In times of need, if customers can’t open a chatbot or pick up a phone to quickly get resolution to their issues, they’ll start shopping around – customer experience is now part of the package.

Meeting these real-time demands, then, is a deal-breaker, but there are also rewards. According to McKinsey, 70 percent of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated, and if you do it right, they will stick around. It also costs 6-7 times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one, so investing here just makes good business sense. 

The customer service ‘war room’

All this makes the customer support function a vital chunk of the business, one that’s generally housed in a designated contact center – a central hub where often vast volumes of omnichannel customer communications are managed. 

It is a full-scale operation focused on collective efficiency – a ‘war room’ with banks of desks, phones and screens, where supervisors roam the aisles and “control the floor”. Large screens adorn the walls, showing real-time data such as customers’ average hold or handle time. These contact centers may still use old-premise systems and physical phones to take calls.

Contact centers are round-the-clock, performance-based operations; support staff may circulate on shift patterns, using the same desk and equipment as one another throughout the course of the day. Centers may also be based offshore, in different time zones, to accommodate 24-7 availability. 

When social distancing measures took hold across the world, then, the airtight, machine-like concept of the ‘traditional’ contact center was swiftly thrown to the wind. Physical call centers – where support staff’s work is essentially tethered to their desks – had to shutdown. To make matters yet more complex, businesses across industries received never-before-seen spikes in support requests, as panicked customers scrambled to cancel travel plans, file for unemployment or renegotiate payments – among a thousands of other complexities the current circumstances brought with them. 

In an update to customers, the CEO of UK telecom firm TalkTalk, Tristia Harrison, said the sudden and unexpected 30 percent surge in network usage caused by remote working and subsequent connectivity issues meant “240 head office colleagues” had to be retrained as customer service agents, with staff having to be reduced at designated contact centers because of social distancing requirements. 

And while some call centers were able to shift to work from home themselves, most could not due to technology limitations, regulations, or the fact that agents lack a private space to take phone calls from home. Those businesses with offshore call centers were also mired by the complexity of local lockdown laws and guidelines. 

Under more strain than ever

The upshot of all this is that many companies, in a time where their customers need support the most, are not able to meet demand, putting their business in further jeopardy at a time of significant market uncertainty. 

“I talked with travel related companies that will only deal with travel related calls within 72 hours from the trip, and food delivery companies that shut down part of their business since they could no longer serve it,” said Gadia Shamia, the co-founder and CEO of Replicant a conversational AI platform for customer service.

With the pandemic leading us to question the normal way of doing things across broad plains of business, the current situation is highlighting new approaches to customer service, and how technologies like AI can assist in ensuring that – for both today and future disruptions – the efficiency and effectiveness of customer service operations can continue unaffected. 

To underscore that statement, just weeks ago tech giant Google tweaked its own Contact Center AI – built for customers fielding thousands of customer enquiries each day – to specifically answer questions around the COVID-19 pandemic, and associated disruptions to users’ operations.

As government agencies, healthcare services and other sectors such as travel, financial services and retail, faced a deluge of requests for clarity over the impact of the outbreak, the AI-powered Rapid Response Virtual Agent allows organizations to deploy chatbots to answer questions across voice, social and chat around the clock.  

The release was aimed at those needing to adapt to the situation quickly; Google said the tool could be set up within a couple of weeks, or more quickly if using curated templates of FAQs and up-to-date guidance from health authorities. At a basic level, the Contact Center AI can provide answers to sector-specific questions like ‘should I wear a facemask’ for healthcare & life sciences groups, or ‘have your refund policies changed?’ in the travel industry. 

But more advanced integrations and conversational flows added over time, can allow ‘virtual agents’ to handle advanced interactions related to the business – customers can ask their bank about changing their individual credit limit, for example, or checking where their order is with a retailer. 

If users add complex conversational flows and backend integrations over time, the virtual agent can handle advanced interactions related to the specific company – those could be related to changing an individual’s credit limit with a bank, for example, or checking where an order is with a retailer.

On Friday (May 1), AI call center software firm ASAPP announced US$185 million amid a boom for such solutions owed to the combination of the pandemic pushing up call center volume at a time when companies must also streamline the function. 

The software doesn’t replace humans. It analyzes the most efficient member of the team, and provides other agents recommendations for responses in real-time based on those insights. Investors in the firm – which claims to employ 55 AI and machine learning engineers with PhDs – included the former CEO of CISCO, John Chambers, and the deal brought ASAPP’s value to $800 million, according to a Reuters’ source. 

Shamia told TechHQ that AI in the contact center is well-suited to handling many customer service requests due to their transactional nature. They can be automated without compromising on quality. “When a customer calls to cancel a flight, there is a very clear conversion funnel – the customer has a ticket and they want to come out of this call with a refund,” he explained. 

“The steps the agent takes are predefined and there is no room for judgment. This is a great call for conversational AI as it can answer the call with no wait time, run a shorter and more effective call than a human agent, and do it 10,000 times a day without getting fatigued.” 

But that’s not to say humans should be removed from contact centers. Support staff remain vital to handling certain requests which require more skillful navigation, but automation can alleviate them to provide a better-quality interaction. 

“By letting AI take on flight cancellations, agents can focus on more complex and emotional calls,” Shamia said. “The result of this partnership is lower wait time, less exhausted agents who can really focus on the caller, lower total cost and higher customer satisfaction. 

“It also allows companies to run 24/7, without forcing employees to work undesirable graveyard shifts.”

Contact center technology may gather pace during this period, as organizations realize how these platforms can transform preconceived ideas of the contact center, shifting from one where rows of headset-adorned support agents are benchmarked on call volumes and average call times, to a slightly ‘airier’ one where the focus is on the quality of customer interaction more than anything else. That said, the COVID-19 outbreak may only accelerate a trend that’s been in motion for years. 

