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How to Win the Global AI Race · EU-Startups Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 0: You are now listening to the EU Startups Podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 0: Hello, and welcome to this special episode of The EU Startup's podcast!
• 0:16
  Speaker 0: We're here at A-Five X Conference in Singapore by Mitation, National University of Singapore.
• 0:23
  Speaker 0: Throughout these next few days we'll be chatting about innovation funding and the developing bridge between Southeast Asia and Europe.
• 0:31
  Speaker 0: Not to mention, The Singapore Defense Tech Hackathon whose winner is going show up at our very end of this series in a special episode.
• 0:38
  Speaker 0: So I hope you're looking forward to hear us talking about challenges, innovation And how we are all comparing when it comes to localized markets such as Asia, South East Asia and even global challenges not to mention lessons from each other.
• 0:57
  Speaker 0: Thank you very much for joining me on this very special and first episode of the series that we're going to be doing here, for The EU Starbs Podcast.
• 1:04
  Speaker 0: It's a pleasure to have you one!
• 1:05
  Speaker 0: And
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for having us
• 1:08
  Speaker 0: with us today.
• 1:09
  Speaker 0: Great!
• 1:09
  Speaker 0: So before I get into questions which...I know you've got a tight schedule so i do want it started.. I was just hoping if could give some background as to who are your experiences?
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: As you said, I'm Orna Berry.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I have a PhD in computer science and two lives.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: One life is related to my professional career And the other one is about my family and personal affiliation with lots of volunteering which covers normally were neither the government nor an organization cover, and I find very important.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: So from a professional perspective, very early on, I moved from research to industry.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And I was in industry, I wasn't entrepreneur, I was chief scientist of the Israeli Government.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: actually It is to cover the industry research and development funded by government.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: There's three major funding agencies for research in development, academia defense and industry.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I was industry And then they went back to work For ten years with my investors.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: My company was sold to a German conglomerate, Siemens.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: And then I was hired to become a corporate vice president and the general manager for Israel's Center of Excellence for EMC later acquired by Dell.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: In this entering period, I also got cancer which was considered to be terminal and an interesting work done with my doctors.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: They came to a resolution that I'm talking about almost eleven years later almost three years with the research and development authorities in Israel to form national programs in quantum science, technology and artificial intelligence data science.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And then I joined Google Cloud.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: So that's where i am today at the office of CTO.
• 4:03
  Speaker 0: No, I even came across a Wikipedia page of you.
• 4:06
  Speaker 0: So you have quite a lot of experience when it comes to all this and its actually in common for the guests that we really have such as storied pedigree especially because many conversations are usually with people who either get started or just found success but bring so much kind of an experience throughout these experiences.
• 4:27
  Speaker 0: I'm hopefully going to give it a very interesting conversation.
• 4:34
  Speaker 0: With that in mind, the first natural question when you're telling me about all this is how you've seen the innovation sector and kind of progress?
• 4:46
  Speaker 0: throughout the years, and now we live in this AI age.
• 4:50
  Speaker 0: And I kind of want to hear your thoughts on how you see it standing right now?
• 4:55
  Speaker 0: It can be when we're talking US or Israeli but a better look would be at global innovation landscape.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: So AI is pretty new In the sense that...it has several waves.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: where It started, I think with the Japanese fifth generation that machine were supposed to act on their own thinking about robots and otherwise.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: But really in the last few years was there emergence of infrastructure.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: one hand create the algorithms that exploit it in order to come closer to human intelligence.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: That's I think where it stands today and on the way.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: there are many, many issues because The more you count on machines ,the more You want the machines To do what you intended .You want them be secure.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: We have seen a In my early days of the career, networking evolve and networking are critical components.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Nobody talks a lot about networking per se but that's performance in cloud reliability or interconnection.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: you go into place where you don't have an internet connection gets you anxious.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: You need connectivity of all kinds.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: So you look at everything from the processing to common use applications, agents and what not.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: And this is an ample development that took quite a bit time From when we started connecting devices through is a transparent infrastructure.
