Digital Mindset Core Building Blocks

The Digital Mindset[1] requires a basic understanding of the core digital technology building blocks that can be assembled in various ways to create new opportunities, new business models and new value for customers and other stakeholders.?As there are approximately 60 core building blocks however, new building blocks will continue to emerge in the marketplace from continual innovation.?New building blocks will be created by combining existing core building blocks.?Natural language processing (NLP) which allows computers to understand written or spoken words was created from AI technologies and has become one of the core building blocks.?

A stack is a useful framework for grouping the core building blocks.?Software developers have utilized stacks to categorize the programming languages, operating systems, software utilities, data storage technologies, hardware, services and other technology components used to create the systems and platforms utilized by companies like Netflix, Uber and Facebook. Common technology development stacks include the MEAN stack, the LAMP stack and the MERN stack. Each of these technology stacks is open-source and serves as a set of standards for web development.?The LAMP stack, for example, is comprised of four levels, each includes a technology.?

• Programming Language – PHP
• Data Base Management System – MySQL
• Web Server – Apache
• Operating System – Linux

Industries have also created stacks to enable innovators to categorize the digital technologies used to compete with industry incumbents. Financial Technology (FinTech) is the combination of technology and innovation that competes with traditional methods of delivering financial services.?The FinTech stack is comprised of five levels.??

• Applications – Applications are typically end-user facing that drives the customer experience.?
• Connectors – Connectors offer a specific set of tools interoperating with the core including authentication, information extraction and transaction authorization tools.?
• Abstractors – Abstractors are services that make it easier to access and utilize the core systems within a financial institution through the use of APIs.?They often take the form of services like payments-as-a-service, brokerage-as-a-service or compliance-as-a-service.
• Core – The core systems create the foundation of any financial institution and are managed by licensed banks. These are the systems that control the movement of funds between financial institutions.?These systems comply with strict national and international regulatory requirements.??
• Rails – Rails include the messaging systems that allow payment settlement to occur between financial entities.

The FinTech stack provides a framework for categorizing the core digital technology building blocks of the emerging digital financial services industry.?

A generalized stack framework with 12 levels is useful to categorize the core digital technology building blocks.??

• Apps ?– App software is utilized by end users to accomplish specific tasks and activities in support of daily living, work and school.
• Enterprise Software – Enterprise Software includes the set of software utilized to run businesses and organizations.?This includes financial software, human resource software, enterprise resource planning software, electronic medical records software and many other types of software that support essential organizational operations.
• Digital Assistants - Digital Assistant software performs tasks for end users in much the same way as a human assistant would perform those tasks.?Bots are examples of independent programs that can autonomously interact with both humans and systems.?Neon[2], a subsidiary of Samsung, is creating Artificial Humans[3] that are capable of independent interaction with human beings including the ability to sense the human being’s emotions and respond appropriately.
• Digital Places – Digital Places are places where people can come together, interact, create and store digital objects like land and other digital assets that uniquely exist through the use of Blockchain Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
• Hardware Devices -?A variety of hardware devices have become available to be used by people, places and things. These include personal computers, mobile devices, wearables, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and the HoloLens that serves as the doorway through which human users can enter digital spaces.??
• Robots – A variety of robots capable of performing specialized tasks in the physical world have emerged.?A Roomba cleans your floor while the Da Vinci surgical system assists a surgeon in performing medical procedures on patients. ?Other examples include self-driving vehicles, drones and industrial robots that perform tasks in manufacturing organizations that were previously performed by human beings. All robots require software for the intelligence that allows them to perform their specialized tasks.?
• Digital Objects – Digital objects are objects that exist in digital spaces like the FIRST 5000 DAYS[4], a digital work of art created by Mike Winkelmann that sold at auction for $69.3M. Digital Objects have the ability to be uniquely identified in the digital space which was made possible by Blockchain Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).?Making digital objects unique has allowed them to be traded like physical objects.??
• Services – Services include infrastructure, platforms and software made available through third-parties that can be acquired as needed by businesses, organizations and individuals.?Clouds provide a number of services to perform specific activities in the cloud computing environment. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) makes available fully formed applications like payroll for a subscription fee.
• Software Tools - ?Software tools enable the creation of apps and enterprise software. Programming languages are an example of a robust set of software tools.?Machine learning is a part of Artificial Intelligence that contains various algorithms that are capable of looking at data and discerning patterns human beings are unable to see.?Many of these algorithms are implemented through the Python programming language, an excellent example of a software tool.?H2O.ai[5] is a company that seeks to support the AI community offering education and AI software tools.?
• Systems Software – Systems software is comprised of the set of software that runs computers (operating systems), manages the storage of data on the hardware and provides security for the entire system.??
• Networking – The networking layer contains the hardware and software elements that allows computers to connect and the apps and enterprise software on these computers to interoperate.?
• Data Center/Cloud – The Data Center/Cloud include the locations, servers and other information technologies on which the system software, apps and enterprise software run. Traditionally these have been centralized locations where physical computer servers reside however, with the emergence of Blockchain Technologies, the Data Center can also take the form of a distributed peer-to-peer network in which a network of decentralized computers perform the processing role of the servers located in a traditional Data Center / Cloud. Currently there are approximately 15,000 independent computers on the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network which anyone can join as a node.?

