Category: Uncategorized

May 08, 2019 by Jessica Munday

Dreamforce first kicked off in 2003 with only 1,500 attendees. And in 15 years, it’s become one of the largest sales conferences globally with more than 2,500 breakout sessions, 170,000 registered attendees (as of last year) and big-name performances and keynotes from the likes of U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stevie Wonder, Colin Powell, Bill Clinton and Melinda Gates (to name just a few).

Dreamforce is basically the Disneyland of conferences. Except instead of singing mice and princesses, we got Metallica and Janet Jackson (which is way cooler if you ask me).

As you’re walking through the various sessions you almost forget that you’re in the middle of San Francisco. Every aspect of Dreamforce is completely immersive and engaging. From the campground-themed Customer Success Expo to the natural forest noises in walkways, to the dozens of waterfalls found in and outside the Moscone Centers.

But beyond the decorations, professionals of all kinds were dedicated to improving themselves, their processes, and driving growth for their teams.

As a rookie attendee, I’ll share my biggest takeaways about what I learned, what I liked and what resonated with me.

What I learned

AI is on track to make sales more human, not take away jobs.

I attended a number of sessions around artificial intelligence (obviously, I work for an AI company) and many speakers shared their research and solutions about how AI is transforming sales and other functions across several industries and predictions for the future.

Finance, for example, is using AI to help personalize their cross- and upsell recommendations for customers based on behavioral analytics. AI is also helping banks streamline their lending applications to speed up their sales cycles.

We also learned that data quality is a bigger nightmare than many companies realize, during a session called “Automate your data quality process” by Validity. They say about 50% of an information worker’s time is spent fighting their data, and for sales reps, this often comes in the form of duplicates. On average it costs $1 to prevent a duplicate, $10 to correct a duplicate and $100 to store a duplicate if left untreated. By automating the data collection process, companies give sales reps back their time and drastically improve their bottom line.

Hands down, I thought the best session was this one: “How to survive and thrive in the age of AI,” hosted by management consulting firm McKinsey. The speakers reviewed current uses for sales AI, its impact on organizations and its potential to change sales processes for the better.

A surprising statistic from McKinsey: currently about 40% of sales tasks can be automated, but by 2020, 85% of sales tasks could be automated.

While many sales reps might be shocked and fear for their jobs, McKinsey actually says AI will be a huge help to both individual sales reps and companies without costing anyone their job.

They explained that sales AI tools are great at a certain set of tasks, and may even do these better than humans. These are predictable, repetitive tasks like data collection and processing. But humans will remain superior in sales tasks that require human emotion and the ability to connect.

AI can take on tasks like data entry, billing, appointment booking, analytics and even cold calls (aka all tasks that sales reps hate performing), but human reps excel in creativity, leading and coaching others, and being social and emotional (the tasks that they love doing). Basically, sales AI will make sales more human.

So rather than replacing sales reps, sales AI tools will actually help reps get more done. They’ll spend less time on busy work and more time making connections and selling. This productivity benefits the sales reps as they are more likely to meet quota and enjoy their work and it benefits the company by increasing the output with minimal cost.

Enterprise companies can see drastic gains in revenue, so even just increasing productivity by five percent could boost business growth by thousands of dollars, if not millions.

Of course, these are not new learnings for Automation Hero, as automating mundane work inside companies is the whole purpose of our end-to-end automation platform. Still, it was great to hear those statements validated by such an established firm like McKinsey.

What I liked

There was a specific area designated for attendees to unwind and escape the chaos of the conference.

As I mentioned earlier, Dreamforce is like the Disneyland of sales conferences, all the decor was elaborate and matched Salesforce’s trailblazer (camping/outdoorsy) theme.

One of my favorite areas was the Dreamforest. It offered an escape from the city bustle and a nice break from the back-to-back sessions and booth chaos sales conferences are known for.

The Dreamforest was an outdoor area set up much like a picnic area between the two Moscone Centers. The entrance looked like the base of a hollowed out tree stump, and as you passed through you heard what appeared to be the sounds of a peaceful forest: bird chirps, frog ribbits and other animal noises, which all helped set the scene.

