 From Lovetta, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM World of Watson 2016, brought to you by IBM. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back, everyone. We are here live at the Mandalay Bay for the IBM World of Watson conference. This is theCUBE Silicon Angles program. We go out for the events to extract the signal noise. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Eric Hunter, who's executive director of Sierra Golden Models, LLC, and director of knowledge, technology, innovation strategy at Bradford and Barthel, LLP, law firm, technologist, futurist, author. Welcome to theCUBE. This is perfect timing for us because now we can talk about the changing world. Absolutely, pleasure to be here. Thanks for joining us. So Watson, what I like about this show is it's a rebrand of insight, but it's a bigger collection for IBM across the board around big data. And it's got a lot of impact. And obviously, IO Internet of Things is pretty obvious. But the bigger picture is the changing culture of how work's getting done, to how people are using data. Things are upside down. It is a spherical world, if you will. This subject that's near and dear to your heart. What's your assessment of today's landscape? Someone says, hey, I'm stuck in the mud. My business isn't working. I've got a lot of kids. I would have them single or whatever the situation is for someone's personal or work. What's your advice to them? What's your situational analysis? Absolutely, I think you really hit it on the head without analysis as well, because we're blurring lines between personal and business all the time. And so I think that when we're looking at businesses itself and individuals, it's important to take a look at what's causing efficiencies within your personal life. Oftentimes, it's the tools we use every day, whether it's the Google searches or whether it's you're logging into the Facebook or the Twitter feeds. We were talking earlier, essentially, about how the news industry's been transformed in so many ways. And so just looking back five years, 10 years, how the culture has shifted, how things are shifting, it's important to keep those aspects in mind. That spherical aspect, that idea that each individual can be their own collaboration point is something that I think that really touches on that. And so when we're talking about elements like Watson and artificial intelligence and innovation, it's really important to think of, okay, we're actually interacting with this every day and oftentimes the results are subtle, whether it's the favorite sports teams who watch, the newscasts, or how we approach our business and the individuals in it, we're all interacting with it. And understanding that, I think, helps people take that first step. And the beautiful thing about it is, is that it's got a futuristic side to it. You hear about AI, artificial intelligence, VR, virtual reality, AR, augmented reality. I mean, it's not fantasy anymore. This is now the real augmentation to life, certainly with cognition, the big thing about Watson, is actually working. It's happening right now for the first time. It absolutely is, and it's fascinating. We're just at the beginning of it. And so it's extremely interesting to see what's already being done and then what it still has to do. There was an interesting article in The New York Times today and it was actually around the military and their integration of AI within weapon systems. And then some of the thoughts around, well, how much independent should we give the AI as AI evolves? And it's fascinating debating this because right now AI is a fantastic helping tool. You can take a look at what Google did with Go, for example, taking out the Go champion earlier in the year. And then you can take a look at everything IBM's done with Watson, but it's a fantastic augmentation to humans and individuals around it. Essentially, it helps with efficiencies. And I've noticed a lot of folks get worried about losing jobs, taking away this, or there's worry about the disruption. But what's interesting is that actually helps individuals focus more, whether you're focusing on space or whether you're focusing on turning a business around and you want to run a project and get the most efficiencies that you can, build the best team, these kinds of things all come into play. Well, it depends, right? If you were the person at the airline ticket counter and you're replaced by a kiosk, well, you've got to retrain yourself and you've got to find new ways, right? So people are legitimately concerned about the middle class getting hollowed out, but we could talk further about what the answer is there, but you're putting forth a vision that talks about how you can enrich lives. But there's opportunities, obviously, but not everybody's in a position to take advantage of those today. I couldn't agree more, and the retraining aspect is key. So I think you can't go in there with blinders on, but on the other hand, if you're going to be able to do something like that kiosk example, what else can the airline use those individuals for that can further innovate forward? Because if all we're doing is we're taking out workforce to automate for this particular path, we're ignoring three, five, seven, 10 years, and that's where that retraining goes. I think a lot of where this additional headcount can go, how can we continue this innovation, even if the company can't see it within the next year, you have to have that side. There was a fascinating study done where you can have folks like the chief operation officer and an organization say, dollars and cents, dollars and cents, same with the CFO, we've got to meet it, we've got to meet it. And the newspaper industry is a perfect example of this. You ended up having newspapers start to go out of business until you start getting these innovation arms that say, you know what, actually, we need to look forward, think of ways of doing things differently. And so although some individuals will have