More than 28 speakers brought AI to life with stories of how they are incorporating a digital workforce to transform their organizations and processes.
NEW YORK – June 3, 2017 – More than 500 senior business leaders, industry analysts and media poured into IPsoft’s inaugural Digital Workforce Summit in New York on June 1st, to hear how AI is reshaping the workforce and see the next evolution of Amelia, the market’s most human and comprehensive AI platform.
On stage IPsoft’s CEO, Chetan Dube and Chief Cognitive Officer, Edwin van Bommel, showcased the new capabilities that are moving Amelia into a new and more sophisticated category of virtual worker, equipped to take on roles from the front office through to the back office. Described as a watershed moment for humanity, Chetan made the case for how organizations can adopt AI to radically improve the way they conduct their business on a daily basis.
Attendees were given a glimpse of the science behind Amelia, seeing how her brain processed information during conversations in real time to plan actions and respond empathetically to changes in customer emotion. Amelia’s humanlike understanding was tested to its full extent in a side by side match with her human counterpart, model, and entrepreneur, Lauren Hayes. It was soon clear that the likeness between the two did not end on the surface but ran deeper into Amelia’s ability to recreate humanlike intelligence.
More than 28 speakers brought AI to life with stories of how they are incorporating a digital workforce to transform their organizations and processes. Lively panel discussions brought together financial services executives from AIG, UBS, Genworth and Guardian Life along with leaders from the leisure and insurance sectors including Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne and VGZ. A series of stories told by the pioneers who are leading change in organizations as diverse as Electronic Arts, International Hotels Group, Becton Dickinson, SEB and NTT Communications gave an honest account of how they are implementing Amelia as a catalyst for change. The overall consensus pointed to a need for reaching beyond simple ‘chatbot’ technology in order to accelerate value creation and eliminate the friction between human and machine understanding. Their collective best practice pointed towards a need to lead this critical period of organizational change with a strong focus on change management and a bold approach to ensuring Amelia is swiftly introduced into meaningful roles.
Thought-leaders from Accenture, Deloitte and McKinsey put forward strategies for reshaping the workforce in order to generate improvements in productivity and boost economic growth. Their man plus machine message echoed with management writer, Tom Davenport, who set out strategic options for human development. As a complement to these strategies, Nick Bostrom, of Oxford University highlighted the responsibilities we must take on as business leaders in order to reap the most advantage from our new AI colleagues.
Dr. Craig Weidemann, special advisor to the Provost at Penn State University, explained why investment in developing new skills for the AI economy had prompted the college to establish a center of cognitive study in collaboration with IPsoft. CEO of telecoms procurement organization, Buyin, Volker Pyrtek, explained how he was pushing Amelia to new levels of achievement by working on a project, employing her to become a procurement negotiator – one of her most challenging roles to date. Global optimization and analytics director for the Nordics payments organization, Klarna, showed how his talent pool is already lined up to take advantage of AI technology and challenge long-established players.
Within the space of 10 hours, a progressive new community of leaders was established for the long term. Inspired and enthusiastic about the ability of AI to make a tangible impact on business performance, they debated where Amelia can add the most value and agreed on the importance of making rapid progress in gaining experience fast in order to stay abreast of the evolving ecosystems which will determine future competitiveness.
If you missed the summit, you can catch up on the presentations here: IPsoft’s Digital Workforce Summit Replay
Event Speakers
Nick Bostrom
Oxford University
Best Selling author of Superintelligence, Nick leads the debate on the policies needed to ensure AI benefits humanity.
Paul Daugherty
Accenture
Paul is the Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at Accenture.
Dr. Tom Davenport
Babson College
Author of Only Humans Need Apply, Tom has written extensively about the evolving relationship between artificial intelligence and human workers
Mike Brady
AIG
Mike is the Global Chief Technology Officer for AIG.
Mike Giresi
Royal Caribbean Cruises
Mike is Chief Information Officer for Royal Caribbean Cruises.
Bill Briggs
Deloitte
Bill is Chief Technology Officer at Deloitte.
Chetan Dube
CEO & President, IPsoft
Chetan will introduce Amelia 3.0 and outline his vision for how hybrid workforces, comprised of human and digital employees, will rapidly transform business models.
Michael Chui
McKinsey
Michael is a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI).
Chris Manning
Stanford University
Chris is a professor of computer science and linguistics at Stanford University.
Julia Aymonier
Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne
Julia is the Chief Information Officer for leading hospitality management school Ecole Hoteliere Lausanne.
Tom DeCarlo
UBS
Tom is the Managing Director, Head of Client Services at UBS.
Volker Pyrtek
BuyIn
Volker is the CEO of BuyIn.
Rich Pierle
Becton Dickinson
Rich is the Chief Information Officer of Becton Dickinson.
Nicolas Moch
SEB Bank
Nicolas is Head of Information, Strategy and Architecture at leading Nordic bank SEB.
Christine Meehan
Vanguard
Christine is a Vice President, Retail Systems at Vanguard.
Stefan Visser
VGZ
Stefan is the Digital Cooperation Catalyst for VGZ.
Scot Whigham
IHG
Scot is the Director Global IT Service Support for IHG.
Jonas Forslund
Klarna AB
Jonas is the Director of Global Optimization & Analytics at Klarna AB.
Martijn Gribnau
Genworth Financial
Martijn is Chief Transformation Officer for Genworth Financial.
Matt Tomlinson
EA
Matt Tomlinson is the Global Director of Innovation--Customer Experience Labs for Electronic Arts.
Edwin Van Bommel
Chief Cognitive Officer, IPsoft
Edwin will explore Amelia"s role in re-defining and enhancing customer experience across industries.
Dr. Craig D. Weidemann
Penn State University
Dr. Craig D. Weidemann is the Special Assistant to the Provost for Innovation and Education Technology Initiatives at Penn State University.
Event Photos
