Name: Ginni Rometty: This is the most disruptive trend in tech
Uploaded: 2015-10-13
Duration: 5 min 40 s
Description: The IBM CEO says companies that engage in artificial intelligence can bring change to almost any business.

[ MUSIC ] To me, digital, when everyone's digital, it's not a destination. it is not the destination. And last week we had the opportunity to put what I would call a point of view about the future out on the table. And so think about when digital business marries up with what I'll call [ UNKNOWN ] intelligence. We said it is the dawn of a new era about being a cognitive business. When every product, every service, how you run your company can actually have a piece that learns and thinks as part of it you will be a cognitive business. So the digital's just the wires. Basically you're collecting the data and then you have to make something. You're collecting but then you take this world, when I say digital intelligence. some short hand it to artificial intelligence. I think it's much more than that. You put those two together and I say cognitive is both an era of technology and it is well a business model. Yeah. So, this thought, I mean can take you back in time When the Internet first came out, and people at first talked about browsing, I know, as we were, again, reinventing ourselves, we said, it will be about more than browsing. And, it led us to e- business. Then there was, you go back just, not very long ago, eight, nine years ago, you would have things like traffic getting, you put sensors in roads. Things starting to change. I know it led us to have this point of view about smarter planet. You could become a smarter business. So you became an ebusiness. You became, as you would say, smarter. But now, I think this next decade, it is about, can you become a cognitive business. And, to me, if you take big data, cloud, mobility. This is the fourth, and I believe it is the most disruptive of these trends. It is clearly the one, you guys have been with me as Watson has grown up, right? He is symbolic of this era, and he is the first real platform of it. But that idea. That I think it allows existing companies. You will be the disruptor. You will be the disruptor should you choose to do it. Because it changes everything about how you operate. So, but we have a long way to go, don't we? There was a McKenzie report that came out earlier this year that estimated that all this data we're collecting We're only turning about 1 % of it into intelligence. You do, but here's, I think two phenomena. Or two things to talk about on the technology side. One is that, do we have a long way to go? Yes, and that's what makes it an era. However, already here, I want you to think of a couple things. 80 %, we all talk about the amount of information. That's kind of interesting. 80 % of all the information in the world, to date, until now, has been invisible to your systems and computers, right. It's songs, it's movies. I mean you might store it, but you don't know what's in it. You don't understand what's in it. And so, that's until now. and with the advent of technology, which I think we sort of unleashed this artificial intelligence. It's been around for decades, but Watson unleashed it. This idea that systems that can understand, they can reason, they can learn, are here. But you also have this idea, back to digital, that a lot of businesses are rewritten in code, right? Take a look, a car has 100 million lines of code in it. Muriel will be here later today. This idea, you combine those You have this new era here. Again, I'll come back to how Watson has grown up. We talked about healthcare last time. But marry it with, and this is what I think's more important, when you said, is it too early, is it early? Here's what I already see you can do with a business, and I kind of lay it out, if I can share it, kind of five areas for you to look at in your business about if you're Beginning this journey to be a cognitive business. The first one, it will drive a deeper engagement with your clients than you have ever seen. Proof, work we're doing with an insurance company. Watson's behind the scene, who knows the client and helping say, as the person's filling out forms putting it in terms that they understand, knowing their portfolio. Closure rate nine points higher than before. Nine points is enough o change an industry on some of these things. Yeah. Wow. Second thing, your ability to scale expertise. Just think if any employee in your company could perform as the best one did. And so, the US spends 156 billion a year on training in business 90 % of those skills are lost in the first year. I mean, you just don't remember them. So, what if you had help? I think you will scale expertise with these systems. The third thing. You'll put learning in every product. One of my favorite, cuz we have a big ecosystem, is the company building children's toys. That it's a dinosaur, using Watson inside, that he adapts to how your child learns, and that's how he then communicates with the child. But it'll be true for any product and service. And then, as well, how you'll change the operations of your company. With someone in here, we're doing some big work on their supply chain. You're not gonna tell us who? [ CROSSTALK ] Supply chain. I won't tell you who, because this is a competitive advantage for everyone. Two to ten points higher on price. I mean, being able, higher revenue. Five points of margin. And then the last is how you will actually do discovery. If you're a, it doesn't matter who you are. You pick your choices of where investment goes. It'll help there. So that's why- Discovery mean- Discovery, whether it's pharma or new areas to go into. Or surge. Surge, data. And by the way, we just announced Thompson Reuters Thinking of this as the foundation of how they do their work in the future. Jennie- So we're there. Those five things pretty much transform every thing about every business represented in this room. This is why it it and this is why I think it's a wonderful opportunity to either be the, instead of being disrupted, you are the disruptor And it applies to everybody in here, and it is a journey, and you just get started on it, right? So, I know I do it inside my own company as well. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

The IBM CEO says companies that engage in artificial intelligence can bring change to almost any business.