IBM believes Sri Lanka is well set for cognitive computing journey

By Hiyal Biyagamage

Q: If you look at the general picture of the ICT industry, how has cognitive computing fared over the last few years? How it has changed the industry?

Chetan: Cognitive computing has changed the industry without a question and it is changing the industry as we speak. But the real question is ‘are we there yet?’ There is lot more to evolve. It is not a destination that you could define and say you have reached there. It is a huge evolution.

If you look at why IBM wants to strategically position the entire organisation as a cognitive and cloud solutions company, you have to look back at the history. IBM has been transforming industries over the last 105 years and we have moved from being a big hardware company to a services company. That is the need of the hour as the market demands. But increasingly with the capabilities that are available both on the software side and hardware side; what it is enabling today is to have a completely different perspective on how you want to use computers or how the whole thing is evolving.

This is where cognitive computing begins to play. Historically, computers were all about computations. When you look at today’s data, 90% of them are unstructured and there is so much information hidden inside them. If there is a way to harness that data and use those insights for your business, for social, for government or for a different entity. It could take people to a very different level. That is where IBM has been working for the past several years in investing and developing cognitive systems that learn, understand and reason and provide a human-kind of a perception. Sometimes, it is very difficult for humans to assimilate a larger volume of data and come back with fast decisions. This where the whole thing comes to shape.

Q: Tell us a bit about how IBM is trying to be a leader in cognitive computing; especially with IBM Watson in your arsenal? 

Chetan: IBM Watson is now present in many industries. Let me start from healthcare. Watson for oncology is all about saving lives. When somebody is diagnosed with cancer, there is a certain amount of time which takes for an oncologist to decide the course of the treatment. Now, with so much of learning that Watson has had and with what we build around it, today it is possible for Watson to provide probabilistic recommendations by going through thousands of papers that have been published, thousands of case studies that have been done and Watson has been learning them. Based on what oncologists define and with the ability to use those definitions in natural language, Watson is able to suggest answers and thereby reduce the time of starting a treatment. In a situation of a cancer, the faster you start the treatment, the higher the probability of saving a life. This would evolve into other areas of health as well, over a period of time.

You can also take banking or wealth management. This is a very lively topic and many people out there often talk about how one person could give solid advice for people with a higher net worth as well as for people who are in the bottom of the pyramid. Everything you do has a trade-off so how do you optimally use the trade-off? What would normally happen is that you will be limited by the knowledge of the adviser. Watson is helping to provide a significant enhancement to the adviser’s knowledge and thereby making him or her more efficient by providing the right kind of advice. 

There is an API (Application Programming Interface) called ‘Personality Insights’ for talent management. When you talk about managing skills and talents, there is always a supplier –demand gap. Automation is changing a lot of requirements for skills so how do you identify the right people? This goes cross-industry. One of the organisations is using this API based on the available data to help the organisation to shortlist people with higher talent levels at a much faster rate. Every recruitment has a cost associated with it. In this case, if you want to hire only one person and the Hiring Manager interviewing 10 candidates; it is now possible to interview only two or three. It is also convenient to the people applying for jobs because lot of that gets done at home, not sitting in some place for hours till the interviews get done. 

Cognitive computing will be used in the fashion industry as well. For us, there will be different attires at different time points. If you are an apparel manufacturer who sells your products; how do you make suggestions for your customers? Cognitive computing could learn from your past data that you share with the company and look at that and make suggestions and suitable recommendations. There is also an application that is being used by a university in Australia where they are talking about Watson as an adviser to students in choosing a future career, based on how they have performed over the years and matching that with current job opportunities. 

There are so many exciting projects that are being done by the whole eco system around Watson. Watson is available as a collection of algorithms and APIs and there are 28 of them available for people to use and develop. It is almost like so much of data that sometimes, you feel it is not possible to understand. The more it ingests, the more it learns, understand and reason. In future, almost all of the decisions will be assisted with se cognitive system or the other in businesses. That is how it is helping them to optimise more resources, make right investments and be successful in what they do.

Q: IBM has deep roots in Sri Lanka and has been in the forefront of changing country’s ICT landscape. How feasible would cognitive systems be for local organisations?

