Testimonial from Silvano Sansoni, CEO of IBM France and IBM Global Sales Manager.
What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is a magnificent promise for our generation and those to come. The most appropriate form to refer to artificial intelligence would be to speak of “augmented intelligence”. That's what we call it at IBM. Take the example of a dermatologist: he now identifies about 80% of cases of melanomas, cancers, in a patient. By using augmented intelligence, we reach 85%. By reconciling human knowledge and augmented intelligence, we finally reach 95%. It is the complementarity between machine and man that makes the integrated value of artificial intelligence.
How to use artificial intelligence?
In the world of artificial intelligence, the characteristics and skills you need are above all a general knowledge, an ability to be curious, adaptable, work with agility and be collaborative. These are called soft skills. In terms of technical skills, I think that “digital natives” will have a long way to go, since they already have these abilities in an almost innate way.
How do I train myself in artificial intelligence?
In today's world of artificial intelligence, we are seeing that the employee is becoming more and more augmented. This means that he will focus on critical missions, and everything related to automatic and repetitive tasks will be carried out by artificial intelligence. For customers in whom we deploy augmented intelligence, we are actually seeing the creation of new positions with added value. This is where the optimistic promise of artificial intelligence lies. For people who want to switch to digital technology, we have a collaboration with non-governmental organizations, to offer digital courses, in collaboration with Open classrooms. These courses build a kind of skeleton that allows the individual concerned to confidently approach the new digital position.
How to avoid biases in recruitment, career management, and compensation?
To avoid recruitment biases in a process of implementing cognitive or augmented intelligence, it is already important to have a mass of historical data, to organize and process it well to avoid cognitive bias as much as possible. For a Human Resources Director, there are two areas in which artificial intelligence can bring real added value. The first is talent management: it's about retaining them and giving them fulfilling external opportunities. On the other hand, concerning the management of skills throughout the employee's life, for example, at IBM, we are setting up a virtual coach that allows people to train with highly interactive tools, but also to experiment and play with technologies.
So what will be the place of artificial intelligence in 5 years?
In the IBM Research Department we have the “Five in Five”, that is to say the 5 innovations that will cause technological upheavals in the next 5 years. These upheavals will be democratized for two reasons. On the one hand, a better understanding of natural language, and on the other hand, a correction of cognitive biases, which will be deployed thanks to the Cloud - essential for having universal access to data, and Quantum - a new form of computing that allows millions of data to be exploited, while remaining extremely vigilant about the computing power used.
