CTOvision.com

Context for the CTO, CIO, CISO and Data Scientist

You are here: Home / Archives for a16z

a16z

What The Board Needs To Know About Artificial Intelligence

No matter what the business, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to have an impact. It is changing the way consumers consume, changing the way companies create and changing the way industries generate value. It is also improving how givernments function including both service to citizens and national security missions. The bad news is that AI is also being used by criminals and hostile governments. It is a component of the rise of cyberwar and the growing cyberthreat.

C-suite executives and members of boards are rightly concerned with assessing what about AI they should accelerate into their companies and what impact it should have on their firms to beat the competition in delivering value.

Frank Chen of a16z is one of the great visionaries and explainers of artificial intelligence, especially around the AI with potential for real business impact. This video on “Artificial Intelligence: What is working” captures his thoughts on the current golden age of AI (which is really more accurately described at machine learning, deep learning and other distributed computing).

Like every golden age, there is promise and peril to be seen. And there is a need to determine what is hype and what is real. There is also a need to know what is actionable and relevant now and what is coming in the future. All of this is captured by Frank in this succinct video:

This video hits so many hot topics. The bottom line: AI has come roaring out of the research labs and is in business now. Now it is your turn to decide what to do with AI inside your organization.

You can find more insights into the nature of this critical megatrend in the CTOvision section on Artificial Intelligence. And track the most important tech concepts for C-suite executives at The Boardroom.

 

 

A Conversation With Marc Andreessen: The impact of emerging tech on jobs, training, education and home life

This post is the second in a series based on a discussion with Marc Andreessen. The first was on: AI, Robotics, Jobs and Accelerating The Future

 

Gourley: Can you provide more context on what kind of education and training?

Andreessen: It is fair to say I am biased on that subject but my view is that the quantitative skills will be in greater demand: Math, Economics, Science, Engineering, Computer Science. The requirements for these are rising at much higher rates so their premium is rising. All of us should seek to self educate on these when we can and this is what we should encourage our youth to pursue. We should of course value other more qualitative skills like history, politics, arts and culture, but understand that this is an increasingly technical world and even those people will need more understanding about how the world really works. If you want to be as relevant as possible, get as many quantitative skills as you can and keep learning.

Of course this is not a zero sum game. The computer scientist can learn history, for example, and it is very important to have broad context. But it is pretty clear this is a technology focused economy.

Gourley: You said above that technology creates jobs. So how can we accelerate that?

Andreessen: This is another key question we all need to spend more time on. We should all keep asking ourselves, since the effect of technology on jobs creation is well understood and since as tech automates it will create higher quality jobs, how do we accelerate the creation of new businesses, products and industries to create the greatest good in terms of new opportunities?

First an example. Consider the old concept of a company town. An entire town might exist to serve the large factory for the firm, for example, Kodak and its company town in Rochester New York. For years the town consisted of people that either worked for Kodak or served those that did. When the market changed on Kodak the town and its people suffered. What if instead of the town serving one factory it served six? Then people would have more opportunity to serve and less chance of being on the losing side of a market disruption. Now take that lesson into the globally connected technology-based economy we have now where there is more opportunity to create opportunity and serve industries far from your geographic location.

So one factor we can leverage to accelerate job creation is to enable success of new industries that can create new businesses that can leverage globally connected skilled labor and globally connected consumers. Tech firms operated this way now. Most other industries are moving in this direction. But we need to take steps to accelerate this approach into education, healthcare, transportation, farming, finance and all the services sectors to expand opportunities for all.

We also absolutely must ask ourselves how to keep the old incumbent companies from holding back progress. The old ways of doing things are too frequently just designed to thwart the innovation we need to accelerate the higher quality jobs. Consider, for example, the old industries whose entrenched lobbying firms build up regulations that cause unnecessary impediments for innovators. How do we mitigate that behavior and ensure the old firms do not hold up progress?

We also need to ask ourselves how to ensure we keep global markets open. And need to continually think about how to make it easier to start new companies. How do we encourage entrepreneurship and innovation?

These are the big questions we should be thinking about.

