 Okay ladies and gentlemen, the next man standing is a veteran at Lenovo IBM. He led the formation of the pioneering and much talked about Lenovo Global Marketing Hub in Bangalore. He led the marketing communication and advertising globally for Lenovo in that role and was instrumental in launching multiple global campaigns besides establishing WW market research and analytics functions in Bangalore the Lenovo Hub model henceforth has become a case study and has been adopted by many large organizations. He's currently the CEO of Lenovo India. Please welcome on stage Mr. Rahul Agarwal who will now be talking to us about AI implications for organizations and the individuals. Am I audible? Am I audible at the back? Okay I must say it's a little unfair because I'm the last speaker I'm told before the party begins. And the second part of unfairness is that I've been asked to speak on something about which I know very little and leave aside expertise. Like most of us I'm trying to still learn my ropes on what this subject is. So let me start by asking you had four and a half hours of intense discussions on AI and I saw some very magnetic and powerful people who have come and spoken to you about. So has it improved your understanding of AI greatly? Do you feel semi-expert or half an expert? Any yes or no? It can't be quite guys. Party is just going to start right so you can start showing some energy now. Do you feel like an expert? More lost okay. So if the answer is not a firm no I think that's absolutely fine because we are all in the same boat and the you know in my view the theater of AI has just begun and there are shows going on all the time and this is one of the shows and I think kudos to the organization for choosing the subject and the attendance of this event I think is a testimony that people are keen to understand but there's a lot being spoken about AI. You know it's this black box where people don't know what's really inside the black box. It's in this neveless cloud which is kind of floating around us. People are talking about impossible stuff being done by AI. There is FOMO fear of missing out. There's also fear of being irrelevant and there are some people who are talking about fears of machines ruling the human beings. I think it's a fairly interesting subject and why am I here? The role that I am doing today is not really AI but AI is relevant to all of us. So I was told that this community is largely a marketing community. A community quite dear to me because I was a part of this community till some time back. I still miss that life and I was told that to bring out a flavor from a brand. How many of you just a razor van? How many of you work for what we call brands organizations? Very very few and how many are from the creative side? Then what are the rest from media? Media? Alright so I think you need to analyze the crowd because this just added up to 30%. So is there some category that I'm missing? No? Just shy, tired. Alright so I'm going to assume that it's mostly creative plus media. So I was told that hey bring out a flavor from an organization point of view. What is it that is bothering you and how are you really going through this this hazy path? A couple of things that that made me feel comfortable with the subject was one Lenovo is actually doing a lot in AI. We invested started investing about three years ago. We've spent millions hundreds of millions of dollars on AI and the results have started showing. We've also invested in about eight to ten AI companies and in the next 12 months we are going to roll out products which will have AI as its backbone. So it's quite relevant to me and there are a lot of conversations that are going on on what can AI do for Lenovo. So it's quite relevant but I must give a disclaimer that I my own understanding is fairly primitive and what I understand kind of gets dismissed after three four months. So we're all together trying to learn this and see what is the implication on us which is the theme of my my page. So I don't have a clicker so who's going to, is somebody going to click? This it's in the podium. Okay so you know I'm assuming that that most of you have had some interface with AI. So when you know I was building the deck I I just wanted to probably put some basics to really reinforce that AI is not this fancy thing which is sitting in some other planet but it's touching a life already. So all these things when you talk to I don't know how many of you have a Lenovo PC but when you talk to our after-sales service on the chat window you may be talking to your AI based chatbot not a human being. Smart assistant and smart speaker again they use AI as a foundation to really be of assistance to you right right there and then when you want when you wanted and we've all been served ads right we've all been served ads and many of us click on the ads and that entire Google machinery is based on some of the most powerful AI engines I think that is one organization which is really leading the whole application of AI and social media you know what gets served to us we don't know but what is getting served to us is customized based on our preferences and this is getting more and more sharper and the content is getting more and more customized without us realizing just sit with your friend and go on a social media and just go down the sequence of content will be very different so I think this is clearly a proof that AI is right in front of us so what is AI I I don't know Ashutosh you must have covered it but to me I'm still trying to understand what is AI and I don't know if people are clear about it because the definition of AI is one thing but to really understand what is AI is important before we get into the implication on marketing and organization and on us and this is one definition that I like the lot and the keyword here is human brain now machines have outperformed human beings when it comes to the mechanical movement right look at the car look at the automobile machines in a factory so that's no big deal but they always needed a brain a human brain to manage the machine now AI for the first time is saying that hey can I can a machine actually mimic what a brain does and in fact does a better job out of out of it and how can you do that because brain is a very complicated structure for two or three reasons