 Live from Boston, it's theCUBE, covering IBM Chief Data Officer Summit. Brought to you by IBM. Welcome back everyone. We are wrapping up a day of coverage, live coverage from theCUBE at the IBM CDO Summit on a very blustery cold day here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. I've been all day with Paul Gill and my co-host. It's been a lot of fun co-hosting with you. It's been a pleasure. It's been a great day. Great guests all day. Absolutely. High quality. This is not your father's IBM. Not your mother's IBM. This is a very different company from when you started covering IBM way back when. And to talk about a little bit about the- 1882. 1882. So talk about a little bit about the changes. You grew up in an IBM town. I grew up in an IBM town. I grew up in an IBM world where everyone dressed the same. Everyone had a set of talking points. It was a very closed, dark organization. Dense organization. Very little information got out. Of course the company at that time was operating under a consent decree of the Justice Department. I've been tempted to be broken up. So they were understandably nervous. We began to see that change after IBM's crisis in the late 80s and began to open up. They began to celebrate individuals. Previously, individualism had been discouraged at IBM. And what you see at this conference here, I don't know, I'm always amazed when I go to IBM conferences at the differences I see between the people I meet at the conferences and sort of the corporate image that is representative, which is of a company that is struggling to make some transitions. I see just lots of vibrant, intelligent, enthusiastic, forward-looking people, very, very smart people at these conferences. I don't think that gets out enough to the IBM watchers out there. I would agree, and what we're hearing, too, about from the employees themselves, talking about the soft skills that are needed to succeed here at IBM, but also in all sorts of industries. I mean, our first guest, Inderpal, was talking about, you asked him, what do you need to succeed as a CBO? What are sort of the traits? An ability to do data science was not really on his list. He didn't talk about numbers or data tech or technology at all. He talked about managing relationships, about motivating organizations, about managing change. Exactly, exactly. So having those kinds of soft skills so necessary for success in the data world, but also here at IBM. And then we've also had a lot of other people on talking about IBM as this very inclusive place where you bring your authentic self to work. I write for Herbert Business Review, so these are really buzzy words right now, but really, so I don't know if a lot of organizations, I don't know if a lot of employees would say that about their employer. And when you talk to IBMers, you hear very enthusiastic people, people who love the company, who love working here, they love the diversity, the way the company's been out front in promoting minorities, in promoting women, in all kinds of ways that it really was ahead of the game in the way it treated its workforce. Looking at the content of the conference, a couple of things really stood out from you. I've been following this area for about five years now, working at the MIT CDO event on theCUBE for a number of years. And really five years ago, the CDO concept, we were asking questions like, does this job have a future? What does this job look like? What are the skills that are needed? Where does it fit in the organization? Is this a replacement for the CIO and conflict with the CIO? What's the responsibility? What is the job? We were asking really three or four years ago, not hearing any of that anymore. There is a lot of unanimity of opinion. This position is important. It's critical. 90% of large organizations will have a CDO within the next couple of years and the role appears to be well-defined and is becoming more strategic and the issues of conflict with the CIO are largely being resolved. This is a mainstream corporate C-level position now and it's amazing how quickly that's happened, really over the last four years. Well, and what Interpol said, when he first started out, he was a CDO in 2006. He said, when I started out, data was considered exhaust, so pollution. And now we really know that it is this valuable asset. Exactly, now it's gold and oil and all the other. Yeah, no, what about sort of this evolution from big data? Big data was the buzzword a few years ago. Now it's really all about AI. It is, and I've been an AI skeptic for a long time just because I've heard the term AI used for many years and when we didn't have it, when it didn't exist, I am now a believer. I believe that these systems that are being built are really exhibit signs of intelligence and we are going to go much quicker in the future as cloud comes into play, as software becomes more of an assembly process. We just had the discussion of the IBM risk analysis, supply chain risk analysis application. That was essentially assembled. It wasn't really written, it was assembled from components and it's a fantastic idea. We are going to see more of these powerful applications coming about and being built by people who are not extremely technical. So I think I was amazed to see how the evolution of this program has gone from big data to AI. Today was all about AI and they're not talking trash anymore. This stuff is really going to work. Are we cautious enough, would you think, as I mean when you're thinking about all the industries here who are now playing in AI, sometimes scampering up the AI ladder a little too quickly because they want the shiny toys when they really need to actually dig in deep with their data, but do you, as an analyst, where do you put? Well, are we ever cautious enough to do technology? I mean, look what Facebook is going through right now. We always go overboard and then we have to pull back and gaze at our navel and figure out, how do we do this right? I'm sure there are a lot of mistakes being made with AI right now. Unfortunately, I don't think the mistakes are being made in areas where it's going to meaningfully impact people's quality of life. We're not going to have medical. We had some people from the healthcare field on today. It was very clear that they take AI seriously, the role of AI seriously. I think we'll see a lot of stupid applications of AI, but that's always the way new technology is, right? So you have to experiment, you have to make some mistakes before you figure out what really works and I think we're just going through a natural cycle here. What's exciting is that these applications are the most transformational I've ever seen. Wow, and this is from someone who's been covering this industry for many, many decades. It's hard to maintain that wild-eyed enthusiasm after all these years, but it really is. Boy, I wish I was 20 years younger because it's going to be fun to stick around and watch how this develops. How about you? We got to raise our kids to grow up and be data scientists. I have every intention of doing that. How about you? You are more focused on the workforce, on the people side of the equation. We heard a lot about that today. Exactly, because frankly, what is all of this stuff doing but making our work lives more easier, more satisfying, more interesting, less tedious, less boring, less onerous? So I think, frankly, when you put it all in terms of that is our goal is to help people do their jobs better and sometimes people's jobs are saving lives, sometimes people's jobs are helping people when a publisher's clearing house sweepstakes, but that's what it really comes down to. And so if it really is helping people do these things, I mean, it is, as you said, very exciting. It's an exciting time to be looking at all of this stuff. And a time when I think people like you and me will increasingly be able to build these kinds of applications because the tools are getting that easy to use. I hope so. I'm kind of, I'm not that good. Well, maybe like you. I mean, okay, my kids, my kids, definitely. Well, Paul, it's been a real pleasure hosting, hosting this show with you. You too, it's been great. I'm Rebecca Knight for Paul Gillin. This has been the Cube's live coverage of IBM CDO Summit. We will see you next time.