Gourley: I’d like to ask your views about another scenario. Projections are that by 2020 there will be over 100 Billion Internet-connected devices, and easily 1 Trillion sensors generating data around us all. In the U.S. the average home will likely have between 300 to 600 high powered chips in devices capable of communicating directly with each other and with the traditional Internet connected computers in the house. In this world of the near future, who will be there to help homeowners optimize and secure their environments?

Andreessen: You bring to mind a company we have invested in called 21. They are a bitcoin company building a specialized bitcoin computer designed to help developers create applications that can buy, sell and trade bitcoin. Today their purpose built computer has utility for developers. But consider the very likely evolution of this type of solution. Consider software that runs on all your devices in your home and in your car that is continually mining (producing) bitcoin. Not only does this mean that your devices are producing something of value for you when they are not in use, but now they can exchange more trusted information and even value in ways that better serve you. Take for example your car on a trip to the airport. You wonder which garage to park in and your car guides you to the one closest to your terminal and then takes you to the best available empty spot, and when it is time to pay it automatically pays with the bitcoin it has generated. This will be simple and convenient and efficient.

Now back to your home, with each of your devices communicating together and with workloads able to be distributed over them you will be able to operate them as a connected supercomputer in your home. Chips on everything from your toothbrush to your toaster will be able to process workloads as you direct, drawing very little power in doing so. When you are not mining bitcoin, you may want to focus your home supercomputer to help find cures for disease or research other scientific pursuits. There are so many possible uses for this new capability.

Gourley: Seems like a risk we are introducing in doing this is the risk that we are potentially giving cyber criminals of the future more direct access to our personal lives and private information.

Andreessen: There is absolutely more work to be done here but a great deal is underway and my sense is security needs are pushing more and more control to the cloud. The many chips and systems in the home will need to be expertly configured and managed and overseen and that is a perfect use case for managed professional services from the cloud. Chips will need to be tethered in some way to cloud services under the homeowners control but managed by trusted security teams and automated processes. Simply having a home firewall is not the answer here. The homes of the future will require administrative solutions that operate at scale and that means the cloud.

Consider today’s example of the Tesla and how its software is loaded and managed. Most other modern cars have ports for mechanics to plug into to check and manage the vehicle. Guess what, mechanics, although they have valuable skills, are generally not going to be as proficient as loading software as they are at maintaining high performance engines. All the Tesla software loads are controlled through cloud services, the mechanic does not need to touch it at all. There are lessons for the future house from this model.

Gourley: Thank you Marc.

Andreessen: My pleasure.

A Conversation With Marc Andreessen: AI, Robotics, Jobs and Accelerating The Future

If you are an enterprise technologist or if you love thinking about the incredible future we can build for ourselves you no doubt already track the very interesting Marc Andreessen. His open sharing of views and context via his blog, on YouTube and his Twitter Feed are a great source of information for those seeking insights into the emerging tech scene and we recommend following him there for continuous context.

We had an opportunity to ask Marc for some clarifying thoughts on his views and present them in this two-part series. This first post is on AI, robotics and the future of jobs, the second dives into education, training and some concepts that may help us think through future uses of technology in our lives. A second post in this series will dive into some of the implications of future trends on education, training and our home lives.

Gourley: Marc can you provide any context that can help enterprise technologists think through the potential of disruptions to the workforce that come from advances in technology?

Andreessen: Disruptions like those of the last 300 years will certainly continue and they will continue to bring better, higher quality jobs.

Gourley: But there are those that say AI and Robotics and software that eats the world will destroy jobs.

Andreessen: There have always been those that say that and they have been proven wrong so consistently there are names for their specious thinking. In economic theory this is known as the “Lump of Labor Fallacy” which contends that the amount of work is a fixed sum. This is also at times called the “Luddite Fallacy” to draw attention to the early views of technology haters who thought that there would just be a limited amount of work and automating any of it would put the humans out of a job. Whatever you call this fallacy it has been debunked by real world observation. Technology produces jobs rather than destroying them, and it produces better, safer jobs and generates rising incomes.

Simply put, by applying technology to areas that have not had it before you get more output for the same input. This is the reason you do it, this results in industry that does more with less and generate more value by doing so. That value contributes to the overall economy. The efficiencies also builds new wealth and creates new markets for products and services and new businesses. In short, if you are concerned about job growth you should want more technology, not less.

