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Interview with Dennis Mortensen, CEO of X.ai
NOT
Outside of time, you want to tease your aunt to ask what time it is, think: the smart speaker has become the fastest selling technology product from the smartphone. Less than four years after the launch of Amazon Echo, about 20% of all US adults have a smart speaker at home. According to eMarketer forecasts, by 2020, smart speakers will have 76.5 million users in the United States.
Just as "BYOD" marked more than a decade ago a technological migration from the consumer world to the office with smartphones, the rapid adoption of smart home speakers collides with their next destination: the workplace.
This time, you probably will not need to bring one to work. Employers are investing not only in smart speakers for business and productivity applications, but also in voice-enabled AI applications that allow employees to interact with virtual assistants. It's not only a revolution of smart speakers, but also the advancement of natural language processing (NLP) capabilities that can be integrated into everything from AI speakers and chatbots to applications. mobile.
Voice assistants have attracted big players to help develop the market. Amazon, for its part, jumped into the fray by launching Alexa for Business last November. Suggested uses include setting up shared speakers near printers to order ink, and using personal speakers to organize meetings, make calls, and retrieve information from applications popular customer relationship management software such as Salesforce.
But to become really smart, AIs like Alexa need skills – the smart equivalent of apps on an iPhone. In industrial jargon, Alexa is "horizontal", a generalist AI that primarily handles simple commands. Complex commands go to specialized "vertical" programs for a function. If you say "Alexa, meet Phil in accounting next week" – a complex order that requires using your calendar, who Phil is and being able to talk to her – then Alexa needs a meeting planner from vertical skills. .
But this only scratches the surface of the potential of virtual assistants. Already, companies are putting technology to work with AI assistants and chatbots for sales and lead generation, customer service queries, product configuration and other needs to improve productivity, reduce costs or improve customer service. experience of customers and employees.
To learn more about the future of technology, we spoke with Dennis Mortensen, CEO of X.ai in New York, who created a virtual assistant (called Amy or Andrew) who organizes meetings while managing all details: It considers time and place constraints and negotiates the best solution for all parties.
Forbes
While this may not seem completely revolutionary, it does suggest important productivity gains that these assistants can bring to the job, especially as they begin to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. Organizing a meeting for you is one example, but Mortensen sees hundreds of other voice apps growing in the coming years, which will increase productivity.
This is the biggest advantage that voice assistants can bring to their workplace?
They can accomplish complex goals and not be limited to individual tasks. A new user interface, at least conceptually, does not modify any of the software we have interacted with so far. The reason I think there will be an impact is that the conversational user interface will be so effective at achieving complete goals.
For example, if you jump into a spreadsheet on your phone or desktop, you do a micro-task, such as changing a cell or taking a nap. A goal is something like putting together a report covering two quarters of the business. This is not a task you can do today in Excel.
How do we get to the point where workplace RNs start to present these "complicated goals," as you say?
I think that there are two technical barriers to achieving this kind of advancement. One is a little mysterious, because it's education. You can install Photoshop and determine if I tell you to do something because you are used to the GUI. But in the voice configuration, which is completely open, you need another type of education. We have certainly seen that. & lsqb; Our customers & rsqb; ask us, "How can I stop Amy or cancel a meeting?" You can use the exact words you just wrote me: "Amy, stop the meeting".
Before presenting you with the second challenge, why do users have a hard time understanding this order themselves?
Because we have not trained users to use any software in the world of conversational user interface. The only reason I feel comfortable as a start-up manager who launches a product in advance of the & lsqb; UI & rsqb; The learning curve is that Google, Amazon and Samsung are massively educating the market and doing it very aggressively. This type of education work is the first real challenge of integrating voice assistants into the workplace, but this is already happening to some extent.
The next most important challenge of technology is in two packages. One is the ambiguity. You or I believe we are clear in our demands because in our heads we know exactly what we want. But there is a lot of ambiguity in the way we express what we want, and recognizing and clarifying this ambiguity is a daunting challenge.