IS THE FUTURE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE FULLY AUTOMATED?

Tech Wire Asia | 19 January, 2018

“Companies have been automating parts of customer service for years using applications and web pages,” said Shamia. “Now they have another channel they can use, without changing their customer’s habits […]”

“This will create long term elasticity both in spending and availability, as AI voice agents can answer one call or 10,000 without planning or complex staffing.”

The post How contact center AI is taking the customer service strain appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

And behind that repetition is a lot of substance; as increasingly digitized organizations, we’re amassing more data than ever before – tapping into the insights it holds can inform and transform approaches inside and out of the business, be it learning about customer preferences or how to streamline our recruitment process, that ultimately can make us market leaders. 

According to a new report by SQream, 59% of companies surveyed expect to see an increase of over 50% in their data volume in 2021. 60% of the surveyed companies already have over 500 TB of storage, meaning the expected increases will be enormous amounts of data.

The study found that 99% of management teams understand how critical data analytics is to make informed business decisions today. But the constant pressure to maximize the use of this ever-expanding wealth of data to derive ‘real-time insights’ and ‘data culture’ – and to avoid ‘dark data’ at all costs – likely induces a pang of anxiety among even hardened business leaders who find the task of being data-driven resource-intensive and mountainous. 

While management teams want to prioritize data analytics, they generally don’t have the budget necessary to cover the costs. Only 13% of the companies surveyed were in a good financial position when it comes to supporting data analytics activities. Over half (55%) will not fare as well, as their budgets will cover less than 75% of their actual data analytics needs in 2021. 

According to SQream, it remains to be seen if shifting priorities to focus on analyzing the treasure trove of data that companies are gathering will result in a matching shifting of budgets. 

The expense comes with the need to invest in and effectively implement solutions and tools to analyze data, such as Hadoop, Spark, HANA, and Tableau. But even with sufficient technology in place, organizations need to recruit and commit talent to utilize these tools effectively and contribute to cheerleading and embedding a culture of data analytics within the business. 

KPMG suggests that organizations with a CDO are twice as likely to have a clear digital strategy. The ongoing education of the organization’s workforce is a fundamental part of such a strategy.

On top of the expense of data analytics tech and talent, 82% of companies shared a variety of challenges related to how long it takes to prep data, ingest data, run queries, and create analytic reports. Only 18% of surveyed companies claim to have no challenges when it comes to running data analytics.

Indeed, IBM found that even if you do invest in professionals such as data scientists, up to 80% of their time can be spent data cleaning, or making it ‘usable’ for analytics and other applications. 

When it comes to becoming a ‘data-driven’ company, then, it seems there aren’t half measures. Organizations that want to leverage as much of the potential of their data as possible must make the initiative a priority central to their business strategy.

That said, it won’t happen overnight. An interview with Asian pharmacy giant Zuellig Pharma on Tech Wire Asia revealed how a well-thought, step-wise process can be the most effective. After investing in the necessary infrastructure, the firm focused on training staff on the benefits of using data and analytics, it educated clients and customers about the value of this new information and built a robust but agile data governance framework.

“As traction among staff, clients and customers grew, so too did our data culture and the number of ROI accretive use cases,” said Zuellig Pharma’s VP of data & analytics, Tristan Tan. 

Only after putting the foundations in place could the company explore more advanced areas: “[…] we have now started leveraging blockchain in our handling of information with our partners across the supply chain and have embarked on organization-wide automation agenda using data-science and robotics process automation to drive efficiencies in our operations,” Tan said.

“These efforts would not have been successful without the foundations we built in the earlier phases of our journey.”

Now the company has a “critical mass” of people who understand the importance of ensuring data is informing the work being done across the organization. Data culture is not an intangible concept but is embedded practically into business processes.

“Ensuring that a piece of information, a data report, a dashboard or analysis, is a regular part of normal business process has been key to our data transformation,” he said. 

Even for some of the most advanced, ‘data-native’ companies, a piecemeal process of individual education and daily discipline has been crucial. UK fintech Revolut is one of those; it maintains around 800 dashboards and runs around 100,000 SQL queries on a daily basis across the organization, and can optimally analyze large datasets spanning several sources to assist in fraud detection, improving customer satisfaction and financial reporting. Queries that used to take hours are now completed in seconds, enabling self-serve data analytics for all employees across all business functions. 

But behind this success with data analytics is an objective to ensure every employee at Revolut has access to the data they need for their work, every day, in a simple and efficient manner. The data science teams uses the central database as a single point of truth, from which it can download real-time extracts and insights at any time.

This is just one example of a company that has built a culture of data literacy from the first instance, but it showcases the potential of making data analysis and intelligence central to the entire business and making it a day-to-day discipline.

The post Data analytics – expensive, complex but worth it appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Due to extra time spent at home, furloughing, or even the complete loss of jobs, the last year has led many on a quest to enhance and expand their skillsets, or even reskill entirely. 

Given the demand for IT – and the towering salaries certain roles can secure – the prospects of the tech industry have led many to focus on developing their coding skills. 

Research from BoxBoat found that one in four people spent their time learning to code during the lockdown, with Python, Java, and C++ the most commonly-learned languages. More than half of respondents said they were looking to improve tech skills for career development, while a third was seeking to improve job prospects.

From free coding tutorial sites to YouTube, opportunities to learn these valuable skills are accessible to everyone and are pretty much endless. 

For many self-taught and inexperienced coders, however, coding securely isn’t even a consideration, let alone a priority, said Matias Madou, CTO and co-founder at Secure Code Warrior. So, while it’s positive that many are looking to upskill themselves, the importance of learning to code safely “cannot be understated”.