There is plenty of evidence that underscores this, including the employment cycle we are going through right now. When unemployment was rising after 2008 the proponents of the Luddite Fallacy popped up again but innovation continued, and fortunately the results are clear. Job growth has been strong and positive. There are more new jobs in both the U.S. and globally than ever before.

Gourley: But there has been disruption, right? And all indications are that technology led change will continue to impact every industry and all levels of government.

Andreessen: If the past is any guide yes it continues and all indications are it accelerates.

Gourley: So what do we do to better prepare ourselves, especially our youth, for this change? Are there impacts on education?

Andreessen: This is a key question and one we don’t spend enough time on. To explore it I think we should first look at the premium that the world puts on education and training. The world is getting more and more connected and with that connectivity more of us can take advantage of great opportunities for advancement. But most opportunities will come to those with technical skills. The greatest pain and disruption will come to those who earn a living with unskilled labor. So clearly the positive approach to enhancing opportunities for more is through better, more ubiquitous education and skills training.

The global move is towards unskilled labor going away. This is another 300 year trend that is expected to continue and even accelerate. In farming, for example, the introduction of tractors meant less labor was required for plowing fields and many of those unskilled jobs were eliminated. Today in every industry there are unskilled jobs that will be increasingly downsized so those people who can only survive by unskilled labor will find that their hard lifestyle gets harder. Education and training can help those who currently do unskilled labor and is an absolute must for our youth.

Gourley: I have seen videos of mines, the largest mines in the world, operating with no miners, and that is a disruption, but it is hard to argue that society would want to keep sending people underground in this dangerous work. Is this what you mean?

Andreessen: Coal and other mining are on their way out for labor. The industry will become more efficient and productive by software and machine automation. Expect more skilled labor, designers, engineers, operators, analysts, but much less of the unskilled workforce. All of us should sympathize with those unskilled laborers who lose work because of this, but you are right that society should not be subjecting people to mining. It is unacceptable and years from now people will look back on us and wonder why we could ever consider not replacing those jobs as fast as we can. It is true we need to put thought into this disruption and create new things for people to do, but this will only work if we pay enough attention to education and training.

 

The second installment of this series will focus more on education, training and what to do to accelerate positive change. Get an early look by signing up for our newsletter, the CTOvision Daily.

Related Reading:

Cyber Strategy and the Dunning-Kruger Effect: Could some policymakers be too unskilled to recognize their ineptitude?

Marc Andreessen on the future of technology and implications for enhancing government dialog with citizens

Marc AndreessenThis is the fifth installment in our series flowing from recent dialog with Marc Andreessen. In this post we provide some of Marc’s thoughts regarding ways that government can improve the dialog underway with citizens on the future of automation.

Gourley: How can government start a dialogue with citizens on how AI, robotics and the coming paradigm crushing collision of physical and cyber worlds?

Andreessen: This is a hard question to give an answer to. But I know it is an important one to deal with and there is a need for this dialog now. It is instructive to consider the current issues with NSA. For 50 years the operational assumption was that NSA could work under a “trust me” basis with citizens. Now there has to be a new dialog and trust rebuilt. It is much easier in this case to point to the problem than the solution and the same can probably be said about the broader topic of how to have this new dialogue with citizens.

The good news is that the Internet provides a channel for enhanced communications in many ways. For example, look at the newly established White House petition process called “We The People” where petitions that get a large number of signatures are guaranteed to get a response. This is an early effort but clearly one worth watching. It would be good to see more activities like this, including more online focus groups, discussions, google hangouts with leaders and other engagements.

On a related note, consider the still too common way politicians communicate with crowds during campaigns. The old and still common way is for a politician to give an old but slightly tweaked stump speech to a crowd. Now it is becoming much easier for any citizen to see any previous speech the candidate has given so they can tell if they are being patronized to.

Gourley: Other than national defense and law enforcement, what will be the role of the US government in this future world?

