We Need to Make Our Children and Grandchildren Masters of Their Fate

Summary of Key Concepts and Points:

• We need to do two more things, over and above buying our children and grandchildren computers:

1) Enroll them in online computer science classes (age 6 -17) and the older chaps, find a way they start on a computer science-related online course – digital skills for Africa by Google Inc is a great place to start from.

2) We need radical inclusiveness for all of us to reap the individual and societal benefits from the digital transformation taking place. Here numbers are the key benefit opener.

• All jobs as we know them today are getting transformed – from the farmer to the plumber, from the cook to the policeman, from the teacher to the soldier – an intelligent assistant will be the key work tool.

Related Articles

This is the 1st article in a four-part series on the need to give our children the tools to be as they wish to be.

Part 2 can be found here:

Part 3 is found here:

While part 4 is here:

WE NEED TO MAKE OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN MASTERS OF THEIR FATE – HOW?

By buying them laptops, desktops, or tablets and enrolling them in computer science coding classes. There is no easy way out of this.

So the question then becomes "Why computer science and not some universal skill like plumbing or driving?".

First, a story, a long one, then slowly thereafter we shall all explore the why of it?

Enter The Brilliant Janitor

Intelligent assistants are not simply websites you can access. They are also portable tools that can turn AI into IA (Artificial Intelligence to Intelligent Assistant) in remarkable new ways so that so many more people, no matter how educated or dexterous, can live above the average adaptability line—and even thrive there.

Consider what it is to be a janitor today at the Qualcomm campus in San Diego.

Hint: thanks to intelligent assistants, it’s become a knowledge worker job.

Ashok Tipirneni, director of product management for Qualcomm’s Smart Cities project, explained to me why: Qualcomm has created a business in showing companies how they can retrofit wireless sensors to every part of their buildings in order to generate a real-time, nonstop sort of EKG or MRI of what is going on deep inside every one of their buildings’ systems.

To create a demonstration model, Tipirneni started with six buildings at Qualcomm’s Pacific Center Campus in San Diego, which included parking garages, office spaces, and food courts; the area was about a million square feet in total and used by about 3,200 people.

They retrofitted small, self-powered, clip-on sensors to transmit all their data—from doors, trash cans, bathrooms, windows, lighting systems, heating systems, wires, chillers, and pumps—to a receiver on the campus. The receiver sends all the data up to the supernova (cloud) to be stored, analyzed, and turned into intelligent advice for the building maintenance men.

“We didn’t have to break open a single wall,” said Tipirneni.

The first result was significant savings. Labs started competing with one another over who could save the most. “We discovered that a lot of the energy use was coming out of PCs in labs, and just by putting the PCs in hibernate mode in six buildings when they were not being used is projected to save roughly a million dollars a year—it was shocking [to find] such an easy fix,” said Tipirneni. “This data is giving us those insights—it’s amazing.”

But the fun part is that they started to stream all the data into icons on a tablet and then outfitted each of their maintenance men with one. The minute a leak or short happens or a valve is left open, it shows up on the tablet. And if something breaks the tablet will immediately display the repair manual.

If something breaks or leaks that the maintenance team doesn’t know how to fix, they take a picture of it with their tablet. “The system will know that this part in this building is connected to a pipe on the fourth floor and that floor is assigned to this technician, and it automatically sends a ticket to him to fix

it,” said Tipirneni. “The device will know exactly where the pipe is behind the drywall,” so there is no need to guess where to make the hole. “You save time and money and use only what you need in the most efficient way.

And then you use the time saved from treating symptoms to fix root causes.”

Qualcomm is putting these sensor clips on all forty-eight buildings in San Diego.

Suddenly the building maintenance guys “got converted to data engineers, which is exciting for them,” added Tipirneni.

They made sure the data was “distilled in a way that is easy for them to understand and be actionable. In the old days, when a facilities manager looked at a building, he would say: “If there is a leak someone will call me or I will see it.”

They were reactive.

Now, says Tipirneni, “We trained them to look at signals and data that will point them to a leak before it happens and causes destruction. They did not know what data to look at, so our challenge was [to] make sensor data easy for them to make sense of, so we don’t overwhelm them with too much data and just say ‘You figure it out.’ Our goal was, ‘We will give you the information you can use.’”

“The cognitive load is too much,” he added, “and technology has to reduce that cognitive load on the user.

Everyone will need and everyone will have an intelligent personal assistant.”

The maintenance team now feels more like building technicians, not just janitors. “They feel it is a step up,” said Tipirneni. “They got very excited about the interfaces.”

And the best part, he added: “We had forty officials from four different cities in for a demo, and some of the maintenance people here presented it and they showed what they learned, and it struck a chord with the city officials.

They were confident enough to talk about these things in a matter of a few months.”

That is what an intelligent assistant can do.

Excerpts From The Book:

Thank You For Being Late

An Optimist’s Guide To Thriving In The Age Of Accelerations

- Thomas L. Friedman