Check out Manna and "Empathy driven AI"

My summer reading included a book called Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future by Marshall Brain,  which described a world with robots, and artificial intelligence (AI). In the book, there were two specific implementations of this technology.  One focused on automating businesses, and the other focused on improving the quality of life. 

I am not sure if we will reach either state, but it was good to get a perspective on how the world could be.  Personally, as a trained data scientist,  I don't envision robots taking over my life.  With any technology,  we need to use it with pragmatism.  AI will enable decision-makers to be aware of their biases and tendencies.  "Based on gut feelings" will be reduced.  At the same time,  all decision-makers shouldn't be making identical decisions since they may not have similar emotions about a decision.  

Speaking about emotions, currently, AI engineers are currently developing  AI algorithms to mimic and sense human emotions  Chatbots, and virtual assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and others want to detect emotion via user interaction and provide a better answer.  AI-driven emotions should strive for better sales and improved customer experience. A Senior Analyst (now former) Allison Snow at Forrester posted a blog entry on November 12, 2018, titled AI Tech Shines A Path To Empathetic Triggers where connects three independent entities empathy, insights, and AI within the context of B2B marketing. On October 14, 2019,  Gartner published the article, Digital Empathy: A New Lever for Earnings Growth by Kristin Moyer, Dave Aron, and Don Scheibenreif.  Gartner typically takes a concept and brands it with its own buzz words.  In this case, Gartner calls AI-driven emotions "Digital Empathy."  

With all innovative ideas, you will find folks who will talk about the dangers of these ideas.  In the article, Empathy in Artificial Intelligence on Medium.com, Jun Wu writes about AI, human emotions, and the ethics around.  Last month Harvard Business Review (HBR) published an article called The Risks of Using AI to Interpret Human Emotions by three Accenture employees (Mark Purdy, John Zealley, and Omaro Museli).  Accenture talks about biases seeping in the AI since AI is nothing more than decisions based on past data.  

Overall the AI-driven empathy concept is entirely new. I wonder how the Nigerian prince scam would work if we were effectively duped into giving money. I feel bad for the security guys, but at the same time, there is a business opportunity. All of these ideas are reflected in the book Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future.  Check out the book!

NOTE: I used the image from Amazon.com.

My customer experience

Last weekend I was in the hospital as my wife gave birth to our son Zachary.  As I was walking in the hallways of the hospital, I realized that hospitals have changed alot in the the last thirty years so.  When my brother was born in 1980, I remember walking in the hospitals and seeing how the hospital was setup.  It was sterile, white, and frankly boring. It is similar to the scene in the classic movie, One who flew over the cuckoo's nest.  I posted a picture from the movie.  Do you notice the whites and grays in this picture.  

Now here are pictures from the hospital where my wife gave birth to our son


Do you notice the blue & gray carpet, the nice wood floors and the halls have beautiful paintings and pictures.  This is typical of any hospital in the US in the twenty first century.

I liked the change and it made my experience in the hospital pleasurable. The doctors, nurses and the staff are extremely polite and the overall experience was great. 

In March 2012, I was given the opportunity to work for my IT organization's customer service department.  I look at customer requests and enable the requests to get processed to the appropriate IT service delivery group.  I enjoy working in the customebr service department because it has provided me an opportunity to assist in the transformation of an IT organization. 

A few years ago, IT organizations were viewed as a collection of computer geeks who wrote client server software or fixed PCs.  Couple of years ago, I talked someone in the US government who was complaining that typical IT person is an introvert who enjoyed working with technology.  He stated this type of workforce was hurting the overall image of his IT department.

I talked to numerous people in the private sector and public sector and there is a frustration that IT budgets are getting cut, IT functions are being outsourced and most of the time they don't understand how they can join the transformation rather than fight it.

After my experience in the hospital and reading Gartner, Forrester articles, I believe IT organizations need to emphasize customer experience management.  Customer relationship management is key however the relationships cannot become strong without providing a rich customer experience.  If I am a customer, I would like the IT department to be proactive, understand my business and needs and enable me to do my job better.  If I don't enjoy working with the IT department then I won't be able to develop a mutually constructive relationship.  For a rich customer experience, I would like the IT department to be transparent, and provide me good service.  Not service like this:

So whenever I think about customer experience, I think about my hospital experience.  I am sure we can do improve the customer experience in IT.  We don't Peggys like the ad above.
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Can't Base Everything On...

I have been following Gartner and Forrester's research content on SOA, EA and other IT concepts from 2005 till present and I have learnt the following:

• Do not base ALL your IT decisions on Gartner and Forrester's predictions and recommendations. I have seen large IT companies make investments in technologies and products where the investments have not panned out because their IT environments are quite different. For instance SOA was the hype in 2005 however current Gartner analysts are saying that SOA simply doesn't work well in most IT environments. Research analysts tend to do that alot since they are reacting and analyzing current trends and make predictions and later contradict their predictions.
  
• Scope Best Practices and Products using Research. Rather than testing ten separate products for your certain IT requirements, you can choose the top five products as assessed by Research companies like Gartner and Forrester. Do assessments on the top five products and see how well they meet your IT requirements and how well do they perform in your IT environment.
• Use Research for Initial Business Justification. If you are looking to address a business problem and you want to follow Gartner or Forrester's recommendations then use their material to carefully craft a business justification on why you want to prototype their recommendation. Please keep in mind that you should address Return on Investment even if the recommendations don't work for IT enviroment.
• Engage these Research Companies. You want to market your IT strategy and progress then I highly recommend that you keep a lively engagement with the Research analysts where they will refine their research using your enviroment's results and at the same time they will give insight into current best practices. But be careful not to waste their time or yours by not having a detailed strategy on how you want to execute your vision and how you want to collaborate and market with these Research companies.
• MOST IMPORTANT: Consider the Research material however stick to your vision and requirements in executing your vision. Afterall you know the 50K feet view and the 1 inche view and therefore it is your responsiblity to execute it.

Good luck!