The impact of AI on commerce and the future of e-commerce

Speaker 1: 0:00
Hello everyone, thank you for tuning in Again. I am Kaylee Batesman, the content director at she Can Code, and today we are discussing the impact of AI on commerce and the future of e-commerce. I’ve got the amazing Jaina Kathari, global Chief Solutions Architect at IPG and the former Chief Technology Officer at MRM, with me today and she’s going to help me to explore the dynamic world of marketing technology platforms and the innovative strategies that propel brands forward in an increasingly competitive market. Welcome, jaina, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 0:34
Thank you for taking time out of your busy day. I know you are super busy. You travel a lot and you are a perfect example of one of those ladies that has a very busy role in technology and somehow still manages to balance work, life balance and family and everything else. So we’re dying to hear a little bit about your role on here and what you do, but also how you got into tech. So it would be a great place to start if we could hear a little bit about you and your background please.

Speaker 2: 1:05
Yeah, of course. I mean I wish I could tell you it was all planned and I knew I was going to do what I’ve been doing today, but I’ve had quite a pervy but interesting path. So I started my career in management consulting at KPMG. In fact I initially started in accounting and you know when you have points in your life where you quickly realize who you are and what you love. So I very quickly realized actually I don’t like to fit in a box and when you do a role such as in accounting or you’re a fear doctor or you are in a very niche, confined space and I very quickly realized I love to problem solve and I’m hugely curious and when someone tries to put guardrails around that you can’t fully problem solve. So anyway, I very quickly moved into the management consulting space in the early 2000.

Speaker 2: 1:55
And when you think about that time, so much of the change and transformation which is the practice I started my career in in consulting was coming from technology and I didn’t code. I was not a computer scientist at university. In fact I studied psychology, which is a whole nother story on why that was amazing. But all of the change was tech driven and I thought, gosh, actually I need to learn how to code and it wasn’t even a need. I want to learn how to code. So I actually learned in my early 20s, rather than that university In my own time did courses and so on. So my love for technology started early. But I was in consulting and leading a ton of change and transformation. And then I sort of thought to myself actually I keep learning about yourself. I like to go really deep into an organization and see the change through. So I jumped client side after about eight years and was at BP and at Vodafone, again leading technology driven change in transformation. Yeah, I was at BP at the oil spill times and there was never a bigger transformation that needed to happen for a company.

Speaker 2: 3:14
So I’ve sort of been in oil and gas and telco and I came into the advertising and marketing industry eight years ago and I think I found my home. And I always say nothing is forever, but I found my home because you know, back to not being in a box, the possibilities of technology and the impact it can have across an entire business needs deep creativity and deep curiosity. So when you think of our industry, people may think of campaigns and adverts and comms, but there’s such depth in the way that you think about technology and data and AI and commerce in our industry and I know we’re going to get into AI and that’s a big topic for today but the humanity and the creativity meeting technology is where I’ve just got you know passion and seen such great progress. So I found my way in a very curvy way from consulting to client side into this industry and the two roles you mentioned at the beginning. You know, chief Technology Officer of MRM was phenomenal because that was the absolute meeting of the possibilities of technology, and now just being promoted into IPG.

Speaker 2: 4:33
What I’m looking at is what do clients need and what are all the opportunities and problems for growth, and how do we then bring media and commerce and data and technology and creativity together to build those client solutions, looking forward and I love to look forward. So I’m very lucky I get to look out one, three, five years into what’s coming down the road and what we might start to build for clients. So I actually genuinely now don’t get to live in a box, I get to live everywhere, which is fantastic.

Speaker 1: 5:07
Yes, amazing Another. You know, something we just love hearing on here and love hearing at she Can Code is the different ways that people come into technology, and I mean I haven’t heard your story before. You hear so many different routes in and so many different opinions about what they thought that the tech sector was going to be like. I mean, you mentioned that your job is so creative. Did you think that at first about technology? I mean, when you learn to code, were you thinking actually I’m going to be stepping into a really creative industry? Or did you just start with thinking you know what? I just learned code and I’ll just start there?

Speaker 2: 5:45
Yeah, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I had no idea that you would get to be. I wanted. I like to make things. I still I love the craft. So whatever roles I occupy and whatever seniority they are, I actually like to meddle in the code and build things.

Speaker 2: 6:02
And so it came from there. I didn’t realise especially in terms of creative application and all of the emerging technologies that would be would really start to impact the world, like I mean. You know, did you think 20 years ago that you were going to be able to speak to a speaker or you were able to do all the things you were able to do on your phone? You know, like 2007 was that tipping point of the way you’d be able to travel with Uber, or the way you watch TV today and Netflix, like these are all things that you know were dreams, if you will, and all of that took that. They took humans to come up with that idea.

