AI Magazine - April 2021

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The AI Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

WILLIAM SMITH DEPUTY EDITOR

PADDY SMITH EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIA FORTE SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

KIERAN WAITE

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JENNIFER SMITH

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG MATTHEW EVANS TYLER LIVINGSTONE

PRODUCTION EDITOR

DIGITAL MARKETING EXECUTIVE

PRODUCTION MANAGERS

JENNIFER SMITH

ANDREW STUBBINGS PROJECT DIRECTORS

KRIS PALMER MIKE SADR BEN MALTBY TOM VENTURO CRAIG KILLINGBACK

JAMES WHITE

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN PRESIDENT & CEO

GLEN WHITE

EDITORS LETTER

AI strategy the latest international battleground This past month saw the publication of a number of critically important AI documents from some of the world’s biggest powers, laying out their approaches to the technology - meaning March may have been a historic month for AI.

“AI is truly revolutionary.

Now, governments are waking up to the realities of AI, and seeking to guide its development”

The perception of AI has certainly evolved over the years. As the technology has made inroads into our lives, whether in a personal setting thanks to smart assistants or at work through technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA), we’ve all come to realise that AI is truly revolutionary. Now, governments are waking up to the realities of AI, and seeking to guide its development.

The EU, the UK’s GCHQ and the US’s National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence all issued reports this month, with huge ramifications for how governments use AI - from internal services to security and even offensive measures.

The ethical use of AI was a common thread in the reports, with questions about the biases inherent in algorithms and the thorny question of who is responsible for the actions of AI-enabled weapons.

These questions are nothing new, but the powers that be are finally ready to answer them.

WILLIAM SMITH AI MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

william.smith@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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3

CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 6

Big Picture

8

The Brief

10 Global News 12 People Moves 14 Timeline:

The History of AI 16 Legend:

Lisa Su 18 Five Mins With:

Gavin Ray

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Datorama, a Salesforce Company AI-powered Marketing Intelligence

34

AI Disruptors Six companies changing the game with AI

42

Vanarama

Expands Tech Tools to Grow Vehicle Leasing Sales

70

Connected Data

54

Understanding the value of automation in manufacturing

AI in Banking

The transformative applications of AI in the banking sector

82 RPA

Robotic Process Automation For the People

62

Marsh France

Accelerating New Technologies for Clients

90

Top 10

AI Evangelists

BIG PICTURE

Volocopter gets $240mn in pursuit of autonomous air taxis German air mobility firm Volocopter, which is developing electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOLs) and autonomous air taxis, received a €200mn boost last month in a Series D round. The aim of Volocopter and its competitors is to build a market for ridesharing via the skies in cities.

Numerous transportation options are being pursued, ranging from helicopters to electric aircraft to pilotless drones.

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April 2021

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THE BRIEF “ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT USE CASES FOR AI IN BANKING IS TO IMPROVE PERSONALISATION FOR CUSTOMERS” Babak Hodjat

VP Evolutionary AI, Cognizant  READ MORE

BY THE NUMBERS Number of graduating North American PhDs in AI going into AI industry— highlighting the greater role industry has begun to play in AI development (AI Index)

44.4% 2010

“TO MAKE THE MOST OF ORGANISATIONAL DATA, BUILD A CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAM, AND MAKE SURE EVERYONE IS INVOLVED”

65% 2019

John Spooner

Head of Artificial Intelligence, EMEA, H2O.ai  READ MORE

“Democratising access to analytics helps resolve the disconnects that may happen between the business and the analytics departments” André Balleyguier

Chief Data Scientist for EMEA, DataRobot  READ MORE

8

April 2021

Did you know?

Three of the biggest western powers laid out their AI strategies for the coming years within the last month. The EU released “A European approach to Artificial Intelligence”...

READ MORE

...the UK’s GCHQ published “Pioneering a New National Security”...

READ MORE

...and the US’s National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence issued its final report.

READ MORE

Want better AI? Try training it like a baby Is AI training being done all wrong?

Researchers at the Allen Institute for AI think that may be the case, and have put forward an alternative means of training machine learning algorithms – hide and seek.

What’s wrong with the way we train AI now?

Most AI training is done with training data or in virtual environments.

So we should build a physical house for AI? Of course not. You just make it bigger, more like a ‘sandbox’ environment in a video game. The Allen Institute set up a virtual environment invitingly dubbed AI2-THOR that has hundreds of flats containing virtual rooms.

 INSITRO The San Francisco startup, which is applying machine learning to drug discovery, raised a bumper $400mn Series C round.

G O O D

 WORKFUSION Industry-specific automation firm was in part spurred by workplace changes from the COVID-19 pandemic as it raised $220mn.

T I M E S

 BYTEDANCE AI CHIPS With the world’s semiconductor supply bringing some companies to a grinding halt, China’s ByteDance announced it would make its own.

Sounds nice. The AI must be happy there.

They are. The AI in the virtual environment play Cache, aka hide and seek. One AI hides something; the other has to find it.

 AI BIAS AI algorithms are often accused of replicating the biases of their creators, with the EU suggesting all AI should be trained with unbiased data sets.

Just like children do?

Exactly. And, just like small humans, the AI learn mapping, exploration, perspective, hiding, seeking and object manipulation.

The researchers hope to develop a whole new set of skills and usher in a new era of artificial intelligence.

 AI WEAPONS A report commissioned for the US President advocated rejecting calls for a global ban on AI and autonomous weapons systems.

APR21

B A D T I M E S aimagazine.com

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GLOBAL NEWS 1

UK

AI supply chain UK-based Ripjar is partnering with Royal Dutch Shell to offer a platform which utilises AI to detect criminal threats including money laundering, terrorism and crime networks. Possible benefits to the global supply chain include an 80% reduction in data reporting errors versus existing legacy systems.

2

NETHERLANDS

Heineken to use AI to control volatile demand Heineken is to use Blue Yonder’s machine learning to control volatility in its supply chain.

The brewer has announced that it will use the demand planning solution to help improve forecasting in order to stabilise a supply chain that has been hit by restrictions on the hospitality industry during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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April 2021

3

CHINA

Autonomous vehicles Chinese tech firm Baidu has demonstrated a vehicle which it said was ranked at level 4 on the Society of Automotive Engineers’ (SAE) scale ( level 5 is complete autonomy at all times), and which made use of 5G to enable remote driving – replacing the safety driver typically ready to assume control of autonomous vehicles in cases of emergency.

4

5

EMEA

Data centre boom AI is set to deliver a boom in data centre investment, according to analysts at Frost & Sullivan.

Investment in data centres is forecast to grow by 9.9 per cent CAGR as big data and IoT drive demand for capacity in all markets, led by APAC, followed by North America and EMEA.

FRANCE

Open source AI Hugging Face and AWS have partnered to bring over 7,000 NLP models to Amazon SageMaker. Founded in 2016, Hugging Face is a global leader in open-source machine learning, with headquarters in New York and Paris. Its Transformers library includes access a range of popular natural language neural networks.

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PEOPLE MOVES JIM SNABE FROM: SAP TO: C3 AI WAS: CO-CEO NOW: MEMBER OF THE BOARD Previously the co-CEO of German ERP giant SAP, Jim Snabe joined the board of AI firm C3 AI. He also serves on the board of Siemens and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the World Economic Forum.

C3 AI CEO Thomas M. Siebel said: “The addition of Jim to our Board of Directors further strengthens this team of highly accomplished professionals”.

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April 2021

“I am thrilled to work alongside a worldclass board and with a growing set of industry-leading customers globally”

LORD DAVID WILLETTS FROM: MEMBER OF UK PARLIAMENT TO: DARKTRACE WAS: MINISTER FOR UNIVERSITIES AND SCIENCE NOW: NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Lord David Willetts was announced as a new member of the board of directors at autonomous cybersecurity AI firm Darktrace.

Willetts joins the Cambridge, UK-based company having previously served as the Minister for Universities and Science, with other current roles including being Chair of the Foundation for Science and Technology.

DR REN FENG FROM: MEDICILON TO: INSILICO MEDICINE WAS: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT NOW: CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER AI-powered drug discovery company Insilico Medicine, based in Hong Kong, announced it had appointed Dr Ren Feng as its Chief Science Officer. He has previous experience with the discovery and development of drugs at industry leaders including GlaxoSmithKline, where he was chief researcher for a global drug R&D unit.

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TIMELINE

HISTORY OF AI

Think AI’s a new thing? Think again, as we look to the history books

1763

1913

1950

BAYES

MARKOV

TURING

Yes, 1763. George Grenville takes office as the British prime minister. Haydn composes his Symphony No 13. And Thomas Bayes writes An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances, which would underpin Bayes’ Theorem.

The maths behind AI is born.

Andrey Markov describes his technique for stochastic modelling, sequencing event probability based on previous known events. The mathematician’s explanation will lead to Markov chains, which are central to modelling real-world processes in statistical form.