Andreessen: This is also hard to fully answer but one thing is becoming apparent. It is clear that change is accelerating dramatically and there are huge issues with how citizenry deal with the rates of change. Many people will be personally disrupted and others will have fear of having their careers disrupted. This will cause anxiety and concerns with how technology is being used. We should ask ourselves if we want our governments to have a role in helping our citizenry deal with the rapid rate of technological and societal change. We should also think through how change will increase the need for social safety nets. As changes come faster and faster and people’s lives become more disrupted, society will need to help. To embrace change and have capitalism and advancement we will also need a vigorous safety net. This includes help with education, training and other ways to reduce anxiety.

It feels to all of us that the world is changing fast, and it is.

Gourley: Thank you Marc.

Andreessen: My pleasure.

 

This concludes our five part series from our discussions with Marc Andreessen. Find all posts at:

Marc Andreessen on the future of technology and implications for interactions between government and citizens

Marc AndreessenThis is the fourth installment in our series flowing from recent dialog with Marc Andreessen. In this post we provide Marc’s thoughts around how automation and AI may change the nature of interaction between government and citizen.

Gourley: Do you have any suggestions that can help us think through how automation plus AI change the social fabric and interactions between citizens and government?

Andreessen: It is pretty clear that businesses are way out ahead on this one. There are very successful precedents that can be studied as we think through what is possible for AI to enhance government service to citizens. In the commercial world, Big Data and AI are closely related, with the most impactful AI being done by processing huge data sets and doing extreme learning against those data sets. Google is really best in class at this right now. Look at what they are doing with predictive search, Google now, contextual search, speech recognition, ad targeting – it’s all machine learning against big data. Google has been leading but we are seeing spinoffs of approaches applied by many other firms in other sectors. A key examplesto consider is health insurance. We can now envision entirely new ways of conceiving health insurance– if you take big data/machine learning approach. We can say the same with auto insurance and crop insurance, financial services, loan risk scoring – all of which can be done far more accurately now than historically.

Lessons to draw from these regarding the future of interactions between citizens and government include better, more relevant provisioning of social services and health support from government, tailored to individuals. Also consider the ability to better forecast disease and its prevention, both broadly for communities and tailored to specific individuals informed by genetics.

Also consider the application of AI and automation to constructs like the drivers license. The current approach where you go in, take a test and get a license is really ripe for automation, not just in the application process but in the continuous use and authorization to drive it implies. Consider AI that can tell if a person is driving poorly. Sensors in a car can tell if a person is drifting from lane to lane or rolling through stop signs or otherwise impaired. By 2030 will AI plus sensors be able to temporarily revoke a right to drive until the person is safe?

Gourley: What should technologists in government be thinking about to help accelerate virtuous change?

Andreessen: The use cases I mentioned above are really just a beginning. Keep thinking through use cases for AI in government service to citizens. There are so many more. My advice here is to track developments in the commercial world closely.

The next post in this series will dive into some ways we may be able to enhance the dialog underway today regarding the future of technology.  Ensure you are on our newsletter distributions to be alerted when we publish.

Marc Andreessen on the Future of Technology and Automation, Robotics, and AI can Impact Government Service

Marc AndreessenThis is the third installment in our series flowing from recent dialog with Marc Andreessen. Previous posts discussed future tech scenarios around the year 2030 and context on government services in the future. In this post we provide Marc’s thoughts around the future of technology including automation, robotics and AI and implications for government, business and citizens.

Gourley: Marc can you give us thoughts that can help government technologists today think through the future of automation? In general, how can we shape an increasingly robotic/AI workforce in government to better serve citizens?

Andreessen: All indications are that 2030 will be primetime for this type of government service.

Let’s start with concepts of self driving cars. By 2030 we can expect self driving cars to be widely proliferated in governments, being used for functions like post office delivery at the federal level and many other uses at the state and local levels. Self driving aircraft are with us now, but consider the fully developed use of government and commercial drones in the near future. You will not be able to go outside without seeing drones overhead. Government use cases for them include weather reporting, law enforcement, health, environmental monitoring, traffic control, safety, emergency response and communications. The same environment will host many commercial drones that may also have those use cases but will also no doubt be there to collect information on consumers for marketing and other business reasons.

Which leads to the topic of surveillance. Drones are not the only platform, surveillance will be conducted from ground-based and building based sensors as well as on most all people you encounter. Just know it will be pervasive, with HD imagery and video potentially collected from anywhere, as well as collection of signals being emanated from smart devices we all carry.