to be part of a restructuring, and I've been part of that with the organizations I've worked in the past, ultimately I tend to have a half glass full of time. So that's inevitable, but you're saying that it's not a zero sum game, that more opportunities that are going to arise are going to arise through this cognitive injection than potentially are replaced, is that right? Is that a fair premise? That's absolutely right. And I wrote a book about this called The Sherlock Syndrome. And so it's this idea that you take Sherlock Holmes, everyone knows Sherlock Holmes. And at one point, this was a fantastical character by Arthur Conan Doyle, right? You could take a look at a room like this at YouTube, and then come back and say, well, judge by how you're dressed, and this and that, and draw all these different correlations, deductions, and analysis. But now, through the AI tools we have, and visual recognition, and facial recognition, and all the correlations that are possible, that's starting to take place within the business. And that's actually starting to take place within our consumer culture in ways I think we don't really understand. The thing that's interesting to me as well though is we can start getting so excited about where we're going in the future, but certain realities that we've come to grips with, like Moore's Law, how we're going to coordinate with that as far as advanced algorithms moving forward when we've gotten used to and advanced pace with Moore's Law, and the other would be thinking about some investments in quantum systems. For example, Google ended up bringing in a physicist to head up a quantum team that they end up having, and it's these type of, these type of research into this is so fantastic to the type of creativity that could come forward. We don't know how much it would come to fruition, but those are the type of examples and restructuring I'm talking about. Eric, I want to get your thoughts on something. We just launched last week at the Grace Hopper Women Computing Celebration, all women's conference, our Tech Truth Fellowship, which is a program where we're kind of creating our own little nonprofit to fund next generation journalists to get to check, because there's no jobs for them. So they're thinking different, this is right up your wheelhouse. But one of the things that we're focused on is technology intersecting with social justice. So I want to get your thoughts on that meme because technology, we all love and know, social justice is becoming now a sociology impact in John Markov's story of the New York Times. You mentioned, he's the advisor of our fellowship, talks to specifically the social impact, the sociology impact of drones for the military. What's your take on social impact with technology intersection as it relates to business? Because you're seeing the businesses more connected to each other, more access to data than ever before, users that are personal and working at the same time all mangled in. What's the impact of the social justice and technology for the business strategy? I think on the social side, it's a fantastic point. You can't divorce technology from process. You can't divorce that relationship. And when I'm talking about process within the business, the process of us talking to each other, let's say we're running an organization, then we have seven others that are sitting at a table that are as well, and everybody within that area talking to one another. If we start to have gaps within that leadership structure within the organization, no matter how advanced our collaboration technology, it starts to become chasms. It gets exponential within the organizations. And you can see that. You take a look at some of the highest corporations in the world. I'll bet I've mentioned some of them, whether it's IBM or Google or Facebook, take a look at how well their advertising targets their consumer. It's almost incredible, right? I mean, as far as behavioral mapping with consumer, driving advertising revenue, great. But then how about if they look inward to their organization, to your point, about that social structure, how well is it understood? And I would bet it isn't as well done because inside, within that corporate structure, we still have the familiar trappings of being human. And so you take a look at these different process systems and the business strategy systems. These systems that end up coming in place, not literal systems in a software sense, but business process, how do you go about it? Organizing these groups, getting people involved. If you're looking traditionally, whether it's Lean Six Sigma and so forth, those are interesting examples from Toyota, whatnot that comes up from a past perspective. But when you start looking at things in today's day and age, like right now, the spherical models example we were talking about touches on it really well. I'll touch on that really briefly. So you have a race of two-dimensional creatures in this book called Flatland, right? And it was written by Edwin Abbott way back. So in this race of two-dimensional creatures, a three-dimensional creature comes into the midst, in this case really disruptive, but nobody can see it because everybody's two-dimensional until one of them's actually able to come out and understand that three-dimensional site. So seeing that, they see a whole different world and I think that's addressing your question because in a way it touches the socials construct of what we see and interact with every day, our social culture, we bring that into the workplace. And so then organizing the workplace around this different way of doing things, it's not just the technology, it's not just the innovation there, it's our behavior that has to adapt with it. And that's the benefit of doing something different. That 3D creature. Our perspective creates a different view and now everything looks completely different. That's the innovation of having new data, faster data, and substance social impact is a new dimension. Absolutely. So