Alan Turing puts forward his idea for a ‘learning machine’ that could become artificially intelligent. The Turing test, or imitation game, proposed how a machine might be able to evaluate data like a human.

Turing’s 1950 paper opens with the words: “I propose to consider the question ‘Can machines think?’”

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April 2021

1952

1989

2009

GAMES

COMMERCIALISATION

IMAGENET

Arthur Samuel begins designing programmes that can play chequers. In 1963, Donald Michie develops a ‘machine’ to play noughts and crosses using reinforcement learning. Backgammon came in 1992. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov at chess. et?

Axcelis releases Evolver, the first commercialised software package for PC to use a genetic algorithm. While the original software is not part of the permanent collection at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, also home to Google, Evolver has been developed and sold ever since.

It’s contentious in many ways, but ImageNet is also widely credited with ushering in the AI boom of the 21st century.

The brainchild of Fei-Fei Li, it is a colossal image database used to train machine learning algorithms with realworld data.

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LEGEND

Lisa Su “We’ll absolutely see AMD be a large player in AI”

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April 2021

As the President and CEO of US semiconductor giant Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Lisa Su is well deserving of the title of legend in the field of AI

A

s a manufacturer of graphical processing units (GPUs), AMD plays an important role in the field of machine learning, where, thanks to their highly parallel nature, GPUs are invaluable. Despite this, AMD has not entered the field as fully as its main competitor such as Intel or GPU manufacturer Nvidia, for instance not offering a dedicated AI chip. Under Su’s leadership, that is changing, however. She has said that the company is considering building dedicated accelerators for applications such as machine learning, adding: “We’ll absolutely see AMD be a large player in AI”.

Born in Taiwan, Su arrived in the United States at the age of three years old. Later, she studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before going on to work for Texas Instruments and IBM, where she helped propel significant advancements in semiconductor design. She joined AMD as SVP in 2012 from Freescale Semiconductor, where she had served as Chief Technology Officer, before attaining the role of CEO and President in 2014.

In a keynote speech at this year’s Consumer Electronics show, Su emphasised the

AMD cemented its position in the industry with a purchase of competitor Xilinx for

$35bn

company’s commitment to digital transformation in society, saying: “AMD is incredibly proud to be at the heart of products, services and experiences keeping us productive, learning, connected and entertained in an increasingly ‘digital first’ world,” said Dr. Su. “We are committed to consistently pushing the envelope on what’s possible in PCs, gaming, data centers and the cloud together with our industry partners.”

The company recently cemented its position in the semiconductor industry with a purchase of competitor Xilinx in a $35bn deal.

Su said of the deal: “Our acquisition of Xilinx marks the next leg in our journey to establish AMD as the industry’s high performance computing leader and partner of choice for the largest and most important technology companies in the world. [...] By combining our world-class engineering teams and deep domain expertise, we will create an industry leader with the vision, talent and scale to define the future of high performance computing.”

As one of the industry’s most prominent women, Su also made our recent list of the Top 100 Women in Technology, coming in at fifth place overall. aimagazine.com

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5MINS WITH...

GAVIN RAY Gavin Ray, chief product officer of Landmark Information Group, gives us his view on what AI means for the property market

Q. HOW IS AI BEING USED IN YOUR FIELD?

» “There are a number of areas where

AI is bringing new value to the property market; one of the biggest is in the interpretation of key documents in the conveyancing sector. It’s important to see this as an accelerator of the business process of buying property: it helps conveyancing lawyers more rapidly identify the risks or concerns related to buying a specific property and address them. Today this is mainly to do with the complexities of Land Registry ownership and increasingly assessing data relating to the environmental profile and planning process of the area.

“In the land development world, and in urban redevelopment, we see some great systems that can use AI to rapidly synthesise 3D building developments to show how land use and investment value can be changed, when you overlay historic information and market data you have very powerful insight into overall development value.”

Q. WHAT ARE THE MOST EXCITING TRENDS IN AI FOR YOU?

» “If our hopes for AI are buoyant,

“ FUTURE VALUE OF PROPERTY AND LAND ARE VERY AMENABLE TO AI ANALYSIS” 18

April 2021

then equally so are our fears. The emergence of strong ethical models and a focus on building high integrity into the process of training and applying AI should unlock a lot of doors; it might feel a little arcane but is something to watch closely and reap the rewards. From this strong root, trust and much greater application breadth can follow. From a purely technical perspective, I think GPT3

from the OpenAPI initiative is quite stunning. There is plenty of debate over what exactly is its true algorithmic and application value, but the fact that it’s been taught 175 billion micro facts from text across the global internet means that we have the first ever single view of all relationships between words, language, point facts, topics and concepts.

“Just looking at some of the customisation examples that have come from this show how AI can now evolve in the mainstream; as you pose questions to GPT3 it starts answering and explaining facts, adding new examples and drawing conclusions you may find hard to believe but you know they are informed from 175 billion inputs.”

it never matters what 99 per cent of the product does; your risk and uncertainty can be dominated by the 1 per cent or even the 0.1 per cent of edge cases. We need to therefore be sure that the benefit model of AI is never outweighed by the hidden cost of any bias, error or uncertainty, which implies we must continually state, measure, validate and report the integrity of AI services.”

Q. WHERE DOES AI GO NEXT IN THE PROPERTY INDUSTRY?

» “There are vast collections of static

Q. IN TERMS OF AI, WHAT KEEPS YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT?

» “I think we always wonder if AI is

heading down the path of the more prosaic Hollywood movies where the computer takes control and one day responds to a request for help with “Sorry Dave, I cannot do that”, leaving you wondering how much power has been handed over to silicon. Thankfully computers have power switches and reset buttons, so we need to keep those things and remain in control!

“Humour aside, the real areas of AI to keep one awake, albeit briefly, are to do with integrity and certainty.

As we use AI to support what we do in more parts of our business it’s vital to know what error rate and uncertainty lies beneath the veneer of intelligence. Having put high volume products to market in the past, I found

"Your risk and uncertainty can be dominated by the

1%

or even the

0.1%

of edge cases"

data that span the property industry, many are historical and foretell trends and issues for the future, so I expect some phenomenal new insight and hidden trend models to appear and help us considerably improve the speed of the conveyancing process.

“When you think about shifting society issues and trends in housing development and urban/residential usage patterns, environmental issues – like flood risk and coastal erosion or evolving understanding of land contamination – you can see that future value of property and land are very amenable to AI analysis. Also, dynamically, there is a lot of data moving around the industry telling us how, where, when and why houses sell, mortgages get lent, conveyancing completes, surveys define house valuations and equally interestingly why things go wrong.

“AI has a lot to offer in explaining what goes well and how to remove the things that don’t: I think we all want the process to speed up and there is much to do here.” aimagazine.com

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DATORAMA

Datorama: AI-powered marketing intelligence Salesforce Datorama enables marketers to optimise their marketing budget for maximum efficiency and business impact WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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April 2021

M

arketers are always looking at ways to improve the impact of their campaigns and drive business growth which is why they are turning to Salesforce Datorama.

Created a decade ago by marketing professionals for marketers seeking to gain a competitive edge - especially in today’s commercial landscape shaped by uncertainty and the Covid-19 pandemic - Datorama is the leading cloud-based, AI-powered marketing intelligence and analytics platform for enterprises, agencies and publishers.

Datorama is the only intelligence platform that helps marketers connect all of their data, uncover deep marketing insights and better understand campaign performance.

With Datorama, marketers can also create, distribute and access powerful marketing analytics apps with speed and ease.

“Our goal for the past 10 years is being able to help our customers automate their data and digital insights to transform their business,” said Boaz Ram, Head of Technology Partnerships at Datorama.

DATORAMA

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DATORAMA

“ Our goal for the past 10 years is being able to help our customers automate their data and digital insights to transform their business” BOAZ RAM

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS, DATORAMA

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April 2021

Founded in 2012 in Tel Aviv, Datorama was acquired by Salesforce for a reported $800 million in 2018. The high-profile purchase promised marketers, ‘one unified view of data and insights… to optimise engagement at scale’.

Datorama enables more than 3,000 leading global agencies and brands including PepsiCo, Ticketmaster, Trivago, Unilever, Pernod Ricard and Foursquare - to optimise marketing campaigns, automate reporting and make data-driven decisions faster.

Datorama marketplace The Datorama marketplace extends the power of the Datorama’s marketing intelligence capabilities by enabling developers to create custom apps that marketers can discover and use on their platform.

The marketplace features prebuilt apps from partners, like Xandr, Brandwatch and Pinterest which helps

DATORAMA

BOAZ RAM TITLE: HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS COMPANY: DATORAMA INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE

EXECUTIVE BIO

to improve marketing analytics and democratising them.

