How to Achieve Sustainable Cost Reduction on the Path to Greater Agility

AI is about to completely change how you use computers

And upend the software industry.

Article featured in GatesNotes

I still love software as much today as I did when Paul Allen and I started Microsoft. But—even though it has improved a lot in the decades since then—in many ways, software is still pretty dumb.

To do any task on a computer, you have to tell your device which app to use. You can use Microsoft Word and Google Docs to draft a business proposal, but they can’t help you send an email, share a selfie, analyze data, schedule a party, or buy movie tickets. And even the best sites have an incomplete understanding of your work, personal life, interests, and relationships and a limited ability to use this information to do things for you. That’s the kind of thing that is only possible today with another human being, like a close friend or personal assistant.

In the next five years, this will change completely. You won’t have to use different apps for different tasks. You’ll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do. And depending on how much information you choose to share with it, the software will be able to respond personally because it will have a rich understanding of your life. In the near future, anyone who’s online will be able to have a personal assistant powered by artificial intelligence that’s far beyond today’s technology.

How Should Corporate Boards Be Thinking About Generative AI?

Make it a priority to discuss progress and update no less frequently than every other board meeting.

Article featured in Forbes

The emergence of Generative AI presents corporate boards of directors with a present-day challenge. Will Generative AI disrupt companies and entire industries?

Some estimates have indicated that Generative AI will automate over 40 percent of business tasks and create business value worth more than $400 billion. The public version of Chat GPT, an application of Generative AI, created over 100 million users in a few weeks of its release. The potential impact extends to job displacement. What if a large majority of white-collar tasks can be performed more effectively with AI?

I recently attended the Wall Street Journal Tech Live event, and wrote about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) And The Coming Wave. At the WSJ event, venture investor Vinod Khosla forecast that, “AI will be able to replace 80% of 80% of all jobs within 10-20 years”. Author and AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman noted, “Within the next few years, AI will become as ubiquitous as the Internet”, and asked, “Will AI unlock secrets of the universe or create systems beyond our control?”

Accelerating AI tasks while preserving data security

The SecureLoop search tool efficiently identifies secure designs for hardware that can boost the performance of complex AI tasks, while requiring less energy.

Article featured in MIT News

Choosing the best design for these components, known as deep neural network accelerators, is challenging because they can have an enormous range of design options. This difficult problem becomes even thornier when a designer seeks to add cryptographic operations to keep data safe from attackers.

Now, MIT researchers have developed a search engine that can efficiently identify optimal designs for deep neural network accelerators, that preserve data security while boosting performance.

Their search tool, known as SecureLoop, is designed to consider how the addition of data encryption and authentication measures will impact the performance and energy usage of the accelerator chip. An engineer could use this tool to obtain the optimal design of an accelerator tailored to their neural network and machine-learning task.

What’s motivating your action?

Are you the leader who tends to spend more time tackling Pain? Or moving towards Gain?

Article featured in Digital Leaders

The fork-in-the-road moment has long fascinated me. In that moment, as leaders, we find ourselves at the fork in the road needing to choose between options on behalf of our teams, our organizations, and the leadership we’re driving towards.

The moment that happens over and over in our careers as we face decisions such as…

Do I hire this candidate or that?
Do I have my team continue to focus on “lights on” activities or shift to “value add?”
Do I fight for the extra budget to push forward this modernization initiative, or do I stay the course?
Do I have the team needed to drive to next or is it time to think about skills acquisition differently?

When we think about it, the fork-in-the-road moment often manifests because of one of two conditions:

1. We’re trying to move our teams/companies away from Pain
2. We’re trying to move our teams/companies towards Gain

12 digital transformation benefits for business

Efficiency, resiliency, productivity and ROI are among the most critical digital transformation benefits for businesses fighting to remain competitive and gain market share.

Article featured in TechTarget

Executives continue to believe that they need to engage in digital transformation if they want their businesses to succeed.

For example, a “KPMG 2023 CEO Outlook” survey of 1,325 CEOs found that respondents saw advancing digitalization as a top operational priority to achieve growth. Such a finding indicates organizational leaders understand that transformation isn’t just a project to accomplish, but a continuous business activity to pursue because it delivers real value.

What is digital transformation and why is it important?

Digital transformation (DX) requires the infusion of internet-based tools and technologies into a company’s processes. This lets an organization meet and anticipate the wants and needs of its customers, the market, its employees and, indeed, all its stakeholders.