Speaker 2: 6:38
So, no, I had absolutely no idea and I knew this is interesting too. I knew it was going to be hard and I say that as a woman, right, and I’m a woman and I’m brown, and you can’t hear this through a podcast, but I’m five foot four. I looked really young for my age. I was female Indian and I was like, okay, this is going to be hard, but actually it’s going to be worth it, and it’s absolutely been worth it.

Speaker 1: 7:04
Yes, definitely. I can tell by your journey and also your passion for the company that you work at currently that has been so worth it to make it to a good company as well, that has really developed you in your career that you seem like you want to stay at.

Speaker 2: 7:20
Absolutely, absolutely do, and you know, just to share one more nugget, I had a baby 16 months ago and there were times when we wouldn’t get those opportunities, but I only came back from maternity leave seven, eight months ago and you know, here we are talking about this role. That really is a dream. So you know, the world’s moved on and it’s a good time, I feel, for women to code and women to be in technology.

Speaker 1: 7:48
Yes, I’m so pleased you mentioned that. I’ve had a few conversations on here with ladies who were so worried about going on maternity leave and they felt that it was career suicide and they were worried even in this day and age. They were worried about telling their managers that they were pregnant, that they needed to take a break, and so many ladies have said exactly the same experience as you, that actually I came back. I was promoted. It was actually the best thing that had ever happened.

Speaker 1: 8:15
My company now see me as somebody that’s turned up with a lot of new skills that I didn’t know I had from becoming a parent. And also it makes you more of a loyal employee. That is thinking, you know, I don’t want my day to change too much. I want to stay at a good company. You’re not that graduate that is thinking of job hopping. You know you’ve suddenly become a completely different employee and there are good things about having a child instead of. You know it is strange in a stay and age, women still have that fault of should I do that or shouldn’t I do that?

Speaker 2: 8:49
Yeah, and I think your values become more important to you as well. So where you don’t feel at home, you almost have more courage to make. You know to make a change or to find your sponsors or whatever it is, but you almost come back with. I feel I came back with more courage.

Speaker 1: 9:07
Yeah, yeah, yeah and yeah, and you take that into your role and into your day to day, into your work. We’re going to look at AI today. I wanted to kick off with what are some of the most significant ways in which AI has revolutionized the customer experience within the realm of commerce.

Speaker 2: 9:28
Yeah, look, just to start broader, as a technologist, you used to say, with things like any technology and advancements AI or otherwise you used to say to your stakeholders, what problem are you trying to solve? Because technology will later solve the problem. The amazing thing with AI is that conversations changed. It’s become. It’s a big change, but it’s a nuance in the language, which is what problems can we solve? Because there’s so much that you can impact in a business with AI, instead of finding the thing that is a problem, you actually find the things you can make better, which has been really, really, really liberating. And you’re asking about commerce.

Speaker 2: 10:16
I have a bee in my bonnet about commerce, which is, I think, an exciting one. People talk about commerce like it’s a department, and in some industries we had to make it a department. So if you thought consumer package goods or something like that, you had to move. Especially with e-commerce, you had to move the dial because it was such little e-commerce you’re not going to buy your cleaning detergent or your shower gel online for one product and economics didn’t work. But now, if you think of commerce, the whole reason a business exists is commerce. Whether you’re in sales or marketing or tech or customer service, you’re existing unless you’re an entrepreneur for profit to sell products and service. So everything is commerce and I feel this is where we’re heading as well. It’s going to be much more pervasive. So in the advent of AI of course you just said it customer experience is a huge, huge, huge leader having extraordinary customer experiences in service of commerce, in service of sales. So I’m seeing a big set of use cases that are pervasive across the industry. And I think a lot of people probably talk to you about generative AI, because that’s moved the needle in terms of accessibility. So you don’t need to be a technical resource, you don’t need to know how to code, everybody can access gen AI. So there’s been a tipping point in now people’s confidence and people’s will and desire to not be scared by AI. So I think that’s been really interesting.

Speaker 2: 11:53
And then, as we think about commerce as a whole, personalization of the shopping experience has been where I’ve seen the biggest, biggest difference in the use of AI, and that’s beyond generative AI. So, if you think, just for a moment, I will start with fashion, because it’s an easier thing for us to visualize here If you went into a shop, especially if you went into a boutique on a high street and you said, look, I’m going out on Saturday night and I want this type of look or I don’t love my hips. It can help me find the right jeans. And suddenly AI has has meant and it’s not even sudden over time that we get that assisted shopping experience and extremely personalized 24 seven Because of ASI. If I go in now on a fashion retailers website, for an example, you know I can get very personalized search based on what you know about me and we know the first few search chambers, the difference between sale and not sale, especially today when everybody is so busy. Product recommendations again, a really fantastic use of AI. You bought this last time. Have you retargeting? Have you thought about using? Have you thought about buying this now? And stylist technologies really interesting. You, suddenly you’re getting a personal stylist because of the way you can use AI, on, on, on there and and look, recommendation engines. So if I pivot for a minute from fashion to a very obvious example in Netflix, that recommendation engine is is literally assisting, based on personal user profiles, acts, scale, personalized recommendations. So you know, if you think about banking products, what they know about you and what accounts you hold, the recommendations they’re able to make.