“Insecure code is a huge risk to all organizations,” said Madou. “The rapidly increasing reliance on digital platforms and the software that enables them have only exacerbated pre-existing security issues.

2020 and the digital reliance it thrust upon businesses have served to spotlight just how drastically important secure code is for businesses, their customers, and society at large. Common security bugs can lead to catastrophic breaches if undetected. A 2019 study found out of 32 web applications, 82% of vulnerabilities were located in the application code itself.

In fact, the need for secure and resilient code today has led to the growth of chaos engineering, where resilience is built into code by design and methodology. 

“Without addressing security issues at its root, organizations will fail to effectively fortify their IT infrastructure. At best, this might mean a small-scale data breach, and at worst, could lead to life-threatening scenarios, particularly when it comes to compromising connected devices in industries like healthcare or manufacturing,” said Madou.

Upskilling in security 

While upskilling with developer nous might seem like the route one to better job prospects, Madou suggests security should be front of mind, both for individuals looking to get started or advance, and organizations offering training and development internally. 

“There are many benefits to upskilling in security as a developer,” said Madou, “At first, writing secure code may seem like a time-consuming and cumbersome obstacle to overcome for developers, but it will become quicker and easier with time and create long term efficiencies by saving time fixing bugs on the other end.

“Consistently producing secure, quality code will increase a developer’s value and make them much more in-demand – getting code right the first time can save organizations a lot of time and money. Upskilling in security will open up more lucrative job opportunities, with secure coding continuing to grow as a highly sought-after skill.”

The demand for talented cybersecurity professionals is skyrocketing, he added, with a shortfall of around 291,000 skilled workers in Europe, and security-aware developers can help take the pressure off by addressing common vulnerabilities from the beginning.

Engage with coders 

Madou recommends that, for organizations, poor code security should be addressed from the top-down, and developers should be given the time and encouragement from their leaders to build on their security offerings from the beginning of their careers.

While training in secure coding is essential to changing the state of security in organizations, it’s not always easy to encourage developers to start prioritizing security, he said, as there is often a “misguided assumption that doing so will take them away from the task they love most – building features.”

WHY YOUR DEVELOPER TEAM SHOULD HAVE A SAY IN SOFTWARE BUYING

Adrian Bridgwater | 16 March, 2020

“As a result, training will only be effective if it’s relevant and demonstrates how security can fit seamlessly into a developer’s day job. The best way of doing this is through hands-on, dynamic exercises that are an accurate representation of what they might actually encounter,” said Madou. 

“For example, gamified developer programs are a great way to engage developers and actively test their secure coding skills. We can’t expect traditional teaching methods, such as classroom-based learning, to change a developer’s mindset on secure coding. 

“So far, such training has proved largely ineffective if the increasing amount of cyber threats and consistent attacks are any indication.” 

The post Are self-taught coders a cybersecurity problem? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Not only do many of us now exclusively meet our colleagues on Zoom or Teams, but might socialize with our friends on Houseparty, watch live theatre productions on connected TVs, or workout on Peloton or Zwift.

When lockdowns end, many of us will cling on to newly-formed habits of semi-virtual working and living, particularly as continued innovation leads to evermore engaging, immersive, and convenient digital experiences.

Mixed reality (XR) has been a talking point in business for some time, and beyond just the conceptualization, it’s now being utilized thanks to advances in software and the availability of headsets such as the Microsoft Hololens, HTC Vive, and Varjo XR-1 (which we’ve written about extensively before). Organizations are using XR technology to mesh real and virtual worlds together, enabling physical and digital objects to co-exist and interact in real-time. Doctors now use Hololens headsets to stream secure feeds of information to nearby rooms, reducing contact; Kia’s car designers use XR to ‘see’ concept vehicles in front of them as they make design tweaks, replacing the need for prototypes; XR’s potential has even been tipped in financial services, enabling professionals to visualize data and information sources within their surroundings. 

“2020 has shown us that virtual worlds have become a key part of our lives, and they hold great potential for fostering human connection and engagement in novel and creative ways,” Epic Games’ Quentin Staes-Polet told Tech Wire Asia.

Epic Games is the video game and software developer behind Unreal Engine, the games engine that powers titles like Gears of War, Infinity Blade, and, of course, Fortnite – the record-earning online Battle Royale that now boasts 350 million players worldwide. 

XR has its origins in the games industry; it’s a technology that “completely revolutionized the gaming experience,” said Staes-Polet, “because augmented and virtual realities enabled players to immerse themselves in hyper-realistic virtual worlds, bringing first-person game perspectives to life. Game developers are always hungry to push the bounds of creativity by seeking new ways to drive photorealistic and immersive game experiences.”

Record-breaking Epic Games title Fortnite has hosted 15.3 million players concurrently. Source: Shutterstock

Today, in a world becoming more a hybrid of virtual and physical experiences by the day, technologies and innovations developed in this lucrative and disruptive gaming sector have an influential role outside of their industry and beyond the digital worlds that immersed 2.7 billion players around the world last year. “XR enables audiences to virtually simulate and interact with complex environments. The opportunities and ramifications of this are huge,” Staes-Polet said, “they hold great potential for fostering human connection and engagement in novel and creative ways.”

Epic is now committing to new iterations of Unreal Engine, exploring applications of XR which hold the potential to completely transform industries such as film, broadcast media and entertainment, architecture and construction, automotive, and training and simulation in aerospace and defense. And it’s taking direct inspiration from, as well as even trialing technology within its gaming titles. In April last year, artist Travis Scott debuted new music in a psychedelic Fortnite-based event called the Astronomical Experience. According to Epic, some 12.3 million players participated in the virtual concert and 27.7 million experienced it 45.8 million times across the five events, demonstrating the potential mass appeal of immersive next-gen music and entertainment experiences.