I'll get your thoughts on competitive strategy. I notice you're into that and we see this all the time. Oh yeah, data's the new competitive advantage. It's the new oil. Okay, that's pretty played out, but I would agree with it. The phenomenon that's going on that we're close to, just not just technology, is the role of the resource developers. It used to be developers were, hey, go build that and they lay bricks down, build products, do stuff. Now they are leading the innovation. So the reverse has happened. They're now on the front lines driving the business. Now they're kind of in the Ivy Tower. So it's a new dynamic. How do you see that impacting? Because now you had developers on the front lines, instant socialization opportunity. What's your thoughts? You know, it's a really interesting point. I was just over, I was speaking in London recently, just last week and went up to talk with a really innovative company called Nuke Software and was talking with one of the leads there, to your point, developer, great developer. And when he's talking about product vision, doesn't have to go through X, Y and Z to get there, saying actually what am I going to do to develop things differently and then that's the direction of the company. And so within that perspective, I think you get some of these dramatic innovation companies that are happening. But as strong as the developers can be, it still comes back, it ties to that social construct you were talking earlier, the social justice or that organization within a company, the development can lead the innovation but the people need to be included within that development if the company grows up around this. So if you have a really sharp developer, take a couple others, they start leading a company, they're growing, they're adding people, there's that aspect. The other aspect too though is that from a global perspective, the developers can be anywhere. And so with a lot of the different technology we have at Unifying folks now, you can take a look at two different models. I don't need the developer to be right by me, which has been something that software comes to do in three years. Or you can take a look at a model that says, actually I need the developer right in the same room. Or the developer saying, I want the other developers, my other folks around me, just like we are now, because something happens when humans are in the same room with a board to work off of and brainstorm that's lacking within the field of technology. You got it exactly. It's like musicians just picking up instruments, playing jazz. You got it exactly. I was a jazz performance major, so upright bass player back in the day. And I think that looking at an organization as interconnected symphony is a really constructive way of thinking about because you think about the harmony of the organization. As corny as that sounds, there's a truism to it. Because when you have discordant parts, everything falls apart. But that ability to improvise from that jazz perspective, that's where it's at. You've got to be able to create. Stick with that metaphor, but you mentioned Moore's Law. Thomas Friedman this morning, Moore's Law was one of his big, big three. Yeah. And we've talked about the industry, this industry has marched to the cadence of Moore's Law for decades. However, if you look at the innovations like Waze, like Uber, I guess Watson, certainly Siri and Alexa, it's the combination of technologies that's driving the innovation curve. So how do you see the innovation curve shaping, reshaping, and what's fundamentally behind that? What's, you just brought up Uber, which is a fantastic example, I think. What's driving that innovation is a more antiquated way of looking things that we used to want to search and go get it. We want to go search and find things. But now, Uber is an example, we want it to be brought to us. I call it the Tony Soprano approach, you know? Bring it to me. And it's kind of one of these things where with that, we can do that now. I mean, I was just in New York earlier in the week, I'm not going to try to catch a cab out there at that point. I mean, I've got Uber, I can come right to me and then I go. And so with the innovation coming to the individual, there is that behavioral adaptation side that makes that possible. But an issue that we should think about with that is that if that's the case, and each of us have our own individual prism to data, I mean, more data available to us now in a cloud of information than ever before, right? But if we allow ourselves to be behavioral adapted to, to our own preferences, we risk being funneled into a prism. When we were talking about, you mentioned the New York Times article, even talking about the politics that we have today. Not choosing any particular side, I think we can all agree, it's possible now to go right into your own prism of information without crossover. And I think that can lead to gaps in information. So as far as innovation going forward, I think that's possible. Exactly. And it's a huge blind spot. Right. Almost self referencing biases, because it gets amplified. Absolutely, absolutely. So how do we counter that? Because that becomes interesting because now with the election, certainly, I mean, I live in California, so my Facebook feed is just dominating with anti-Trump hatred. Almost one, there's apps out there now where you actually have a move from Facebook, but this brings up a dynamic. It's causing a fracture in the social relationships. It absolutely is. And we can't, we can't tip toe around that. It actually really is particularly abroad and the, what I've been speaking abroad example, do that all the time. I'm often asked abroad, what is happening back there in the US? I mean, why, why is this, why is there such a friction, these opposing sides, but then also justify one side or the other? How is that happening? And it's interesting because to that point, and if you don't have news organizations that then cross back over, you don't have that