Ram said that Datorama set out to simplify the process for marketers who have more than 3,0000 platforms to choose from when looking to reach the alldigital customer across every touchpoint.

“Every Platform has its own data set, usually they work in silos and then it becomes extremely hard for marketers to understand. There is too much data to choose from and understand how they impact on each other, what's the return on investment (ROI) or the efficacy of a specific campaign,” he said.

“So that's what Datorama is built for. The purpose is to help marketers ingest all these different data sources from all these faces, all these platforms into a single coherent data model. It then enables marketers to create reports and dashboards to drive cross channel real time insights which helps optimise their marketing.”

Boaz is currently the Head of Technology Partnerships at Salesforce Datorama, and is part of the Datorama Management team. In his current role he manages all types of technology partnerships, including building an ecosystem of partners around the Datorama Marketplace.

Prior to joining Datorama, Boaz served in different product leadership roles for the past 15 years, in Adobe, Yahoo, and Mediamind/Sizmek/Amazon.

Datorama is Boaz's third acquisition in his last four companies. Boaz specializes in Product Management, Product Strategy, Partnerships and Marketplaces, Marketing Technology, Advertising Technology and B2B in general, and has vast experience in building growth products and acquisitions.

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DATORAMA

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April 2021

DATORAMA

Salesforce acquired Datorama for a reported

$800mn Enables more than

3,000

global agencies and brands to optimise campaigns

Founded in Tel Aviv in

2012

“ We are built by marketers for marketers” BOAZ RAM

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS, DATORAMA

Artificial Intelligence (AI) gives Datorama the power to drive the marketing platform giving it a competitive edge as it is able to map, model and harmonise data at speed. This enables it to make smarter decisions for clients.

“We are built by marketers for marketers, and we understand marketing - other platforms are more generic. That means we have a model that is structured for marketing,” commented Ram. He pointed out that AI-driven technology allows Datorama to look at data and highlights different aspects that can help customers optimise their data. “These insights can advise a marketer on the best regions or times to run their campaigns for a better ROI.” Value of ecosystems Ram emphasises the importance of ecosystems to Datorama comparing their aimagazine.com

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DATORAMA

“ These insights can advise a marketer on the best regions or times to run their campaigns for a better ROI” BOAZ RAM

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS, DATORAMA

successful business model to how Apple evolved their iPhone.

“Ecosystem is my favorite subject. I like to use the iPhone analogy. When the iPhone was launched in 2007 it did not have an app store. When it came out, it was just a smarter phone,” he said.

“Although it introduced the internet to the palm of your hand, it couldn't extend its capability to do other things. The app store only came out in the third generation of the iPhone, which was in 2009.

“Think about how we use the smartphone today - very little for actual phone calls or texting and more for banking or shopping which comes from other vendors and partners that built apps for the iPhone.

“And that's really the concept of Datorama’s Marketplace ecosystem. It's basically to democratise the platform and help our partners and customers build solutions, using our technology and really expand the capabilities and the breadth of the solutions that we have beyond what we thought was possible.”

Ram said that although Datorama has an “awesome engineering and product team” 28

April 2021

DATORAMA

Boaz Ram from Datorama talks about digital marketing from a data perspective

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DATORAMA

“ And that's really the concept of Datorama’s Marketplace ecosystem. To democratise the platform and help our partners and customers build solutions, using our technology and really expand the capabilities and the breadth of the solutions that we have beyond what we thought was possible” BOAZ RAM

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS, DATORAMA

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April 2021

DATORAMA

2012

Year founded

519

Number of employees

$75.3mn Revenue USD (2019)

they're limited in resources. “Partners that can think beyond our spend and resources and expand the capabilities of the platform to help our customers leverage their solutions - so that's the power.”

Datorama has an app with Brandwatch which allows marketers to understand the reach of paid campaigns, not just organic, which is a major benefit for anyone on social media.

“We have an ecosystem of consulting partners and system integrators, like Accenture and Deloitte and smaller companies like Nabler, which help us sell Datorama as an extension of our sales and customer service teams which will help us scale. And that's something that we've expanded and learned a lot.

Solutions for ecommerce The restrictions imposed by the COVID19 pandemic from remote working and lockdowns has seen marketers turning to Datorama to focus their online sales.

“Everyone's turning to ecommerce and now there's a need for a lot of website analytics, a lot of ecommerce solutions and integrations with ecommerce sites like Shopify, Amazon and Walmart,” said Ram. “A lot of the things that we saw happening in small steps during the past eight years really accelerated in a way that no one thought was possible during the first eight months of the pandemic. I think ecommerce will stay and grow stronger.”

Salesforce acquisition When Salesforce acquired Datorama three years ago it opened up global markets and took it to the next level. “It brought in massive scale to roll into the Salesforce machine and that changes a lot of our processes,” commented Ram. aimagazine.com

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DATORAMA

POWER OF THE DATORAMA DEVELOPER PORTAL Datorama’s Marketplace includes Salesforce apps, as well as apps from customers and partners that have been built using the Datorama Developer Portal. These include: • Salesforce Marketing Cloud Cmail: Offers customers interactive analytics that help benchmark and measure the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns • Xandr Invest Essential Monitoring: Identifies ad server discrepancies and surfaces KPI performance trends for marketers to optimise campaigns and budgets more effectively • Workspace Health: Monitors data quality across every marketing source in one actionable view • Social intelligence: Compares brand presence for competitive insights across Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter • SmartLens Apps: The following apps deliver improved reporting for top marketing sources by displaying KPIs, trends and instant analytics

“ A really good leader needs to define a vision, have the ability to articulate it and finally the determination and conviction to go ahead with it” BOAZ RAM

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS, DATORAMA

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April 2021

DATORAMA

“We've grown in size with the acquisition and in relation to the global resources open to us. Salesforce is an amazing company to work - as I think, it has the right heart in place - especially with its involvement in philanthropy.”

Looking ahead, Ram says the proliferation of marketing solutions is ever-changing.

“It's a very dynamic industry, Apple recently announced that, as part of the iOS 14 update, it will be giving users the choice to block the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) identifier at the app level.

“This is going to kill the option to track campaigns using their Apple phones. And that's a major change in the industry.”

According to reports, Apple has taken the strategic stance that privacy is a user right and is currently taking steps to grant users more ability to opt-out of any type of targeting or

tracking the change is expected to occur across Apple’s entire product portfolio.

IDFA is a unique identifier for mobile devices and is used to target and measure the effectiveness of advertising on a user level across mobile devices.

Looking ahead how technology will shape the industry in the near future, Ram predicts cryptocurrency will take off - not just as a speculative financial tool - but as an actual currency to be used in retail and marketing.

“I think it's, it's getting to the point where it's mature enough and safe enough for some of these currencies. I'm excited to see how the GameStop drama pans out.”

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AI DISRUPTORS

SIX AI DISRUPTORS THAT ARE PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF I N N O V A T I O N AI is pervading every sector of business and innovation, weaving its way into the fabric of everyday technologies. Here are some of the companies pushing the envelope WRITTEN BY: ESAT DEDEZADE

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April 2021

T

here are few industries, if any, where artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have yet to infiltrate. From helping farmers increase their yields, to predictive maintenance and self-driving vehicles, AI is transforming the way that countless companies operate, increasing efficiency, improving services, and opening up new revenue streams.

The use of AI is now so prevalent, in fact, that it’s a term that gets thrown around constantly, used to refer to everything from the most basic of data analyses, right the way up to incredibly complex use cases that are breaking new ground and genuinely transforming industries.

From utilising data to improve tasks and make novel predictions, to natural language processing and computer vision, AI remains a core technology that’s set to have a huge impact in shaping our future. With the scene set, we’ve rounded up a list of six AI companies that have broken the mould, standing out from the competition with their trend-setting ideas and drive for innovation.

AI DISRUPTORS

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AI DISRUPTORS

Between hope and possible there’s a bridge.

There from the beginning to where we stand today. And to where we will go from here. One company. One promise.

If you can imagine it, we will build the bridge to get you there.

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April 2021

AI DISRUPTORS

Deep 6

“ VIDEO ENHANCING AI CAN UPSCALE VIDEOS UP TO 8K RESOLUTION, RETAINING DETAILS AND MOTION CONSISTENCY” Deep 6 AI is used extensively in the healthcare industry in combination with machine learning to analyse patient data and help medical professionals diagnose patients more efficiently. Deep 6, a Pasadena-based company with $22m of funding under its belt, instead focuses on the pharmaceutical industry – namely the testing of new drugs.

One of the biggest bottlenecks in the long, complicated process that makes up clinical trials, occurs at the very beginning, when researchers have to find a suitable selection

of participants to work with. Criteria such as age, ailments, family history, existing medication and more all have a role to play in the selection process, and trawling through hundreds of patient records is a complicated, time-consuming task.

