Interview with Arijit Sengupta, CEO, AIble - Speaker at Global AI Conf - SCA - Jan 2019 Posted on : Nov 16 - 2018

We feature speakers at 3rd Annual Global Artificial Intelligence Conference - 2019 Jan 23 - 25 – Santa Clara 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 Interview with Arijit Sengupta, CEO, AIble Topic - "Real World AI"

Interview with Arijit Sengupta

1.      Tell us about yourself and your background?
Arijit Sengupta is the former CEO of BeyondCore, a market-leading Automated Analytics solution that is now part of Salesforce.com. Arijit has guest lectured at Stanford and other universities; spoken at conferences in a dozen countries; and was written about in The World Is Flat 3.0, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, and other leading publications. Arijit held leadership positions at several Big Data, Cloud Computing and eBusiness industry associations and previously worked at Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft, and Yankee Group. Arijit holds an MBA with Distinction from the Harvard Business School and Bachelor degrees with Distinction in Computer Science and Economics from Stanford University

2.      What have you been working on recently?
Delivering business ROI through AI—currently models are not really oriented directly to delivering ROI. They are aimed towards academic measures of accuracy, such as precision and recall. Unless we solve this disconnect between real world business needs and academics, most AI models will fail to create real impact on businesses.
I am also writing a book on demystifying artificial intelligence—essentially a practitioners view on where AI goes wrong in the real business world, and how to solve those problems.

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

 Imagination.

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?
AI is an academic tool that works well in the world of kaggle contests, but it stumbles badly in the real world which is why the vast majority of AI models are never deployed.
Over the next few years AI will get real—there will be a laser focus on delivering ROI through AI.

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?

 I think that people are more afraid of AI than they need to be.They are imagining Skynet or Hal, situations that aren’t the reality. The real question is how can we truly empower business users with the use of AI. The danger comes from how we frame the problem. Do we think of AI as a way to replace people, or do we think of AI as a way to empower people; giving every single business user superpowers so that they can do more than they ever thought possible.

 As long las we are focused on a truly humanist approach, AI will be an enabler as opposed to a source of fear.

6.      When you’re hiring, what types of people are you hiring? The job market for traditional programmers, engineers is  very difficult to get into AI space. Are you hiring from that talent pool or is that a different talent pool? In terms of talent, how do you go about ensuring you get the best AI people at your company?
People who have a sense of mission. We are hiring who we can whether that means it’s a dev we have to train on AI techniques, or if it’s a data scientist who isn’t as strong in writing code properly. The reality is that nobody is perfect. The question is, are you willing to learn? Are you willing to evolve? Are you willing to be better today than you were yesterday? That sense of willingness to learn and a deep curiosity—that’s something you can’t teach.

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

 This message has come up many times—when the steam engine was invented, when electricity was invented, then when computers were created. But the reality is that the jobs don’t go away—the nature of the jobs change.

Would you rather have us be the our best selves and try to progress as a society? Or would you rather have us focus on preserving the jobs that we understand today? I vote for, lets evolve. And let’s take care of people who will have to go through a period of disruption as a result. But in the end, if you create enough value, there’s always a way to share that value to make everyone better.

8.      What can AI systems do now?
Predict.

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

That is a very subjective question. As long as AI is focusing on empowering people, that kind of zero sum thinking has no place in the discussion.

10.  You’ve already hired X number of people approximately. What would be your pitch to folks out there to join your Organization? Why does your organization matter in the world?

You’ll never be bored. There is no politics. You will have an impact. The organization is critical because we are empowering every business user to create AI customized to them, to make their business better.

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

Get practical. If you don’t create results today, all this metaphysical discussion will come to nothing and we will have frittered away one of the biggest opportunities for transforming the way people do business, and in fact, the way that people live their lives.

12.  What are the top 5 AI Use cases in enterprises?
Predicting which deals to go after, which marketing promotions, which customers will churn, which products will fail, predicting when people will pay.

13.  Which company do you think is winning the global AI race?

 No one. Companies are running after the wrong goals.

14.  Any closing remarks?

 Come listen to me speak.