It was adorned with fake turf grass, a huge artificial waterfall, a music stage with picnic chairs and benches surrounding it. It was extremely relaxing to sit and listen to the “Sounds of Ohana” band as I ate my lunch and just for a moment forgot that I was in one of the biggest cities in the country. I love that they set up this area specifically for attendees to unwind from their hectic conference schedules.

What I took away

Personal empowerment and well-being shouldn’t fall by the wayside.

There was a theme for each day of Dreamforce: trust, innovation, equality and personal empowerment. I appreciated that Salesforce designated the last day specifically for personal growth. It’s common for startup employees, business leaders, entrepreneurs and virtually anyone else in a stressful work role to often overwork themselves and experience burnout, which can be unhealthy.

Salesforce encourages attendees to spend this day not worrying about their company or customers but instead to focus on themselves. It was a day filled with mindfulness practices and centered on reflection and self-improvement.

One of the keynotes was given by Arianna Huffington (you know, the CEO of The Huffington Post) and she shared her story of passing out due to exhaustion. She debunked the myth many people believe that in order to be successful you need to sacrifice your own well being. She said that by giving herself time to refuel she can jump back into a project refreshed without feeling burnout.

It showed that Salesforce truly values more than just the bottom line. It was a warm, meaningful message to end a tiring week and a much-needed reminder not to put your well being on the back burner.

Tips for Dreamforce 2019

As a rookie Dreamforce attendee, I know I could have used a few more tips ahead of the conference. So whether you’re a seasoned vet or you’re looking into attending next year, here are some tips I that could have helped me.

1. Wear comfortable shoes

Dress for comfort, especially when it comes to your shoes. They estimate that people walk five miles each day of Dreamforce. And after making my way to all the sessions across downtown San Francisco, I believe it. Take care of yourself and your feet!

2. Take a look at the map and grab an info flyer

Even as an SF local, I found it hard to make my way around. Sure, the Moscone Centers are easy to find but there are several other locations for sessions across the city and multiple floors of each building. Be sure to get an information flyer and take a look at the map before departing for your sessions. And don’t be afraid to ask for help! There are dozens of workers there to help guide you in the right direction.

3. Plan out and register for your sessions ahead of time

I made the mistake of going to many sessions that I hadn’t previously registered for and the result was maximum capacity rooms that I couldn’t get into. However, people who registered for the sessions and showed up on time skipped the line and their seat was reserved. Don’t miss out on your important sessions by registering before the conference.

4. Schedule break time for yourself

The sessions at Dreamforce start around 8 a.m. and can end as late as 6 p.m. Make sure you schedule some resting time in between those sessions. Dreamforce has lots of lounge areas for people to take their lunch and get off their feet. Set aside some time to recharge

5. Bring a bag for all your goodies

As with any sales conference, there are always tons of sponsors giving away freebies. Bring a backpack or a purse to carry all your goodies in or else you could end up carrying three water bottles, fifteen pens and seven different stress balls in your pockets.

May 08, 2019 by Jessica Munday

It shouldn’t be surprising that most workers are worried about a future in which artificial intelligence performs human tasks and replaces the human worker. That’s true for almost three-quarters of American workers, anyway.

Those fears seem to be legitimized when robotics and AI companies build machines to perform tasks typically carried out by low-income workers. Self-service kiosks are replacing cashiers, apple-picking robots are replacing field workers, and down the road, driverless cars will replace taxi drivers, and so on.

These are notable examples of how far we’ve come in the development of AI technology, but it’s critical to take a step back and evaluate how AI will realistically affect your organization and role.

Harvard Business Review says wasted time and inefficient processes cost American companies more than $3 trillion every year. For any organization, the real value AI brings to the table is simplifying and improving inefficient processes when they augment employees’ intelligence.

What is augmented intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is often designed to mirror human intelligence, while augmented intelligence elevates human intelligence and helps people work faster and smarter. Augmented intelligence tools are created to help, rather than replace, humans.

Augmented intelligence follows a five-function cadence that allows it to learn with human influence. It repeats a cycle of understanding, interpretation, reasoning, learning, and assurance. Here’s how it works:

Understanding: Systems are fed data, which it breaks down and derives meaning from.

Interpretation: New data is inputted, the system then reflects on old data to interpret new data sets.

Reasoning: The system creates “output” or “results” for new data set.

Learn: Humans give feedback on output and the system adjusts accordingly.