Then, if I am AI, my universe exists in the form of a pool of intentions and a set of entities. Intentions such as "I'm late", "I am mandatory", "You are optional" or entities like "He is the administrator". Try to define these intentions so that there is no element of this universe confused or misunderstood. actually quite difficult. Take a self-driving car he can not make a complete model of the real world. It's way too complex. So, you have to create a simplistic model to understand it, but what does it consist of? Roads, signs, weather, animals? Defining all these things is really difficult.
We all want a good meeting scheduler. But there are so many other high level needs in the workplace. Are we years away from more sophisticated applications?
My bet is that you will see tens of thousands of very specialized vertical AIs that will do a very good job each – and all working side by side will have an exponential effect.
When Apple launched the iPhone, they thought it could be preinstalled with all the applications you needed. Apple actually had infinite capital, they could have tried to build all these applications. But of course, they would not know what kind of application each person would need. They therefore needed 2 million applications from external developers to satisfy the market.
You can see Amazon making a similar bet with the voice. They want to be the horizontal AI, but they have the store of skills. Amy, the virtual assistant of X.ai; would be just an app in this store.
Your assistant is part of what was traditionally an administrative job. Of course, people are worried that with the rise of AI assistants, a lot of jobs for humans will disappear. Is this a valid concern?
There are agents who will do simple jobs that were a luxury service. Nobody has a driver today, a personal driver, and this is where self-driving cars come in. & Lsqb; X.ai & rsqb; is in the same place – few people have human assistants. Less than 0.1% of meetings are organized. So, we are democratizing what people could not have before.
There are a lot of tasks at work and I think these are the first things we will tackle. After that, we can talk about what happens if & lsqb; AI assistants & rsqb; become creative and do the work that people like to do. Right now, I think it's far into the future.
Where are we now with these technologies in the transition from home to the workplace?
I think the radical change I've just suggested is that home products – Alexa, Google Home – are based on the idea of the conversational user interface. There are no buttons, no screens, you have to talk to them. I think it's going to get to a point where you'll be confused if you can not just ask any question at home, like "How old is Barack Obama?" Or "What's the date of Boxing Day? Become so normal that you will be confused when you walk into someone's apartment and you can not just ask a question out loud and get an answer. I think it is at this time that these products will enter the business world. I think we need to standardize it at home to the point where it is so normal that you expect it to exist as part of the business as well.
Twenty years ago, you could be rebellious by bringing your own laptop to work, or 10 years ago, bringing your own smartphone. But getting a device and placing it in the meeting room will be different. The rebels are probably not going to cut it unless these devices get so cheap that you can buy them half a dozen, as Amazon sells the Echo Dot.
Now, of course, the offices are different from the homes. I am convinced that today it is much easier to deploy a text-based conversational user interface solution at the workplace than a voice solution, and I think a workplace assistant will be a mix. People imagine someone screaming through the & lsqb; office & rsqb; when they plan to use a virtual assistant, but I think it's more like prolonging a conversation.
You and I could go into any open-plan office right now and there will be several conversations going on. It's okay I think it'll be the same thing – I'm heading to another table and talking about something. I'm moving away and I do not need to post-it or take out my phone, but I just say, "Alexa, add a reminder for next Tuesday to talk about this feature.
In the domestic market, a report According to Activate, 65% of smart speaker owners had not installed third-party skills – vertical AIs – at all. Will not that be a problem in business too? Most people use their Alexa or Google device for three or four things. They check the weather, set the timers and play music. But in the office environment, most software is evaluated by experts, decided and then deployed internally with real training. This is where, if you find the case of strong use, this could be imposed on employees, like: "The only way to book a meeting room is to use this technology." This tends to turn a practice into a habit.
Do you think this space of technical assistant in the workplace will see some companies fight for dominance, as was the case with smartphones? I think it's unlikely you'll see a plethora of horizontal AI like Alexa or Google Home. The horizontal AI can answer most of your rudimentary questions and integrate with most vertical skills. You have three or four major competitors today: Amazon, Google and Apple, and Microsoft to a certain extent. It's the explosion of vertical applications beneath them that will make everything move forward.