Where Staes-Polet and Epic now see a key opportunity for XR is in innovating the remote work experience – an area now attracting innovations from hundreds, if not thousands of tech companies, which understand the current value of enabling better collaborative experiences for nuanced needs that drive business productivity and employee wellbeing.

“The core benefit of XR is that it encourages real-time simulation and collaboration beyond the confines of one’s webcam — empowering users to interact with each other and their environments in tandem,” said Staes-Polet, “For remote workforces, XR presents an opportunity for employees to engage with each other in a shared sense of space, almost replicating the human interaction and cooperation that would be present in a physical office.”

Given the innovation taking place and vast amounts of investment that it’s attracting (just look at the US$26 billion purchase of Slack by Salesforce), it’s difficult to predict how the future of remote work will take shape. But XR presents “endless possibilities” in the collaboration space, creating virtual meeting spaces, for example, where attendees could interact as 3D avatars. And where Unreal Engine’s photorealistic XR potential could be most effective is in fields of work that typically require an on-site presence — one that video conferencing can’t replicate. For example, architects can leverage real-time XR to create digital simulations of buildings, bringing different players within the planning, design, and construction sphere together to work collaboratively, speeding up the building process. Users can walk through their fully built simulations to assess their designs, consider how the building fits into its surrounding environment, and make changes on the spot. “None of this would even be possible through conventional ways of work, much less video conferencing tools,” said Staes-Polet. “That is why we believe that there is a huge untapped opportunity here to revolutionize the way some traditional industries such as architecture, filmmaking, and automotive, operate.”

A future of work and play enabled by XR is exciting and perhaps now inevitable, but Staes-Polet says there’s still a lot more to be done in creating awareness among professionals around its applications, and this is partly why Epic Games has expanded into Southeast Asia – in order to support the growing base of developers here through outreach programs, webinars and training, and development sessions. The company is seeing rising interest in countries like Malaysia. And as more companies look to adopt XR, the technology becomes more affordable and accessible, lowering the barriers to adoption.

“Ultimately, our hope is to see XR gain mainstream acceptance amongst an enterprise audience. We firmly believe that the hyper-realistic, hyperconnected and immersive world that the technology promises will even pave the way for the next Internet.”

Micorosoft’s Hololens has been used in the healthcare sector Source: Shutterstock

In our new semi-virtual worlds, what other lessons can we take from the gaming industry?

“What I personally love and admire about the games industry is the strong sense of community and digital ingenuity. People are always looking to connect, collaborate and learn from each other, be it online on forums, social media or in-person” said Staes-Polet.

“We are honored to be a part of building and contributing back to this ecosystem as players and developers ourselves! It is why we are strong believers in developing an open ecosystem of learning and development and why we have fought hard to keep the Unreal Engine free. We want this technology to be available and accessible to everyone who would like to learn and use it, so developers from all over the world have access to a powerful piece of software that helps accelerate innovation and creativity.”

MIXED REALITY IS PROVING ITS PLACE IN HEALTHCARE AMID COVID-19

Tech Wire Asia | 21 May, 2020

Last year, Epic Games introduced an initiative that waives the fees for developers on the first US$1 million earned in game revenue, which has leveled the playing field for independent developers too. The firm also offers a suite of online learning modules offered to its developer communities, with the objective to equip and upskills developers with different ways to leverage the games engine and 3D real-time technology – as well as with the soft skills for professional development in the industry.

“Even at the cutting-edge of technology, gamers are always looking for new ways to leverage next-gen technologies to transform the playing experience. It is this hunger to continually innovate that is incredibly advantageous in the times we’re living in and what has accelerated gaming into the hugely popular, billion-dollar industry that it is today.”

The post Epic Games – enterprise XR and what we can learn from Fortnite appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Beneath the exciting tide of artificial intelligence (AI) applications permeating industries and consumers’ daily lives, there has been an undercurrent growing in strength over years: the question over whether we can trust the decisions of morally-void autonomous systems, informed by and interpreting only the datasets they receive. 

The challenges around ethical AI have, for several years, been viewed as the biggest challenge facing its users, but now some organizations are actually killing plans for adoption because of the potential danger or avoiding embarking on projects altogether.  

As reported by Yahoo, the chief technologist for business software maker LivePerson, Alex Spinelli, said he had canceled some AI projects at his employer (and previous ones) over concerns about AI – in particular, the use of machine learning to analyze customer data and make predictions about behavior.

Spinelli attributed the AI systems – particularly those used by Facebook to target users with content and pages it thinks will be of interest to users – to the spread of disinformation conflagrating the pro-Trump Capitol riots last month.

AI has shown transformative potential in its ability to undertake complex tasks with lower costs and resources. Use cases are proliferating, from detecting fraud, increasing sales, improving customer experience, automating routine tasks, to providing predictive analytics, while automated chatbots remain the most widely-adopted machine learning application. 

But when it comes to the question of AI ethics, there are plenty of examples to show we’re a long way off the mark.

Bias in AI-powered facial recognition systems is perhaps the most prolific example. In 2018, a study by MIT found that while determining gender using three different facial recognition programs, the error rate for light-skinned men was 0.8%, while darker-skinned women were misgendered 20% to 34% of the time.

Amid Black Lives Matter protests last year – and a flurry nationwide of what was deemed excessive force by the law – IBM withdrew its facial recognition technology, condemning the wider technology’s use for “for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms.”