Assure: Security and compliance are ensured using blockchain or AI technology.

Having humans and machines work hand-in-hand is a win-win for both parties. The machine grows smarter and more productive while the human workload is streamlined. With humans guiding the learning process these tools learn and adjust their models more quickly than intelligence tools with no human feedback loop.

What can augmented tools do?

Augmented tools are currently used across a number of fields to help drive productivity, improve efficiency and save people time and organizational dollars. Most often augmented tools are used to clean data sets, give predictions, improve decision-making, and to respond to customer service needs.

These systems are already in use in the healthcare, financial, retail, manufacturing, sales and marketing sectors. They’re helping diagnose and suggest treatments for ill patients in hospitals. They can perform risk analytics and regulation tasks in banks. And augmented tools can automate CRM updates and suggest new accounts for sales teams.

The beauty of augmented intelligence is that these systems use historical data to help make predictions, but the human-user always has the decision-making power. Some common-place examples include suggestions from online retailers and streaming services.

Let’s use Netflix as an example. Say you recently watched “Orange is the New Black.” Netflix may then suggest other shows with prison themes, or documentaries about life behind bars, or shows with a strong female lead, etc.

Based on past data (your recently watched shows and movies), it’s able to make a prediction about what you will want to watch next. Once you make your latest selection, it will adjust its algorithm to further customize your experience.

Why augment employee intelligence?

Augmented intelligence impacts decisions about company spending by increasing the accuracy of everything from invoice processing to sales forecasts. Sales representatives, for example, can make smarter decisions about what accounts to sell to based on their past closed deals. And finance employees can make better decisions about procurement when they have real-time invoice data and can see patterns over time. If such tools tools can save employees up to an hour each week, imagine the hundreds of thousands of dollars it can save the company annually.

Why now?

The global value derived from AI tools as a whole is expected to surpass the trillion dollar mark (~$1.2 trillion) this year and hit nearly $4 trillion by 2022. We’re on the bleeding edge of the next industrial revolution with AI tools at the epicenter.

Gartner predicts that within the next ten years AI will be the “most disruptive class of technology.” At Automation Hero we see this coming in the form of autonomous business processes, reducing waste and saving time for employees and companies.

Eighty-five percent of executives think AI will give their company a competitive advantage, but only 20 percent have already incorporated it into their business processes and less than 39 percent have an AI strategy in place. Companies that implement now will be ahead of the curve.

And those who were early to adopt are already seeing the rewards. Eighty-three percent of the most aggressive adopters said their companies have achieved either moderate (53 percent) or substantial (30 percent) benefits. The stakes are high; the earlier you implement AI the better your advantage and the later you implement the longer your strides will need to be to catch up.

May 08, 2019 by Jessica Munday

One of the biggest lies business leaders tells themselves is that their business processes“aren’t that bad.” And certainly not bad enough to introduce enterprise automation. Let me stop you there: Yes, they are.

You may not realize it, but the processes in place in your company are massively inefficient, expensive and frankly, make your employees want to pull their hair out.

Let’s take your legacy systems as one example. What’s inside that system? Research shows that 41% of IT and business users say data is “trapped” in legacy systems. If data is needed in multiple systems within your business process, and the legacy system is unable to sync with those external tools directly, your employee must manually port that data from one system to another.

The average employee spends between 4 to 10 hours a week on repetitive computer tasks (up to 350 hours per year). Often these processes aren’t even directly related to their primary job function.

These inefficient processes exist at every level of an organization, costing your business money and wasting several hours of each worker’s day. It’s time for management to face the facts; your business processes are inefficient and enterprise automation is the solution.

How bad are my ineffective processes?

Inefficient processes cost organizations up to 20-30% of their annual revenue, according to IDC research. Here are a few examples of processes costing your company:

• IT departments spend 30% of their time on basic low-level tasks.
• 50% of companies spend $5-25 per manually processed invoice.
• 64% of sales reps’ time is spent on non-revenue generating activities, with 25% being administrative work.

Regardless of industry or job function, there are ineffective processes in your organization preventing your employees from completing valuable work. And as your employees waste time on these tasks, your company is wasting money as they perform them.

Solutions for enterprise automation

When it comes to enterprise automation, there are actually a few options for enterprises depending on your needs and level of inefficiency.