CREDIT: vm / iStock
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Interview with Dennis Mortensen, CEO of X.ai
NOT
Outside of time, you want to tease your aunt to ask what time it is, think: the smart speaker has become the fastest selling technology product from the smartphone. Less than four years after the launch of Amazon Echo, about 20% of all US adults have a smart speaker at home. According to eMarketer forecasts, by 2020, smart speakers will have 76.5 million users in the United States.
Just as "BYOD" marked more than a decade ago a technological migration from the consumer world to the office with smartphones, the rapid adoption of smart home speakers collides with their next destination: the workplace.
This time, you probably will not need to bring one to work. Employers are investing not only in smart speakers for business and productivity applications, but also in voice-enabled AI applications that allow employees to interact with virtual assistants. It's not only a revolution of smart speakers, but also the advancement of natural language processing (NLP) capabilities that can be integrated into everything from AI speakers and chatbots to applications. mobile.
Voice assistants have attracted big players to help develop the market. Amazon, for its part, jumped into the fray by launching Alexa for Business last November. Suggested uses include setting up shared speakers near printers to order ink, and using personal speakers to organize meetings, make calls, and retrieve information from applications popular customer relationship management software such as Salesforce.
But to become really smart, AIs like Alexa need skills – the smart equivalent of apps on an iPhone. In industrial jargon, Alexa is "horizontal", a generalist AI that primarily handles simple commands. Complex commands go to specialized "vertical" programs for a function. If you say "Alexa, meet Phil in accounting next week" – a complex order that requires using your calendar, who Phil is and being able to talk to her – then Alexa needs a meeting planner from vertical skills. .
But this only scratches the surface of the potential of virtual assistants. Already, companies are putting technology to work with AI assistants and chatbots for sales and lead generation, customer service queries, product configuration and other needs to improve productivity, reduce costs or improve customer service. experience of customers and employees.
To learn more about the future of technology, we spoke with Dennis Mortensen, CEO of X.ai in New York, who created a virtual assistant (called Amy or Andrew) who organizes meetings while managing all details: It considers time and place constraints and negotiates the best solution for all parties.
Forbes
While this may not seem completely revolutionary, it does suggest important productivity gains that these assistants can bring to the job, especially as they begin to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. Organizing a meeting for you is one example, but Mortensen sees hundreds of other voice apps growing in the coming years, which will increase productivity.
This is the biggest advantage that voice assistants can bring to their workplace?
They can accomplish complex goals and not be limited to individual tasks. A new user interface, at least conceptually, does not modify any of the software we have interacted with so far. The reason I think there will be an impact is that the conversational user interface will be so effective at achieving complete goals.
For example, if you jump into a spreadsheet on your phone or desktop, you do a micro-task, such as changing a cell or taking a nap. A goal is something like putting together a report covering two quarters of the business. This is not a task you can do today in Excel.
How do we get to the point where workplace RNs start to present these "complicated goals," as you say?
I think that there are two technical barriers to achieving this kind of advancement. One is a little mysterious, because it's education. You can install Photoshop and determine if I tell you to do something because you are used to the GUI. But in the voice configuration, which is completely open, you need another type of education. We have certainly seen that. [Our customers] ask us, "How can I stop Amy or cancel a meeting?" You can use the exact words you just wrote me: "Amy, stop the meeting".
Before presenting you with the second challenge, why do users have a hard time understanding this order themselves?
Because we have not trained users to use any software in the world of conversational user interface. The only reason I feel comfortable as a start-up manager [UI] The learning curve is that Google, Amazon and Samsung are massively educating the market and doing it very aggressively. This kind of educational work is the first real challenge [to getting voice assistants into the workplace]but this is already happening to a certain extent.
The next most important challenge of technology is in two packages. One is the ambiguity. You or I believe we are clear in our demands because in our heads we know exactly what we want. But there is a lot of ambiguity in the way we express what we want, and recognizing and clarifying this ambiguity is a daunting challenge.
