BW CIO in an exclusive conversation with Bob Lord, CDO, IBM Global talks to us about his view on trends and the challenges faced while addressing AI and ML.

What is your take on the need for reskilling and upskilling today’s developers. How does IBM equip the developer community for the same?

One of the key activities I have taken up as the Chief Digital Officer in the company, is to take our core assets and put them online for people, so that they can actually use, , self-service themselves and get code as they wish and as they want. So, one of the big things, if you’re a developer, you can now come to our IBM code site and you can get code assets around cloud, our data science experience, Watson and our AI solutions. We’ve really giving developers access to toolsets in a self-service fashion that they haven’t been able to do before. And with those code assets, there are learning models, videos and more. There’s reference architectures, learning FAQs. So it is  more of a self-service model and if you’re intellectually curious as a developer or as a data scientist, it’s a great place to go and learn. 

Coming to new age technology trends impacting artificial intelligence, machine learning, what is the sort of future that you envision? Even for Internet of things?

When I think about AI, I actually think about augmented intelligence. Essentially, Machine learning algorithms are becoming so sophisticated that it’s providing human beings with insights around data like never before and that’s enabling all professionals to think about problems differently than they had done in the past. So, I’m very positive about these trends impacting the developer community in a big way. I see Augmented Intelligence being used for good. I see doctors being able to  diagnose faster, because our machine learning tools in Watson have been able to analyze enormous amounts of data to give them insights that they normally wouldn’t have ever had. I see our tools helping predict cyber-attacks before they happen so I see this era as a very good force for all of us. As far as the Internet of Things is concerned, it is really majorly about data collection, so what’s great about the Internet of things is that it is bringing in more data and we can then put machine learning on top of it to garner insights so that human beings can make better, informed decisions.

What is the biggest loophole do you think or challenge when you’re addressing components like machine learning, AI?

The biggest challenge is skills. For us, in order to exponentially grow the way that we need to, first and foremost people  have to be comfortable, second they need to embrace it and third they really need to upskill  and reskill with the help of , new learning tools. This s really the most important piece. 

IBM’s larger ecosystem focuses in India and the role of developers in shaping new age start-ups. So, what is your take on the same?

We are focused heavily on our core businesses around large enterprises and the global system integrators. This is where we really we would continue to focus on. But, in India we’ve spent a lot of time with entrepreneurs and start-ups, so anything that we’re building for our developers and the enterprises, we allow start-ups and ICEs and small enterprises to use. So, it’s a very distributive system across India.