If you’re looking for a reduction of repetitive, rule-based and high-volume work tasks that specifically deal with web interfaces, look into robotic process automation (RPA).

Our specialty at Automation Hero is the next generation of RPA: intelligent process automation. Intelligent process automation is the powerful combination of artificial intelligence, RPA and mass amounts of data to automate complex tasks and perform more adaptable workflows.

The key difference between intelligent process automation and traditional RPA is that RPA is unadaptable. RPA performs one action repeatedly without considering nuances or exceptions. For example, if you asked an RPA system to sort red and blue balls, it wouldn’t be able to react in the case of a yellow ball. RPA also can’t learn, so every process must be programmed and changed manually by a developer.

However, when you add AI to RPA, the possibilities for optimization are endless. Intelligent process automation systems can learn, making them flexible in the face of complex processes.  It’s the first technology intelligent enough to handle tedious, yet complicated human processes.

For example, it would recognize that this ball is unlike the others and classify it separately on its own, or alert a human that there is a third category of balls.

According to research by KPMG, implementing intelligent process automation results in cost savings of 40-75% depending on the company with payback ranging from several months to several years.

It’s estimated that about half of automation opportunities are being missed. By finding these automation opportunities, you can cut the time your employees spend on busy work in half. Bringing on intelligent process automation benefits both your company when it comes to cost savings and your employees by automating the tasks they hate performing.

May 08, 2019 by Stefan Groschupf

I’m thrilled to announce that Automation Hero is now publicly available. Automation Hero is an advanced sales AI automation platform, offering the first proactive and adaptive sales AI assistant – Robin.

After I helped bring Hadoop to life (now a $40 billion market), I founded Datameer, a company focused on big data business intelligence. With the help of my team, we built the company from an idea with three boxes on a paper napkin into a leader in the data analytics space with close to $100 million in VC backing. We managed to double bookings six years in a row. How? The secret sauce was a very data-driven approach to our marketing and sales process.

The sales data dilemma

We urgently needed high-quality data to optimize our sales processes but it became very clear that we were wasting the valuable time of our sales reps on data entry. But all sorts of processes and systems depend on quality data. We were facing the “garbage in – garbage out” problem, meaning sales or marketing automation or forecasting is only as good as the data in your CRM system.

I’m sure you’ve heard, “If it is not in Salesforce – it didn’t happen.” In fact, sales reps on average input about 300 CRM updates a week. Meanwhile, 79 percent of information a sales rep has doesn’t even make it into the CRM and 58 percent of respondents to a Salesforce User’s Benchmark report believe that less than a quarter of data is actionable and trustworthy.

Making sales human again

As I thought about this problem, I realized how completely broken the entire sales process is these days. We hire great sales reps based on their human interaction skills and then turn them into data-entry robots following made-up sales playbooks. Sales reps spend only 37 percent of their time selling and the rest of their time is wasted with pesky, repetitive tasks.

Salesforce’s “State of Sales” report found that a positive customer experience is the biggest sales challenge organizations are facing. This is an even bigger challenge if sales reps only spend 37 percent of their time talking to customers. It’s time to rethink our sales technology stack and processes. In 2018 we can’t have our sales reps, arguably the most valuable company resource, type data into a slow and clunky database front-end (a.k.a. your CRM system). In fact, I would pose the question of whether we need CRM systems (as we know them) in 2018?

We believe that AI can be a disruptive force in the sales world. Our mission is to automate the tasks that squander sales reps’ time and help them focus on what they do best – building customer relationships.

Augmented Intelligence not Artificial Intelligence

There are some companies out there that believe in a superhuman AI overlord. We believe in exactly the opposite. We believe that time is the most valuable resource and we should do everything in our power to not waste it. We believe AI should be the servant of people — not tell humans what to do.

Therefore we didn’t use a superhuman name such as Einstein or Watson but Robin – your friendly AI sidekick. We believe AI needs to augment intelligence.

It’s just email

The consumerization of enterprise technology also means that sales reps are overwhelmed by having to learn, login and manage up to 10 tools each day. We want to declutter and consolidate. That’s why our user interface is just an email and that’s how Robin interacts with each user. It’s that simple and powerful and it feels like a real assistant.