• 7:11
  Speaker 0: And how do you see the challenge and just mentioned here, the infrastructure?
• 7:14
  Speaker 0: The challenge of infrastructure when it comes to things like data centers.
• 7:19
  Speaker 0: that's a big challenge for us in Europe right now and the European Union putting all this work into establishing more in data centers.
• 7:26
  Speaker 0: Of course there are certain public backlash even too but Do You Find That the Infrastructure Question Is A Big Bottleneck For AI?
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Infrastructure is always bottleneck.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: When you know what's the next generation that we want to establish, You build it first in terms of infrastructure, because you cannot do without.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: I think a great example for building fairly clean infrastructure is Finland and the Hamina data centers that... The First Generation was built with significant power based on wind And second generation also builds with the ability to distribute heat, so they'll discuss about fusion and atomic energy.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Variety discussions of where you get sources from the energy.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: then how do we translate it into data centers?
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Many places are using solar energy or using variety.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Solar, of course is only for the daytime and when sun is out
• 8:59
  Speaker 0: And from your work at Google cloud?
• 9:01
  Speaker 0: Is that something also kind of impacting in business?
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sure.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: like what i do it's not related to infrastructure that I have the infrastructure they need.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: So, I can deal with education and health or research on top without... The only one related to dealing all layers is security but thats it!
• 9:40
  Speaker 0: But the assumption has been correct, right?
• 9:41
  Speaker 0: You've assumed that infrastructure is in place and there's availability.
• 9:46
  Speaker 0: And it is!
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah but coming from where we shifted between mainframes to network connected computers back in the early eighties living through this I don't assume Everything and yes, I get distracted when they don't have an internet connection.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: It works
• 10:10
  Speaker 0: Okay And that kind of.
• 10:12
  Speaker 0: I want to pull back a little bit because you talked about Finland as a good example Of well infrastructure application.
• 10:19
  Speaker 0: So that makes me kind of curious about your thoughts out cuz he worked on national programs As well.
• 10:24
  Speaker 0: when it comes to these initiatives What makes or breaks?
• 10:28
  Speaker 0: A nation when it come's two their attitude towards
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: AI
• 10:33
  Speaker 0: cloud infrastructure?
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I think that we know the regulatory discussions because of fact, you put regulations.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: We talked about it.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: regulation and innovation do not go very well together.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, when you scale and it is a massive intrusion into all layers of life then you must be protective such that... ...you use with at least responsibility and explainability.
• 11:23
  Speaker 0: That's a big question isn't it?
• 11:25
  Speaker 0: us Europeans, I can't tell you how many founders i talked to that talk about regulation as being the main stoppage for them and a big reason why they might go to Silicon Valley over staying in Europe.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: So first of all people can go wherever they want uh... They could get a visa ,they can get investments, any talented person has high mobility And one of the issues that countries need to consider is fact, talented people have high mobility in this world.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: So I think... ...that the topic of guardrails isn't necessarily only in Europe.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: You hear about China and I haven't been to China in a while, but... But i'm sure that there are topics In china that manufacturers have To open up the government.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: And when you buy products outside of china People may want more privacy and less exposure Of their own.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: So..I think Wherever entrepreneurs work and invent, first of all the stage that is deep science is separated from regulation.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Once you come to develop a drug it needs to go through their approval process because You cannot be sure that it's safe, that its efficient.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: That you know exactly who to give the dog or not to give a dog?
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: It can kill people if they leave them their own dog!
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: So I think this same holds for software because software manages our infrastructure.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: so we want to build software that manages the infrastructure in way maintain it and control.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: So I think that a doesn't need to limit the imagination, It requires certain protocols per market segment you have put in order for good purposes.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I think the issue is, it's very difficult to understand ahead of time what a medication does.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Vioxx was invented for one thing used another and caused damage in an original discipline.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: eventually people stopped using even if in a orthopedic pains.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: So, you need to know where do live?