One of the core digital technology building blocks is Artificial Intelligence (AI), intelligence exhibited by machines.?AI aspires to mimic the cognitive capabilities associated with the human mind including the ability to learn, the ability to reason, the ability to argue and the ability to solve problems[6].?As intelligence is not equal across all human beings, so artificial intelligence has different levels or phases in its evolution.?These levels or phases include:

• ?Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)
• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
• Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) is already in widespread use across many industries.?ANI has the ability to recognize patterns in large data sets which allows it to excel at classification and clustering problems for text, voice and images.?It generally focuses on one specific problem which it strives to perform as well as a human being but, in some instances, it is able to outperform human beings.?In 1997, the IBM???Deep Blue?? computer program beat the World Champion Chess player, a human being, in a six-game match.?In this instance, the ANI computer program exceeded the capabilities of a human being with an IQ of zero.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is emerging with the ability of a machine having the cognitive capabilities of a human being.?An AGI machine would have the ability to reason, argue and solve issues like a human being.?Experts disagree on the timing of AGI machines.??MIT Professor of Robotics, Rod Brooks predicts AGI won’t arrive until 2030.?Brooks says, “It is a fraught time understanding the true promise and dangers of AI.?Most of what we read in the headlines….is, I believe completely off the mark.”?In contrast, Richard Sutton, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Alberta stated, “Understanding human-level AI will be a profound scientific achievement (and economic boon) and may well happen by 2030 (25% chance), or by 2040 (50% chance) --- or never (10% chance).” As Yann LeCun, Professor of Mathematics at New York University explains, “There is a thin domain of research that, while having ambitious goals of making progress toward human-level intelligence, is also sufficiently grounded in science and engineering methodologies to bring real progress in technology.?That’s the sweet spot.”??

Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) is a future vision for AI embraced by pioneers in the field and warned about by ethicists concerned about the implications for humanity.?ASI creates in machines with capabilities that surpass the abilities of a human being along multiple dimensions including general intelligence, creativity, problem solving and social skills.?As there are significant economic payoffs in every industry and almost every area of human endeavor, creative entrepreneurs will continue to pursue ASI despite legitimate issues raised by ethicists.?

Advances in AI continue to make solid progress.?In April, 2022 Tesla, Waymo and Cruise announced they would sponsor a competition between their self-driving cars in an unmanned race between San Francisco and NYC.[7]??OpenAI’s DALL·E, is an AI system capable of creating realistic images, and art from a natural language description of the image. Enhanced DALL·E 2 can, for example, create a video of a tennis player playing on the precipice of a volcano from a natural language description of the video.[8]

With the advances being made in ANI and commercialization of ANI solutions in the market, organizational executives and leaders would be well advised to pay attention to AI developments with specific focus on solutions that might significantly impact their industry.?Leaders would be well advised to identify and follow the progress of both innovative corporations with proven performance, academic researchers, entrepreneurs, startups and the digital giants for emerging developments in both ANI and AGI.