first is brain has a lot of emotions emotions complicate life emotion complicate everything do we agree on that absolutely number two a brain can get fatigued after a few hours you will feel tired your efficiency will go down number three as you age and it's a ugly realization as you age your brain slows down with all due respect to my you know my age category people but you tend to slow down and most importantly the computing power of the brain is very limited right is very very limited now computer possibly with the right formula and algorithm can do all this at a much better scale at a much much better scale and the other key difference between AI and whatever has happened from computers and other analysis on analytics is that AI tends to make the machine learn so even with very little data very little data the algorithm can actually learn on its own and come up with stuff that has not been programmed and computerization till now has been all about programmed stuff so if you're you need a brilliant software analyst and a programmer who will predict the output but use a computing power but the key word here is learning so if if computers can learn they can do a much much better job than what a normal human brain can do of course it has limitations as I think we've heard from the panel again a couple of charts AI is not new it's been around 1940 1955 but nothing much happened till about 1990 and it's only in the last two decades that people have been talking more about it and only in the last six to seven years when it's really becoming hot so what is the AI continuum I still you know want to spend a few minutes trying to help all of us including me understand what is AI now there are three parts to there are three parts of the continuum or to the spectrum first is analysis now data analysis is something that can be done by human beings so in a sales environment data analysis means you look at last two years sales data and then analyze hey my sales go up in the third month of the quarter and you know these are my most profitable customers a simple analysis right where human beings really pretty much analyzed but computers can help second is analytics now analytics for the same data can tell you who are your most profitable customers and who are the customers who are likely to come back to you analytics can also tell you what are they likely to buy in a limited way now AI is actually just an extension of this it just goes a few steps forward and says look I you've analyzed the data you've got some analytics but AI can actually reach out to those customer on its own with the customized offering and actually give a pitch and that is where AI starts replacing human beings in some ways and which is why we all are all talking about the jobs getting killed or replaced by human being but it's a reality many of the email marketing jobs will become obsolete email marketing is surely not going to happen targeting segmentation can be done automatic if you have the data so that is how you go to remember AI it is not something fancy that just like a blockchain blockchain is very difficult to understand and explain but this is actually just deeper analysis with the power of brain and something that learns on its own so why is AI gaining prominence don't want to bore you with the stuff but data there's so much of data being generated you know every all the data that we have today in in any history is 90% of that was created in the last two years that's a kind of data we are creating computing power I think everyone knows how fast this the computing power is growing and how it is actually getting commoditized anybody can get access to the supercomputers today and lastly is the algorithm I think Google again has taken the lead and the and the whole beauty of their programming and the whole beauty of reasoning which actually lays the path for any AI engine to function is happening now so it's basically the convergence of these three factors that is really making AI explode these are some applications some of them are there in India some of them are not there yet but in many parts of the world these applications are alive and they're making a difference to how people either provide services on products or receive products and services so I don't know how many of you have heard of this I think everyone has heard of the deep blue but can anyone stand up and say what is the common thing between these three yeah so these are examples so these they are three example let me show so on the left is Gary Kasparov he's supposed to be an extraordinary he's supposed to possess an extraordinary brain which can possess process information much faster than normal human beings right because when you play you're playing chess there are millions of permutation combination on every move right so for the first time a computer could beat it and nobody could can program anyone how to play chess because the permutation combinations are so huge secondly Watson again IBM has done some part-breaking work on AI this a game called jeopardy which is played in the US very complicated game and you know there was this game that was played sometime back and again Watson was a winner and people just didn't predict it and lastly there's a game called go I don't know how many of you're aware of go it's a very complicated game very complicated game and everyone predicted that look this is there's no way any computer can beat anyone on this game and the same happened so these are some extreme examples there are some daily life application but this shows you what the power of AI is and remember this happened 20 years ago 97 is then deep blue defeated Kasparov so now let me actually come to the subject which is what are the possible implications of AI to an organization like Lenovo and it's important for all of you to understand because if you're working for a agency then this is relevant for your clients and if you can partner with them in this journey I think you'll you'll you'll get a better place in their in their space so first is product innovation you know can we actually give customers what they really want do we have products which are you know based on AI like like our voice assistant but more importantly can AI help you to build products which customers really need you know analyzing all the data that we have rising