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: You make inventions but want use them responsibly.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Using it is also understanding what they
• 14:59
  Speaker 0: are doing.
• 15:01
  Speaker 0: And we've mentioned here the mobility of talent and I think that's another side of argument because Yes, founders entrepreneurs are mobile and we live in such a globalized world.
• 15:12
  Speaker 0: It's a lot easier right?
• 15:13
  Speaker 0: A European can come to Singapore, Singaporean can go the US.
• 15:17
  Speaker 0: this is all made easier And
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: it's recommended that everybody does because if you want to go to a market You don't even have any connections there not talk about knowing the pricing the need and variety of other issues, it's much harder to establish the ground level that if you go to a market that you have been there before.
• 15:49
  Speaker 0: But then what about the source of this supply chain?
• 15:53
  Speaker 0: Because there has to be an interest nationally speaking to make sure residents in these countries are the ones promoting their own local economies.
• 16:04
  Speaker 0: There has to be an argument there about kind of exporting talent and importing talent, how that can lead to problems.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: So I think many times for many entrepreneurs their roots are very important.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And i spent ten years in the states then came back to Israel.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: And when I came back to Israel, it didn't only come as a professional.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Back to Israel like...I came with the social responsibility and knew that what i'm going make sure is making contribution for state.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Indeed!
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: I spent time in public sector.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I spend time volunteering and in addition to having a professional career, you know?
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: To put food on the table.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And keep my brain working.
• 17:01
  Speaker 0: I hear that a lot actually!
• 17:03
  Speaker 0: There's this sense of national pride... ...that comes with successful entrepreneurs.
• 17:08
  Speaker 0: even if they've gone abroad or Silicon Valley or wherever it is Asia Many will return to their home countries in an effort to promote their own local economies and all that.
• 17:20
  Speaker 0: So, I mean from what you're saying then i'm understanding That is an important aspect of this talent supply chain.
• 17:27
  Speaker 0: Is maybe the exportation Of talent but them returning to Their countries To improve?
• 17:33
  Speaker 0: yes
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: yeah okay?
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: And sometimes You go for three years and Sometimes we go For ten years and sometimes they Go for twenty five years and you come back with a massive experience, potentially also the economical might to make others successful as well because that's commitment.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: And it is fun to see them going.
• 18:03
  Speaker 0: To shift your conversation here I do want to tap more into all your background.
• 18:08
  Speaker 0: when it comes to AI, when it come to deep tech.
• 18:11
  Speaker 0: All that development.
• 18:12
  Speaker 0: I'm curious to hear you thoughts on if there is something right now that worries or makes a question about the way AI is developing and speed at which its developing?
• 18:24
  Speaker 0: Because we've talked about regulation.
• 18:30
  Speaker 0: so...
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: You get into another ecosystem.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: that is not only the technology.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: The technology in hands of users, it's a question.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: so you want guardrails in place.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: when you count their users are not sufficiently knowledgeable or responsible to use responsibly.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: So that is where you care a lot about guardrails and part of guardrail's regulations, and regulations are part government but also parts verticals like the financial sector.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: so I personally think that AI is phenomenal.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I think, look a lot at education and for the first time this is mechanism that allows to build something very complex because when you use AI just accelerate well defined problem.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: it's one thing.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: When we used AI in order to be adaptive to different personas or different personalities, or different capabilities.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: It is an explosion in the positive sense that you're actually allowing suddenly people with different capabilities to have pretty similar opportunities because of the fact is not only converging on solving and summarizing something.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: It's also opening up, it has multiple channels to actually create the dialogue of what best for opportunity or student in this case, such that you can match and make more people much better professionally.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Much happier with a moment of their own that is different than
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: others.".
• 21:13
  Speaker 0: Okay well I think that's all we have time for today but i want to
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: thank you very.