Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Today, we
Speaker 1: are witnessed to one of those rare moments in history,
Speaker 1: the rise of an innovative technology with the potential to
Speaker 1: radically transform business and society forever. That technology, of course,
Speaker 1: is artificial intelligence, and it's the central focus for this
Speaker 1: new season of Smart Talks with IBM. Join hosts from
Speaker 1: your favorite Pushkin podcasts as they talk with industry experts
Speaker 1: and leaders to explore how businesses can integrate AI into
Speaker 1: their workflows and help drive real change in this new
Speaker 1: era of AI, and of course, host Malcolm Gladwell will
Speaker 1: be there to guide you through the season and throw
Speaker 1: in his two cents as well. Look out for new
Speaker 1: episodes of Smart Talks with IBM every other week on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts
Speaker 1: and learn at IBM dot com, slash smart Talks.
Speaker 2: Pushkin Hello, Hello, Welcome to Smart Talks with IBM, a
Speaker 2: podcast from Pushkin Industries, iHeartRadio and IBM. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2: This season, we're continuing our conversations with new creators visionaries
Speaker 2: who are creatively applying technology and business to drive change,
Speaker 2: but with a focus on the transformative power of artificial
Speaker 2: intelligence and what it means to leverage AI as a
Speaker 2: game changing multiplier for your business. On this special bonus
Speaker 2: episode of Smart Talks, Tim Harford, host of the Pushkin
Speaker 2: podcast Cautionary Tales, sat down for a conversation with two
Speaker 2: leaders forging new ways of working together encouraging collaboration to
Speaker 2: better serve clients. Shrineyvassan Bentickarajan is the Director of Global
Speaker 2: Partner Business, supervising Azure Data and AI as well as
Speaker 2: Azure OpenAI at Microsoft. He's a leading thinker behind digital transformation,
Speaker 2: business growth, and strategic innovation. And Chris maguire is General
Speaker 2: Manager of the Global Microsoft Partnership for IBM Consulting. He
Speaker 2: is responsible for driving IBM Consulting strategic alignment and collaboration
Speaker 2: with Microsoft, bringing clients to technologies they need with a
Speaker 2: focus on hybrid cloud and AI. They talked to Tim
Speaker 2: about the efforts of IBM and Microsoft in the generative
Speaker 2: AI space. We're just at the beginning of understanding what
Speaker 2: generative AI can create for customers, businesses, and the broader world.
Speaker 2: This collaboration forward model will expand the impact of AI,
Speaker 2: allowing innovation to thrive. Let's dive in.
Speaker 3: Chris Schreeney, welcome both of you. Thank you so much
Speaker 3: for joining me. Tell me a little bit about your roles. Seney,
Speaker 3: maybe you first just tell me a little bit about
Speaker 3: what you do at Microsoft.
Speaker 4: So I have about twenty seven years of experience in
Speaker 4: the tech and consulting services industry, and in these twenty
Speaker 4: seven years, I've had the privilege of leading the charge
Speaker 4: and driving digital transformation, business growth, and strategic innovation for clients.
Speaker 4: And in my current role as at Microsoft, I managed
Speaker 4: the strategic partnership with IBM. I helped craft strategic quitions
Speaker 4: that align IBM's potential impact with Microsoft and did any
Speaker 4: value proposition.
Speaker 3: So, Chris, we've heard Schweney runs the Microsoft half of
Speaker 3: the partnership with IBM. I presumably you're on the other
Speaker 3: half of that partnership.
Speaker 5: Correct, correct, Yeah, about three years ago we decided to
Speaker 5: really go big with Microsoft as far as the chief partnership.
Speaker 3: So Microsoft and IBM are these giant aims in technology,
Speaker 3: very well known for decades. So why is it so
Speaker 3: important to have collaboration as well as competition in the
Speaker 3: enterprise generative AI space?