Society will need to decide how to resolve issues/tensions associated with an environment like this. We can generally break these down into issues in three domains:

1) Government

2) Business

3) Individuals

At the government level, we will have to deal with issues regarding protection of civil liberties and ways to respect reasonable expectations of privacy while people are in public spaces.

Businesses today collect information on people and extrapolating out to 2030 shows even more issues to resolve there. The same concerns we have now will be apparent on much larger scale. Imagine data from your self driving car letting the shopping center know you are approaching, then HD video of you letting the shopping center have more tactical information on what you are wearing and correlating that with signals from your smart phone plus knowledge of your financial and purchasing history. There might be great benefits to consumers of this sort of advanced preparation of your arrival, but society will have to consider these many issues.

Individuals today are empowered with great abilities to sense what is going on around them, including information on other people around us. There are issues of safety and security that make this a very virtuous thing to do. But also issues of privacy for others.

At all three of these levels, government, business and individuals, there is a growing need for society to think through questions and implications of this coming world of integrated smart sensors, robotics and AI.

 

The next posts in this series will dive into the social fabric of interactions between citizens and government and then the coming paradigm crushing collision of physical and cyber worlds.  Ensure you are on our newsletter distributions to be alerted when we publish.

 

Marc Andreessen on the future of technology and the nature of government services

Marc AndreessenThis is the second installment in our series flowing from recent dialog with Marc Andreessen. The first post reviewed some likely scenarios of the tech enabled environment of 2030 and some foundational considerations regarding converged cyber-physical systems all citizens will have access to (see the first post here). In this post we provide some of Marc’s views around the nature of government services in the near future.

Gourley:  In the near future of 2030, do you have thoughts on services that government currently delivers to citizens that will be done better or perhaps rendered obsolete because of new personal computing technologies?

Andreessen: We can assume that by 2030 all government services can be online.

A key area is legislation. Consider that law and code are related- law itself is a form of code, so in the timeframe we are talking about we will very likely see huge parts of the law move online. We are already seeing the use of the Internet as a reference to law, but consider it being delivered in a tailored way to inform. And consider having more online adjudication of both civil and criminal cases online. By 2030 we should expect to have virtual adjudication in many cases.

This is just one domain. Consider the many services that states are already moving online, like driver licenses and car registration. The Internet is changing the DMV and most every other state, federal and local government office.

Interacting with governments for healthcare will be far more refined than today, but more importantly, citizens will be served with healthcare from non government capabilities that will change the need for government interaction. Consider that by 2030 we will all have personal sensors that will have readings of every relevant aspect of our body chemistry and that can be used to better channel healthcare, with or without the government. These are just hints of elements that can help us think through the transformation of government service to an online global world.

For other hints, we can find parallels to how the smartphone enabled youth of today interact with financial services. Many young people today interact with their financial services in ways that will never require them to visit a bank. Extrapolate forward from that. By 2030 every citizen will primarily interact with financial services without visiting a facility. In the context of citizen to government interactions why would that be any different?

There are other categories of services that people will need and want from government. Consider new ways of interacting to shape policy, for example. Key among these is voting. At some point it will go online. Estonia is a pioneer of online voting and the big lessons learned is that it can be done reliably and in ways that satisfy the needs of citizens. There is no reason not to do this. Once the means for online voting is established this same channel can be used to ask other questions of citizens. Polling can be more frequent, as can sentiment assessment.

Citizens are already using the Internet to organize in ways their governments have not realized, now consider the year 2030 when there is far more political organizing happening online. The connected world of this era will have far more online petitions, fundraising, lobbying, grassroots efforts, pressure groups and protests. Internet services that provide those today are growing fast, like Change.org or NationBuilder.com for online campaigns. MoveOn has pioneered the approach and they clearly get it. Facebook and Twitter have been key parts of protests and demonstrations globally. Expect this trend to continue.

All this raises some interesting questions. As citizens become more interactive there can be more referendums and direct democracy. But there are negatives to consider with this approach. There are reasons to have a representative government. It can be very good to have a layer of representatives in between citizens and government.

