‘Cognitive is much more than artificial intelligence’

Back in the 1990s, when IBM was close to becoming irrelevant as technology moved from mainframes to personal computing, Louis Vincent Gerstner, the then CEO of the over 100-year old company, embarked on a transformational journey. Two decades later, current chief Ginni Rometty is on a similar journey.

With new technologies like mobility, cloud and artificial intelligence changing processes and systems, Rometty is in the middle of a transforming IBM to a solutions company. At the centre of her strategy is cognitive computing, which she believes will impact every sphere of our lives. BusinessLine was part of a select media round table where Rometty explained her strategy and how India fits into her scheme of things. Excerpts:

With your focus around cognitive technology, are you at the cusp of achieving a transformation that is something greater that what Louis Gerstner did in the 1990s?

It’s not about what has been achieved by an individual; it’s more about the industry. Each era of technology change has been driven by one technology. The difference now is that there are multiple things going on and they are happening in parallel. That does create the dynamics of change to be far more accelerated.

The change is being driven by all three – Big Data, Mobility and Cloud. It’s very different than in the past. What we are doing is to stop thinking of ourselves as a product and instead as a solution to problems.

Then as problems change, solutions can change. We are globally the largest scale implementer of design thinking and and agile methods and good amount of that is led by India here.

You are on the advisory committee of US President Donald Trump. How do you see his policy around visas and immigration?

The topic of jobs is a topic in every country. When it comes to things like visas, we at IBM use visa to fill short-term skill gaps. It’s a very small part of our employee base.

IBM has been built on diversity and we move our work force around the word. Clients expect us to bring skills wherever it is in the world to solve their problems. As for being part of the advisory committee, its both a responsibility and honour to be asked for advice by government leaders.

Every IBM CEO has advised leaders around the world. We cherish things like diversity, tolerance, inclusion. Our track record is second to none. The way to get progress in the world is to engage and to bring solutions. In cases where there are dilemmas between freedom to movement of people and security, there is always a trade off.

There are ways to make the world secure so that people can move freely. Engagement is a positive ..not on politics but on policies.

There are multiple technologies like cloud, artificial intelligence, machine learning and cognitive. How do you see all of these coming together?

Cognitive and cloud are two sides of same coin. Cognitive is much more than artificial intelligence (AI).

The difference is quite remarkable. AI is about helping with decision-making and cognitive is about reasoning. Cognitive is not about replacing jobs, its about augmenting what you and I do.

Cloud technology makes this ubiquitous, mobility will give it reach and cognitive will give it the content, and together it will give a profound impact.

You spoke earlier about the need for ‘new collar’ jobs instead of blue and white collar jobs in the new paradigm. What is IBM doing to re-skill people?

We have been investing in education in India for over two decades and are now looking at revamping that. We do a lot of re-skilling within our own company.

This year we are looking at picking about 50 universities on new curriculum. We are also looking at how to adapt Pathways to Technology (Ptech - a programme launched in the US for early college high schools) to India.

There are six other countries adopting this approach. You tell a school this is what the industry is looking for, so teach that curriculum. Industry provides mentorship and we offer internships. The results are phenomenal.

Some of the schools we have picked are from unprivileged sections. So yes we will work with universities in India to upgrade their curriculum so that the students are ‘hirable’.

While technology is great, the question here is what are you doing to localise it and deal with specific problems in countries like India?

IBM has R&D in India, which is one of the 12 in the world. Even our most advanced long-term research is done here. The reason we ended up moving research out is to be closer to the problem. How do you deal with more than a billion people and make available technology at affordable cost?

We have done some fantastic development to make technology accessible to all.

You mentioned that India is the fastest growing for IBM. Are there any specific opportunities you see here?

This is a country of developers. By 2020, India will have the largest community of developers worldwide. We are cloud platform company and want to give that platform to all small and medium businesses.

Second, it is about digitising companies and taking them to the next level of cognitive. Cognitive is India’s future. Third, it is about security. For every client I meet, I put security as number one on the list. You have to assume bad things will happen. We have a very large network security operations centre in India.