Speaker 5: It goes back to client first. Their needs have to
Speaker 5: be above everybody else's and if we're not meeting their needs,
Speaker 5: then we're not responsibly doing our job. And we have
Speaker 5: a platform. On the IBM tech side, Microsoft is a
Speaker 5: platform and we in the middle, as IBM consulting have
Speaker 5: the expertise to properly design and take the best interest
Speaker 5: of the client to heart and implement and help them
Speaker 5: get to whatever outcomes they're trying to get to, utilizing
Speaker 5: genera of AI to make better use of data and
Speaker 5: the investment they've made, and to properly scale. I mean,
Speaker 5: Microsoft has a unique approach to GENDERAI. They're doing desktop
Speaker 5: up so they have a great user base globally with
Speaker 5: all of their office products and other solutions that most
Speaker 5: people we use in the world today, so making general
Speaker 5: of AI available to them is fantastic. And then us,
Speaker 5: you know, we have a platform down approach at IBM,
Speaker 5: and if we do things right together, we'll meet in
Speaker 5: the middle and jointly help solve those clients problems.
Speaker 3: So just want to understand what this looks like. We're
Speaker 3: starting to discover that these AI systems actually it's possible
Speaker 3: to build lots of lots of different ones. There are
Speaker 3: different varieties that have different strengths different weaknesses. So from
Speaker 3: the point of view of a customer when they approach you,
Speaker 3: when you say, well, we've got this ecosystem, you've got
Speaker 3: access to various models. How what does that look like?
Speaker 3: Is it like an app store or is it something
Speaker 3: a bit different.
Speaker 4: Certain models are good for certain use cases. Now I
Speaker 4: think you might have heard that earlier. We used to
Speaker 4: hear about large language modess lms. Now the smaller language
Speaker 4: model also are becoming popular because it can do certain
Speaker 4: things very effectively. It just trained on certain domains and
Speaker 4: also respond faster.
Speaker 3: So a small language model is basically just we're going
Speaker 3: to train you on I know, the manuals for all
Speaker 3: our technical products, so you really understand if people have
Speaker 3: a problem with our product.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it could be for example, trained specifically for healthcare domain, right,
Speaker 4: things like that, or it could also be trained for
Speaker 4: certain user profiles, right for the typical work that they do,
Speaker 4: for example in a call center or in a hospital.
Speaker 4: How the certain things can be done faster, right. The
Speaker 4: advantage of small language models is that it makes it
Speaker 4: possible to run on smaller machines, so you don't need
Speaker 4: large service and things like that.
Speaker 3: So what I'm hearing is that people are coming to
Speaker 3: you while they're coming to IBM and basically going, hey,
Speaker 3: we've heard about all this cool AI stuff and what
Speaker 3: do we do? Because of course that's that's where your
Speaker 3: starting point is because the technology is so new the.
Speaker 4: In fact, in fact, IBM did a Hapaton Global hackat
Speaker 4: on and this was the first of its kind that
Speaker 4: they did where they actually brought in the client teams
Speaker 4: also okay, so they said that, okay, let us see
Speaker 4: how we can actually ideate with the clients to solve
Speaker 4: their problems, right, and they came up with quick innovative
Speaker 4: use cases and some of these actually translated into projects
Speaker 4: that the implemented.
Speaker 3: Can you think of an example one of these projects
Speaker 3: that sticks in your mind?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So there's a client Wintershell where IBM actually co
Speaker 4: created a knowledge extraction too to help the field engineers
Speaker 4: to retrieve relevant insights from the vast knowledge baser. So
Speaker 4: Wintershall is an energy company and as part of their
Speaker 4: innovation effort Edwinterishal, they also did identified eighty new AI
Speaker 4: use cases.
