Lifeboat Foundation

As much as the title states India isn’t ready for AI; much of the world isn’t fully ready either. Very few businesses are planning and prepping for an AI transformation or introduction into their businesses or companies; many schools still require newer methods (if not a program/ set of courses) to teach AI; many financial structures like insurance for business using AI capabilities such as robots that will interact regularly with the public are not widely available for businesses; etc. Lots of planning and work remains even across the US for AI adoption to truly be appreciated by the masses.

India still not ready for Artificial Intelligence (Tech Feature) — New Delhi, Feb 10 : At a time when the global technology giants are set to leverage the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for your daily lives — from taking care of businesses to fulfilling your personal needs — India seems to be reluctant to get on to this bus.

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Danaher’s Instruments of Change — If you feel like your industry that has always been on a slow & stable growth curve is now under greater pressure to change; you’re not alone. Recent indicators are showing with the latest changes in tech and consumers (namely the millennials as the largest consumers today); industries have been shaken up to perform at new levels like never before or companies in those industries will cease to be relevant.

Doing well by doing good is now expected for businesses, and moral leadership is at a premium for CEOs. For today’s companies to maintain their license to operate, they need to take into account a range of elements in their decision making: managing their supply chains, applying new ways of measuring their business performance that include indicators for social as well as commercial returns, and controlling the full life cycle of their products’ usage as well as disposal. This new reality is demonstrated by the launch last September of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which call on businesses to address sustainability challenges such as poverty, gender equality, and climate change in new and creative ways. The new expectations for business also are at the heart of the Change the World list, launched by Fortune Magazine in August 2015, which is designed to identify and celebrate companies that have made significant progress in addressing major social problems as a part of their core business strategy.

Technology and millennials seem to be driving much of this change. Socially conscious customers and idealistic employees are applauding companies’ ability to do good as part of their profit-making strategy. With social media capable of reaching millions instantly, companies want to be on the right side of capitalism’s power. This is good news for society. Corporate venturing activities are emerging, and companies are increasingly leveraging people, ideas, technology, and business assets to achieve social and environmental priorities together with financial profit. These new venturing strategies are focusing more and more on areas where new partnerships and investments can lead to positive outcomes for all: the shareholders, the workers, the environment, and the local community.

Continue reading “Technology and Millennials Are Driving Business Strategy and Social Change” »

Good article and perspective. And, I believe areas like Finance and Legal will be addressed over the next 5 to 7 years with AI. However, much of our critical needs are in healthcare particularly medical technology and Infrastructure (including security); and these need to get upgraded and improved now.

I recently read a thought provoking article by Klaus Schwab, called ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond’. At the beginning of the article Schwab describes the first three industrial revolutions, which I think we’re all fairly familiar with:

1784 – steam, water and mechanical production equipment.

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Nice — Bridgewaters engaged. Actually, not too surprised by this.

IBTimes UK spoke to AI finance startup Walnut Algorithms about machine learning and the financial sector.

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2 trends that is happening now especially with millennials: car ownership is no longer the desire; and home ownership is out of reach. And, this will impact at a minimum 4 industries — financial, real estate, auto, and insurance industries? Something that many in industry will need to get very creative in addressing to entice the future larger market consumers.

Young people no longer rush to buy their first car, meaning future cities need to think quickly about public transport and the emerging “share economy”, one of Australia’s leading urban futurists says.

Fewer people will “own a car”, “shared” driverless cars will be common and the “Uber” idea of sharing a ride will extend beyond an alternative to taxis, to ‘sharing’ homes, jobs, electric cars, hotel rooms and bikes by 2050.

Continue reading “Young Aussies thinking twice about car ownership: city futurist” »

Could an avg “Joe” from Wall Street actually beat AI? It sounds like it.

Investor and Forbes contributor John S. Tobey has a rather fatalistic view of artificial intelligence-based investing and trading regimes. In a recent article, the former professional investment manager who formerly operated a multi-manager fund of funds, likes three primary investment strategies – and they don’t generally include artificial intelligence and computer-based hedge fund decision processes.

Continue reading “Beat Artificial Intelligence In Markets By Investing In Individual Stocks?” »

Nice! Robo-advice will be accessed by investors worth $2.2 trillion by 2020, equivalent to 12% of the global retail funds.

If you’re a finance professional, the question you probably get asked most by your friends and acquaintances is “what investments they should make”? That’s the basic question that everyone with money will ask. They may ask the “financial advisor” at their bank, they may turn to Google for advice, they may ask their “friends who work in finance”, or they may listen to recommendations of people they trust. However, individuals with a high net worth will typically seek out a wealth management firm with a brand they trust. But which firm?

Try to Google “top wealth management firms” and the first 5 search results will be a comparison of the top 100 wealth management firms. That’s a very competitive space. How do you differentiate yourself from your 99 competitors who are essentially trying to so the same thing you are? One way is through the use of technology, and as a result we see the rise of “robo advisors”. Here’s the definition of a “robo-advisor” from Investopedia:

Continue reading “The Real Truth Behind the Rise of Robo-Advisors” »

Overall, this is a good article. However, for AI to truly take off across industry; you must understand the industries that you’re trying to enable. I keep finding this gap in all of the AI discussions.

Yes, we have opportunities in the consumer space; however, if you truly want to be embraced by industry to enable it’s front and back office operations you must ensure that the AI that you’re developing can easily support and enable businesses. Granted not all AI belongs in business and are sometimes better suit for the consumer space or government and vice versa. However, when designing and developing AI; you truly have to know up front who is your primary targeted audience and remain focused towards that audience.

Dr. Kailash Nadh, who holds a PhD in artificial intelligence from London’s Middlesex University and is the CTO of financial technology firm Zerodha, talks about why AI hasn’t picked up yet and what lies in the future.

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Wise Autoresponse for your Customer Support Call Center needs — I do know that one of the large financial institutions in NYC announced in Dec. that they were replacing their tier 1 & tier 2 support with AI this summer.

BERKELEY, CA — (Marketwired) — 01/27/16 — Wise.io, which delivers machine learning applications to help enterprises provide a better customer experience, today announced the availability of Wise Auto Response, the first intelligent auto reply functionality for customer support organizations. Using machine learning to understand the intent of an incoming ticket and determine the best available response, Wise Auto Response automatically selects and applies the appropriate reply to address the customer issue without ever involving an agent. By helping customer service teams answer common questions faster, Wise Auto Response removes a high percentage of tickets from the queue, freeing up agents’ time to focus on more complex tickets and drive higher levels of customer satisfaction.

“Wise Auto Response has dramatically eased the burden on our support agents, allowing us to reply to half of all tickets automatically,” said Francesca Noli, VP of Marketing at Product Madness. “Now we are able to focus agent attention on more complex, customer-facing issues like payment problems, which have a direct impact on our bottom line. Wise gives us the best of both worlds: it has the power of an artificial intelligence system like Watson, along with the lightweight integration we need to successfully apply machine learning to our service operations quickly, easily and cost effectively.”

Wise Auto Response identifies common customer inquiries that can be responded to with a high level of confidence — such as password resets and basic product functionality, or standard “thank you” email templates that don’t require hands-on follow up — and automatically responds without the need for any manually written business rules. The new functionality complements the current suite of predictive applications offered by Wise.io, including Wise Routing, which automates the support ticket triage process, and Wise Recommended Response, which provides a ranked shortlist of appropriate macros and templates for each new customer inquiry.

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