A Common Sense Approach For AI (Guest: Johan Steyn)

Andreas Welsch: 0:21

Today we'll talk about taking a common sense approach to ai and who better to talk to about it than someone who's worked with a lot of different companies on just that Johan Steyn. Hey Johan, thank you so much for joining

Johan Steyn: 0:36

Andreas, thank you. It's a wonderful and lovely privilege to be with you today.

Andreas Welsch: 0:42

Hey, I'm so glad you're able to join. I can't believe that this is already the 10th episode of What's the BUZZ? and I'm really stoked about that. So I also wanna say thank you to those of you in the audience for all your questions and feedback and engagement over the last few months. I'm really having a lot of fun with it, and I hear from you that you're getting a lot of value out of it as well. So let's continue on that path. And Johan why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do and what your focus is around AI.

Johan Steyn: 1:14

Cool, Andreas. Firstly I love following your work. It's exciting to be involved with somebody like you. Great honor to be here today. I've worked for some of the large management consulting and audit firms. The last few weeks I've been doing my own thing. I'm a freelance AI and automation consultant. I also work with some startups where I mentor them and help them. And I do a lot of work in the rural areas and with poor and orphanage and vulnerable children. So the whole AI for good kind of lens, if you would. And then I also write a lot for Reuters and for other magazines and newspapers. And I do some work in academia with four different universities, but I think to sum it up, my passion is using AI for good for the future of our children. That really is what keeps me up at night. Andreas.

Andreas Welsch: 2:10

That's an awesome cause I'm so excited to have you on. We met through Swiss Cognitive at the beginning of the year and had already talked about some of these things there. So I'm really looking forward to also learning from you and getting your perspective and for you to share your perspective with the audience, especially what you're seeing in your home country of South Africa and the continent Africa as a whole. Because I feel it's really an underrepresented and undertold story that we see in the media. But hey it really sounds like you've been involved in a lot of different things and have seen different aspects of AI. So for those of you joining the stream, drop a comment in the chat where you feel we need more common sense for AI and we'll pick it up in a few minutes here. But to get started, Johan, should we play a little game to kick things?

Johan Steyn: 3:03

Yeah.

Andreas Welsch: 3:05

Awesome. This game is called Fill in the Blank. And when I hit the buzzer, the wheels will start spinning. When they stop, you see a sentence and I'd like you to complete it with the first thing that comes to mind and why fill in the blank and to make it even more interesting, you'll only have 60 seconds for your answer.

Johan Steyn: 3:25

Okay.

Andreas Welsch: 3:27

Awesome. So again for those of you watching us live please drop your answer in the chat and why when Johan fills in the blank. But now are you ready for, What's the BUZZ?

Johan Steyn: 3:37

Give it to me.

Andreas Welsch: 3:39

Okay, perfect. Then let's see. If you're just getting started with AI dot, fill in the blank.

Johan Steyn: 3:51

Don't just focus on the technical skills. Think about the business and societal applications. It's sometimes more important than just the technical skills.

Andreas Welsch: 4:04

That was a very short answer. Perfect. Why do you feel it is more important to to focus on business than just technology?

Johan Steyn: 4:16

It's a great question, Andreas. Look, I've worked with some exceptional people across the world, but even here in South Africa, startups and young people equivalent to the best you can get in Silicon Valley, I think the problem is a lot of them are so technical that you should almost hide them somewhere in the room and put pizza under the door because they can't speak to business owners. They dunno how to translate the value of their products or platforms in. Or societal terms. So yes, you have to continually upskill your technical skills, but we do AI or automation for a reason. Don't forget what that reason is. It's not just a tech, it's a reason. And that's often a business reason, and I think that's why it's important.

Andreas Welsch: 5:03

Perfect. Great summary. And to your point, that's where you then really make an impact if you tie to the business and make it tangible. So hey let's jump into the first question. I know you've been a consultant and you've seen dozens of companies embark on their AI journey and. I'm wondering, what's the worst issue you've seen leaders make when they start in investing in ai? And maybe we've already touched a little bit on, on it with focusing on technology more than business, but I'm curious if there are others or what if this is particularly unique or important? From your perspective, doing projects in Africa.

Johan Steyn: 5:39

Absolutely. Andreas, look, I think we, I think business leaders think that digitization or automation or AI. Is the remit of some people in the dark corners of the technology department. It is the most powerful technology we've ever created. It is still quite limited, but it's growing exponentially. It should be a senior leadership, a C-suite. Responsibility and about seventy(7 0%) of business leaders globally have no clue what this technology is about, how it'll change the organizations, how they need to upskill their people, how they will interact with their customers, so that it's not the technology, it's the business understanding of using the right tools for the right reason in the way where I often see that this technology fails. It's, and that's why we speak about common sense today. It, and it's maybe not that common, but forget the tech, forget the platforms. Just take a breath and step back. Why are we doing what we're doing? And I often say I fixed more problems over the last five years with Excel than with ai. And I fixed more problems with people understanding their jobs, fixing toxic cultures than with automation. So the technology's important, Andreas, but the greater picture of the whole organization and the beauty of humanity and what we can often, what we fear, that is the picture I think we often forget in this whole pursuit to automate and AI, everything.

Andreas Welsch: 7:16

Fantastic. I remember you, you said an article a couple days ago about voice assistance in, in Africa. Picking up, or especially not being able to pick up different accents or different local languages. What are some of the other things where you see where it's very specific to Africa, where things are? Are they disadvantaging the population or whether or not it's as far developed or not taking it so much into consideration as they should.