Sales AI automation as an unfair competitive advantage

IDC predicts that sales AI is a trillion dollar opportunity. This is the first time that a disruptive technology will crack the trillion dollar mark. The World Economic Forum describes AI as the 4th industrial revolution. Our beta users have already reported saving up to an hour each day. That’s less time spent on boring and unrewarding tasks, and more time on productive responsibilities. Large organizations in the financial service and insurance industries already predict a double (and even triple) digit million dollar ROI from Automation Hero.

Businesses have a shorter window to adopt this kind of technology. In 1925, Nikolai Kondratieff examines the relationship between technology and economic cycles and how these cycles are accelerating. In 2005, Ray Kurzweil describes the skyrocketing acceleration of technology in his book, “The Singularity Is Near.”

This means that fast movers will see an unfair competitive advantage and late adopters risk displacement in just a few years if they fail to get the ball rolling.

Democratizing AI

We feel it’s important to democratize AI and allow as many sales reps as possible to take advantage of its opportunity. That’s why we offer a freemium account (in addition to our Premium Personal and Enterprise versions) for individuals that want to get up and running asap. Signing up for Automation Hero couldn’t be easier — with two clicks, you can connect your company email and Salesforce account and Robin starts supporting daily activities asap.

Business 5.0

If we already have autonomous, self-driving cars and autonomous financial trading, we need to think about what role AI will play in companies. After big data and Industry 4.0 / IoT, I would like to introduce the term ‘Business 5.0’ to express the next evolution of automating business processes.

Automation Hero is a Business 5.0 platform which connects diverse, structured and unstructured data sources, internal and external systems, business processes and most importantly, humans, into a cohesive intelligence fabric. We can elastically expand and contract, and process trillions of events and big data on a distributed and containerized compute environment in the cloud or on-premise. Automation Hero is a business operations system for the modern company.

Bright minds behind a revolutionary product

I’m honored to be joined by some of the brilliant minds I worked with at Datameer. People who built and marketed some of the most innovative big data and machine learning technology are working incredibly hard on ensuring Automation Hero’s Robin is leading the charge in sales AI automation innovation.

We’ve also attracted smart money early on with CometLabs, Baidu USA, Cherry Ventures and signals VC as investors. Baidu invests $3 billion annually into AI research, CometLabs is the premier AI investor in Silicon Valley, signals VC has extensive connections in the insurance industry and Cherry Ventures managed the largest European e-commerce company.

And, the good news doesn’t stop there. Joining as independent advisors are Deborah Hopkins, founder and CEO of Citi Ventures and Donald Farmer, principle at Treehive Strategies. Hopkins was Citi’s first-ever chief innovation officer and a senior advisor to Citi’s Investment Bank winning IPOs including VMware, Palo Alto Networks, Arista and Qliktech. Farmer led the team behind Microsoft’s Power BI and Qlik Sense, and has over 25 years of experience in analytics, data management and AI.

Join our community!

We’re incredibly excited to be driving an industry with so much potential. More than 80 percent of the most aggressive adopters of business AI technology say their companies are already seeing the rewards.

Sign up today for our sales AI automation platform and join our community of hundreds of beta customers, including many Fortune 500 companies.

Happy selling, Heroes!

May 08, 2019 by Jessica Munday

The movies are a magical place where the wildest of fantasies can come to life. You can follow the journey of knights and princesses, robots fighting intergalactic battles and even see what it was like if we could bring dinosaurs back to life. But what about movies that depict artificial intelligence (AI)?

Few people really know much about AI except for what they see in the movies. The average person doesn’t understand the difference between deep learning and machine learning, but they could tell you that the Terminator was evil and stemmed from famous AI monsters that have gone rogue (which is often where the general fear of AI stems from).

Hollywood builds a great story around it, but just how much of it is based in truth? Like most things, there are some kernels but a lot is added for cinematic effect.

Let’s take a look at five of the most famous AI movies and separate fact from fiction.

The Matrix

The Matrix is a classic turn of the century sci-fi that urged people to start thinking about reality, specifically about the possibility of a computer-simulated reality. The movie depicts a dystopian future in which machines rule and have created the Matrix to harness the energy of humans.

It made many fans question the nature of our reality with some even believing that we live in something similar.

