrounding AI will only intensify with its continued expansion. As with any groundbreaking development, the fear of disrupting the status quo is unavoidable. However, disruption does not have to equal destruction.
What matters is how we respond and find new ways to thrive alongside technology.

Property Investment Market Continuing to Hit New Heights in Hong Kong

According to a report by JLL’s latest Property Market Monitor, the property investment market in Hong is continuously hitting new heights since last year, which is also riding on strong global investor interest.

A total of four en-bloc office buildings were sold for a total consideration of HKD 14.8 billion in 2018, which is about 17% higher than last year.

The en-bloc sale of 18 King Wah Road drew the most attention, setting a new record for the largest office transaction in Hong Kong East.

Decentralization remained as a key theme playing out among office tenants in the leasing market. The spotlight and the focus of leasing activity was on Hong Kong East and Kowloon East. Here tenant decentralization and consolidation requirements underpinned demand. Net take-up in the overall market amounted to 209,900 sq. ft till date. The net absorption in Central reached 33,000 sq. ft. as diverse tenants requested room for expansion.

“The broadening gap between rents in Central and emerging core business districts will add momentum to decentralization. We expect Hong Kong’s Grade A office market rentals to continue to trend higher, rising by up to 5% in 2018, with the support of the outbound growth of Mainland Chinese companies. Central will continue to outperform the overall market as demand competes for the pockets of space that exist,” reports Alex Barnes, Head of Markets at JLL.

On the back of a tightened vacancy environment, office rents in Central advanced by 0.7% m-o-m in January. There was a rise in rents in Hong Kong East region by 0.8% m-o-m, driven largely by increasing demand at the top-end of the market.

“The strong pricing achieved in the government sale of the Murray Road Car Park in May last year is now starting to permeate through the broader office market as investors reset benchmarks.  With local money also flowing into the market, the record high prices being set in the market are no longer relying solely on PRC buyers. We expect capital values to rise a further 5-10% in 2018 even with interest rates set to rise further,” asserted Denis Ma, Head of Research at JLL.

The sentiment remained upbeat buttressed by record high land sale for government sites in Kowloon as well as strong gains in the local stock market, in the city’s residential market. The mass residential properties’ capital values raised up by 0.9% m-o-m in the first month of 2018 following to an increase of 1.3% m-o-m the previous month.

Next Generation CIOs to Create Paths of Success

This is a contributed piece by Adam Spearing, Senior Vice President, EMEA of Platform and Communities at Salesforce

The role of the CIO has changed immeasurably since I started working in tech some 20 years ago. The IT department is no longer here to ‘keep the lights on.’ Instead, the CIO is now Innovator in Chief, disruptor extraordinaire, and driver of change.

This shift is down to the rapid change in the way tech is perceived in many organizations and the demands from a generation used to the mobile consumer experience —  it has become a core enabler to the business, rather than a nice to have. What’s more, with breakthrough capabilities enabled by new technologies such as AI and big data, a growing shortage of available developers, and an increasingly tech-savvy business user, the role of IT — and the CIO in particular — is morphing into one of strategic advisor to the business and driver of innovation within the company.

But how can IT leaders manage this digital transition and take advantage of rapidly emerging opportunities? Discussing this question with customers, colleagues, and partners, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are three things IT leaders need to do to thrive in this new environment.

Take a business-first IT mindset
The rise of the next-gen CIO and their success can be put down to a number of factors, but one of the biggest is ensuring the IT function is commercially oriented. Today’s most successful CIOs are setting up their departments as profit, rather than cost, centers. CIOs must have a greater understanding of the business case for any new programme or tech-focused initiative. Only by understanding the wider business strategy and objectives can CIOs understand how to prioritize IT projects that best serve the customer and grow the business. It’s therefore a key part of the CIO’s role to ensure IT is involved in all decision-making processes and to establish themselves as a partner within the business.

Ocado’s CTO Paul Clarke is a case in point. When it comes to instilling long-term change, Paul sees the mission for his division, Ocado Technology, as fueling innovation and entrepreneurial spirit throughout the business. This ensures that technology decisions and initiatives are powering the commercial and strategic needs of the company.

Unlock data to innovate
Technological change is also forcing large companies to find new ways of working. Shell, for example, is facing market disruption from new types of competitors, which are changing the way the market trades and buys fuel. The company can’t afford to stand still and watch the world change around it.
As a CIO, one way to discover new ways of working is to unlock the data sitting within the business and turn that ever-growing pile of data into opportunity. Embracing a cloud-based system of engagement is no longer just about delivering a 360-degree view of the customer. It also enables end users to slice and dice customer data for actionable insights that help them see opportunities for new ways of working such as building apps to help run the business.

In the case of Shell, the team is using data analytics, big data and artificial intelligence to make better decisions internally. For example AI is being used in the analysis of the huge volumes of information created in the day-to-day running of Shell’s plants, helping the company to become more profitable.
Shell also uses AI to improve the customer experience and to keep ahead of the competition. For example the Shell Connected Car Open API can analyze user behavior and offer customers tailored convenience and loyalty rewards. The platform helps Shell predict what a customer might want so that when they arrive at one of their retail sites they can immediately send an offer to their phone such as a discount on food and drink.

Focus on the customer and employee experience
It’s not just businesses looking for fresh ways of working. Customers too are looking for innovative ways to make their lives easier. Our recent State of IT report shows customers are not simply looking for differentiation — they seek disruption. And they’re giving their loyalty (and business) to companies that are looking at new ways to do things that make their lives easier – whether it’s booking a place to stay with Airbnb or ordering tonight’s dinner via Deliveroo.

Technology has also changed what customers expect from the brands and companies they interact with. An overwhelming 70% said technology has made it easier for them to take their business elsewhere and a further 58% agree it has ‘significantly changed’ their expectations of how companies should interact with them. CIOs therefore need to focus on deploying new workflows and technologies that help their business deliver a convenient — and disruptive — experience to customers.

CIOs today should also look at applying these same principles to their employees. After all, it is employees who serve on the front lines of customer service, act as brand ambassadors, and are ultimately responsible for the organization’s success.

It’s clear that it has never been a more exciting or daunting time to be a CIO. The reason? Well, with IT leading the business, CIOs are under the spotlight like never before. At the same time the speed of business is also increasing. To quote Shell’s VP & Global CIO, Craig Walker: “Make a decision in the 1990s and it wouldn’t be wrong for eight years. Now, it could be eight weeks.”

Exit mobile version