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We all see how technology is impacting society, business, and service divisions. And how exponential it\u00a0is growing. But what should we really look out for in the near future? Are machines really intelligent, or\u00a0are they as dumb as a toaster? Are 3D printed steaks any good? Is AI life-threatening, or just job-threatening? Read on more as I chat with Gerd Leonhard<\/strong>, Service Mastery Day<\/strong> host at this year\u2019s 12th\u00a0<\/strong>Aftermarket Business Platform<\/strong> in Berlin<\/strong>, October<\/strong> 17-19<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Thomas Igou (Content Director at Aftermarket):<\/span> Gerd, what\u2019s the biggest trend impacting manufacturing organizations today, from a Service\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>perspective?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n G.L:<\/span><\/strong> Data and intelligence is the biggest trend happening right now. Every process is completely tracked\u00a0and monitored, made intelligent. As Kevin Kelley likes to say, \u201cfirst we digitize, now we cognify.\u201d\u00a0The problem is that there is too much data but not enough precise information in aftersales, no linking\u00a0of online and offline. Intelligent machine (misnomer, intelligent, not smart), can look at a trillion facts of\u00a0data and give you on demand answer in 14 seconds. Humans can\u2019t do that; for huge amounts of\u00a0disparate and unstructured data, you need artificial intelligence to structure this. And it\u2019s important to\u00a0remember that these machines are not thinking machines, they are giant neuro applications like super\u00a0software, and that is what AI is bringing to us, and I sometimes call it IA, Intelligent Assistants rather\u00a0than AI.\u00a0It creates a huge change. You have to train these machines, put all the good data in; only then can you\u00a0get machines to create a huge amount of value by recognizing patterns and suggesting other ways of\u00a0doing things.<\/p>\n A problem that will arise is that it\u2019ll be widely used because AI is superior to humans in analyzing data.\u00a0This will create the black box problem: you don\u2019t know why a machine will decide this because it\u2019s\u00a0beyond human understanding, you have to trust the machine or not. But I think it\u2019s important to keep\u00a0humans in the loop to question the machines because they will not understand human components and\u00a0reasoning; it\u2019s important to have a counter balance. It\u2019s a bit like the trip advisor problem: it can be\u00a0really great, but you still need to check it against reality.<\/p>\n When you talk about aftersales, a lot of this is manual work shoveling data and facts, and that is going to\u00a0dramatically change. This is like the doctor looking at IBM Watson who must scan a million MRIs to\u00a0figure out if there\u2019s cancer; the doctor can just push a button and ask Watson to take a look at this\u00a0picture, what do you think? And 14 seconds later he gets an analysis of millions of facts. That\u2019s going to\u00a0be the same in Service.\u00a0Also, the cloud means everything is becoming virtual, paper is on its way out, everything is connected.\u00a0Of course, that leads to another problem: security and surveillance. When everything is in the cloud, it\u00a0becomes attackable. And that becomes an issue, not only in terms of technology but also regulation like\u00a0GDPR, keeping data safe, that is quite an effort. You get the benefit of connectivity but also the\u00a0responsibility.<\/p>\n One of the key challenge, when you\u2019re in technology, is that you make ethical decisions all the time. In\u00a010 years from now, we\u2019ll be in a world where machines will be able to do things unthinkable for us, then\u00a0we\u2019ll have to decide what are the guidelines, what\u2019s fair use, what is the authority of users, do I have\u00a0permission\u2026 if something goes wrong, it could kill the bank, it will be much bigger than what\u2019s\u00a0happening with Facebook right now<\/p>\n You have amazing technology, but you need to have the right guidelines and processes in place.\u00a0Accountability is a big deal.\u00a0We used to have wars on oils, now we\u2019ll have wars on information.\u00a0If you look at the food chain complex, once you\u2019ve sold something, who owns the data and who gets to\u00a0do what? You need to be hyper collaborative, not compete, because in the end it won\u2019t be on\u00a0ownership of the data because we are moving to a world of APIs where everything is connected, it will\u00a0be about the license to operate, to use the data, not locking it up. For example, in the healthcare\u00a0system, it will be about the health cloud which puts all people\u2019s data in the cloud, so the question is\u00a0what kind of permission do I have to read?\u00a0The data we\u2019re going to get will be mindboggling; it will be bigger than oil.<\/p>\n T.I:<\/span> Should we fear the rise of the machines?<\/strong><\/p>\n G.L:<\/span><\/strong> We\u2019re far away from machine becoming conscious or sentient, for machines to have this capability\u00a0they would need to go way beyond the current binary operations. One of the biggest problem is that\u00a0machines will become so narrowly intelligent, we\u2019ll give them too much power because we think they\u00a0are so intelligent; we\u2019ll give them too much authority in terms of analytics.\u00a0The biggest issue in the foreseeable future is displacement of work. Any work that is automatable will\u00a0be lost. Bu that\u2019s not life threatening, it\u2019s just threatening our jobs!\u00a0To change our jobs, we need to move up the food chain to valuable things humans do, like\u00a0understanding, negotiations, planning, innovation.\u00a0We\u2019re 30-50 years to any potential existential threat of AI, where AI can supplement or surpass humans.\u00a0The most important thing will be regulation and safety. It\u2019s like nuclear power, if you\u2019re not doing it\u00a0safely, it\u2019s very bad.
\nElon Musk and Stephen Hawkins are on the right track, if we\u2019re going to have intelligent machines like\u00a0we are, we\u2019ll need to contain them. But it\u2019s not an issue today, these machines are as dumb as a\u00a0toaster, compared to human brain and human thinking, because they don\u2019t \u201cthink\u201d at all.\u00a0It\u2019s a danger, but not next week.<\/p>\n