MWC 2024 Reflections: The Dawn of the Age of the Plooey

I have the attention span of a hummingbird, so let’s get to the answer to the burning question right away. How is AI being leveraged in telecommunications in 2024? After having the pleasure of attending quite a few briefings with leading companies in this space while at MWC 2024 , I can report that the AI Revolution is well underway in telecom. My colleagues and I at The Futurum Group were treated to examples of AI enhanced systems for network management/optimization, fraud detection, security, customer service, and marketing.

The underlying theme that struck me as the most interesting was the evolution of the user interface. Those of us who remember the Mac versus PC arguments from last century understand that this didn’t start with Windows 95. The heart of the difference of opinion was the CLI (Command Line Interface) versus the GUI (Graphical User Interface). Especially within the walls of Enterprise IT, where GUIs are still generally frowned upon for their lack of flexibility, agility, granularity…have I left anything out?...when compared to a CLI.?

This reminds me of a story. (Feel free to use this as a sleep aid.) At EMC, we acquired a data warehousing company, and I was part of the team charged with integrating them into the family. So I went to school to learn the Greenplum platform.? In class, we did an exercise where we deployed a cluster. It failed. The instructor spent two hours walking through lines of code before he caught his mistake. An extra, unintended space. Remember what I said about my attention span? I was furious. I raised my hand and asked, “When will we have robots who can do this work that clearly is not designed for humans?”, confirming to everyone in the room that I was an idiot.

Enter the PLUI. Pronounced “plew’-ee”. If I just made that up, so be it. Let’s roll with it.

A Plain Language User Interface, in theory, allows an operator to ask, “What is wrong?” and get an immediate view of network issues, along with proposed remediation. With a PLUI, you eliminate the need to learn a programming language. You can simply say, “Deploy a virtual private network.” and your personal silicon assistant will create and execute the job. Now, let’s keep it real, you still need to know what “plain words” will get the job done, but it dramatically reduces the time to competency in an operational role.?

Companies demonstrating these capabilities described them with phrases like “Within days, a customer service representative will perform like a ten-year veteran.” and “When trucks are rolled for service calls, a new technician with an AI-powered tablet will be just as capable as a much more experienced colleague.” When asked how this will affect the labor force, the consensus seems to be that there is a shortage of skilled labor. I’m not sure I buy that completely, having worked with rate cards that rank “skill” based upon cost. Cheap is a skill. Therefore, there is a shortage of skilled (cheap) labor. How will this play out at the societal level? Only time will tell.

This dovetails in an interesting way with recent comments from Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, about the skills needed in the future. Learn to code? His view is that AI will make coding as relevant for IT professionals as it is for a truck driver today. Trucks have LOTS of sophisticated code running, but those tasked with getting value out of a truck don’t need to know how to code.?

Maybe that Medieval French Poetry degree will end up more valuable than a computer science degree in the not too distant future as one’s comparative value will be measured by how well one communicates in Plain Language.

So, does a PLUI turn everyperson into a superhero, or does it turn us all into drones? That remains to be seen. I’m with Intel's Pat Gelsinger on this one. Tech is neutral. It’s up to us to exercise our free will and harness it for good.

In summary, MWC 2024 was all about AI, but not within radio networks per se. The Open Radio Access Network (ORAN) progression continues. The market for 5G…especially private 5G…continues to mature. AI engagement will drive network utilization. AI will be critical for operations at every level. Largely by leveraging increasingly sophisticated Plain Language User Interfaces.?

I, for one, welcome the Dawn of the Age of the PLUI.?

*Grammatical errors and awkwardness are my superpower. Run it through ChatGPT if it bothers you. Thanks.