From a Mobile First to an AI First Strategy

17/05/17

Watching Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, intro speech to Google IO, I was amazed by the evolutions and practical opportunities offered by AI (well spent 10 minutes). Not that I was not expecting it, but evolutions keep on coming at a speed that we all fail to predict.

3 to 4 years ago we made some research trying to analyse disruptive technologies impacts on public bodies and, more especially in my case, on the European Institutions.

Basically, and this is no news anymore today, the daily data production exceeded the 10 quintillion bytes (10^19 bytes). Which is for a single day, more than the data produced by mankind since the seventies. With the raise of digital imaging, videos, IoT, …, it won't be a surprise when we'll break the 45 Zettabytes per annum threshold in 2020. It looks conservative watching Sundar Pichai claiming, that for Google only, 1.2 bio photos are collected daily and 3 bio new objects created on Google Map Weekly.

To process all this information, we need computers with heavy weighted calculation capabilities. End of 2014, the most powerful personal computers clocks were at 10 tera flops (10^11 floating points operations per second). Well that’s fast and already as fast as a mouse brain. But it was still slow compared to the human brain computing capability of 10 peta flops (10^16) and far from the exa flops (10^18) required to reproduce the brain neuronal connections necessary to replicate intelligence.

3 years ago all personal computers were very far (at a 100.000 multiple) from being able to claim human brain processing power.

Today, Google Cloud TPU offers, to all, a cloud access to TPU Boards with a 11.5 peta flops capacity, making Artificial Intelligence capabilities only a click away.

The GAFAs, BATXs and most companies in the world are capturing Zettabytes of information, giving it away almost for free, and de facto turning scarcity into a commodity. 

The real value engine, is the one that will allow to turn data into, not insights anymore, but into intelligence.

AI is the name of the game.

So if you had a Mobile first / Digital first strategy, it is time to think about an AI first strategy.

And the clock is ticking faster than ever.

With this in mind, a regular review of Public Sector operating models and how they can leverage the latest maturing disruptive technologies is a must. Have look at the latest @deloittegov research on Artificial Intelligence for some trends and inspiration. https://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/focus/artificial-intelligence-in-government.html