Chetan: It is almost similar as it is happening in other places. It is the evolution. If you take organisations across the globe, a lot of focus historically was given to systems of record. They provided computational efficiency in running a system at that point of time by enabling right governance, tax reports and many more things. Just like elsewhere, most of the organisations in Sri Lanka had been working with that model and now they are done with that part. You are done with your core systems. Today, the discussion revolves around smartphones, mobile penetration, cloud and Internet of Things (IoT). What is also becoming an important is that how do you engage with your clients and what is the quality of the experience that you are providing to them. That is where cognitive computing has to play a major role. 

Chrishan: IBM has been present in Sri Lanka for the last 55 years and has helped key sectors of the country such as government, telecom and banking to grow. We have run almost 99% of mission critical applications and implementations in the country. With that track record, we find that lot of customers are now talking to us about Watson. They are very keen of the technology and looking at implementing it in their business. The IBM Connect organised here will showcase the true potential of IBM Watson and how it works. Watson will also help growing startups in Sri Lanka and we have launched IBM Global Entrepreneur Program for startups that will help them to harness the power of IBM Cloud, as well as deeply connect and embed them into IBM’s vast global network and rapidly build innovations, scale quickly and accelerate growth.

Chetan: Watson as a technology has evolved a lot after its famous victory in Jeopardy. It will evolve more and there is lot more work being done around this technology. We have many APIs which run inside Watson and these could be picked up by many people. IBM may not be able to provide solutions at the same time however, there are other partners in the eco system including a lot of startups doing exciting work in this area. They could collaborate with Watson and use the technologies to provide certain solutions. That part of the global eco system partner programme has been launched in Sri Lanka which essentially means that it provides a startup certain credits in order to build their first product and solve a specific industry issue.  

Q: What would be the challenges for big companies here as well as for upcoming startups? In Sri Lanka, there isn’t a proper system implemented yet to identify startups and how to bring them forward. What are your thoughts on that? 

Chetan: This is always a work in progress and it will remain. Just because there is none does not mean that there will not be one. If I take an analogy of other places; this is one thing that has evolved faster as a culture. The reason for that is progressively a lot of barriers, whether it is governmental regulation barriers or whether it is the funding. Cloud technology has clearly disrupted these barriers. Traditionally when you wanted to start something, you necessarily had to do a large amount of investment. Today you don’t have to do that to start your entrepreneurial journey, thanks to cloud.

Likewise, with Watson on Cloud or Bluemix as a platform, entrepreneurs do not need to spend millions of dollars to start a business. These are things you could assist. Some things that happen in every environment from a point of economic growth and governmental help; nobody is isolated anymore. You know what is happening in Silicon Valley and you know what is happening in India. A whole bunch of Sri Lankans know what is happening out there. Human aspiration is always there to do something different. You have the aspiration and skills and companies like IBM offer technologies and tools. When you take a combination of these, you would see the momentum. 

Large technology companies may not be able to solve all the problems. The pace of change in the digital world is so fast that you can use all the help you could get and that is what I believe is going to accelerate this entire process. You talked about legacy systems. Actually, there is no challenge if it is a legacy system because what you are looking at here is predominantly a system of engagement that leverages what data you have on your legacy system and leverages on what you have not been leveraging so far like textual data and data streams from social media sites. I don’t really see this as a challenge. It is a journey of updating your external systems to match latest tech trends.

It is a technology which is pervasive. If you have a business and you are engaging with a set of clients, there would be something which is available with Watson that would be applicable and utilisable for your business domain.

Q: Sri Lankan companies were initially reluctant to adopt cloud technologies due to privacy concerns. Cognitive computing speaks of artificial intelligence which is another controversial topic. Any thoughts about this issue?

Chetan: The way we see it is that cognitive systems today will assist decision making, whether it is businesses, healthcare and all different areas. It is providing that incremental ability which hitherto did not exist to provide that decision making. In each one of these, the final decision will be made by the human being.

Q: How do you see Sri Lanka’s progress in adapting cognitive computing into their business? Is IBM optimistic? 

Chetan: We are very optimistic and I am excited. Based on several conversations I had with Sri Lankan clients and their responses; there is a lot of interest. The question is, how fast do we translate that interest into options? It will have a cycle. We will have early adopters who would experiment and put out something but most of that will be in the area of customer experience and engagement. It is a growing economy here and things are doing well. The optimism shown by Sri Lanka clients has been very encouraging and that would help IBM to continue its efforts and bring more investments to Sri Lanka.