Winning with Generative AI: Real-world Case Studies beyond RPA for Business Automation

Please welcome a partner session with Cognitos [Music] [Music] Shall we start Not everybody kind of settle in Hey guys can you hear us in the back Sweet cool all right start us off show Of hands how many of you are Developers Cool okay I have good news and bad news Good news is that your job is gonna get Much easier very soon Bad news is that the people who didn't Raise their hands might take a job So I'm Benny Gill founder and CEO of Cognitos and I've been a developer like You guys for 30 years And learned a bunch of languages built a Bunch of products And three years ago I was taken aback by a question a Teenager learning python asked me he Said This computer Why is it not as smart as Alexa And I was like first of all that Question doesn't make sense because it's Like But it's like what does it mean you know What it meant it's like the thing in the Kitchen is much smarter than this thing That is making me type python And like but both are computers so where Are we missing the link and anyway so

That's what Started this journey um I realized that After so many decades of us like seven Decades we've been working as a society Forcing humans to learn the language of Machines You're just doing it wrong You know humans want the machine to Speak their language why are we forcing Us so this is like Dark Ages In the Dark Ages literacy was very low Today we are at computer science Literacy of 0.5 percent in the world and It isn't improving no amount of you know Coaxing people to go into school and Learn stuff it's not going to happen We're in the Dark Ages One in 200 people know how to teach a Computer something new to do yet all of Humanity depends on computers you have One computer in your hand all day long You depend on it All businesses If they have to change a single thing They have to change something a computer Does So imagine the 100 dependency On computers and yet a fraction of People who raise their hands able to Make that change in the world that is Dark Age so you have to get out of the Dark Age the only way is not to develop Another language and teach people we

Already have that language natural Language that's what we want to build We have to make sure there are no Developers in it Everybody else who didn't raise their Hands should be able to do stuff And this is where I felt that Jim who is A CIO third year experience in the Industry where I have deeply saying I'm In the Dark Ages no okay I just want to Clarify that you will teach us about all The complexity in supply chain And it has to deal with that so Why don't you talk about what has been Your experience Um in the last 30 years what have you Seen And you know what do we need to do about It sure yeah so Um as Penny just said I've spent 30 Years developing I.T systems in the Global supply chain space and Before covid most of you never heard of Supply chain or Logistics like I would Go out to dinner explain what I did Nobody cared and once we hit through Covid everybody wanted to talk about Supply chain why are all those vessels Sitting off of Long Beach and Um and so you know the the challenges of Trying to bring together all of the Information Across the supply chain to understand Where product is at any given moment is

Still very very challenging and so you Know from the um from the standpoint of Trying to to bring this information Together I'll give you a great example Think about the airline compared to International Transportation so those Big ocean containers that bring all the Product in that you're buying Compared to an airline you go on to Kayak or United and you say where's my Plane or when's it going to arrive or Land uh and you'll get the same answer In each of those apps In Global Logistics that's not the case We'll get information so our company Century we're a global logistics Provider our job is to be at every Origin Port around the world with the People the warehouses the technology we Have a platform called visiv that Manages all of the supply chain Processes so so we've got to be there to Orchestrate all of that but we're Dealing with these challenges today and It's still happening where You don't know necessarily when a vessel Is going to arrive at a port you could Look on three different sites and get Three different answers and so while Earlier today we've heard all different You know conversations around the AI and Tech there's still a lot of challenges In the industries especially in supply Chain to really apply this technology

And so Vinnie and I are going to talk a Bit more about this now but the Technology and what cognitos is building Is is is empowering us to be able to Bring all of that data together in a Much easier State uh tell me about In your business I mean there's so many Things like when somebody manufactures Something in China and shows up on my Doorstep there's so many pieces in the Middle and humans are there pushing Paper sometimes and so how much of Manual labor is involved in your Business and why is that the case yeah It's it's still substantial and so If you were to look on LinkedIn there's A few companies out there that would say They've disrupted the whole industry and Solved it it is not the case Um the problem is there's thousands and Thousands of players so we manage Imports for some of the largest Retailers e-commerce players Amazon QVC Specialized bikes people like that and They're all dealing with many many Thousands of vendors you know hundreds Of Transport providers and everybody's Talking in their own language in essence So you could have a standard document Like a bill of lading to move these Goods but each of those providers has a Different variation of that document and So we've tried to apply just straight OCR to that in the past but when you've

Got so many variations it doesn't make Sense and so the solution previously has Always been to apply people to it And so offshore teams or teams in Asia That would actually look at these Documents and make sense of them and so Yeah so that's what we've been dealing With as an industry is just The lack of standards and the so many Players So I'll tell you from my experience in Software what the way software is Evolved is you have like a happy path You know okay this is what I want to do And you don't like too many variations Um you write it and then anytime you Find a one case that's the edge case you Forgot you put it in the code and all That and slowly the code gets more and More complex But in industry like yours it that even That is not viable then that's why Humans are coming in so the question is Why are humans better than machines At dealing with all this variation so I'll give you an analogy To make the point clear and that is Where technology is going and that's What we are trying to bring Take the case of a pilot pilot of an Airplane The program they get is the flight plan And this is what I want to do and the Pilot looks at that and says okay good

