Service of the future: opportunities and risks

    Hello, my name is Andrey Popov, I work at Raiffeisenbank as a CIO.


    A couple of weeks ago, a colleague and I (hello, claxton !) Attended a Google I / O conference . While the topic is still hot and relevant, I will share with you my impressions and observations. I won’t talk about hard-core technologies - you can watch it on the I / O channel . Purely personal IMHO.



    Future directions



    This year, the focus of attention was declared artificial intelligence. In a variety of forms and methods of implementation, but absolutely all services were permeated with them - from “smart” voice recognition to behavioral analysis of user actions. We saw a future in which communication with machines becomes more and more similar to communication with people, and you can receive and process any information about the user according to mail, search queries, our photos and videos, payments in Android Pay, actions on social networks, etc. .P. So far this discussion is at a fundamental level. But we understand that the next stage is applied, and what sounded like a concept today will change the market landscape tomorrow. So what awaits us?



    Google-is-ai-first


    From-Mobile-First-to-AI-First


    Disassemble and sell



    All changes and “skills” of services presented at the conference solve two problems: comfort for the user and new business opportunities. For example, Google showed how they smarter their Photo app. Now it distinguishes people, compiles it better from a series of photographs of history, tracks where it happened, suggests modifying certain photos to make them look better. It would seem obvious functions, but around them you can build completely new solutions. In particular, to extract any data from the photo - to collect information about purchases from photo receipts, from vacation photos about locations, and more. At first glance, it is convenient, first of all, for the user. But in fact, it is interesting for a business that will get access to this information and use it for analysis, for a quality offer to the client.


    One-TPU


    Nice robot to talk to


    Google clearly showed how over the year the approach to dialogue between the machine and the person has qualitatively changed.
    Much of what we previously could do only in the form of buttons and mechanistic commands is today being translated into a plane of much more natural communication. Machines better understand text queries, can respond to various words, and not just a fixed set of commands, even understand how the conversation is going. For example, Google introduced a new version of an answering machine in Gmail. A year ago, it was a rather strange service. Now he is tracking the communication chain in correspondence and  offers answers that, at least in the English version, looked out of place - in the style of communicating with a specific addressee and in the context of the topic under discussion.


    A similar level of humanization of the machine was presented at a  lecture on the creation of voice interfaces . Now our typical IVR sounds like a robot, reacts like a robot - only to specific commands. Communication with him is not very attractive for a person, since you need to memorize commands, adapt to his speed of reproduction and perception. This is not a dialogue. Communication with a machine that responds only to commands was painful. Now, like the Gmail answering machine, the voice assistant can understand words from the context, perceives equivalent phrases - and the user has the feeling that this is normal communication. This is a story that can also affect the business, the development of remote service channels, the work of call centers, the expansion of the functionality of chat bots regarding consulting clients.


    Faces-of-google-ml


    Threat to banks DETECTED


    On the one hand, Google tried to position all of these services as a well-thought-out system in which all components are put together in a beautiful mosaic, intertwined, complementing each other. You see it as really something big that will come for us for all, will create a new level of comfort and opportunities.


    But at several sessions they talked about this in the refraction to creating applications, showed how, using this ecosystem, Google can elegantly and naturally do the work of collecting information about you for you, engage in cooperation and sell products to him so that he comes back again. If you take it abstractly, it looks really cool to the user. But from the position of the banking market, this is already perceived as a challenge and even a threat. Google, of course, does not want to be a bank. But through the tools that they give developers of end applications, they can create ecosystems that, without directly conflict with banks, can change their role very much. The bank runs the risk of being in the margins: from those who create value and serve customers, turn into those who simply process payments.


    Will the situation develop in such a scenario? A matter of time and how banks adapt to new conditions. Such a risk did not arise now, much was said about it. But it was at this event that it became clear how large technology companies would attack the financial industry. Previously, discussions went on whether Apple, Facebook, Google, will open its bank. Now it’s clear that the path is completely different - the ecosystems they create can simply force banks to second roles in the process of communication with the client. For example, on June 5, Apple at WWDC announced transfers between Apple Pay users - an illustration of the ecosystem (iMessage + Apple Pay) as a kind of challenge for banks.


    Mocktails-at-io


    New threats - new opportunities


    On the other hand, I see this as an opportunity. We can use the same tools, the same platforms and solutions that Google offers application developers. So, we get access to this analytics, and the opportunity to understand who this user is, who is also our potential or existing client.


    This story did not scare me. She outlined for us a new field, which will still have a lot of movement, many new fights. We have entered a very interesting new phase of technologies that create for us, as for the classical industry, a new danger, but also a new opportunity. You just need more and better work.


    Postscript: an international organization


    This was my first time at IT conferences of this magnitude. There is not a single professional event in Russia in our industry that would bring together thousands of participants over three days. The organizers thought of everything to make the guests comfortable, even to such “trifles” as possible burns and dehydration from the hot California sun: in addition to the fact that each participant’s welcome bag contained sun protection cream, dispensers with san block and drove rickshaws with water tanks.


    Raiffeisen-Logo-At-IO


    The technical organization was expectedly flawless. But I especially liked the variety of formats: in addition to standard lectures and discussions, there were laboratories where participants were given the opportunity to receive information in practice. A new format of sessions for me is “office hours”. Imagine you came to your colleague with your question for discussion, but the colleague is an expert from Google. In fact, this is an opportunity to get advice in a democratic format of a dialogue between colleagues. Everyone who came could find a form convenient for themselves. We will definitely use this experience in our events.


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