Interview with Vadim Astakhov, Solution Architect, Amazon Web Services - Speaker at Global Artificial Intelligence Conference Ap Posted on : Apr 18 - 2018

We feature speakers at Global Artificial Intelligence Conference - April 27-29 2018 – Seattle to catch up and find out what he or she is working on now and what's coming next. This week we're talking to Vadim Astakhov, Solution Architect, Amazon Web Services Topic - "Amazon Machine Learning Platform For Smart Contact Center"

Interview with Vadim Astakhov

1. Tell us about yourself and your background.

I am AWS Partner Solution Architect working on developed and implemented of Cloud adoption strategy for multiple Amazon Web Services (AWS) Enterprise customers in North and South America, Europe and Asia Pacific region. I lead AWS Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning initiative for AWS Partners on the West Coast. 

2. What have you been working on recently?

I perform Technical Review for AWS Consulting Partners who have demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success in the area of Big Data, Advance Analytics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. 

3. Tell me about the right tool you used recently to solve customer problem?

I try to use the best tool for each problem based on specifics of customer problem.

4. Where are we now today in terms of the state of artificial intelligence, and where do you think we’ll go over the next five years?

Recently, we start seeing a great adoption some mathematical discoveries from 80th-90th, like Neural Networks and Deep Learning which are become more available due to emergence of cloud computing. These are important breakthrough in adoption AI to business challenges. At the same time, AI and deep learning are not a guarantee of success, so the right balance of architecture, Big Data analytics and good development cycle will play  important role to make an AI/ML successful. I think in the next 5 years we will see more and more applications in AI solving complex problems and mission critical applications, but I don't expect AI will be removing human subject out of architectural and decision making activity.

5. There is a negative perception around AI and even some leading technology folks have come out against it or saying that it’s actually potentially harmful to society. Where are you coming down on those discussions? How do you explain this in a way that maybe has a more positive beneficial impact for society?

Unfortunately, some of negative perception is actually already been proven as true. AI/ML system can be easily  used to enhance and automate malicious activity. It was reported that, AI/ML system were  used by criminals to expose vulnerability of government and financial institutes. AI system capable to synthesize images and voices can be used by criminal groups to perform malicious impersonalization. Thus AI orchestrated phishing attack can be performed at large scale then traditional social engineering attacks. Automated bots already been used to manipulate information content on social networks. Those cases demonstrate the needs to develop new type of “AI defender” systems which will be able to recognize malicious AI activity and leverage countermeasures.

6. Will progress in AI and robotics take away the majority of jobs currently done by humans? Which jobs are most at risk?

Routine jobs with limited repetitive set of operation which can be automated might be at higher risk. But human operators must supervise AI systems.

7. What can AI systems do now?

BI greatly benefit from AI/ML systems. Some Image/voice recognition can be performed.

8. When will AI systems become more intelligent than people?

General intelligence is still open research topic. I see no way to do accurate predictions at that moment.

9. What are some of the best takeaways that the attendees can have from your talk?

There are economic and social issues that we need to address quickly. One of them is providing high quality service at any time and at large scale without sacrificing customers satisfaction. We show how AI/ML system will be crucial in developing automated Contact centers to provide services and facilitate sale activity. 

10. What are the top 5 AI Use cases in enterprises?

Security which covers many areas related to analysis of financial transactions, Image recognition,  Healthcare/patient data Predictive maintenance for manufacture, conveyer systems and IoT Social media content distribution, Chatbots and Voice Oil and mining industry leverage Geophysical feature detection/classification