Then, if I am AI, my universe exists in the form of a pool of intentions and a set of entities. Intentions such as "I'm late", "I am mandatory", "You are optional" or entities like "He is the administrator". Try to define these intentions so that there is no element of this universe confused or misunderstood. actually quite difficult. Take a self-driving car he can not make a complete model of the real world. It's way too complex. So, you have to create a simplistic model to understand it, but what does it consist of? Roads, signs, weather, animals? Defining all these things is really difficult.
We all want a good meeting scheduler. But there are so many other high level needs in the workplace. Are we years away from more sophisticated applications?
My bet is that you will see tens of thousands of very specialized vertical AIs that will do a very good job each – and all working side by side will have an exponential effect.
When Apple launched the iPhone, they thought that all the applications you needed were preinstalled. Apple actually had infinite capital, they could have tried to build all these applications. But of course, they would not know what kind of application each person would need. They therefore needed 2 million applications from external developers to satisfy the market.
You can see Amazon making a similar bet with the voice. They want to be the horizontal AI, but they have the store of skills. In every practical sense, Amy [X.ai’s virtual assistant] would be just an app in this store.
Your assistant is part of what was traditionally an administrative job. Of course, people are worried that with the rise of AI assistants, a lot of jobs for humans will disappear. Is this a valid concern?
There are agents who will do simple jobs that were a luxury service. Nobody has a driver today, a personal driver, and that's where autonomous cars will go. [X.ai] is in the same place – few people have human assistants. Less than 0.1% of meetings are organized. So, we are democratizing what people could not have before.
There are a lot of tasks at work and I think these are the first things we will tackle. After that, we can talk about what happens if [AI assistants] become creative and do the work that people like to do. Right now, I think it's far into the future.
Where are we now with these technologies in the transition from home to the workplace?
I think the radical change I've just suggested is that home products – Alexa, Google Home – are based on the idea of the conversational user interface. There are no buttons, no screens, you have to talk to them. I think it's going to get to a point where you'll be confused if you can not just ask any question at home, like "How old is Barack Obama?" Or "What's the date of Boxing Day? Become so normal that you will be confused when you walk into someone's apartment and you can not just ask a question out loud and get an answer. I think it is at this time that these products will enter the business world. I think we need to standardize it at home to the point where it is so normal that you expect it to exist as part of the business as well.
Twenty years ago, you could be rebellious by bringing your own laptop to work, or 10 years ago, bringing your own smartphone. But getting a device and placing it in the meeting room will be different. The rebels are probably not going to cut it unless these devices get so cheap that you can buy them half a dozen, as Amazon sells the Echo Dot.
Now, of course, the offices are different from the homes. I am convinced that today it is much easier to deploy a text-based conversational user interface solution at the workplace than a voice solution, and I think a workplace assistant will be a mix. People imagine someone screaming through the [office] when they plan to use a virtual assistant, but I think it's more like prolonging a conversation.
You and I could go into any open-plan office right now and there will be several conversations going on. It's okay I think it'll be the same thing – I'm heading to another table and talking about something. I'm moving away and I do not need to post-it or take out my phone, but I just say, "Alexa, add a reminder for next Tuesday to talk about this feature.
In the domestic market, a report According to Activate, 65% of smart speaker owners had not installed third-party skills – vertical AIs – at all. Will not that be a problem in business too? Most people use their Alexa or Google device for three or four things. They check the weather, set the timers and play music. But in the office environment, most software is evaluated by experts, decided and then deployed internally with real training. This is where, if you find the case of strong use, this could be imposed on employees, like: "The only way to book a meeting room is to use this technology." This tends to turn a practice into a habit.
Do you think this space of technical assistant in the workplace will see some companies fight for dominance, as was the case with smartphones? I think it's unlikely you'll see a plethora of horizontal AI like Alexa or Google Home. The horizontal AI can answer most of your rudimentary questions and integrate with most vertical skills. You have three or four major competitors today: Amazon, Google and Apple, and Microsoft to a certain extent. It's the explosion of vertical applications beneath them that will make everything move forward.
CREDIT: vm / iStock