now it's one of the most complicated subject is rising in our consumer business we sell more than 100 different SKUs and they're sold in different routes and it's a it's a very difficult task to decide what to price where and no human mind can do it and at the end of it is fairly subjective it's rough I think AI can help us do the optimal pricing for maximizing our profitability people now this is where AI has not really been used but anybody who has hired people knows how subjective that whole process is despite some test and assessment and all that but AI can actually help us tell who are the people who are more likely to succeed because of the cultural statement because of their capability and this is a huge huge value at that can happen to organizations marketing I'm not going to spend time on it because I think enough must have been spoken about it but this is something that is happening right a lot of this is actually live you know we do digital marketing and we it's customized Google and Facebook and other folks tell us hey you know give us 29 creatives and they will be served to 29 different kind of customers and that segmentation and positioning is constantly changing based on what your brief is retail and distribution now again it's a very unstructured field we have about 10,000 stores small or big in India who sell Lenovo now which city should have how many stores which town should have how many stores what is optimal detail footprint that we require it's all very subjective view it's only based on some rudimentary analysis and there is enough evidence to say that if we have the right data over the last few years an AI engine can actually tell us and I'm sure the Watson engine actually is ready today to do that and you know the last is after sales transformation can we actually do preventive maintenance through AI engine self-healing PCs or chatbots which we use today and by the way a lot of companies have started using chatbots so this tells you that you know all the four piece of an organization can get vastly enhanced by AI and it's up to organizations to decide whether to you know follow up to be a follower or to take a lead and get that competitive edge so you know in a sense these are the three things that that AI can bring to an organization to any brand first is better customer focus better products better targeting better pricing better availability so absolutely I think the the the goal of all organization finally is to serve the customers in the best possible way and if you do that the shareholders value gets maximized your bottom end line gets maximized so that's the overarching benefit second is efficiency cost you do things faster you scale up faster and and lastly is is product because sometimes you don't realize how difficult it is to innovate a product and if you look around you'll see there are very few companies who are able to do a good job of true product innovation and the reason is that the whole process is very flawed and it is way too subjective and I think I can play a big big role there so how's the Lenovo using AI I I think this is the last part of my presentation having tried to explain what is AI and what is the implication of AI for an organization where it can potentially touch all aspects of the organization and by the way you know it's like what happened in the last 15-20 years two things started touching all aspects of our life one is computer and second is internet so we can't even imagine what it can do any function any process that an organization is doing today can be done in a vastly different manner with the intervention of AI so these are some of the things that we are doing so you know our our supply you know we do after-sales service and there are millions of spare parts that are relevant for us because products change every year and we have globally thousands of where are we stock now which spare part to stock where is extremely important because if you don't get your part the next day you know what our fees that goes down so we are using a very advanced AI engine to do this talk planning again based on past data this is on the cusp of analytics and AI because this is very high-end analytics but you know the AI engine is actually now meant to automatically order and reorder for each of the warehouses so this will become kind of auto mode we're also there is a case study we've done there is in China we are doing a diagnostic assistance for cancer where you know we've done a prototype we are remotely just by looking at the cells of the cancer experts in the US can actually tell what is the degree of of of the cancer and what is the possible treatment and we all know that while cancer is by and large a much better disease to treat but a lot of people still run to the developed markets to get it treated we've already launched smart speakers and assistants you know which are live example of this chatbots we already use chatbots for our after-sales service and I you know I I had the opportunity to look at a retail solution that we have where we have a what we call a manless store but that store actually recognizes your face as you get in and it when you go in it you know because of your face recognition it has your past buying history it will recommend your back and then when you check out it just looks at your face and it will debit your your payment which is linked so you can just walk in and just walk out in about 90 seconds with your bundle of goods it's an amazing solution that we have and I don't know we might not launch it in India because there's no shortage of people here and pilferage is a big the big issue but I think a lot of our European and US markets are getting very excited with this solution now some of the other things where we are doing research I think speaker we've already launched there's a smart service assistant which will go beyond the chatbot the speech activity recognition so when people are talking to us on the on the call center or after sales depending on their voice you know our pitch will change and this is very important people are agitated when this problem is not getting solved and a smart supply chain I think supply chain in the industry that we work in whether it's phones or computer is very complicated so we are doing some advanced AI trial there so net net you know I think Lenovo is