Amazon then also withdrew its Rekognition software from use by law enforcement. But the company was earlier forced to park its AI candidate-screening technology due to an inherited lack of gender-neutrality. The ‘secret’ tool was supposed to rank candidates with a five-star rating system. Amazon previously canned another AI-powered recruitment program, after discovering that the 10 years’ worth of successful applications it was consulting to make decisions were male-dominated, and therefore unfavorably discounting women. 

Most recently, Google’s former co-head of AI ethics and a prominent black female researcher at the company, Timnit Gebru claimed to have been fired after the company blocked the publication of a report she co-authored, raising ethical questions around the use of large, data-consuming language models in which Google is one of the leaders. Following her departure, the search giant went on to suspend computer access to another of the firm’s AI ethics researchers who had been critical of the company. 

A need for regulation

With machine learning models relying on algorithms learning patterns from vast pools of data, models are at risk of perpetuating bias present in the information they are fed. AI’s mimicking of real-world, human decisions is both a strength and a great weakness for the technology— it’s only as ‘good’ as the information it accesses. Of course, this challenge isn’t new; as innovation continues, AI and machine learning ethics are regularly touted as crucial to the technology’s development. This challenge is on the radar of organizations, world governments, and the machine learning community. To date, there has been a growing body of work on ethical AI principles, guidelines, and standards across different organizations, including IEEE, ISO, and the Partnership on AI. But guidelines are still lacking, and many organizations are navigating the complex waters of self-governance.

In 2019, a Vanson Bourne study revealed 89% of IT heads believe AI development should be regulated, with the need for a level of control and central oversight deemed necessary, even if it hindered the pace of the technology’s evolution and applications by organizations. 

Self-regulation and governance – and the creation of internal AI ethics panels – aren’t keeping pace with AI’s growing scale and sophistication. A report by Pegasystems found that 65% of respondents felt current external governance was insufficient to manage AI adoption; 70% of respondents expressed fear about AI.

Effective self-governance requires enterprises to check software for AI algorithms are correct, and that the algorithms are ethical. But despite AI’s proliferation, just 27% of respondents have a designated leader in AI governance, with Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Financial Services all reporting significant gaps in internal leadership and formal strategies. 

There is plenty of advice out there for organizations to stay on the ethical path with AI, but many organizations seem to be crying out for more hardline guidelines, consistent across industries. 

As far back as 2017, Elon Musk called for the regulation of AI development, despite being “clearly not thrilled” to be advocating for government scrutiny that could impact his own industry. The Tesla CEO believed the risks of going without were simply too high. 

“Normally the way regulations are set up is when a bunch of bad things happen, there’s a public outcry, and after many years a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry. It takes forever,” he told NPR. 

“That, in the past, has been bad but not something which represented a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization.”

So far in the US (and preceding the new administration), there’s been an appetite for “light touch” regulation built of flexible frameworks, with the intent to do as little as possible to stymy the growth of the country’s technology industry. Under the Trump administration, the Office of Science and Technology Policy warned against more hardline policies being nudged forward in Europe: “Europe and our allies should avoid heavy-handed innovation-killing models, and instead consider a similar regulatory approach.”

In an article entitled AI That Reflects American Values, United States’ chief technology officer Michael Kratsios wrote; “The U.S. will continue to advance AI innovation based on American values, in stark contrast to authoritarian governments that have no qualms about supporting and enabling companies to deploy technology that undermines individual liberty and basic human rights.

“The best way to counter this dystopian approach is to make sure America and our allies remain the top global hubs of AI innovation.”

In that same Pegasystems survey, however, concerns were not so much that regulation would dampen or hamper innovation or make adoption more complex and expensive – they leaned towards a worry that regulation would be insufficient to manage AI adoption.

With no universal regulation set-in-stone, businesses are left to make their own assessments on AI and how to ensure the way it’s applied is deemed ethical. They must consider whether the business benefits they gain from the technology are worth the risk of discrimination.

THE QUESTION MARK OVER AI AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Mark Jones | 30 September, 2020

The fact that the question of AI ethics is giving some business leaders pause is a good sign, at least, and some organizations are notably making progress themselves. 

Last year, engineering giant Rolls-Royce unveiled a “workable, peer-reviewed AI ethics framework” published under Creative Commons license, which it said can help any organization ensure the decisions it takes to use AI in critical and non-critical applications are ethical. The company has been using AI for around two decades, including using the technology to monitor jet engines in service in real-time. But as it looked to extend AI to more parts of the business such as robotic inspections of critical components, it was becoming critical to address rising concerns around ethical and transparent AI. 

“Rolls-Royce’s AI capabilities are embedded deeply into other companies’ products and services and so aren’t widely known. Rolls-Royce’s AI doesn’t often feature in a consumers’ understanding of how the digital world is changing their lives,” said Caroline Gorski, Global Director of R2 Data Labs.

“The current debate about the use of AI is focused on the consumer and the treatment of consumer and personal data. But we believe that what we have created – by dealing with a challenge rooted squarely in the industrial application of AI – will help not only with the application of AI in other industries but far more widely,” she added. 

Rolls-Royce chief executive, Warren East, stressed that the firm wants to move from “conversation” around concepts and guidelines of AI ethics to “applying it”.

“There is no practical reason why trust in AI cannot be created now. And it’s only with the acceptance and permission of our society – based on that trust – that the full benefits of AI can be realized, and it can take its place as a partner in our lives and work.”

The post Is the AI ethics issue hindering innovation? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The insurance industry is built on covering financial risks to individuals and businesses so that an insurance market has emerged to cater to the potential damage inflicted by ransomware demonstrates just how common the cybersecurity threat has become.

Indeed, in Q3 2020, Check Point Research saw a 50% increase in the daily average of ransomware attacks, compared to the first half of the year. This was led by two ‘strains’, Maze and Ryuk, the latter of which now attacks 20 organizations a week. 

