Fireside chat with Ilkka Raiskinen
It is with great anticipation that Ilkka agreed to be interviewed and I could not wait to hear some of the exceptionally interesting views that Ilkka would inevitably offer. I asked Ilkka for a short introduction of himself:
I am Ilkka Raiskinen a former inhabitant of corporate telecom world, currently enjoying life in startupland.
My daily work consists of two types of activities: I have my board member and consultancy roles which are about strategies, governance and funding. I am also a Data Engineer which means that I am working on data to find out patterns which might reveal something interesting about the problem at hand.
Nicole: What is your passion in work and business?
Ilkka: My number one priority to is to work with people whose values, enthusiasm and energy levels are compatible with my own. (Note that compatibility does not imply sameness). Continuing still on an abstract level – I am getting my kicks out of understanding structures and patterns in problems that I am working on - that is also why I founded Aletheia back in 2009.
The more diverse the team, the more diverse the data sources, the more chances you have of making an impact
Nicole: AI can be used in so many places and cases. What is an area where AI is very little used but where you think would benefit greatly?
Ilkka: I don’t particularly like the word AI because it sort of implies something that I feel is not there. It is one of those concepts that totally lack core and you really need a context to have a meaningful discussion about it.
The stuff that we read from the papers is, in my opinion, normal engineering where you apply computers, mathematics and stuff on various problems. Take Google Deep Mind, for example, which has been one of the leading AI/ML companies in the world and recently “solved” the famous protein folding problem. If you investigate the company and see what they have been working on it is a bunch of VERY clever people with a lot of resources solving all kinds of problem. What is common to these problems is only the method in the spirit of Alan Turing and the Bletchley Park team.
This is a longwinded way of saying that, in my opinion, the more diverse the team, the more diverse the data sources, the more chances you have to make an impact.
Nicole: After this era of digitalization and transformations, what do you see as a next big hurdle for companies globally to overcome?
Ilkka: This is, obviously, a very deep question and my own view on this is something which is very much a work in progress. I was very impressed by a book from a MIT professor Sinan Aral - The Hype Machine - where he argued for a better and more transparent mechanism for managing social media and digitalization in general. A metaphor he used might be interesting for people in the Kaato community: Mobile telecommunications took off when roaming and interoperability rules and practices where defined. This is something that is totally missing from digital industries in general. Maybe this is one of those issues that deserves more attention and where Finland could have an important role.
Nicole: In your work in digitalization and transformation, what is the one thing that is most unexpected along the way or as an outcome?
Ilkka: I have a very ambivalent view on digitalization and the hype around it. I have the (mis)fortune of having experienced several hype cycles where the protagonist is a form of technology defined “transformer” (See for example, Fast Company issue Nov, 1995) – so on one hand there is nothing new under the sun.
However, when you look at, for example, our school system and the impact digitalization has had on that – it is just unbelievable. I have also attended lectures recently and I was exposed to the flipped classroom method, which was not there during the ancient times I did my formal studies. As the name indicates, the best practices to learn are now fundamentally different (flipped) from the not so distant past.
My perspective to the question is that digitalization seems to find its way into our practices in a peculiar way: you don’t see and appreciate it until it has happened. It operates in a stealth mode. William Gibson’s famous quote says: 'The future is here it is just not evenly distributed'. In a digital world that really has some unexpected consequences that are mostly related to the speed of change.
Two pillars of strength for Finland: private-public collaboration and ability to execute
Nicole: What do you think is an area of improvement for Finland to grow its economic presence in Europe and internationally?
Ilkka: I believe that we should play to our strengths and in this case I see two pillars: private-public collaboration and ability to execute. Digitalization is a great example where one could leverage these pillars. Most experts agree that digitalization will require further ground rules where regulation (public sector involvement) will play a significant role. Finland could be an important contributor in these areas and provide examples how problems could be solved and thus grow its presence. Getting the regulatory framework right will require experimentation (i.e. cannot be solved in committees) and that could the role for Finland.
How to do things is often much more important than what you do
Nicole: What would you suggest are the top 3 skills or capabilities that are most important for young adults to manage and thrive in our very dynamic business and working environment today?
Ilkka: I have had an opportunity to work with young professionals and I must admit that I am really impressed by their skills in general. What is really striking is their attitude to work and how comfortable they are with the whole work environment. In a way they seem to be much more professional than my generation were at their age - they are born global.
If there is one advice I could offer, that would be the focus on how to do things. It seems to me that very often people (especially the young) focus on the ‘what’ question: what is the right price, what is the right person for this job, what should I study, what should I do next.
My experience is that how to do things is often much more important than what you do. If you make a mistake on the what -side, you often can fix it quite easily but if you make a mistake on how you are doing things - that could be fatal.
Nicole: Which are the areas where you could help others in the Kaato group?
Ilkka: Let me start by saying that Kaato has helped me in finding people that can I discuss openly about challenges, opportunities, and ways to find solutions. I believe that Kaato is foremost a community of knowledgeable and friendly people willing to help and challenge. My objective is to try to return the favour by being available to those that might benefit from my experience and skills. Currently, people usually turn to me to evaluate ideas and opportunities that are related to telecoms and machine learning. I am still well connected with people in this field and that can be helpful.
Nicole: What is your pet project or something you like to do?
Ilkka: #1 my summer cottage – mostly picturing myself as a lumberjack.
#2 hacking and philosophizing about data. Currently I’m working on Natural Language Models – especially BERT and its successors. It is mind blowing how big these models are and what you can achieve with them. The downside is their size (Microsofts Turing-NLG: 17 billion parameters) and the resources it takes to train them. Just last week Huggingface reported that the CO2 impact of training a large language model is 626 155 lbs which is roughly five times the average lifetime CO2 impact of a US car including fuel!
Many thanks, Ilkka! We look forward to a next event where we could have Ilkka speak again, hopefully in 2nd half of 2021. This wraps up the interview series for the Kaato group of connected professionals for the 1st half of 2021. Wishing all a wonderful and relaxing July! We will continue our fireside chats after a break.
Thanks Nicole. Ilkka is one of those people that after you have met, you feel more fresh and up to date to track where tech and global trends are taking us.