One of the more famous AI skeptics and Matrix believers, Elon Musk, even said, “There’s a billion to one chance we’re living in base reality.” Musk and other enthusiasts believe in the “simulation hypothesis,” which is the idea that the world as we know it is not real and is instead a huge virtual reality program. Think the video game Sims but with a little more free will.

There are actually two anonymous billionaires who believe in this theory so much that they’re funding technology to break humanity out of the Matrix. Some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful and intelligent people believe in the Matrix, but what does science say?

A 2017 Oxford study by theoretical physicists says it’s highly unlikely – if not impossible – that we’re living in a virtual reality. The main reasoning is that there’s just not enough material in the known universe to create a computer with enough power to host such a large-scale simulation.

The scientists tested this by trying to create a Matrix of their own that was only a portion of the size of our physical universe. As more particles were added to increase the size of the virtual world, the more complex it became and the more computing power was required.

They concluded that there are not enough atoms in the universe to create a computer capable of creating a simulation the size of our universe. Sorry, Elon.

Her

This 2013 film depicts a man in the near future who falls in love with his own customized personal AI assistant (one of millions in the world stemming from the same core system). At its core, it’s a story that raises questions about human-machine relationships. The AI assistants can hold real conversations and adapt to its user. (Spoiler alert): The movie ends will all of AI assistants upgrading themselves and merging until they’ve become “hyperintelligent” and leave the humans to a place beyond the physical world.

I would argue that this is one of the more plausible AI storylines since some levels of this technology is in development and the social groundwork is starting to be laid.

Due to the recent technological breakthroughs in deep learning, machines are becoming increasingly better at holding human-like conversations through the use of natural language processing (NLP).

While technology is not quite to the point where AI can hold deep meaningful conversations like the main AI character, Samantha, we are seeing headway. For example, Google’s assistant can hold phone conversations that nearly replicate that of a human. A few phone calls Google demonstrated was so human-like that not even the person on the other line was able to detect that it was an automated call (it even used filler words like ‘um’).

According to Accenture, 46 percent of Americans currently use a “voice-enabled digital assistant” and by 2021, Ovum predicts that there will be more AI assistants than people on Earth. It’s not hard to imagine that we’d become attached to them.

Many people already feel a sense of companionship with their personal assistants. We call them by name (Siri, Alexa) and have personified them with fun (automated) personalities, even customizing their accents.

Some companies are even creating robots specifically to be used as companions or partners. In Japan, people can marry anime characters through the use of virtual reality (VR).

However, AI has not yet reached a point in which it can hold freeform conversations that have not been programmed or scripted.

Ex Machina

This 2015 sci-fi is one of the more famous AI movies that follows a programmer who’s been instructed by his boss to give the Turing test (a test that compares human intelligence to computer intelligence) to a human-like robot. Caleb, the programmer, develops an attraction to the robot, Ava, that seems to have conscious thought and acts out of free will.

While many factors of this movie are a little too far from reality to be taken seriously, there is one aspect of Ava that is feasible: how she gains her knowledge. Ava’s intelligence comes from “BlueBook,” a fictional search engine much like Google. She can collect information from what people share online and build her behavior accordingly.

In real life, every search query, social media post, click, purchase or basically any action that we take online is tracked and stored. Our online behavior can shed light on who we are and what we are interested in. In this way, Ava’s learning model is not far off from those being used by artificial intelligence engineers today.

But Ava’s consciousness is something that is far fetched for any existing technology. Science has achieved artificial specific intelligence in that machines are smart enough to perform a highly specific task or problem. What we have not achieved though is artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is when AI achieves the same level of intelligence as humans. And while AI companies and developers are racing to get there, experts guess that this will not be achieved until at least 2060.

Her physical presence is even more fiction than fact. Scientists have created an artificial skin that’s similar to humans which can sense touch and can be grafted onto machines. But they have not created a machine that can move as fluidly as Ava can.

A robotic hand just recently learned how to juggle a cube after being trained for 100 computer years. But robots still can’t walk in a way that mimics human patterns, nor can they perform simple human movements like getting into a car.

There is headway being made in robotic bionics though. For example, Disney recently created a bot that has incredibly fluid motions, but the movement is controlled by a human with a video game-like controller. And Boston Dynamics is creating four-legged robots that are increasing in speed and agility.