Given this surging threat – exacerbated by a more digital reliance than ever among businesses and evermore sophisticated phishing techniques and malware – businesses are turning to insurers to cover themselves against the potentially crippling ransoms accompanying successful threats – which can be in the tens of millions of dollars. 

One of the most high-profile and successful attacks in 2020 saw GPS technology and fitness firm Garmin eventually pay an estimated US$10 million to recover systems and data. 

It’s not just private companies that are being targeted. Often cybercriminals choose their targets based on causing maximum disruption to society. Public service organizations, universities, and hospitals are frequent victims. 

Germans police launched a homicide investigation in September after a woman died during a cyberattack on a hospital in Dusseldorf, as doctors attempted to transfer the patient to another facility. 

Paying ransoms, whether directly or by proxy via an insurance firm, is a controversial practice. Many in the cybersecurity field believe that by paying out claims from companies who have paid ransoms to regain access to data and systems after an attack, insurers are inadvertently supporting organized crime, and contributing to ransomware’s growth. 

Ciaran Martin was the head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre until last August, and said ransomware was “close to getting out of control”, fuelled by the fact there is no legal barrier to companies paying ransoms to cybercriminal gangs, and claim their loss back on insurance. 

Extortion laws prohibit the payment of ransoms to terrorists, in response to the threat of kidnapping. However, cyberattacks aren’t carried out by terror groups (not knowingly, at least). The most prolific tend to be based in Russia or former Soviet states, operating while the Kremlin and other governments turn a blind eye. 

As such, there’s no bar to paying ransom demands, so it’s possible to make a claim if no personal data is involved. 

“I see this as so avoidable. At the moment, companies have incentives to pay ransoms to make sure this all goes away,” the former intelligence chief said. “You have to look seriously about changing the law on insurance and banning these payments, or at the very least, having a major consultation with the industry.”

Following Martin’s comments and accused of funding organized crime, the UK insurance industry has hit back. 

As reported by the BBC, The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has defended the inclusion of ransomware payments in first-party cyber-insurance policies, stating that insurance was “not an alternative” to doing everything possible to minimize the risk. 

Paying ransom demands can be incredibly tempting to organizations, offering them a way to admit a loss, sweep the problem away under the rug, and get business back and running as quickly as possible. Taking a stand against it is much harder. 

RANSOMWARE ATTACKS INCREASINGLY EXPOSING GAPS IN LARGE FIRMS

Joe Devanesan | 27 January, 2021

Aluminum firm Norsk Hydro was attacked in 2019, causing the shutdown of its entire IT system – 22,000 computers were hit at 170 sites across 40 countries worldwide. 

Despite being insured against cyberattacks, the firm refused to pay, instead of shifting to manual operations in order to keep the business operational at barebones capacity. 

Recovery cost the business an estimated US$45 million, and profits dropped by 82% in the immediate aftermath. Nonetheless, the company was praised for its response. 

Just like houses require security systems and cars require inspections, insurers do require that reasonable precautions are taken to prevent cyberattacks from succeeding, and these requirements could ultimately contribute to cybersecurity across businesses. 

On the flip side, insurance could lull businesses into a false sense of security which attackers could take advantage of.

“Cyber is a relatively immature insurance market without historical loss data to guide it. The rapid increase in the number and value of attacks may show insurers that continuing this cycle will make it unprofitable,” said Peter Groucutt, Managing Director at Databarracks.

Groucutt believes insurers should focus on two key areas when approaching the ransomware issue.

“Firstly, as with other types of cover, insurance companies must carry out cyber hygiene checks on customers before entering an agreement. For smaller organizations that could mean having the Cyber Essentials Certification, or for larger organizations, a more thorough assessment of its cyber defenses and backup and recovery provisions.

“Secondly, insurers should rework their approach when an incident does happen. Rather than paying out to cover the cost of a ransom, they should emphasize remediation, so fixing the problem by helping the customer with Cyber Incident Response, IT Forensic Services and assistance to restore data and get operations back up and running.”

Groucutt concluded: “This change won’t happen overnight: it will be a case of short-term pain but long-term gain. Whether done proactively or through regulation it will take time and effort, but this zero-tolerance approach is our best chance at breaking the cycle. This is in insurers’ and their customers’ best interests in the long run.”

The post Should we be insuring against ransomware? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

For decades, this technology has been put to task, fixed to the ground of automobile production lines. But more recent advances in artificial intelligence and data analytics have led to the development of ‘smarter’ units that, today, are capable of anything from disinfecting hospital wings with UV lights, stacking shelves in Walmart, and even flipping burgers in White Castle. 

Away from the pandemic, vehicle manufacturers like Daimler are racing to develop autonomous trucks to solve a driver ‘gap’ in the US. In the UK, Brexit is leading agriculture firms to explore further how robotics can retain productivity and optimize domestic yields in the face of seasonal labor shortages and increased reliance on home-grown produce. 

In sum, the overriding industrial benefits of increased productivity, efficiency, and resilience have spurred a global market surging forward at a CAGR of 26%, ready to amass a worth of US$210 billion by 2025 (Statista). 

Robot tax

For businesses, there is no shortage of vendor choice in this highly-competitive market, and with an expected rise in Robotics-as-a-Service offerings, the technology will become accessible even to the smallest firms. 

That adoption, however, could be coming at too high a rate, and despite the many apparent benefits of physical automation in industry, if left unchecked, such rapid uptake could be unsustainable in its detrimental impact on society. 

Just how quickly that impact could be felt remains unclear. A report by the Brookings Institute estimated the effect of automation on jobs in the US could take hold in “a few years or two decades.”

