Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Okay, perfect transition to
Speaker 1: get to our next guest, because we're talking about the
Speaker 1: increased energy usage that we've seen a lot of that
Speaker 1: has to do with AI. Check out all the news
Speaker 1: about AI just in the last couple of days, Carol.
Speaker 1: Lots of headlines. Apple rolling out this five hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty nine dollars iPhone five hundred and ninety nine dollars
Speaker 1: excuse me, iPhone sixteen eight with an AI bid for growth.
Speaker 1: Microsoft unveiling AI tools that can create video game scenes
Speaker 1: that would normally have to be programmed and animated by
Speaker 1: a human. It's a model it built using data collected
Speaker 1: from Xbox gamers and their controllers.
Speaker 2: There's so much going on, and don't forget this comes
Speaker 2: after the big news earlier this week. We talked about this.
Speaker 2: Mira Muradi, the former chief CTO over an Open Ai,
Speaker 2: launching a new AI startup. And then you had open
Speaker 2: ai co founder Ilias a Skiver raising more than a
Speaker 2: billion dollars for his startup at evaluation of over thirty
Speaker 2: billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Okay, lots of money coming into this and G two
Speaker 1: Patel is on top of all of it. He's Executive
Speaker 1: VP and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, where he's charged
Speaker 1: with making sure that Cisco's portfolio works in the world
Speaker 1: of AI. He joins us from Silicon Valley G two.
Speaker 1: Where do you see Silica see Cisco's place in this
Speaker 1: new world of AI?
Speaker 3: You know the way that we think about this. Firstly, Carolynton,
Speaker 3: thank you for having me on the show. And you know,
Speaker 3: if you look at the way that the world is
Speaker 3: evolving right now, it's it's moving really fast. But if
Speaker 3: you look back at the gold Rush, think about Cisco's
Speaker 3: position over here is we're going to provide the infrastructure
Speaker 3: and the safety and security guard rail so that organizations
Speaker 3: can actually use AI scalably in the market. And if
Speaker 3: you think about a common sentiment that you have right
Speaker 3: now in the market, and we've done a study to
Speaker 3: actually prove this as well, there's an overwhelming majority of
Speaker 3: companies where the CEOs are very excited about the possibilities
Speaker 3: of AI, but virtually all of.
Speaker 4: Them feel very underprepared.
Speaker 3: In fact, the study that we did, we found that
Speaker 3: ninety seven percent of the CEOs that actually we're pushing
Speaker 3: AI projects that we're really excited about it only one
Speaker 3: point seven percent of them felt fully prepared, and I
Speaker 3: totally get it. I mean, this is a it's a
Speaker 3: very fast moving market. People have to kind of think differently,
Speaker 3: and so that's an area where we feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: having preparedness and infrastructure, making sure that safety and security
Speaker 3: don't become impediments for the adoption of AI, and having
Speaker 3: the skills.
Speaker 4: Gap get really addressed are the three.
Speaker 3: Big challenges that most organizations have that we at Cisco
Speaker 3: want to try to go out and help our customers
Speaker 3: with CEE two.
Speaker 2: One thing I think about is, you know, there's the
Speaker 2: idea of move fast, break things, get it. There's also well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, we want to see where the dust
Speaker 2: settles when it comes to AI a little bit because
Speaker 2: we're at this point two more than two years in
Speaker 2: and of just the euphoria and the build and the spend,
Speaker 2: and now we want to see, okay, what do we
Speaker 2: get for our money? Is there a little bit maybe
Speaker 2: of that going on that there are executives, especially if
Speaker 2: smaller mid sized companies, who are saying, we got to
Speaker 2: kind of hold off until we really understand how do
Speaker 2: we monetize this.
Speaker 3: Yes, if you take a step back and broadly, like,
Speaker 3: if we like to take a look at what's happening
Speaker 3: in the market, there's only two kinds of companies that
Speaker 3: are going to exist in the market. There's a first kind,
Speaker 3: which is going to get highly dexterous with the use
Speaker 3: of AI, and the second which is going to be
Speaker 3: you know, struggling for relevance. Now, if you look at
Speaker 3: the great ones, majority of them are getting slowed down
Speaker 3: because of a few very foundational reasons. The first one is,
Speaker 3: you know, safety and security gets to be a big concern,
Speaker 3: especially for large regulated organizations. They want to make sure
Speaker 3: that they tread carefully on that front. And as you
Speaker 3: have things like deep seak and you know, the cost
Speaker 3: of models gets to be lower and lower, and the
Speaker 3: cost curve goes down precipitously, you're going to have more
Speaker 3: and more models that are out there. And these models
Speaker 3: by definition are unpredictable, and we've found that it's pretty
Speaker 3: easy to jail break these models, and so that safety
Speaker 3: security concern is a real one.
Speaker 4: The second area is that.
Speaker 3: People just aren't quite equipped for going out and making
Speaker 3: sure that the infrastructure is ready for AI. And then
Speaker 3: third one is this notion of skills, and if you
Speaker 3: think about skills, I personally believe that staying on the
Speaker 3: sidelines is not going to help you go up the
Speaker 3: learning curve. So you have to jump in and you
Speaker 3: have to jump in the fray and make sure that
Speaker 3: you're starting to take some projects and learn from those
Speaker 3: projects and have these practical experiences as a company so
Speaker 3: that you get a better feel, a better intuition of
Speaker 3: what's happening in AI and what it's going to take
Speaker 3: to succeed. But just staying on the sidelines, I think
Speaker 3: is a really bad strategy that's going to let others
Speaker 3: get ahead of you and you'll.