Terminator

Terminator is one of the most famous AI movies and possibly one of the most dystopian. This classic franchise depicts what could happen if AI were to gain self-awareness and try to preserve itself at all costs. The first film in 1984 shows the original Terminator being sent back in time by Skynet, a highly-advanced AI, to carry out various tasks such as kill specific targets such as Resistance leaders before they come to power, aid in the creation of other terminators, build machinery and set up safe zones.

There are some parts that may be true in the very, very distant future, however, most of the themes (aka AI overlords set to rule over the human race) are little too far-fetched.

As I called out earlier, we are far from achieving AGI, which essentially what the self-aware Skynet is considered. As Business Insider puts it, “The issue is not self-awareness — it’s awareness, period. We could make a machine to be ‘self-aware’ in a technical sense, and it wouldn’t possess any more human-level intelligence than a computer that’s programmed to play the piano.”

Take Sophia the robot for example. Sophia is a human-like bot that has stirred up a cultural frenzy. She can hold nearly-human conversations, says she has goals and aspirations and has even been declared a citizen of Saudi Arabia. Sounds like a robot that has made it to consciousness, right? Wrong.

Sophia operates off of three systems: a scripting software, a smart chat system that lets her respond to keywords and a system that grounds what she says with logic and experience. Only because of these systems is she able to perform the tasks she can, most of which consist of talking through programmed scripts.

Sophia’s creators have even said that Sophia achieving AGI is still in its “infancy” and that they’re not working toward that just yet. Technology has a long way to go before it’s remotely possible for even an advanced bot to achieve AGI.

As far as robots seeking to takeover or demolish the human race there’s one theory that was written in the 1940’s by a science fiction author called the Three Laws of Robotics. Many believe they are the truths for all tools and machines that have ever been built, including the impending conscious AI system. These laws are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Scientists and futurists have mixed reviews on machines achieving AGI. For example, people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking think this will be the end of humanity as we know it.

I like to go with the opinion of Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering and esteemed futurist. In 1999, he made predictions about technology that he expected to see over the next 100 years. For the predictions he made that have already passed, 102 out of 108 were correct or nearly correct.

One of his most profound theories is around technological singularity – the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence (ASI) will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.

He predicts that the by the year 2045 will have reached singularity and by that time technology and machines will have taken over all development of new AI. They’ll begin innovating other tools and systems so quickly that humans won’t be able to understand what’s going on.

Could machines wipe out humans after they reach singularity? Kurzweil says no and that he’s actually looking forward to it. He argues that at this point, machines will actually help humans be smarter and better at everything they already do saying, “We’re going to be able to meet the physical needs of all humans. We’re going to expand our minds and exemplify these artistic qualities that we value.”

What the Terminator may have right though is how they are programmed to carry out very specific tasks – very similar to the bots we have today.

Star Wars

This is the ultimate sci-fi franchise that excited our minds in the 1970’s and continues to bring us intergalactic drama and wonder in 2018. While each trilogy focuses on a different set of characters in varying timelines, the overarching theme is set in a “galaxy far, far away” where forces of good fight against forces of evil.

This is a fictional theme with a very fictional plot line. It doesn’t take place on Earth or anywhere near it so we can’t expect much to cross over into reality. Don’t expect technology to create stormtrooper uniforms or the Death Star.

Though when it comes to AI there is one example that is close to fact: droids. The most memorable droid characters are, of course, the humanoid bot C-3PO and lovable R2-D2 and BB-8, but there’s many more with specified jobs (shout back to Terminator). There’s pilot droids, medical droids, assassin and battle droids and scout droids that all stick to the duties they were programmed for.

These AI-enhanced droids work alongside humans much of the time. However, most of these AI bots only do the tasks they’ve been built for or follow orders given by the humans they belong to.

While not quite at the Start Wars extreme – this culture of robots and humans coexisting and working together is something that is very likely in the near-distant future.

People are already starting to work with AI assistants in their jobs today, so it is very likely that as technology progresses, we’ll see even more integration. And what does that mean? Human skills such as empathy and creativity will be left to humans while robots will handle the more repetitive (or if you will, robotic) processes.

For example, our sales AI assistant Robin helps salespeople get their busy work done by automating the mundane tasks they are often required to do – letting sales reps focus on what their good at – selling.

Tell us about your favorite famous AI movies and whether you consider them to be fact or fiction. Tweet us @automationhero_!