Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is for the time being and important new domain to be discussed. As far I am concerned, perhaps the most productive debate we can have at the conference in the 2017 edition isn’t the one of good versus evil, the rise of the machines or singularity is near. The debate could be about the guidelines instilled in the people and organizations using A.I., something that cybernetics tried to push back in the 60’s.

Why the human element still matters?
While demand for efficient, transactional, prediction-driven workplace systems is on the rise, just look around you and you will realize that most of the interactions you have with companies or even to perform daily tasks – like find the better route to commute – have embedded intelligence and are context aware, taking into consideration your location, profile and transactional history. However, there are a set of skills we seemingly don’t want systems to perform. Despite new techniques like deep learning are denting our ability to prevent we will become dispensable, emotional intelligence is said to be among the fastest-growing job skills, and some experts say the ability to collaborate and listen thoughtfully can even protect your position and help advance your career over the next decade as automation progresses. This is probably the reason that contact centers were not totally replaced by robots. Yet.

Ultimately, humans and machines will work together, not against one another. This is already a reality. Imagine if human and machine work together to solve society’s greatest challenges like providing healthcare services, probably one of the areas on which we have seen the deepest progress, as well as, fighting insurgency and keep our cities safe. As machines become more intelligent, they become more capable and we can rely for daily or even knowledge intensive tasks. Businesses of all industry verticals will benefit from these new systems of intelligence machines that can better detect image patterns, process natural language and make informed decisions. This is the reason why you attend Paul Harmon session. Paul is a legend in Business Process Management, probably is one of the best domain knowledge experts I ever came across. His experience is legendary and he will focus about the looming of AI in a multitude of industry sectors, as well as what it means in terms of process design and execution.

For many business, the new spectrum of possibilities provides not just an opportunity to automate processes and become more efficient, but to fundamentally change business models under the new digital transformation moto. Many of today’s advances breakthroughs can be attributed to evolution in machine learning. Machine Learning, is being used across many industry sectors, like Financials and Healthcare.  This kind of supervised learning means that we can convert data into intelligence in the sense that these networks can look for patterns or features in the data they are given. Paulo Cortez is going to talk about how AI can be used to extend our life expectancy, by predicting human organ failure or real examples on prescription marking in Financials, also known as next best action, a technique that induces spending on financials products based on real customer needs and desires.

Now is the time for greater coordination and collaboration on A.I. New kinds of services such as personal digital assistants, chat bots and so on are also defining new ways of interacting with humans. However, we simply don’t want to chat to a smartphone. We need a sense of friendliness that can enhance customer’s perceptions of the company. Bianca Fortuna is going to talk about a convergence of several technologies to make some extraordinary advances in terms of operation management.

For businesses, the new possibilities provide not just an opportunity to automate processes and become more efficient, but to fundamentally change the way they operate. Ross Brown, is in my opinion, one of the most prominent researchers in terms of process simulation, optimization in virtual worlds. When everybody was still stick to simulation tools, Ross was leading the way using new concepts like 3D simulation and today he is applying mixed reality approaches to explore the next frontier in terms of process optimization.

A.I. must be designed to assist humanity. I firmly believe on it. As we build more autonomous machines, we need to respect human autonomy. Collaborative robots, or co-bots, should do dangerous work like operating in hazardous environments, creating a safety wall and safeguarding human life, combined with vital sign monitoring to prevent human life loss. We are now at the tipping point where we are seeing a convergence of several technologies, robots included that jumped from the factory floor to the office space. That is the reason of the relevance of Manuela Veloso talk and how we can co-work together with robots.

I am looking forward to see you at the conference.