is is I would say it's got one foot into this and we have realized the potential of AI one more example which is not mentioned here is share it how many of you've heard of share it up yeah so who won't share it do you know so share it is owned by Lenovo yeah yeah we it's a it's a stupidly guarded secret and do you know how many active monthly users are there on Facebook in India somebody spoke about it how many 200 225 and India is the largest market for Facebook guess what the number is for share it 200 million 200 million so it's almost there there's an amazing asset that we have and they use they're using AI to serve proactive videos if you are a share it user you probably are being served videos and feel good that they're customized personalized videos for you they may not be the best today but that is what is also using the AI engine now what is the implication on all of us as individuals forget that we work for an organization and forget that you have clients that you got to cover I think one thing is we got to feel good about the fact that it will make us more productive it will declutter our life I know self-driving cars in India I keep telling people it's impossible it's impossible and people dismiss it but that's what that's what they say but forget that but smart homes smart refrigerator you know it is it will make our life very very convenient the refrigerator will order on its own the washing machine will order the washing powder on its own the smart home assistant will you know do a whole lot of things that today you can run around so it will it will make our life better it will also give us better choice but today if you want to buy a computer tell me is it a easy decision or a TV let me not buy if you with computer when I want to buy anything it's a mind-boggling journey there's so many permutation combination and there is no guide to tell me what is the right product for me if I my daughter came to me sometime I can say she wanted to buy a computer and I I was like I just put her on to the product manager who confused her further so nobody really knows what is the right product even my product manager could not tell my daughter what is the right product in the end he says how much does your father want to spend and my daughter actually came she's 10 so you know she she didn't know that she should not be asking me this question she should be going for the lowest price product but she actually came and asked me so this is how confused we are about what to buy I think AI will help us choose our products better investment all of us invest in mutual funds and this and that again nobody knows what is the right thing but based on AI models different profile of people will get the right choice so I think our life will definitely improve as a customer as an employee again I think our productivity will improve because a lot of jobs will be done by AI engines and we'll be able to do much more than what we are doing today the marketeers so I think you'll be able to show a lot more value add to your clients on media management creative efficacy the whole ROI measurement I think they'll be far more effectiveness if you have the right AI tools and the other thing is about you know skilling that you there is a fear of being outskill I think it's a little over stated because when industrialization happened and when computerization happened they all said that the machine will take over the humans but that never happens because we have uncanny ability to not just try it over technology but ride over technology and master it so while there are some fears of AI reaching the the the shores of human cloning you know and one should have the humility to say one doesn't know what one doesn't know but I think by and large the future is always full of hope and as well as paranoia and I think you know we need to stay calm and we need to learn just know what's going on which is my last line but therefore what what does it mean for all of us I think it means that we first we need to know that this is happening and this is not just small technology change it's a it's a massive technology change that will affect all of us in a good way as well as in a not so good way and the not so good way is that we will get out of our comfort zone all our jobs will get affected all our job will get affected somebody like me worries that what is my competition takes a lead there's a big worry right if my competition takes a lead then they have a better competitive edge right so as a consumer I'm happy with the stuff that is happening but in my current in my role I'm worried about it so I think all of us need to improve our understanding and I think attending this meeting is maybe the right thing to do but that's not enough we got to go back and keep improving there's a lot of published material by McKinsey I think there are three organizations who are doing path-breaking work McKinsey IBM and Google and McKinsey is actually on this part of publishing they're sharing what they're learning so we must educate ourselves and keep upscaling I'm sure there'll be a lot of AI stuff that will come out a lot of courses will happen a lot of digital courses will happen and lastly as I said it's important to keep calm and not get paranoid because people do get paranoid and they and there are you know Jack Ma made a statement that millions and millions of people are going to get employed and you know he's a you know he's a great visionary we must remember what he said but I think we must also keep her calm and know that nothing is going to happen overnight no change in this world happens overnight very few very few things happen overnight and completely change our lives as long as we are keeping our ears on the ground and you know keeping ourselves aware of the implications and scaling I think we are good so I think that's about it and I've completed my time slot we don't have time for Q&A and anyway I'm not I'm not the expert on AI I was asked to share my view I've done that and hopefully some of you will remember what I said thank you I'd like to invite on stage Shilpa Shetty national sales head BTVI to please present a memento to Rahul our way of saying thank you for your time and your participation thank you Shilpa for doing the honors and thank you Rahul once again for your participation here at the eForum.com