broad reach, then you can have these kids as an information. If we were going to approach this from a business standpoint, we saw this happening in a business. I would say it's really important for these groups to learn from these groups to have crossover between the two. But then how do you end up talking to news organizations to ask them to go look at other news organizations, to have different perspectives? It'd be a pretty tough sell. How do you look at the media? You know, I just, at all times you mentioned the future of media, so I want to just go there real quickly. Data is changing every issue. It has yet to change the media business, where truth, the seeking the truth ultimately is data. There's a trust relationship involved. But yet fact checking is harder than ever, and you're seeing NPR doing some cool things with fact check in real time. New format, by the way. What do we do with the media business? How's it going to change? It's a great question, and it depends again on how you're accessing that information. So let's say, for example, take a Kurzweil approach. Currently right now, we're getting information through these, through those devices. Those devices, we bring them everywhere we go, and we have access to incredible amounts of information through them, including news. So the news distribution source is that way. If I'm going to be watching news, I don't tune into a channel. Me personally, I'll Google the search, or bang, whatever your preference is. You bring it up, and then that's that particular topic of the news is there. But then take it a step further. Let's say the access point has come through glasses, like you're both wearing today. Or let's say if I were wearing contact lenses that way there, pull up the news media through that in front. Then let's take it a step further, again, going more of a Kurzweil approach, right, Kurzweil, and you end up having a grown Wi-Fi, embedded Wi-Fi that you end up accessing the news for and it's displayed. It sounds sci-fi, but there's a lot of research around this already. Now to that point, you talked about a trust relationship, which is why I'm bringing this up. How then do individuals trust the sources that happens? And if we're talking about grandkids, what's the evolutionary aspect of the brain as it develops, accessing that type of cloud of information and news sources, is it going to develop differently than we currently have? Are certain parts going to be complete? You could argue that neurologically it would be different. Absolutely, it would be. And, you know, back to trusted sources, you have collective intelligence opportunities. Sure. I mean, you can go there and say, but back to your prism problem. We need algorithms for the algorithms. Right? I mean, the machine learning for machine learning. It's true. And there's a point to that. I wrote a chapter about this in the books called The Snowden Effect. And, you know, Edward Snowden came out, all these revolutions took place. I mean, all these revelations, everybody's up in arms, like, oh my gosh, what's happening with this? But then after that happened, and they're saying, oh, you know, Google or Facebook, he lifted out all, listed out all these different, you know, your privacy, your privacy. The thing that I often ask audiences, who actually changed their behavior after that happened? After the Snowden revelations, who stopped going to Google to use Gmail? Who stopped using Facebook knowing the privacy ramifications? Who actually stopped doing within the consumer realm? And I would argue next to nobody. Hardly anybody did. And so when we're talking- Maybe because they can't understand the effect, but like you asked them, the Yahoo hack, which was hidden for multiple months, everyone's flocking off Yahoo mail. That's actually true. That's actually true. So the liberties that were breached, if you will, for the user, I mean, this is the thing we talked on my podcast show last Friday, I wouldn't give you any thoughts. Homeland Security has always been about terrorists and physical bombs in New York City. But what about spearfishing concepts like that's going on in the personal level? The bank fraud, the identity theft, these are personal liberties being trashed by terror organizations. And what's fascinating about that, it's a very astute point also, then also, is it being done by international actors, as far as different nation-states are being done by different groups. Within the legal community, there is a big push on protecting data, obviously for client confidentiality, and also in some cases have to be HIPAA compliant. Intellectual property firms have to take incredible measures to attempt to protect data. And they have this guideline of reasonable measures to protect data. Within that environment you're talking about, how many steps can you take to meet that quota? To take the Yahoo example, that many email accounts hacked. One could then take a look and say, okay, does that mean that Google would be as vulnerable? Would Microsoft be as vulnerable to the way that Yahoo was? Should we stop using cloud-based interactive email? And the answer, of course, would be no. I couldn't see anybody necessarily doing that at that point, yet the threat that you mentioned very much remains with these different states. So it's that compromise, and I guess that's where I'm getting at with Snowden Effect. The alarm comes in, the risk to privacy is real, but there is that aspect of moving forward, that evolutionary forward seems to push it forward. And obviously, cognition, AI, Watson, big data is on that path to help us get through that. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Eric, thanks. Great conversation. Stand-up bass player. We've got a little music going on here. Sharing the data, extracting the signal and the noise. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. We're right back with more live coverage from the Mandalay Bay. This is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We'll be right back.