Deep 6 aims to transform this with a solution that pulls and interprets data from electronic medical records that lets researchers easily filter for parameters of interest. This can lead to lists of potential trial attendees in minutes, as opposed to months. Cleverly, the solution’s language processing engine is intelligent enough to predict certain conditions even if they’re not outright stated in a patient’s notes, saving even more precious time for researchers. aimagazine.com

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AI DISRUPTORS

BenevolentAI | Accelerating the journey from data to medicine

Conservation Metrics Conservation Metrics is a Santa Cruz-based startup that stands out from the crowd by developing AI and machine learning tools that are specifically designed to improve conservation efforts around the world.

The company’s tools allow organisations to monitor wildlife status, distribution, and key trends such as population growth or decline over time. Used in combination with hardware such as camera traps and aerial imagery in even extremely remote locations, Conservation Metrics has collaborated on more than 200 biological monitoring and resource management projects around the globe, processing anywhere from 20GB to more than 10TB of data per project.

One such example is the Elephant Listening Project, carried out in conjunction with Cornell University. The project tracks and protects forest elephants by using 38

April 2021

AI DISRUPTORS

“ MACHINE LEARNING TOOLS CAN SEPARATE ELEPHANT SOUNDS FROM THE ENVIRONMENT” Conservation Metrics

around 50 acoustic sensors in the Republic of Congo’s Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to gather critical information such as the animals’ location, behaviour, and numbers.

Combined with Conservation Metrics’ AI and machine learning tools that can separate elephant sounds from the environment, the team can accurately map their habitats and detect if elephants are entering areas with higher risks of poaching.

Topaz Labs Headquartered in Dallas, Topaz Labs is a company that offers a robust selection of AI-powered photo and video enhancement software for amateurs and professionals.

Having received positive media coverage across its wide product range, the company’s use of machine learning and AI offers users a wide variety of tools for tweaking and enhancing media.

Its Video Enhance AI solution, for example, can upscale videos up to 8K resolution, retaining details and motion consistency.

The neural networking powering the software was trained by analysing thousands of video pairs to learn how details are normally lost, and can detect areas in a user’s videos that need to be rendered.

Photography tools include sharpening, denoising, enlargement and masking software, saving users considerable hours of time that would otherwise be spent manually making tweaks and adjustments.

Non-destructive in nature, all changes made in the software can be edited and adjusted at any time, without permanently affecting the original source material.

Benevolent AI Benevolent AI is a London-based company that aims to disrupt the pharmaceutical sector by predicting the effectiveness of aimagazine.com

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AI DISRUPTORS

medicines for diseases that currently have no treatment. The company’s solution operates by using AI and machine learning tools to shift the way that drugs are used and developed.

Founded in 2013 with almost $300m raised in funding, its knowledge pipeline pulls in data from biomedical data sources, which is then extracted and contextualised, mapping the potentially beneficial relationships between genes, diseases, and drugs.

February 2020 saw the company use its tools to identify baricitinib, a rheumatoid arthritis drug, as a potential treatment to inhibit viral infection from coronavirus.

This discovery led the US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly to initiate clinical trials, with the results showing that the drug, in combination with another medicine called remdesivir, reduces the recovery time of patients hospitalised with Covid-19.

Okko Health Founded in Bristol, Okko Health is a company that has created an AI-driven smartphone app that allows users to accurately measure and monitor their eyesight from the comfort of their own home, resulting in the early detection and timely treatment of eye diseases.

As a result, time and costs are reduced for both patients and clinics, while some conditions have less of an opportunity to progress further.

Measuring more than just visual acuity, the tool also enables users to test their ability to view low contrasts, alongside distortion metrics and colour vision. This CE-marked system is the first big data collection tool for monitoring visual function, with the aim of not only detecting problems, but also predicting them before they occur, drastically reducing the impact that any 40

April 2021

visual ailments may lead to. Allowing patients to monitor their conditions at home also allows specialists to concentrate more on patients who are most in need, while reducing congestion and waiting times in the process.

Humanising Autonomy Humanising Autonomy is a company that’s developing tools to improve the autonomous vehicle experience. Founded by three Imperial College graduates, the system aims to create an environment in

AI DISRUPTORS

Humanising Autonomy

“HUMANISING AUTONOMY AIMS TO CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS ARE ABLE TO BETTER UNDERSTAND HUMAN BEHAVIOUR – A KEY OBSTACLE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AUTOMATED VEHICLES IN CROWDED CITIES” which autonomous systems are able to better understand human behaviour – a key obstacle in the development of automated vehicles in crowded cities.

The lack of perceptive abilities can make existing automated vehicles unsafe around densely pedestrianised areas, slowing down the adoption of self-driving cars.

Humanising Autonomy’s solution uses AI and machine learning to create a human intent prediction application which can recognise and predict human behaviour from visual camera footage. If the camera

detects a person at the side of a road looking down at a phone, for example, a more cautious approach can be taken to take into account the pedestrian’s potential lack of awareness while being distracted by their phone.

The end result is a solution that enables safer roads by preventing accidents and near misses, with faster and more efficient journeys, with less hard-braking events.

The company also makes it clear that their software is never used to identify, track, or trace with its camera analysis. aimagazine.com

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VANARAMA

EXPANDS TECH TOOLS TO GROW VEHICLE LEASING SALES WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS PRODUCED BY: KRIS PALMER

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VANARAMA

Vanarama Founder and CEO Andy Alderson charts the company’s growth from an online leasing broker into a fully fledged e-commerce retailer

A

ndy Alderson’s online journey started back in 2003, when he spotted an opportunity to sell a stock of Citroen C5s at half price.

By quickly setting up a domain, freephone number and taking out advertising, he managed to sell the entire stock in six weeks. Almost exclusively, he didn’t see a single customer – and that was when he realised his future lay in online sales.

Fast forward 18 years, and the Founder and CEO of Vanarama is firmly in the digital driving seat.

“We started as an online leasing broker in 2007, then became a fintech business – and in the last two years, we’ve become more of an automotive e-tailer,” he said. He expects to sell 25,000-30,000 vehicles online this year, fully e-commerce, and is targeting 100,000 within three years.

That optimism looks at odds with the unending challenges facing the automotive industry, what with the transition to electric, digital transformation and decline in car ownership. He says dealers need to inherently re-examine their businesses and not simply repackage themselves for the digital age.

“Click and collect isn’t digital retailing – we were doing that in 2003,” he said. “If solutions were good enough across the board, online would make up 50 percent of sales, but there’s not enough instances where they are good enough. Up to 50 percent of dealerships could go as part of the transformation by 2025, he predicts.

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Andy Alderson, Vanarama

VANARAMA

VANARAMA

Andy Alderson from Vanarama talks about online car leasing

“ The challenge for dealers is if they just use a website to do more of what they currently do, and see it as a sales channel or lead generation, they will make the same mistake as Blockbusters did” ANDY ALDERSON FOUNDER & CEO, VANARAMA

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AutoTrader, Car Gurus, and Whatcar? are already reporting that up to 60% of customers would consider buying online today, if solutions were good enough.

“The example I use is the BlockbustersNetflix moment. They were in the same business, renting DVDs online, but Netflix could see the move towards streaming. The challenge for dealers is if they just use a website to do more of what they currently do, and see it as a sales channel or lead generation, they will make the same mistake as Blockbusters did. They’ve got to look at everything digital first – removing friction, being transparent with pricing – and if they do that, they’ll get more offline too.”

The warnings stem from his approach to managing risk. One of his favourite books is Only The Paranoid Survive, by Andy Grove, the former Intel President and CEO. “You have to imagine the worst all the time, even when

VANARAMA

ANDY ALDERSON TITLE: FOUNDER & CEO INDUSTRY: AUTOMOTIVE E-COMMERCE

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Since joining the motor trade in 1992, Andy Alderson has seen some radical changes in how the industry operates. The most important change has been the rise of the internet and its evolution into a place customer can not only find vehicles deals, but carry out detailed research on the vehicles themselves. Now, Andy believes the industry is facing new challenges, including the transition to electric cars & commercial vehicles, the ongoing digital transformation, financial challenges such as Benefit-in-Kind (BIK) taxes which hit

company car users hard, and the move to usership rather than ownership.

We used to consider ourselves a ‘clicks and bricks’ business, but the reality now is you can retail from clicks alone, but you can’t retail from bricks alone.

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VANARAMA

things are going well. One of our core values is ‘even if it’s brilliant, make it better’,” he said.

As with most businesses, the 95 percent revenue drop in the first lockdown was akin to a “flock of black swans” although his outlook meant he was better prepared than most.