For example, healthcare leaders would be well advised to follow the ANI developments in COVID19 detection.?MIT undertook the development of an ANI application to diagnose COVID19 in asymptomatic individuals based upon an individual’s forced cough.?MIT utilized recordings from 5,320 subjects which were provided as input to a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based architecture.?When validated with an authorized test on symptomatic patients, the model achieved a sensitivity of 98.5% with a specificity of 94.2%.?When validated on asymptomatic patients the model achieved a sensitivity of 100% with a specificity of 83.2%.[9]?Australia-based ResApp Health has also developed an app (ResAppDx) to analyze an individual’s cough and breathing sounds to diagnose COVID19.?ResApp Health utilized machine learning technology to develop the app that showed a 92% sensitivity for detecting COVID19.[10]?The ResAppDx app has received regulatory approval including European CE Mark and Australian TGA however, US FDA approval is still pending. ResApp has agreed to be acquired by Pfizer.[11] The ResAppDx app can be downloaded from the app store with a prescription from a licensed provider.

It is important to note, COVID19 detection is not possible by even the most trained physician listening to the patient’s cough, thus the ANI app exceeds the capabilities of the best available experts. ?The ability to detect COVID19 using an ANI based app has major implications for healthcare organizations who struggled to provide safe care for patients and appropriate protection for their workforce during the pandemic.?Before patients present in the Emergency Department, they could forced cough into their phone and send the recording to the hospital.?The COVID19 app can evaluate the cough and determine if the patient has COVID19, is asymptomatic or is COVID19 free.?Patients arriving at the Emergency Department without being pre-tested could be tested upon arrival using the COVID19 app as part of the triage process. The app also has applicability in situations like Cruise Ship travel.?As passengers board the ship, they could be screened for COVID19 by simply coughing into a COVID19 surveillance device.?Ship crew could routinely be screened during the cruise at both the beginning and end of their shift providing early detection of COVID19 and early measures to be taken to avoid spread of the disease through the ship.

A basic understanding of the core technology building blocks enabling the digital revolution is important for leaders and executives who need to ask the right questions that separate the hype from reality and decide on the organization’s future strategy.?A basic understanding is key to connecting the dots that will frame the organization’s digital future. Blockbuster Video, founded in 1985, had the opportunity to purchase Netflix in 2000 for $50M.?The Blockbuster CEO had a hard time containing his laugh at the ridiculous offer proposed by Netflix.?Blockbuster continued renting VHS videos as the internet with optic fiber was installed in each of their customer’s homes.?In 2022, Netflix is valued at $99.8B and Blockbuster is gone.?Without a digital mindset and an understanding of how optic fiber would change the playing field, the Blockbuster CEO was unable to connect the dots and gain foresight into the digital future.?

Footnotes

[1] https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/digital-mindsets-future-bill-wellman/??

[2] https://neonlife.ai/aboutus/?

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UlBFiL6noU

[4] https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/beeple-first-5000-days/beeple-b-1981-1/112924?

[5] https://h2o.ai/wiki/?

[6] Russell, S. & Norvig, P. Artificial intelligence a modern approach third edition (Pearson, 2010).

[7] https://cleantechnica.com/2022/04/01/tesla-waymo-cruise-to-race-self-driving-vehicles-from-san-francisco-to-nyc/#:~:text=In%20a%20surprise%20announcement%2C%20Tesla,and%20available%20for%20emergency%20purposes

[8] https://etfdb.com/disruptive-technology-channel/openai-s-dall-e-2-model-has-profound-implications/?

[9] J. Laguarta, F. Hueto and B. Subirana, "COVID-19 Artificial Intelligence Diagnosis Using Only Cough Recordings," in IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, vol. 1, pp. 275-281, 2020, doi: 10.1109/OJEMB.2020.3026928.?

[10] https://www.resapphealth.com.au/resapp-announces-positive-results-for-a-new-novel-smartphone-based-covid-19-screening-test/?

[11] https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/RESAPP-HEALTH-LIMITED-22837363/news/ResApp-Health-Pfizer-raises-scheme-consideration-to-A-0-208-per-share-41223514/??