Speaker 3: Craz if a corporate leader were to come to you
Speaker 3: and say, look, I'm sure Jeni AI is going to
Speaker 3: shake up my industry. It's going to be a competitive threat.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there are loads of opportunities as well, but
Speaker 3: I don't know how to start thinking about it. What's
Speaker 3: the basic advice that you you'd give them to orient
Speaker 3: themselves and the questions that they should be asking themselves.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, obviously it's our ability to get with
Speaker 5: a client and bring the relevant partners to the table
Speaker 5: to discuss the outcome that the client is trying to
Speaker 5: achieve and then design a solution. Because I mean, obviously,
Speaker 5: if you're you know, you want to make sure your
Speaker 5: your your money is well spent. And given that in
Speaker 5: the world of software everything has moved to a consumption
Speaker 5: model and you're only paying for what you use, you
Speaker 5: want to make sure you're getting the most efficient use
Speaker 5: out of those platforms. And you know, we at IBM
Speaker 5: Consulting have become extreme experts on advising clients how to
Speaker 5: do that. And you know, it's it's a great story
Speaker 5: now when we walk in together because over decades and decades,
Speaker 5: IBM and Microsoft have been there at the table as
Speaker 5: a trusted technology advisor and service provider.
Speaker 3: The theme of this season of Smart Talks is new
Speaker 3: Creators and that's you guys. Yeah, your new creators. So
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you both, maybe start with Chris,
Speaker 3: what do you see as the most creative part of
Speaker 3: what you do?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 5: I think it's it goes back to the ecosystem, but
Speaker 5: you know it's the age old saying two heads better
Speaker 5: than one, three heads better than two, on and on,
Speaker 5: and also that you know, what we like to say
Speaker 5: is the way we're doing our ecosmus one plus one
Speaker 5: equals three, especially when it comes to Microsoft.
Speaker 3: You know, generative aies never were very good at maths,
Speaker 3: were they so?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 3: Exactly, But they're creative so that's great.
Speaker 5: So it really is about solving clients real problems and
Speaker 5: using the very best of the technology that's available today
Speaker 5: to do that as fast as possible, and it get
Speaker 5: them to a where they're actually monetizing as fast as
Speaker 5: they can. It is really important that we take our
Speaker 5: part in this whole AI revolution very seriously and be
Speaker 5: very very responsible, and we take that job very seriously.
Speaker 5: And Microsoft is a very strong partner with us when
Speaker 5: we go into clients together.
Speaker 3: Shoney, what's creative about what you do.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So when I started my career, I was a software developer,
Speaker 4: so problem solving was one of the core competency that
Speaker 4: I had to work on. And that problem solving mindset,
Speaker 4: along with the industry knowledge that I gained over the years,
Speaker 4: help me identify the market trends, the consumer behavior, the
Speaker 4: disruptive technologies helped me come up with some creative ideas
Speaker 4: and solutions as part of my job.
Speaker 3: Chris Sheeney, thank you both very much.
Speaker 2: What an insightful conversation with Chris and Shreey shedding light
Speaker 2: on the efforts of IBM and Microsoft. Technologies like AI
Speaker 2: are complex and often difficult to scale without help. A
Speaker 2: partner ecosystem approach is crucial in the world of AI.
Speaker 2: By bringing together diverse expertise, collaboration can cater to a
Speaker 2: variety of industries, providing specialized solutions for unique challenges. As
Speaker 2: strategic partners, IBM and Microsoft aimed to guide enterprises through
Speaker 2: these challenges responsibly looking ahead. The possibilities opened by an
Speaker 2: ecosystem approach to AI are endless, from the integration of
Speaker 2: the tech into everyday devices in our pockets, all the
Speaker 2: way to its increased adoption in highly regulated intricate industries.
Speaker 2: A huge thank you is due to Chris and Trainey
Speaker 2: for sharing their expertise and insights. Smart Talks with IBM
Speaker 2: is produced by Matt Romano, Joey Fishground and Jacob Goldstein
Speaker 2: were edited by lydia Ji Being Caught. Our engineers are
Speaker 2: Sarah Buguaer and Ben Tolladay. Theme song by Gramoscope. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Andy Kelly, Kathy Callahan and the eight Bar
Speaker 2: and IBM teams, as well as the Pushkin marketing team.
Speaker 2: Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries
Speaker 2: and Ruby Studio at iHeartMedia. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
Speaker 2: listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 2: listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Glabwell. This is a paid
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