“What we saw with COVID was the acceleration of pre-existing trends – people already wanted to buy online, they were dissatisfied with the current process of buying a vehicle and didn’t want the grind of trawling 50

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“ By the time customers pick up the phone to enquire or order from us, they know more about the vehicle than we do” ANDY ALDERSON FOUNDER & CEO, VANARAMA

VANARAMA

around showrooms,” he said. “95% of our customers have never driven the vehicle they buy from us until the day we deliver it to them” “We sat down three days into lockdown and realised we had a golden opportunity to use the time to move forward, and we were in the final year of three-year digital transformation into a full e-commerce business. So we launched full e-commerce nine months earlier than planned, and started to develop more automation, AI and ML.”

DID YOU KNOW...

RISING EV LEASING OPPORTUNITIES The leasing model gives consumers a chance keep pace with change more easily, he believes, and even if drivers are on a PCP, 90 percent swap it for a new model within three years, which mirrors leasing behaviour.

“People are much more interested in user-ship rather than ownership,” he says. “When we talk to consumers now in context of EV, they will be happy to upgrade their vehicle every few years as technology and charging infrastructure improves.”

He expects more manufacturers to follow Volvo’s recent move and start selling EVs completely online by 2030.

“I don’t think it will be the death of the showroom as you’ll need service centers and delivery outlets, but we may see dealerships become distribution hubs and manufacturers do more internet-only franchises.”

Most website searches are for SUVs and 90 percent search under budget.

He says popular models include Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Tesla, Ford, Vauxhall, Renault and Nissan.

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VANARAMA

AD TECH AND E-COMMERCE PARTNERS

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DID YOU KNOW...

Vanarama has three key partners which are driving its market and e-commerce profiles. Flashtalking is an independent ad serving, measuring and technology company, and Reply, a leader in e-commerce and omnichannel solutions.

“Flashtalking has helped us target audience and whatever asset you want to deploy, on any platform, while Reply enabled us to bring in new techniques for the delivery of e-commerce solutions,” he says.

Mina Energy shows customers how much electric they are consuming when charging and it sits on top of your normal energy supplier, and rates can be combined under one bill. Customers receive three months free EV home charging when they take up a subscription alongside the Vanarama lease.

Vanarama uses atomic web design, which means it can design in code, and allows you to see various components of the UX to work and interact with each other, before you actually build the site, and calls on the services of dev-ops engineers globally.

He says at some time in the next six months, it will launch a voicebot, and integrate it with Alexa.

“We’re just deploying the first version of it now, that’s the core technology that underpins the omnichannel solution. Integrating marketing and sales data is key, so you know not only who you’re targeting but how you will reach that audience, and then we find the best price through our smart panel of lenders.

“The technology means we’re getting more customers to the site, we’re converting more, and talking to them in different channels and giving them a better experience. Customers can choose to interact or deal with a person,

VANARAMA

“You have to imagine the worst all the time, even when things are going well. One of our core values is ‘even if it’s brilliant, make it better” ANDY ALDERSON

FOUNDER & CEO, VANARAMA

but we find most are happy to integrate with a bot if it means getting a quicker response. If you want to add insurance, for example, the voicebot will be able to do it for you.”

The ingrained nature of digital is best illustrated when he says they sold 1,200 vehicles through Facebook Messenger alone, completely end-to-end.

“By the time customers pick up the phone to enquire or order from us, they know more about the vehicle than we do,” he says. “People are watching videos, talking to peers, getting recommendations and reading reviews, and are much better informed and comfortable online, because they’re spending an average

of 14 hours researching the vehicle online. But because of the amount of data we have, and capability to identify consumers we want to market to, we know what kind of customers will buy a certain type of vehicle.”

He foresees three camps emerging as the digital transformation accelerates. “The people who don’t want to change and don’t think they need to; those that know they have to change but don’t have the investment or ability; and those that know what they need to do and get on with it.”

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AI APPLICATIONS

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AI APPLICATIONS

THE TRANSFORMATIVE APPLICATIONS OF AI IN THE BANKING SECTOR AI is proving a game changer in the financial industry, where it is revolutionising processes in everything from customer experience to fraud prevention WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

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ith the financial world having bifurcated into establishment giants and fintech challengers, one of the key differentiators has been the use of AI. As the old guard increasingly wakes up to the reality of digital transformation, however, it too is now adopting techniques including machine learning to unlock latent efficiencies. Indeed, according to McKinsey, across the globe AI has the potential to deliver $1trn of additional value in the banking sector every year.

The scale of that potential is down to the particularly broad range of use cases for AI in the industry, not least in customer experience, as Babak Hodjat, VP Evolutionary AI, Cognizant, explains: “One of the most important use cases for AI in banking is to improve personalisation for customers – especially for incumbents looking to compete with digital natives. This is because AI can spot novel strategies that would never have been identified by human data scientists, and, in turn, allow companies to take full advantage of today’s massive data sets – ultimately helping to provide hyper personalised experiences tailored to specific customers. For example, through the use of advanced chatbots and tailored content and interfaces in apps and on digital platforms.” aimagazine.com

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AI APPLICATIONS

How AI & Machine Learning will Transform Banking & Finance Industry | AI-ML Training | Edureka

“For those larger institutions, AI will play a major role in the way they shape customer journeys and the way customers interface with banks” ELLIOTT LIMB

CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER, MAMBU

Part of enabling a good customer experience is offering a well thought out digital banking solution - yet another area in which AI is enabling change. “AI and advanced analytics can then produce the insights that will help banks anticipate a customer’s next need: how they travel through the app, what offers they respond

to, and how they use each service,” says Alex Kwiatkowski, Principal Industry Consultant, Global Banking Practice at SAS. “It’s like adding GPS to the digital footprint of every customer, to see how they move through their digital world. Roll the data up to analyse major trends, and keep the data at the customer-level to figure out the nextbest action.”

The final and arguably most important avenue for AI in banking is in risk detection and prevention. “Tools such as AI can help banks monitor for suspicious activity in a very efficient way,” says Hans Tesselaar, Executive Director at banking interoperability association BIAN. “It is unrealistic to think a bank would be able to successfully keep its entire network protected with manual effort, alone. Not only would it be capital intensive, but more risks would likely go unnoticed due to human error. AI can help reduce the manpower needed and can also conduct surveillance seamlessly around the clock.” aimagazine.com

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“With the AI scanning for the smallest anomalies in the user’s behaviour, banks can perform continuous authentication, which can reveal malicious actors before fraud can take place” TIM AYLING

VP EMEA, BUGUROO According to Darktrace: The average cost of a cyber attack on banking organisations is

$18.4mn The technology is particularly adept at spotting instances of fraud in unobtrusive ways by picking up on small giveaway signs, as Tim Ayling, VP EMEA at buguroo, explains: “With digital banking fraud on the rise, partly as a result of the pandemic, banks must ensure their customers are not being impersonated or manipulated at any point during their online sessions. Using AI and deep learning to conduct behavioural biometric analysis, banks can build unique ‘BionicIDs’ for all users, including cybercriminals. With the AI scanning for the smallest anomalies in the user’s behaviour, banks can perform continuous authentication, which can reveal malicious actors before fraud can take place, without impacting the customer experience.”

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It’s important to remain realistic about where AI is best implemented, however. “While we don’t recommend AI be directly part of your core banking platform, it is very important for your core to be flexible enough to integrate with a partner that provides AI capabilities,” says Elliott Limb, Chief Customer Officer of Mambu. “Larger banks and financial institutions that haven’t implemented a flexible core banking platform can sometimes have trouble with digital interactions between their clients.

Oftentimes they will struggle to be nimble enough to build something ‘on the fly’ that would be individualised enough for clients. For those larger institutions, AI will play a major role in the way they shape customer journeys and the way customers interface with banks.”

Catering to this demand for AI in the banking industry are a number of startups - many of which have attracted significant financial backing.

Darktrace Cambridge, UK-based Darktrace has raised $230.5mn across eight funding rounds since its 2013 foundation. The company’s offering takes the immune system as its inspiration, with its main product, the Enterprise Immune System, bringing AI to cybersecurity and allowing for rapid, autonomous responses to incoming threats.

Tailoring its software to a number of industry verticals, of its financial services offering it says: “Darktrace is uniquely positioned to

defend against the full range of cyber threats.

The self-learning AI technology detects and responds to all emerging malicious activity, reacting in seconds to protect organisations from zero-day exploits, insider threats, and machine-speed ransomware.”

Sift Fraud detection is one of the most important responsibilities for financial institutions, and it’s here that AI is once again easing burdens.

San Francisco’s Sift has to date raised over $100mn for its platform, which utilises machine learning to protect businesses from everything from payment fraud to account takeovers. It does so by dynamically creating a trust score based on user behaviour. aimagazine.com

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AI APPLICATIONS

“One of the most important use cases for AI in banking is to improve personalisation for customers” BABAK HODJAT

VP EVOLUTIONARY AI, COGNIZANT

“Companies have always had to choose between protecting and growing their business. With Sift Science, they no longer need to make this trade-off – they can reduce risk while also improving customer experiences,” said Sift Science CEO and Co-founder Jason Tan. “Our Digital Trust Platform already protects world-leading digital brands from fraud.”