Gets into the plane And starts flying the plane now Many things can happen many things can Go wrong imagine how many edge cases are There in an airplane there's a big fat Book That the pilot knows that it can open Anytime something is blaring or whatever If that book doesn't have the solution You call the control tower the control Tower cannot help you land on the Hard Sun right The pilot knows how to deal with this Stuff If a developer was doing that this is How it would go you get a flight plan And say oh this you know if if one Engine is wrong you know not functioning You need to do x y z so it's like start The engine or if the engine is not Working do that that code gets inserted Okay and now another thing happens that Code gets uncertain over time these Million different things that can happen Is entering your flight plan And the developers saying and I have Done it and then somebody comes and says From the business side say you know what Hey I want to change the flight plan and The devil is like what so I have put in A million lines of code now you want to Change it and that's the problem in it Today business processes are actually Simple

That's the flight plan I give I want to Process and invoice a bill of lading a Purchase order coming in onboard a new Employee you know I want to put this Thing in my CRM simple stuff But the Infinite combination of things That can fail is where the developers Come in and they put in a lot of effort And it gets more and more complicated Over time it just gets harder and harder So what are people doing so you say Let's have humans do it there are Hundreds of thousands of people today That are doing things manually And now we're sitting in the beginning Of getting out of these dark ages where Humans don't have to do these boring Stuff because some developer does not Want to do stuff properly you know in This proper manner I was thinking you Know what's the solution The solution Is what we do in the flight plan or even In my car there's a manual The happy path is in English step one Step two step three you want to change Your oil step one step two step three Yeah I mean if something bad happens Your car is on fire I mean I don't I'm Not gonna put it there right that's in Troubleshooting guide So we need a system for automation where The main procedure is first of all in English so a business person can come

And say I want to change the plan my Flat plan is different they should be Able to read what it is and change it With all this generative Air Technology We built up interpreter for natural Language That can run English as if it was code So that's one thing you need we have That second thing is this interpreter Needs to be different than any other Interpreter that's been built in the Last 70 years where it says if there is A problem that unforeseen thing instead Of blaming the developer and say hey you Need to go to school and think you know Think more carefully before writing code It pauses and says Let me look up the troubleshooting guide And maybe in the troubleshooting guide For this scenario some business person Told me what to do and I'm going to Execute that code now once I've done That I come back and I continue so that Kind of interpreter is needed and once You do that you are enabling this next Generation of automation languages and Technology so you know many decades ago We jumped from Punch Cards Assembly Language to symbolic languages like COBOL and Fortran all of C C plus plus That is a big jump Now we are sitting at another Revolution Where we are going from these Deterministic very hard-coded languages

Computer languages which only very few People in the world understand to Natural language as a means of Automation given this new kind of Interpreter that comes in and helps People doesn't force people to think up Front like when I'm coming up with my Plan for my business process I don't Have to think about the million things I Can fail And million is an understatement I mean In in real life if I say go walk from Here to that door infinite number of Things can come in my way right but if I If you force me to write a program I'll Write a very simplistic program right But humans handle this complexity on the Fly so we need to build build a system That does that and the moment you do That now you enable Automation in Businesses That can go beyond what uh traditional Automation did so that's what we are Saying what's your experience in this Space yeah let me just take it back to The tech side for a minute so when I Think about enterprise software Development what you were saying before About the user guide is is really true So that the software developers end up Building more and more complex code and So when something goes wrong now you've Got to raise a ticket to go figure out What the code does before you can even

Start to solve it right and so you've Got this iterative Loop going on that's Going back and forth between the Business the business just wants a Simple thing I just want to change this Right and and yet they've got to go Through this whole cycle to understand Okay what was it to begin with what do I Need to do and so so Benny I think you Know what you're talking about is this Idea of being able to encapsulate that And and have this separate layer that The business can interact with so the it Organizations can develop these Applications and then the business can Tweak or adjust how these applications Run and and See it and have it documented so that They can go back because what happens if Person number one makes that change and Then somebody new comes into that job Right there's no way how do they know What was going on where's that manual It's there it's in this technology to be Able to come back and see oh here's all The things we did and for me that's Critical because you know we have Hundreds of customers every customer's Supply chain is special and unique and In their minds it's perfect And so as a logistics provider I got to Figure out how to make it perfect right And so this allows my business users and Before this technology we were trying to

