Reflecting on AI and a Special Announcement

Progress in AI technology in many ways has moved faster than our ability to leverage it for the many ways in which it can create value. For that and many other reasons, it has been a prominent topic on this podcast over the past years. In this special episode, we will be revisiting some of those conversations, sharing clips from the experts we've heard from, specifically about AI and its impact on our futures. I also have a special announcement regarding my future work on AI and the future of the show.

I'll be taking a pause from the Seattle Exchange podcast. I will be creating a new show focused heavily on AI. Several of my colleagues and I were early in adopting the technology and scaling it across a large organization. We'll be sharing our experiences, strategies, tools, and techniques so that you can do the same within your organization or your teams.

So head over to the AI Edge Enterprise podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. With that, here's a special show reviewing some of the top insights from my conversations about AI so far. One of our first episodes about AI was with Paul Reitzer, CEO of Marketing AI Institute, who talked about generative AI and what CIOs need to know. The blessing of ChatGPT in my world is it woke people up to the power of AI.

in good ways and in bad. People can now envision the downsides as well. So now we can actually get to the important conversations around ethics and responsible application of AI and impact on workforces and things like that. I feel like we need more conversation around AI as a leverage point to create better working environments, better jobs, and more fulfilling lives for people because otherwise, I think it's just for nothing.

Like it's just another productivity gain and a missed opportunity to improve people's lives. Shortly after that, I talked to Trevor Schultz, CIO of Alteryx, about data democratization and, as he called it, the current intelligence era. For CIOs to think about is really, what can they do to take advantage of those capabilities? And if you just sort of pull back all the hype, data really is the lifeblood of these intelligent systems And this is where AI is going to matter because you hear about if the data isn good or it not trained well you have hallucinations It gives you bad answers.

And you act just trunced it blindly. So you have to have this literate group of people. When we go back to data literacy, you need a literate group of people in your company who are going to have the ability to take advantage of these new AI-enabled systems in this era of intelligence. So, you know, IT leaders really are paying more attention today.

We always paid attention to data, right? That's our job. But really, we have to refresh and rethink and reimagine what we have to do in order to enable these intelligent systems to really take advantage of advanced capabilities. We then discussed emerging trends and how CIOs should think about implementing generative AI with Tim Crawford, CIO, strategy advisor at Avola.

And that's part of what is scaring IT executives today is that they got burned on cloud. And now we're talking about generative AI. And now, unfortunately, we're talking more about data and the risks just went up. And so you have to be really careful about how you go down this.

I realize the pressure's there. I realize there's a lot of demand to try and adopt it and get ahead of your competition. But at the same time, if you don't think about the risks that go with it and have a healthy balance between benefit and risk, you're just playing with fire. Then Peter Shen, head of digital health, North America at Siemens Healthineers, talked about the opportunities for AI to improve the healthcare industry.

we term it as ai being a companion for the clinician yeah so the clinician is still going to make that ultimate diagnostic or therapeutic decision here but can we have a technology like ai be that companion for him or her so that they have actually a more informed or more confident diagnosis or a more confident treatment plan for that particular patient so that's where we see again the technology working hand in hand with the clinician rather than replacing that clinician there I also had the chance to sit down with Jeff Baudiere Head of Product and Growth at Hugging Face We talked about the current state of AI in the enterprise and open source AI Open models, open data sets, and open source AI are really the only way forward for enterprises if they want to be future-proof in terms of auditability, in terms of regulation, in terms of compliance.

And then it's about being in control of your own destiny, right? Because AI is so key to everything you're going to be offering to customers. New features, new products, new services. There's going to be AI features if AI itself is not the feature.

So you want to be able to control that and build up your skill set. Also, it's important to note that AI partnerships will play an increasingly important role for most companies. Suhail Nimji, VP Head of Business Development, Corporate Development and Partnership at Jasper AI, gave us insight into how CIOs should be choosing their AI partners. Is that vendor and partner that you're choosing to partner with, do they understand the landscape well enough to adapt with the changes?

That's the conversation. And then the thing is like, there's no like sort of magic to these discussions. It's just the simple things of like, do they know what they're doing? Like, have they implemented this before?

Do they have a good pulse on what the market looks like today and have a really good vision for what the market looks like tomorrow and adapt with the changes that come with it? Obviously, data management and data storage considerations are even more complex with the rise of AI. Missy Young, CIO of Switch, warned us of the coming AI gold rush as it pertains to data centers and the future of the data center industry and what CIOs should do about it. there's a huge rush to do these massive deployments of AI all over the place.

AI companies are consuming all of the available high-density data center space in the country as fast as they can. There's not really anything left right now. There are certainly data centers that have, like, you might hear, oh, hey, this one data center over here has 30 megawatts. Well, that's great, but it only has crack units for cooling inside.

It's not going to be able to cool this So we have to retrofit that facility in order to do liquid cooling Okay that with the current supply chain issues that at least a year and a half out if you start yesterday So we are under construction in all of these markets specifically to handle this massive rush of data center consumption by the AI companies. And so my big warning right now, what I am preaching to the heavens right now is if you are not currently planning for what you need from a data center perspective over the next two years, if you're not planning today for what you need two years from now, you will not get it.

Srini Koshki, President of Technology, Sustainability, and AI at Rackspace, talked about sustainable use of AI. I am the parent of two amazing daughters that grew up, like one half and half in the internet age, and the other one solely in the internet age. And I tell them they're very responsible, but I tell them, like, look, it's great that you're looking at older guys like me and saying, like, you know, you should have been more responsible with this, and I take that criticism to heart.

But as we were kind of having this conversation over lunch, I just saw you take 10 pictures of that food that you were using. Where do you think that goes? Right. Like there's a network consumption.

There's a storage consumption. It never gets deleted. So like, no, look, we have we all have to be very, very conscious about what we choose to use technology for and how do we drive that. That's a very integral part of sustainable and responsible AI.

The other parts that are equally important is, you mentioned it, it has to be safe, but I extend it even further saying, if we build AI to replace human beings, then I don't think it's responsible, right? Now, if you actually build AI that augments a human's capability, that's very responsible, right? Because it's like kind of, it allows me to move away from the day-to-day toil to work on higher levels. It's been a fascinating year in tech.

and I've loved having all these conversations. While I'll miss hosting the CIO Exchange podcast for now, I'm super excited to focus heavily on AI in my next show, AI Edge. Keep an eye out on my LinkedIn for updates there. And if you want to dive deeper into any of the episodes mentioned today, links will be in the show notes.

Thanks for listening to the CIO Exchange podcast.