Zest AI Zest AI turns the power of AI onto the problem of credit underwriting, using machine learning to transform the business of accessing credit. The Los Angeles, California-based Zest AI has raised $232mn since its foundation, with its latest round last October seeing the company receive $15mn.

Its software allows banks to identify borrowers who are overlooked by traditional techniques, allowing lenders to tackle unfair biases in their approaches. Mike de Vere, CEO of Zest AI, said: "Our customers want to spread economic opportunity more widely, but they've lacked the tools to make it easy to do the right thing. [...]We have the resources and commitment to bring the power of ML and new standards in fairness to every financial institution in the world."

The financial industry is certainly far from alone when it comes to embracing the disruptive power of AI. Thanks to the scale of the industry and the volume of money flowing through, however, it is one place where the beneficial effects of AI can be most keenly felt - whether in customer experience, digital banking or risk detection. aimagazine.com

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MARSH FRANCE

ACCELERATING NEW TECHNOLOGIES

FOR CLIENTS Julien Alzouniès, Chief Operating Officer, describes Marsh France’s pursuit of operational excellence and simplified, digitalised insurance processes WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

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ith a rich and far-reaching history that extends to more than 130 countries over the course of almost 150 years, Marsh’s reputation as an insurance innovator has been crystallised by several notable achievements: inventor of the ‘self insurance’ concept, the first broker to use on-site risk experts, creator of ‘space’ life insurance for astronauts, and much more. When we spoke to Julien Alzouniès, COO of Marsh France & BeLux, he made it clear that the company’s innovative, adaptive and thoroughly modern approach to the industry is helping it optimise digital processes and achieve a perennial goal: operational excellence.

Coming from a long career as a consultant, Alzouniès joined Marsh France in 2018 at a time when the team consisted of only 20 people. Recognising that, as COO, he could make a direct impact on the company’s growth and portfolio retention in an era when client servicing activities are recognised as a key quality differentiator in insurance, Alzouniès chose “service quality

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Julien Alzouniès discusses transformation at Marsh France

simplification” and “digitalisation” as his guiding principles. Subsequently, the team was expanded 1,000% to 200 people. “The objective was to put the key enablers of user experience transformation under the same scope of accountability, namely data and project management, as well as two main business activities: policy servicing and claims,” he explains.

Marsh France added automated dashboards for its sales placement and servicing activities, modernised its client portals, and implemented internal workflow systems to track tasks and monitor service performance more effectively. The company also launched several new digital solutions, including: • MarshSignature: an electronic signature solution, wherein contracts can be “recorded, validated, certified, signed and archived” via an online platform (EDICourtage).

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• MarshOnline and MarshPartner: online underwriting platforms in support of the company’s Affinity portfolio.

• MarshMotor: a multi-device solution allowing the user to report vehicle-related accidents, select a repair company from Marsh’s approved partners and benefit from remote damage expertise.

The latter solution was developed with Paris-based insurtech WeProov. Founded in 2015, the company is transforming claims through photo recognition AI (artificial intelligence) capable of facilitating easy, fast, and secure online FNOL (first notice of loss).

“WeProov is one of our key partners and working with a fintech has actually enriched Marsh by providing added value and agility,” Alzouniès explains. “MarshMotor is a great way to collect information documenting damage and the process has been simplified enough to work on a smartphone; you can raise a claim in as little as five minutes.”

MARSH FRANCE

JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS TITLE: CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER COMPANY: MARSH FRANCE INDUSTRY: RISK MANAGEMENT & INSURANCE BROKERAGE

“ The objective was to put the key enablers of user experience transformation under the same scope of accountability” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: FRANCE Julien Alzounies is O&T leader for France and BeLux and a member of the Executive Committee of Marsh France.

Julien Alzounies began his career at Capgemini Consulting, then worked at Stanwell Consulting. He then worked as a change lead at Axa Group Solutions on international transformation programs in Western Europe. He joined AIG Europe Limited in 2012 and AIG France's Management Committee in 2016. In February 2018, he joins Marsh France as Chief Operating Officer, in charge of Operations & Client Service and Technology & Client Solutions. Julien Alzounies holds a Master in Management from Skema Business School and an MBA from the Asian Institute of Technology.

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MARSH FRANCE

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MARSH FRANCE

Another key partner is LTI, one of Marsh’s largest global strategic partners over the last two decades. During that time, LTI has supported Marsh on a number of transformational and digital initiatives. “In developing the newly revamped digital extranet offering, LTI has been playing an extremely important role by bringing its deep domain knowledge of our systems and processes acquired through supporting Marsh’s legacy BCP platform,” says

“ It's very important for us to harmonise our platforms” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

Alzouniès. In the digitisation journey, LTI has helped in improving the user experience, enabling a SSO (single sign on) mechanism for clients, building more advanced reporting capabilities, and partnering on the optimisation of approximately onethird of Marsh’s processes, thus providing clients additional flexibility. “LTI has brought very high-quality technical and domain expertise to the initiative, which has augmented Marsh’s capacity to build and launch the new, enhanced Marsh BCP. With LTI strengthening its offerings around cloud, we look forward to strengthening this partnership further.”

Forging strong partnerships and developing innovative solutions has been particularly crucial over the last 12 months, as the COVID-19 pandemic placed significant strains on normal operating aimagazine.com

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1871

Year Founded.

800

Number of Employees

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MARSH FRANCE

paradigms. Marsh France’s staff were already well versed in remote working methods, meaning the general shift was weathered with poise. However, this is not to say that the totality of the change wasn’t challenging: “Moving to a new operating model, where we previously had only an average of 10 to 20% of our people working remotely to close to 100%, was a significant challenge.

Nevertheless, it only took us about one week to reach the optimal level of performance for all our employees,” says Alzouniès.

This impressive achievement is made even more resounding by the concurrent finalisation of Marsh’s integration with

“WeProov is one of our key partners and working with a fintech has actually enriched Marsh by providing added value and agility” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

British multinational insurer Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT), which formed a significant logistical obstacle in terms of HR and client data migration.

For Alzouniès, remote working is just one component of a larger consideration: the digitalisation of processes, data and document exchanges. “The need has only been accelerated by the pandemic situation and it’s going to become even more important in the future.” Having met this internal transformation with aimagazine.com

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Digitizing the Core Experience Transformation Operate to Transform Data Driven Organization Learn More

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MARSH FRANCE

“Marsh wants to enrich the quality of the data that we provide clients, not only to deal with risk management but also to enhance risk prevention” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

aplomb, Alzouniès states that refining the company through a new OPEX (operational excellence) programme will feature strongly in Marsh’s strategy for 2021. Started at the end of 2020, this will be an ongoing and far-reaching initiative that is currently scheduled to last until 2023. “We decided to launch this at a global level across all our geographies as a major transformation programme. Its scope covers all of our business functions, including sales, placement, policy

servicing, finance, and claims through digitalisation, service enhancement and quality improvement.” The end goal of this process is the “harmonisation” of Marsh globally through modernised operating models. “It's very important for us to harmonise our platforms,” continues Alzouniès. “System automation and service integration will also enable Marsh to capture and capitalise on more client data from a risk analysis and placement benchmarking perspective.” aimagazine.com

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“ Data is important for our clients because they expect more benchmarking information. We also need to continue mastering our service performance, because it’s crucial to operate in the insurance market efficiently.”

JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

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Alzouniès is determined to further develop Marsh France’s core business solutions aligned with the company’s other offices in continental Europe. Taking a data-centric stance that emphasises the use of “maturing” technology like AI will form the crux of accomplishing this aim, although he states that this focus is not entirely new. “Data is important for our clients because they expect more benchmarking information. We also need to continue mastering our service performance, because it’s crucial to operate in the insurance market efficiently.”

When he considers the benefits that enhanced digitalisation will bring to the company as a whole, Alzouniès summarises them as service improvement through more efficient workforce deployment and overall service simplification. Through its OPEX programme, Marsh France has secured a flying start for incorporating these benefits. First and foremost in 2021, he states, the company’s main objective will be the finalised roll-out of MarshMotor, with the goal of making all the company’s French clients benefit from using the new application. Furthermore, new versions of client portals such as Marsh BCP (business continuity planning) will be launched before the end of Q1, as well as a new portal for real estate insurance management. “Over 2021, we want to significantly improve our work reporting capabilities and the quality of client reporting from a claims perspective. Marsh wants to enrich the quality of the data that we provide clients, not only to deal with risk management but also to enhance risk prevention.”