Johan Steyn: 7:45

Yes, it's a piece I was blessed to publish my first piece with Reuters. Andreas about the disadvantage that Africans have in our data sets around conversational AI. There are approximately 3000 different languages in dialects in Africa. Obviously, most of the conversational AI platforms are English or some of the major European language or Arabic potential, even Chinese. But how do we serve people in their local dialect and language in this continent, even when we speak about breast cancer research or prostate cancer or lung cancer research as an example, a lot of the data sets are predominantly Northern American or European and they are largely applicable, but they're also nuances around the diseases. People suffer in Africa. That's not served by these data sets. So there are a lot of initiatives by Africans and I'm very proud of them, who are creating data sets in the language case, often from scratch to make sure that we have the right data for these models to learn from and to serve our local populists. And then there's also the question about almost like a colonization by China and others. Taking over the digital world of this continent and it's already taken over lot of our natural resources and mining and energy and the like, but what will our children, what will my eight year old son be left with in 30 or 40 years from now if we don't regulate this better? If we don't as Africans? I'm not saying reinvent the wheel. Let's use the wonderful platforms built in the US and in Europe and elsewhere, but we have to build on top of that to make sure that it is applicable for the specific societal and business needs of our continent. And I can do this for hours. This topic I'm very passionate about, but I'll stop there for now. Thank you so much for your perspective. And I think I can see and the audience can see your passion definitely is as well. And it's a it's a very key topic that you raised there. Making data sets more more diverse catering matches for individual regions as, as well.

Andreas Welsch: 10:04

Maybe if we pivot a little bit to towards business say you're in finance or in procurement, you're probably not that deep into AI. And when you hear AI it's probably either the headlines of AI gone bad that come to mind. Where it's the Hollywood movies where AI destroys humanity. Yes. But making it more real and more tangible. From your experience, having worked with different companies in that space on these topics, how have you seen companies actually get genuine buy-in from from their employees and from their team members to do AI? And that it is not destroying humanity, but that it is real and delivers.

Johan Steyn: 10:48

What a great question, Andreas. Look, again, don't let it be a technology led initiative. It must be a people first initiative supported by technology and the technology department. People naturally fear things they don't know. We are all like that. And to your point, Hollywood, we think of Terminator. We think of the robot with the red eyes and smoke coming out of its nose. And a lot of people still think of it. If you just google the word AI or in an image search, it's most likely humanoid robots or anthropomorphized robots. And we know it's code and it's an ambivalent technology. It's created neutrally. It's how we use it that makes it good, whether it makes it bad, at least for now. So I tell my customers, start small. Pick the initiatives that will make life easier for your staff and your customers. The best change management is the water cooler chat or people in the smoking balcony or in the virtual world it's a bit more difficult, but once people start talking about the fact that I'm actually enjoying my job more, I don't have to do all this repetitive nonsense, these digital assistance and conversational AI agents are really helping me. It is what I often call taking the out of the human because there are still many things that technology can't do that only humans can do. And the other way around intuition experience, looking at a human being in the face. A customer saying, are you really okay? How can I help you? We can't automate that, so that's the key thing. Make sure that we use the technology for the what the technology is good at. Set the humans free to do what we are good at and start small so that people can learn to trust this technology, to see that it's a benefit. Don't go in with some sort of a big bang approach. And lastly, don't let the technologist lead this. Let them support you. Let business lead. I hope that helps.

Andreas Welsch: 12:47

Seems like that perspective really resonates also with Denise here saying, bringing people in connecting them, showing them the greater benefit and objective. Now to wrap it up our third question. If you put all of this together I'm wondering what project comes to mind and that you've seen either be super successful or not and for what reason?

Johan Steyn: 13:13

Okay. There's an example I often use as, it's so simple that it's laughable, but it illustrates the point. I worked with a large hospital group here in South Africa at about 83 different hospitals. They wanted to automate and AI their front desk operations when patients walk into the hospital. And after investigating it, I realized that the printer. Is to far away from the administrative staff. So with every patient engagement, they had to walk to the printer three times. So we moved the printer closer, it increased their productivity with 320%. No AI, no robotic process automation, common sense. So before we dive into all these platforms and these platforms are incredible, think about what will make the life of your easier and don't make decisions on the executive level. Actually spend time, have a coffee with your administrative people, with the people whose jobs you're trying to automate. Cause they have insights about what will make their lives easier, that you as an executive will never know. So that's why I say start with the people. Then bring in the technology. It's so common sense, but we never remember this.

Andreas Welsch: 14:34

That's awesome. And some solutions can be so simple, right? And they can be right in front of you, but you don't see them immediately. So hey, we're getting close to the end of the stream, and I was wondering if you could summarize the key three points from our talk today that you wouldn't want to leave our audience with.

Johan Steyn: 14:53

Okay, Andreas. Look. Wow. Firstly, this technology is incredible. It's advancing a lot faster than we think. It'll never replace human nature or, and experience and intuition. And always start with people first and take them on the journey with you, because people will always be more important than technology. And I understand that We are on businesses and we are not in a kumbaya world. We've got shareholder pressure. Why can't we both make life better for our people and be a lot more profitable business at the same time? It must be possible.

Andreas Welsch: 15:33

That's a beautiful statement to end on. Thank you so much for the summary. Thanks for joining and for sharing your experience and for those in the audience for learning with us today.

Johan Steyn: 15:43

Thank you. It's been amazing, Andreas. Thank you.

Andreas Welsch: 15:45

Awesome.