Ultimately, disruption seems inevitable. The same report estimated that 25% of jobs would be displaced, accounting for the work of roughly 36 million Americans whose jobs are deemed “high exposure” to automation, with at least 70 percent of these tasks able to be performed effectively by machines in the future. Among those jobs, food services— including cooks and waiters— short-haul truck drivers, and clerical office workers were are considered to be some of those most at risk.

In light of this problem, influential commentators, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates himself, have pointed to the potential for a ‘robot tax’. 

In an interview with Quartz, Microsoft founder Bill Gates argued that a tax on organizations deploying robotics at scale would help finance jobs where humans are required but needs are unmet – such as care for the elderly or working with children at schools. 

Far from deriding the benefits of automation, Gates urged lawmakers to be “willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed [of automation]” 

“That’s because the technology and business cases for replacing humans in a wide range of jobs are arriving simultaneously, and it’s important to be able to manage that displacement,” Gates said.

Core to the robot tax concept is the premise that beyond the initial outlay, where an employee would contribute a portion of his or her income monthly, a robot (sophisticated though the technology is) contributes zero. 

As floated in 2019 by New York city mayor and Democratic Party member, Bill de Blasio, a robot tax should apply to any company introducing labor-saving automation – such as an autonomous pallet truck – and would require the government to pay five years worth of taxes for each worker displaced by innovation. It would also insist that the employer also find new jobs for the displaced worker at their same pay level or pay them a severance.

But de Blasio said the tax would also require a new federal agency to determine which jobs were eliminated by automation and how much robot tax employers would owe, and finally, it would require Washington to eliminate all tax incentives for any innovation that leads to automation.

That’s a hefty proposal, and one based on the common assumption that those displaced by robots and automation will never find similarly paid work again. That’s despite historical evidence showing that while initially displacing certain jobs, automation technology eventually creates more in the long run, even amid boosts to productivity.

“To be sure, it is hard — impossible in fact — to imagine what new areas of employment will emerge in response to any wave of innovation.  It is always easier to look at who is losing,” wrote Milton Ezrati in Forbes.

“[…] when in the last decades of the twentieth-century word processing, email, and the Internet generally displaced thousands of typists, messengers, and administrative assistants, the feared class of unemployable people never emerged because those same technologies also facilitated any number of occupations previously undreamed of. Among them was Federal Express and similar delivery services, including, in more recent years, Amazon.”

HOW THE PANDEMIC ACCELERATED THE RISE OF ROBOTICS

Dashveenjit Kaur | 17 November, 2020

In the finance sector, the introduction of automatic teller machines (ATMs) threatened to throw thousands of bank clerks out of work. But the increased productivity led to more profit, which meant banks could hire more staff than ever before who, with the assistance of new technology, could do more interesting and valuable work than before ATMs were put in place.

While the massive job losses posed by robotics remains, for now, a reasonably distant and theoretical concern, the pandemic has accelerated every industry’s adoption of technology. As we invest in and implement technology faster than ever before, now may be the time to ensure a braking mechanism is in place. 

Introducing a robot tax would serve the purpose of slowing ‘job-destroying’ automation while raising revenue to supplement shrinking taxes paid by human workers. As noted by WSJ, this could take various forms, such as levies amounting to payroll-style taxations, or a slowdown to tax deduction for businesses that replace employees with robots.

But what any kind of robot tax has in common is penalizing innovation and the adoption and progression of technology – and that can surely never be a good thing. 

The post Does a robot tax make sense? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Google is threatening to remove its search engine from Australia, in a lash back against the nation’s attempts to make the search giant, along with Facebook, pay media outlets for news content.

If it proceeds, the ruling in Australia would be a world-first and could influence how governments around the world regulate big tech firms.

The proposed laws would require Google and Facebook – possibly among other tech companies – to provide “fair” compensation news publishers for the value their content drives.

The government argues that this funding is crucial to the longevity of a strong media that’s vital to democracy, and has cautioned that other markets will follow the same course.

Australian print media has seen a 75% decline in advertising revenue since 2005, according to the government.

But Google’s Australian managing director Mel Silva has said the laws are “unworkable” – despite news accounting for just 12.5% of Google Searches in the market –  and “would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia.”

Australia is nowhere near Google’s biggest market, but the company comprises nearly 90% of desktop searches in the country, according to Statista. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the country’s lawmakers wouldn’t bend to the search giant’s “threats” of withdrawal.

According to the BBC, of every A$100 (US$77) spent on digital advertising, A$81 goes to Google or Facebook, while a pull-back on ad spend during the pandemic has led to some news outlets in Australia closing.

AUSTRALIA DECLARES 2021 THE ‘YEAR OF 5G’

Dashveenjit Kaur | 30 November, 2020

But Google has continued to perform well in the market throughout 2020, generating almost US$4 billion, while paying just US$45 million in tax.

Much like almost everywhere else, Google serves as close to an essential digital service for consumers and businesses, and it’s not clear whether Google would withdraw the full expanse of Maps, Gmail, and Google Home.

A pull-out from Australia could be devastating for local businesses, who rely on discovery and traffic through the search engine, including Google My Business listings and results on Google Maps.

On the one hand, Google can’t afford to concede ground in Australia, given the potential for other markets to quickly follow suit, resulting in a huge dent in the company’s global revenue. On the other, Google’s departure would leave room for a new competitor to enter the market offering a more amenable business model.

One possible breaker to the current stalemate could be in Google’s News Showcase, where the company pays select media outlets to display content, however, this isn’t available in Australia, so the government isn’t able to assess its value.