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DATA ANALYTICS

How Companies are Making the Most of CONNECTED DATA We take a closer look at the ways in which companies are connecting vast reserves of data in order to spread its benefits throughout their organisations

O

rganisations are collecting everincreasing amounts of data, both in terms of volume from existing sources but also the range of sources they glean it from. Whether it’s IoT sensors on the factory floor or information about how customers interact with a website, the challenge for companies is in integrating these disparate sources to create a complete picture of their organisations.

Making the most of data requires both technology and strategy, as John Spooner, head of Artificial Intelligence, EMEA, H2O.ai, explains: “To make the most of organisational data, build a cross-functional team, and make sure everyone is involved, be they experts in data, technology, analytics, industry knowledge or line of business specialists.” It’s also vital to have an idea of what data analysis can and can’t do.

“Companies should start by having a clear idea of business problems they could solve and processes they could improve with their data sources, before spending too much effort on operationalising a wider variety of data sources,” says André Balleyguier,

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WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

DATA ANALYTICS

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DATA ANALYTICS

“ Democratising access to analytics helps resolve the disconnects that may happen between the business and the analytics departments” ANDRÉ BALLEYGUIER

CHIEF DATA SCIENTIST, EMEA, DATAROBOT

DataRobot’s Chief Data Scientist for EMEA. “Once business ideas are clearly scoped and road mapped according to their value and feasibility, the next step is to prioritise which data sources to focus. This prioritisation goes hand-in-hand with the development of a data strategy that scales to an increasingly large variety and volume of data sources needed to solve the business problems.”

While such unified analytics has revolutionary potential, it’s not a fix-all, as Spooner explains: “Raising expectations

too high at the outset can lead to overhype. Similarly, failing to explain what is possible can lead to indifference and a poorly supported project. Select the right use cases to start and then expand.

The initial use cases should be of high value, achievable, near term and data ready.” The real benefits come through standardisation. “Scaling often means adopting standard processes and platforms for data cataloguing and management that are both flexible and replicable, to avoid unnecessary manual customisation for each data source,” says Balleyguier.

It’s also a question of ensuring that the correct stakeholders have access to the relevant data. “The other challenges that need to be addressed relate to how these data sources are made available aimagazine.com

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for consumption by the business: are the relevant business users able to easily access and analyse the data? Are they aware of what is available?” says Balleyguier. Of course, the definition of what a stakeholder should be is also expanding. “An increasing number of tools are available to make the use of data more accessible to nonexperts. In the same way that anyone is now able to create a website without being an expert web developer with the appropriate tools, or analysts can make rather complex calculations on data using Excel without coding, there has been a surge in the number 78

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of platforms to allow business users to create rather complex data visualisations or dashboards. These platforms can be directly connected to the data sources to allow more informed and agile business decisions.”

The benefits of that democratisation are manifold. “Democratising access to analytics helps resolve the disconnects that may happen between the business and the analytics departments and mitigates the shortage of expert skills available,” says Balleyguier. “This in turn helps companies identify and solve more business problems, with the same resources, at faster speed,

DATA ANALYTICS

“ To make the most of organisational data, build a cross-functional team, and make sure everyone is involved” JOHN SPOONER

HEAD OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, EMEA, H2O.AI

The democratisation of access to data analytics has happened for a number of reasons, according to H2O AI’s John Spooner:

without relying on a siloed department of experts.”

The future of connected data will of course involve expanding to hitherto untapped sources, but it will also require technological advances. “A decrease in the time to insight, as advancements in hardware such as chip design, automation in many parts of the analytics process and embedded analytics directing into applications that business users will utilise, will enable employees to get answers to their business questions in seconds, rather than having to wait hours or in some cases

1. T echnology advancements such as cloud, big data platforms and GPU processing now allow employees to process a large amount of data quickly and at an affordable initial investment.

2. The growth of open-source analytics frameworks and interactive analytics dashboards have enabled employees to have access to affordable software that enables them to quickly gain insight from their data.

3. It has been proven through many use cases that data analytics deliver massive returns on investment for organisations, allowing them to increase revenues and reduce cost. aimagazine.com

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Hands-On with H2O Driverless AI by John Spooner

“ The challenge for companies is in integrating these disparate sources to create a complete picture of their organisations” 80

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DATA ANALYTICS

days,” says Spooner. That process is already underway, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic accelerating existing trends.

“Geo-location or mobility data has been instrumental in managing the disruption of COVID-19, and this trend will continue: augmenting analytics with a wider variety of data like images, text or location, will continue to be a key enabler in the years to come,” says Balleyguier.

Perhaps the most important development will be the increased integration of artificial intelligence into

analysis. “Moreover, better and faster access to more digital data is encouraging a wider use of AI solutions, heavily consuming this data,” says Balleyguier. “This will enable companies to move away from decisions mainly based on dashboards and business intuition to more informed decisions augmented with AI. In the next few years, we will see companies move from AI experimentation to AI industrialisation, by adopting more repeatable and automated operational processes for AI creation, deployment and management.”

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R O BO T IC P R O CESS AU T O MATION For the People 82

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RPA

Filing expenses and booking leave are not the most thrilling bits of business administration, but RPA for basic HR jobs is turning heads WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH

T

here’s no denying the benefits that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can bring to a business, especially in a department like HR which deals with repetitive, data-driven tasks on a daily basis. Allowing employees to ditch mundane tasks such as processing expenses and annual leave lets them focus on more impactful work, often resulting in substantial gains. While you’d be forgiven for thinking that investment in RPA solutions has dropped during the global pandemic, that’s far from the case.

This year, Gartner predicts that total RPA software revenue will hit close to $2 billion (an increase over almost 20 per cent from 2020), with 90 per cent of large global organisations expected to adopt RPA in some form by 2022.

This is supported by recent findings from CFO Research and AppZen, which shows that reducing manual, time-consuming processes is a priority for 90 per cent of executives.

"Last year, we saw a huge acceleration of digital transformation in finance, and our research confirms that we'll see even deeper transformation in 2021, championed by the finance organisation," said Anant Kale, CEO and co-founder of AppZen. "With CFOs taking an increasingly strategic role, the need for agility and incorporating technologies that accelerate company-wide decision-making is imperative. Moving forward, we expect to see a rise in automation and AI among modern finance teams." aimagazine.com

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RPA

$2bn

total RPA revenue projection for 2021 (Gartner)

90%

organisations who are expected to have adopted RPA by 2022 (Gartner)

90%

“ Moving forward, we expect to see a rise in automation and AI among modern finance teams" ANANT KALE

CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, APPZEN

A cure for the mundane HR departments are a prime example of an area in which RPA can have the most impact. Many tasks require dealing with rule-based data, including payroll, on-boarding, expenses, and requests for annual leave. No HR professional dreams of spending hours in front of a screen chained to data intensive tasks, which is why RPA offers so many benefits.

“All jobs have some repetitive nature to them, and thus can benefit from

executives who say reducing time intensive manual processes is a priority (CFO Research and AppZen)

automation,” says Renzo Taal, managing director EMEA at UiPath. “This may be on a large scale, such as a HR team processing thousands of expenses, or it may be as small as sending out one specific email a week.

Either way, a software robot could be trained to carry out this process, handing back time to the employee to spend on valueadded work.”

Leaving the robotic work to the robots, employees can focus on more creative tasks such as fostering a positive company culture, training, and engaging with employees – all areas that are best left to the fluid and creative minds of actual people. Throw artificial intelligence (AI) into the mix, and you can take advantage of products like chatbots during the recruitment process, where, for example, they can help aimagazine.com

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“ We’ve seen productivity rise by a factor of two” SCOTT DODDS CEO, ULTIMA

candidates narrow down the roles best suited to them.

“AI aids transparency in the recruitment process – for example, by automating CV screening through AI and process intelligence,” says Neil Murphy, Global VP at ABBYY. “This also makes the onboarding process faster and more efficient, which drives better retention. It also has the knock-on effect of reducing the time it takes to manually process these documents, and instead spend it on educating employees around the use of these technologies. This creates a long-term approach to automation that works for an entire business”.

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Beyond this time-saving aspect, RPA also reduces human error in data-heavy workloads, in addition to executing tasks around the clock for maximum efficiency.

Software automation company Ultima, for example, is using RPA to automate its own back-end operations, including its HR onboarding processes.

“We’ve seen productivity rise by a factor of two”, said Scott Dodds, CEO at Ultima.

“Software robots collate real-time sales and marketing information, and process all the information they collect during the day to produce detailed forecasts and business intelligence for the next morning.

Usually this took eight to ten hours per day of staff time, it now takes minutes. As a

RPA

RPA for Human Resources: Skills extraction for faster job matching

result, the business has improved business intelligence to plan with, and staff have more time to spend on customer service and strategic thinking.”

Widespread benefits It’s easy to draw attention to the fact that some of the world's largest organisations are using RPA to increase efficiency while saving costs, but the benefits transcend to smaller businesses too.

