Extreme Weather, GenAI's Inflated Expectations & Life Matters

BizTech Pulse - July 2024 Edition

Welcome to July edition of BizTech Pulse!

Extreme Weather Tests Limits of Human Survivability

According to recent reports , people have died taking a stroll in the midday sun , on a family hike in a national park, at an outdoor Taylor Swift concert , and even sweltering in their homes without air conditioning. During this year’s Hajj pilgrimage in June, around 1,300 people perished as temperatures pushed above 120 degrees Fahrenheit in Mecca (CNN).

Though any type of extreme weather can prove to be lethal, my recent experiences have made me more wary of heat. Last year, I was exposed to heat wave conditions during June-July in the southern US states. Again this time my travel to South Asia during summer months reminded me of the deadliest type of extreme weather, i.e., the heat. For the record, heat wave conditions in India have caused more than 100 deaths recently . Added humidity can make conditions in some places so harsh that our bodies simply cannot adapt.

The reason I am bringing this up is that I know very close friend who collapsed on a popular southern Indian hiking trail and was rushed to hospital on a moderately hot and humid day. He otherwise is a pretty active and healthy person. This happened in India where world class medical facilities are available, though bringing him down from the hilly hiking trail to the ambulance quickly did pose a little bit of challenge. Fortunately, he had his family with him. In another case reported from California, a marathon runner was not that lucky and lost his life due to extreme heat. Personally, I have also been transported to hospital when I pushed the limits on one of the hottest days of the year in the historical past.

Who is vulnerable?

Everyone!

Some people are more vulnerable to heat than others. Older people, especially those over 65, are specially at risk, because their bodies do not thermoregulate as well. Very young children and pregnant women also face elevated risk, as do those with pre-existing conditions.

Take precautions, listen to your body and do not push limits of human survivability!

If you are fond of traveling like me, make sure you know how to access emergency medical services in the unfamiliar countries and cities.

Generative AI's Inflated Expectations

Generative AI (GenAI) has become the new buzzword and is already the most popular AI technique.

It has opened up many use-cases that were not previously possible with older AI models and techniques. However, it comes with its own intrinsic weaknesses and limitations. As a consequence, there are use-cases where using GenAI does not currently work well and using it as the main AI approach ends up being counterproductive.

GenAI is best suited for content generation, conversational user interfaces, and knowledge discovery. Beware that it will require human loop to address the hallucination problem.

AI also deals with other problems like classification, recommendation systems, intelligent automation, anomaly detection, predictive analytics, decision intelligence, etc. GenAI may be useful in lesser and varying degrees for these use-cases, and other AI techniques will work better.

Apparently, GenAI is currently going through the cycle of inflated expectations, partly due to lack of understanding how Large Language Models (LLM) work. As organizations gains more experience, and address security and data privacy issue, they will likely move more and more use-cases from pilot phase to full blown production. It will lead to better understanding of the limitations and true potential of the GenAI for various use-cases. Better tracking of total cost of ownership (TCO) and concomitant business benefits - beyond just the time saved and more in terms of innovations possible due to GenAI - will make the business case and ROI truly compelling.

Life Matters: Pursuit of Happiness

Recently, a small group of our college friends gathered to discuss what happiness meant for them. We had known each other for a long time, grown together and came from diverse professional backgrounds including academics, consulting, research, industry, government, entrepreneurships, public service, etc.

It was interesting to note that we all agreed to some core elements while there was divergence of opinion when it came to details:

1. Family, work and higher purpose generally were the main components of happiness.
2. Happiness is a journey and not a destination.
3. Managing work-life balance is a dynamic problem, though family gets priority in long-term.
4. Happiness is similar to a multi-objective goal programming problem that needs to be optimized on temporal scale.
5. Happiness is state of mind. Money alone is not enough for happiness.
6. To manage happiness, consider three intersecting circle representing (i) things that matter to you, (ii) things you can control, (iii) things that are ethical or right. Then focus on the 'intersection'.
7. To solve happiness issues, you need a 'Board of Governors' consisting of family members, friends, other religious or community leaders who have stood with you in the past.

Closing Quote

"The basic source of all happiness is a sense of kindness and warm-heartedness towards others. We are all the same as human beings. We are born the same way, we die the same way, and we all want to lead happy lives." - His Holiness the Dalai Lama