Speaker 4: Be left behind.
Speaker 1: One thing love to hear from folks in your position
Speaker 1: who are interacting with customers each and every day is
Speaker 1: try to get an understanding of where demand is, who's buying,
Speaker 1: what house spend is. When it comes to it, what
Speaker 1: can you tell us about the environment right now, So there's.
Speaker 4: No shortage of demand signal on AI right now.
Speaker 3: In fact, what's happening is there's a lot of money
Speaker 3: in from different parts of it that are going into AI.
Speaker 3: And then the question becomes, what are the use cases
Speaker 3: where AI is being used really well? So if you
Speaker 3: think about some of the you know, really highly adopted
Speaker 3: use cases right now in large companies software coding and
Speaker 3: software development, in twenty twenty five, you will actually be
Speaker 3: able to have, you know, a meaningful amount of your
Speaker 3: code for a mid level engineer that'll actually be done
Speaker 3: by AI. And so that's an area that's going to
Speaker 3: be hugely you know growing. The second area that we've
Speaker 3: seen a fair amount of movement and momentum on is
Speaker 3: this notion of a contact center agent. Each one of us,
Speaker 3: Caroly and Tim, we all probably will spend about four
Speaker 3: to six weeks of our lifetimes on hold waiting for
Speaker 3: some agent. When you call a company and they need
Speaker 3: to make sure that they actually solve your problem. That's
Speaker 3: an enormous waste of time for humanity at large. And
Speaker 3: I think there's going to be ninety to ninety five
Speaker 3: percent of these calls will be addressed with a voice
Speaker 3: agent that is going to be an AI agent, where
Speaker 3: you it'll sound just waiting.
Speaker 1: Really, I'm really still waiting for that to happen.
Speaker 2: One that actually works and is I don't know, like
Speaker 2: I do feel like we've all gone through automated.
Speaker 1: Systems and representative representative et representative.
Speaker 4: That's how I do.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: So is it really going to be a very different experience.
Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the challenges that we've had
Speaker 3: if you think about, you know, calling an agent, and
Speaker 3: when you have something that's an automated agent, the reason
Speaker 3: it sounds so frustrating is that it sounds like a
Speaker 3: robot and you can't interrupt it. It doesn't understand tonality,
Speaker 3: it doesn't understand expression, doesn't understand the emotion that the
Speaker 3: customer might be feeling. And so what you're now starting
Speaker 3: to see happen is these voice agents are getting so
Speaker 3: sophisticated that you can interrupt its speed. It speaks at
Speaker 3: the speed that a human would be able to speak.
Speaker 3: You can redirect it, you can throw curveballs. It'll understand
Speaker 3: your tone if you're frustrated. It's not going to ask
Speaker 3: you silly questions when you're frustrated about things that are
Speaker 3: like how's the weather, how are you feeling, because that's
Speaker 3: not what the customer might be might might want to
Speaker 3: talk about. So those kind of dynamics will fundamentally change
Speaker 3: the take rate and adoption of this.
Speaker 4: So in the next two.
Speaker 3: Years, I assert that it'll probably be about eighty to
Speaker 3: eighty five percent of the inbound calls that come in
Speaker 3: will be able to be handled by an AI agent,
Speaker 3: and the ones that aren't handled by an AI agent,
Speaker 3: the AI agent will be smart enough to hand it
Speaker 3: off to a human agent with all the context, so
Speaker 3: you don't have to repeat your account number again and
Speaker 3: you don't have to go out and you know, kind
Speaker 3: of restate your problem just the way that we actually
Speaker 3: feel right now. And that's what gets the frustration levels high.
Speaker 3: And I'm I'm really hopeful about that that entire category.
Speaker 3: So that's the second category where you're seeing a fair
Speaker 3: amount of momentum, and then there's there's many more use
Speaker 3: cases and automated workflows that you'll start to just see
Speaker 3: get more and more proliferated throughout the entire corporate landscape.
Speaker 2: Well don't judge me, G two, but I just started
Speaker 2: really playing with chat Gipt and I came in and
Speaker 2: I was like kind of blown away. I came in
Speaker 2: one morning like, Tim, you've got to start playing with You're.
Speaker 1: Saying you soon you're going to be paying two hundred
Speaker 1: bucks a month for the agent future.
Speaker 4: I see it.
Speaker 2: Everything's a monthly faith.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you folks have tried out this operator.
Speaker 3: It is unbelievable what it can do because.
Speaker 1: A month version, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's it's the two hundred dollars a month version. And
Speaker 3: by the way, the interesting part is they're losing money
Speaker 3: on the two hundred dollars a month, which tells you
Speaker 3: the amount of impact and the amount of adoption rate.
Speaker 4: That is most people think it's bad. I think it's
Speaker 4: a really.
Speaker 3: Good sign for EI because there's no shortage of people
Speaker 3: wanting to use this. They're solving a real problem. So
Speaker 3: you can literally tell Carol, tell this agent, Hey, I
Speaker 3: want to go out for a movie with my spouse
Speaker 3: tonight and I want to make sure that I can
Speaker 3: have dinner. Can you go find me a dinner reservation.
Speaker 4: And I'll just do it for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, listen, come back soon. I really would like to
Speaker 2: continue this conversation with you. Really enjoyed it. G Two Patel,
Speaker 2: executive vice president and chief product officer over at Cisco,
Speaker 2: joining us from Silicon Valley