“While larger businesses will have individual departments to handle repetitive finance, admin or HR tasks, employees of smaller firms may all be a little responsible for these processes”, Taal explains. “If these tasks are automated, all employees will benefit from the time handed back to them. Investing in RPA can also make small businesses more competitive. This is why RPA adoption

among small and medium businesses is increasing, spurred by a solid cloud offering that enables them to scale their automation initiatives without making investments in costly infrastructure”.

Successful deployment of RPA in HR use cases can also go beyond simply automating administrative tasks and improving numbers. Now, more than ever, employee wellbeing and mental health are at the forefront of many employers’ minds, and the benefits that technology can bring can go well beyond simply increasing profits — there’s a human factor to take into consideration too.

“We consistently hear from clients how it enhances the well-being of their people, sparing them from spending their time on dull and repetitive tasks, making for a happier, more productive workforce,” says Chris Porter, CEO of NexBotix. “This aimagazine.com

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is particularly important at the current time.

The huge impact of the pandemic on every aspect of our lives means that employers have a greater responsibility to consider the well-being of their people. Automation is helping to reduce stress levels in the workplace, whether that be in an office or, as is the case for millions across the globe, while working remotely.”

The future of RPA While it’s clear to see that investment into RPA solutions won’t be declining any time soon, it’s important to note that this technology isn’t a blanket solution to simply replace the ‘human’ in human resources.

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Phil Lewis, co-founder at Endpoint Automation Services believe that “The sky is the limit in terms of where we see RPA going. It will never take away the importance of humans in the workplace, but if business processes are slowing companies down, then using tasks that could be streamlined with robots will free up staff to focus on more value-add activities and innovation, while our robots take care of repetitive day to day tasks.”

In terms of technological development, Taal believes that more firms will turn their focus to full automation to all tasks that can be automated. In addition to this companywide increase in efficiency, he also predicts that companies will also be forming their

RPA

“ Automation is helping to reduce stress levels in the workplace, whether that be in an office or, as is the case for millions across the globe, while working remotely” CHRIS PORTER CEO, NEXBOTIX

own solutions, thanks to coding platforms that lower the entry barrier for RPA system creation.

“Given the availability of low-code automation platforms, which have lowered the accessibility threshold for a broader range of users, in the future we will witness the advent of automation software co-creation.

Using their first-hand experience with conducting business processes, subject matter experts will go beyond being consumers to becoming the creators of the automation solutions that make their work life easier. We call these citizen developers.”

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TOP TEN

AI EVANGELISTS We rank the top 10 evangelists in AI and machine learning WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW

D

Technology magazine looks at 10 of the top evangelists in AI and machine learning.

We will discuss some of the most innovative thought leaders who go beyond their limits to bring the best knowledge and commercial value to consumers of AI and Machine Learning software. This list contains some long practiced experts in the industry and covers business founders and employees from the likes of Google, Amazon and IBM.

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TOP 10

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TOP 10

10

Pascal Bornet

Data, automation and innovation leader / author Pascal Bornet is a global expert in the field of intelligent automation (IA). He is a senior executive with 20-plus years of experience leading digital business transformations and creations. Over the past 10 years, he has founded and led intelligent automation practices, first for Ernst & Young and then McKinsey & Company. These lines of business delivered high-impact results to corporate clients across industries through innovation, research, strategic investments, and cutting-edge technology developments.

Bornet is also a recognised author, thought leader, lecturer, and speaker on artificial intelligence, automation, and the future of work.

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09

Lex Fridman

AI researcher, podcast host

MIT

Lex Fridman is a researcher in human-centered AI and deep learning at MIT and beyond in the context of autonomous vehicles and personal robotics.

Before joining MIT, he worked for Google on machine learning for large-scale behavior-based authentication.

He is particularly interested in understanding human behavior in the context of human-robot collaboration, and engineering learning-based methods that enrich that collaboration. He received his BS, MS, and PhD from Drexel University where he worked on applications of machine learning, computer vision, and decision fusion techniques in various different fields.

TOP 10

08

Daniela L Rus Director

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) Daniela L Rus is a RomanianAmerican roboticist, the Director of theMIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She was also included in Forbes list of incredible women advancing AI research.”

Rus' research is focused on developing the science of networked/distributed/ collaborative robotics. The main question that inspires her research is “How can many machines collaborate to achieve a common goal?”

07

Demis Hassabis Founder and CEO

DeepMind

Demis Hassabis is a British artificial intelligence researcher, neuroscientist, video game designer and entrepreneur. As well as CEO and co-founder of DeepMind, Hassabis is also a government advisor. After graduating from University College London, with a PhD in cognitive neuroscience in 2009, he continued his research into neuroscience and artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

Hassabis and co-founder Mustafa Suleyman created the machine learning AI startup with the mission to "solve intelligence" and then use intelligence "to solve everything else". aimagazine.com

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Listen Now

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05

Ilya Sutskever

Co-founder and chief scientist at Open AI

06

Mustafa Suleyman VP of artificial intelligence policy

Google

Mustafa Suleyman grew up in the London borough of Islington. At the age of 19, Suleyman dropped out of college to pursue mental health work and later become the policy officer on human rights for the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.

Suleyman co-founded British Artificial Intelligence firm, DeepMind, which was bought by Google in 2014. He is prominent in the debate over the ethics of AI and has spoken widely about the need for organisations to join in holding technologists accountable for the impacts of their work.

Open AI

After graduating from the University of Toronto’s Department of Computer Science, in 2012, Sutskever spent two months as a postdoc with Andrew Ng at Stanford University.

Following on from this, Sutskever co-invented the software developments AlphaGo and Tensorflow as well as the Alexnet, convolutional neural network.

He went on to work for Google Brain, to create the sequence to sequence learning algorithm.

In 2015 he left Google to become the director of the OpenAI institute and was the keynote speaker for Nvidia NTECH 2018 and AI Frontiers Conference 2018.

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04 Fei-Fei Li

Professor, Computer Science Department, Stanford; co-director

Stanford Human-Centred AI Institute While Dr. Fei-Fei Li’s current research takes place at Stanford Human-Centred AI Institute.

It comes as no surprise that she has been placed on the list of Top 10 AI Evangelists. Li’s professional career dates back to 2005 when she began work as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and has pursued AI ever since.

Her interests include cognitively inspired AI, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision and intelligent AI systems for healthcare delivery.

In the past she has also worked on cognitive and computational neuroscience.

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03

Andrew Ng

Founder and CEO

Landing AI

Following an extensive career in computer science, Andrew Yan-Tak Ng founded Landing AI in October 2017. He is also known for his involvement in founding the Google Brain (Deep Learning) Project in 2011, and was a Co-Founder and Vice President at Baidu, building the company's Artificial Intelligence Group.

Since 2018 he has launched and currently heads AI Fund, initially a $175-million investment fund for backing artificial intelligence startups. He has founded Landing AI, which provides AI-powered SaaS products and transformation program to empower enterprises into cutting-edge AI companies.

02

TOP 10

Kati Venturato

Offering Manager, digital customer experience and growth, data and AI

IBM

As the recently appointed offering manager for digital customer experience and growth, Data and AI at IBM, Kati Venturato brings a wealth of marketing experience and customer focus to IBM Watson services. In particular, Venturato writes fondly of the IBM Speech to Text (STT) service and has the ability “to look under the hood and really understanding the technology.” as she explained in a 2016 IBM blog post.

While reading Venturato’s 2017 article on the Watson blog, about the Speech to Text service, what becomes very clear is her profound knowledge of the AI powered speech recognition and transcription software. But, as she has discussed in the IBM blog, it is essential as an Evangelist to truly believe in the service and understand how it will add value to the end user.

“To really get into the hearts and minds of people – to really evangelise the product – you have to be cognizant of who you’re speaking to and their potential point of view, so you can relate to them better” aimagazine.com

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Welcome to my channel!

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TOP 10

Julien Simon

Global AI & machine learning evangelist

AWS

AWS’s global artificial intelligence and machine learning evangelist, Julien Simon has “a never ending curiosity for technology, and for innovative ways to solve realworld business challenges”. With extensive knowledge and realworld experiences (CTO, Software at Aldebaran Electronics, VP engineering at Criteo, and CTO at Pixmania) Simon began working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) before joining the company in 2015.

As you would expect from an accomplished user of AWS, his passion for AI extends beyond his work for the company. Simon produces podcasts that he posts to his blog, on medium.com, where he discusses topics which are targeted towards advanced AWS users. He is also registered with the Promotivate speakers agency, where he holds talks on subjects

such as: machine learning at the edge, deep learning on Amazon SageMaker, innovation with machine learning and AWS, and more.

Alongside his blog he uploads regularly to his YouTube channel, appropriately named ‘Julian Simon’ where consumers can find some of his videos dating back to 2013. When watching his videos consumers can see the level of competence that Simon had gained with the software before he acquired his evangelist title from Amazon.

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