Train the business users to be Developers hey you've got to learn how To write SQL or you've got to learn how To you know understand you know c-sharp So you can know what this this code is Actually doing that's crazy right and so What you're talking about is being able To open that up so that you've got an English engagement like a language Engagement with the application no Different than we have on our phones Today just in an Enterprise class Yeah I mean people are using natural Language and kitchen hey Alexa hey Siri Do stuff in businesses you should be Able to say here is my process document Today what people do is take that Document and give it to somebody on IIT Side you have to go implement it IT guy Says okay maybe I need to get an RPA too Or some other kind of Automation and now I drag and drop and create these widgets I mean before it existed the business Guy would talk to another human and say Hey this is what I want to do this is The document there's no dragging and Dropping there's like natural language And thing the the difference between man And machine is machine likes to crash And burn and blame the developer yeah The human will say hey You didn't tell me about this what's the You know what should I do in this case And that could be during run time that's

Extremely powerful because it takes the Burden of thinking up front away from The business user because business user Really I mean doesn't want to think like A developer right you just want to you Know this is what we need to do and when The problem happens the business user Extremely smart at addressing that they Have a lot of experience we need a Platform that allows that to do and when You think about that too The hardest part from a developer's Standpoint and I started as a developer Too many many years ago is Is that last 20 that last ten percent Right like that's where all the Complexity lies and so with this Technology you can do the 80 and then Leave that last 20 so that the business User can Define how to do this and so Like when we're working with this Technology for Um for document transformation optical Character recognition it can be really Hard to program for all these different Variations of a document but if you can Put it in front of that operator that Business person and say tell me where This is and then as a technology I'm Going to learn that and start using that It's much easier than having a developer Try to tell the machine that yeah this Is basically We need to humanize computers I mean

That's the fundamental thing I mean we Hear a lot about generative AI What's it Gonna do I mean that's it's producing Text like humans but can it act like a Human and that's the Next Generation Where we are going and I feel that not Just in supply chain but all businesses That have paperwork which obviously as Long as there's government there will be Tips And they're forced to do it And there are always edge cases the CFO Says yes this is the rule by the way for This particular deal there's an Exception because we want to do it this Way there's always exception in whether It's Finance whether it's HR legal I.T What we need to do is to enable the Folks on the business side who know what To do when there's an exception with the Tool that they can control so they're Getting more efficient at the same time The cost on I.T like Jim your team right Should not grow exponentially is Actually the iit's job is governance Security you know all the connections That's setting it up and just to talk About that the corporate governance side So we're enabling these business users To adapt the application but we're doing It in a platform where we can still Manage and control it and see it what's The alternative right now if you walk Into just about any Enterprise

Organization they get 80 of the way There and then it's Excel or it's some Other technology not technology but some Other solution end user Computing Solution that some wizard came up with And the organization doesn't know exists Right so what we're what we're talking About here is cognitos enabling the Business user with the power to be able To make the change that they need to do To run their operations run their Business but still give the corporate Governance that you've got it in one Place right Jim so tell me last question For you So this is the state today where do you See your industry going in three to five Years yeah it's interesting like I said Earlier that there's been a lot of talk Of of disruptors in our space and and I I don't honestly think it's happened yet And I think what we're seeing now with Generative Ai and AI in general will Start to enable that these challenges Aren't going away that what I talked About earlier about you know multiple Providers telling you different things About vessels or all these different Document formats they're not going to be Fixed overnight you know there's always Going to be this this need to translate And integrate data and to adapt to Everybody's unique supply chain and you Can look at that in any business and say

That same thing your customer is always Right you've got to figure out how to Adapt to them right and so I think Through these Technologies now we can Start to to really use them to empower Those business users and we don't have To teach them how to write SQL or how to Write code to accomplish that yeah that Makes sense so Um any last thoughts on what will you do With extra time you get I'll be out on my mountain bike Somewhere racing somewhere in Virginia But like how about you you've got 38 Seconds to tell us what is the next Three to five years of uh well I think You know AI is changing the game Um Everybody who can talk to a human and Teach the human something new to do will Think of themselves as a developer going Forward because now machines are Becoming more like humans so if you can Program quote-unquote a human you can Program a computer no difference And what that does is accelerates Innovation at least 100x because today There are only 25 million developers in The world so all Innovation is funneled Through that narrow thing and of course That's why they get a lot of money And you know it's unfair but at the same Time the rest of the world has all the

Ideas so imagine short circuiting that Like if you have an idea you can talk to A computer change Whatever the computer does you can Create your own business run as fast as You want that's going to happen we are At the verge of that happening that's a Big disruption but at the same time we Have to make sure we do it in a safe way So humans have always have to be in Control of what's happening the way you Be in control is you can you can read What the machine is going to do Readability of code is the most Important thing that we have in our Hands even if the code was generated by AI The human has to read it and approve it And say okay I like this this will run And when this the human says this will Run it's running on an interpreter That's not going to guess its way not Going to put in biases and Hallucinations that's the future that we Are aiming for Thank you all for your time thank you Everybody [Music]