The point is that society must figure out what levels of direct democracy we want. If government does not embrace it there is a high likelihood that citizens will use the power of the Internet and their applications to better mobilize against government. But if government embraces it too aggressively we can end up with mob rule.

 

The next posts in this series will dive into ways automation, robotics, and AI can impact government service and the social fabric of interactions between citizens and government.  Ensure you are on our newsletter distributions to be alerted when we publish.

 

Marc Andreessen on the Future of Technology and Implications for Government Service to Citizens

Marc AndreessenIf you are a professional in technology, government and/or business you have no doubt already been exposed to the very interesting Marc Andreessen.

Odds are many of our readers are already tracking his thoughts closely via his blog, his media interactions captured on YouTube and his very dynamic and thought engaging Twitter Feed where you can now track the dynamics of what he finds interesting day to day.

But have you ever wanted to dive deeper into Marc’s views on the future of technology as it relates to government services?

I had an opportunity to ask Marc a few questions and decided to focus on this topic in the hopes that the resulting discussion could prove to be informative to government technologists and the citizen thought leaders helping to shape the future of government to citizen interaction. The result was a series of five posts which may prove to be informative to your strategic planning.

With this first post, we do some scene setting discussion on what they world may be like 15 years from now and solicit Marc’s context:

Gourley: Marc, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the future technological environment with a focus on lessons for today’s government technologist. Your views on the contributions of new technologies to the future of government-citizen interactions would be most appreciated, as well as your views on the use of technologies that can help the government do its job better.

Andreessen: Sounds great.

Gourley:  As a planning assumption, consider a future environment 15 years out. Projections are that by the year 2030 there will be 370 Million Americans, so not so much more than we have today. Imagine all of those citizens having access to all the compute power of highly evolved intelligent cloud-based and personal IT solutions and consider a world where cyber and physical systems have been deeply connected and where sensors abound. Assume bandwidth is available where ever it needs to be. Assume citizens are already being served with many benefits of this technology that governments used to provide. Do you think this is a plausible future? What would you add?

Andreessen: Could be a realistic scenario. It is certainly in keeping with our views. Some of the assumptions we (a16z) operate under is that we are just now getting a glimpse of a world where everyone will be online. The computer itself is only 70 years old, and only 7 years ago did the PC allow the first billion people to get online. Smartphones blew through that record, hitting 1.5 billion in 2013 and on track to reach the entire global population of 7 Billion by 2020. The price of smartphones is dropping fast and we may actually reach that number much earlier.

So it is very realistic to say that by 2030 people around the world will have lived in an age of smartphones for a full decade. So these people will have a decade of experience living with a supercomputer in their pocket. Citizens will no doubt be comfortable using these devices for applications that touch every aspect of their lives, including how they transact business, how they organize and how they collaborate, and that will impact how they interact with government.

We also expect the cloud revolution will be fully implemented by then, including people confidently accessing trusted cloud based applications and data. Consider this not just here but extrapolated to everyone in the world. Everyone on the planet will have access into social networks, ecommerce, cloud based calculation services/algorithms, enhanced education and news and information. Everyone will have this everywhere.

 

Now that we have done some scene setting, our next post in this series will dive into services the government provides now and in the future and what to expect as citizens become more digitally interactive, with other posts to follow on ways automation, robotics, and AI can impact government service and the social fabric of interactions between citizens and government. Ensure you are on our newsletter distributions to be alerted when we publish.

 

More Content

Cyber War

SciFi

Super Bowl Ads Indicate Big Businesses Think You Are Afraid of AI

Tom Loftus provided an insightful review of some of Super Bowl ads in the 4 Feb 2019 Wall Street Journal. Like AI parody in SNL, these ads really poked fun at computers: Seriously, did anyone catch the commercials? If the Super Bowl is the zeitgeist, then it is safe to say that America is not […]

HBO’s Westworld: The Man In Black is a special kind of Twitter user

HBO’s Westworld is a modern take on the Michael Crichton SciFi tale of a robotic amusement park. The HBO version has a new twist. The creators/writers were all exposed to years of Twitter, which has influenced every episode and the entire arch of two seasons of the show. Now that season two is wrapping up, […]