The post Blackmail? Google says it may have ‘no choice’ in leaving Australia appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

While it might be close to a century old, the company has adapted to meet the demand of the fast-evolving healthcare and pharma sector, and now serves more than 350,000 medical facilities, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and, as a result, millions of patients in a mission to make healthcare accessible across Asia.

Given such extensive operations, it’s imperative for the firm to have access to accurate, real-time data to better monitor the business, make agile decisions and spur innovation.

Despite its long reign, however, a panoptical view of operations is a relatively new addition to the organization.

“Our long heritage was actually a bit of a double-edged sword for us and until around 5-6 years ago, technology adoption and data capabilities were relatively low across the business […]” said Zuellig Pharma’s VP of data & analytics, Tristan Tan.

“In 2015, a new management team came on board that were convinced about the critical role digital and data would play in driving future sustained growth – and the need for transformation.”

Zuellig’s new leadership was determined to make the firm technology-led and set about building the foundations necessary to install a culture of data accessibility throughout its ranks. This phase saw the creation of data pipelines and data management structures using tools like Hadoop, Spark, HANA and Tableau.

All these efforts were tied by a commitment to data velocity, Tan explained, or maximizing the speed of access to data within the business.

But the necessary infrastructure was just one part of the process. Zuellig had to ensure its people had the foundations to embrace data culture. The firm focused on training staff on the benefits of using data and analytics, it educated clients and customers about the value of this new information and built a robust but agile data governance framework.

“As traction among staff, clients and customers grew, so too did our data culture and the number of ROI accretive use cases.”

Only after putting the foundations in place could the company explore more advanced areas: “[…] we have now started leveraging blockchain in our handling of information with our partners across the supply chain and have embarked on organization-wide automation agenda using data-science and robotics process automation to drive efficiencies in our operations,” Tan said.

“These efforts would not have been successful without the foundations we built in the earlier phases of our journey.”

Now the company has a “critical mass” of people who understand the importance of ensuring data is informing the work being done across the organization. Data culture is not an intangible concept, but is embedded practically into business processes.

“Ensuring that a piece of information, a data report, a dashboard or analysis, is a regular part of normal business process has been key to our data transformation,” Tan said.

For example, daily and weekly stand-ups are mandated for operators in the firm’s warehouses to jointly review real-time operational KPIs and statistics, which informs how operational teams focus their efforts.

While Zuellig’s data culture is comparatively fresh, the methodical approach to embedding it means the workforce, and the company’s partners and customers, have been able to embrace it confidently. Tan told us that this approach to data had been crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic as a “primary medication provider”, despite the operational challenges.

Data accessibility, tied to “very straightforward data science” has allowed the firm to better predict, plan, prepare and succeed in the “fog of war”, and react quickly to ensure medications and key supplies like vaccines are allocated to where they’re needed, even during lockdowns.

So, how can other companies begin to embed their own data culture?

Firstly, organizations must invest in the right technology that will allow for good data management and easy-to-use insight generation, such as Tableau. Then, companies must encourage individuals to look for ways in which data can create value in their teams, either by improving processes or creating additional quality to their work output.

“The main objective here is to encourage individuals across the organization – down to the most junior – to drive their own ‘data use cases’ within their roles,” said Tan.

“Successful – or even sometimes unsuccessful but well-meaning – efforts should then be rewarded and publicized to others in the company to build a ‘data-friendly’ atmosphere.”

Once these use cases become more common and more established, the more successful of them should then be embedded into existing business processes so that usage of data in decision-making becomes less dependent on individuals over time, becoming a consistent part of the organization as it grows.

The post Zuellig Pharma on how to build a data-friendly business appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Amazon is opening up the tech behind its Alexa voice assistant system for businesses to build their own automated versions in other software and devices. 

Carmaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will be the first customer to use the product Alexa Custom Assistant, which will allow businesses to create their own intelligent systems with unique voices, skills, and ‘wake’ words.

Business users have already been able to create apps from blueprints to do things like book rooms, connect to meetings, and access corporate data through smart speakers. 

However, the latest move is an effort to extend the software’s reach, and compete with competitors like Apple and Google whose own voice assistants have benefited from the vast reach of those firms’ captive smartphone users. 

As shown by its tie-up with Fiat Chrysler, one of the key markets Amazon wants to tap is in-car infotainment systems. 

A recent report by Block-Builders found a growing appetite for connected cars. More than two-thirds of customers claimed they’d switch car brands if faced with poor digital connectivity, and the entry of tech companies like Apple into the automobile market promises to set new precedents in the arena of in-car experiences. 

Manufacturers are exploring new technologies and partnerships that can enhance natural and safe interactions with vehicle controls and infotainment systems. 

Alongside voice assistants, gesture recognition and technologies like augmented reality offer new and exciting ways for passengers to access information and controls.

READY TO PAY BY VOICE? MASTERCARD IS COMBATING CASH WITH INNOVATION

Mark Jones | 17 September, 2020

Carmakers using Alexa could theoretically use two voice assistants within a vehicle, enabling a driver to ask Alexa to roll down a car window using the brand’s own assistant, for example, or play an audiobook by routing the request to Alexa itself. 

Uses don’t stop at the in-car market, however. Amazon said Alexa Custom Assistant can be used to build intelligent assistants into mobile applications, smart properties, video games, and consumer electronics. 

In settings such as healthcare, voice assistant tech has vast potential in maintaining boundaries between what is and what isn’t sterile, while enabling access to information and imaging required for the patient and procedure, without breaking asepsis.

Meanwhile, customers will gain access to Alexa voice science experts to take them through the recording possess and develop the voice using advanced machine learning algorithms, and can plug-in pre-built applications such as communications, local search, traffic, and navigation.

The post Build your own Alexa – Amazon makes voice assistant available to businesses appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.