Speaker 2: 13:48
So I think personalization in the shopping experience has been the most I guess, the loudest segmentation, also customer segmentation. I think there was a monitor report recently and it said it showed a seven hundred and sixty percent increase in revenue if your campaigns were segmented. Well, ai lets you do that, you know, at scale in incredibly intelligent ways. And the segmentation I also really like and I think we’ve known in many industries reached the potential of this dynamic pricing. Yeah, so we all know if we’re booking a holiday and we’re on our tour operator, on Airlines website, you might see a different price to me just now or apart, because they’re looking at taxes and demand and competitor pricing and constantly adapting Amazon Also very good at that. The minute that they detect there’s a discount on a product somewhere else, they’re able to affect their pricing. There’s a swing for about twenty percent. So I think dynamic pricing is going to be really interesting in commerce. What will be fascinating actually is we’re talking about digital commerce here in some of the examples I’m using. But what about if in store pricing also changed? And what about if we had some level of personalization in store as well, because we were connecting the online and offline channels. So I think AI has also got a way to go on connecting online and offline as well. So there’s a bunch of examples that the other one I find fascinating, and this is back to it can affect the entire business.

Speaker 2: 15:33
You think of inventory and stock management. That’s a critical part of commerce, right? If you sell something and you can’t fulfill it, I mean, you know, and there’s a lot of manual labor in that and people used to go and count stock and merchandising and ordering was really difficult. And now you’re seeing you know wait sensors and pressure sensors on shelves, like smart shelves, and you’re able to count stock and you can send data off to warehousing systems and they know how, they know when to reorder logistics, getting. And if you think of a Tesco or a Sainsbury’s, in all of the Rona Cardo and all of the online deliveries, ai engines are the ones optimizing those routes every day.

Speaker 2: 16:19
I had a job I won’t name where at one point with and we were working with one of these big supermarket retailers and they asked us to save a whole load of cost, but they asked us to save it on their onlinecom shopping portal and we actually went back and said you’re not thinking expanse. That you’re. The reason you’re asking us. That is because where you’re marketing technology partner If you just said save it anywhere where we saved them everything they wanted and more was in optimization of deliveries and yeah. So, and this is the other thing, right, coming back to creativity and the advertising industry, we’re not being asked anymore just to do big marketing partner where they’re as a business growth partner and as business partner. So when I talk about whether it’s logistics or inventory or segmentation or styling, we’re able to play in all these spaces, which has been really fascinating.

Speaker 2: 17:19
And the other one I’ll quickly touch on is conversational commerce.

Speaker 2: 17:21
I’ve been watching this space for a while, but mostly with startups, where as soon as I have a relationship with a brand, I can, and it starts to engage in a text or WhatsApp conversation, and so, whether I’ve got a question about the product, ie, customer service or I want to reorder contact lenses is a really good example.

Speaker 2: 17:44
You know I would reorder my contact lenses with one text. I think AI is also going to push conversational commerce really far and have have the data collected from those conversations. There’s a really critical part of the customer experience. So when you asked about the customer experience, you know, I sort of in my mind it’s the meeting of marketing, sales and customer service, and whether it’s the back end, like inventory management, or the front end, you coming on to a site and really feeling like I understand you. Every part of that customer experience has, you know, has been affected by AI and you know the expansive thinking that we can continuously do is brilliant. But I will come back to something I said at the start. The human needs, the idea, yeah, then comes in, you know, manages and allows that at scale. So the talent needs, which is the other area I find really interesting when we talk about AI and commerce, the people’s jobs are going to get a lot more interesting, right?

Speaker 1: 18:50
And not disappear, but become more interesting. I think that’s what people think at the minute. My job will disappear. Actually, you’ll find yourself doing something completely different.

Speaker 2: 18:59
So if you’re a copywriter and staying with commerce and you’ve an AI has written all your product descriptions on Amazon for you, for Amazon you still need to have a look at. It’s not going to write beautifully the way you know a really skilled copywriter would write, or you know. It just means you get a starting point and use your time to make that infinitely better. Yes, definitely.

Speaker 1: 19:24
Yeah, I agree with everything you said, because I wanted to ask you a little bit about the benefits of AI, and actually one of the ones that really stood out there was just when you’re in store and if somebody normally if you go in store and it’s a person that is talking to you, you feel like they don’t really understand you.

Speaker 1: 19:44
You might have a sales assistant, which, it’s funny enough, tends to happen more in the States. You get approached by a sales assistant and then they’ll send you off in a direction for a pair of jeans that might be a couple of hundred pounds or dollars. Wherever you are and you think you know that’s really not within my budget and I would not have disappeared in that direction to buy jeans for a few hundred pounds. But if there is that technology there that already knows things about you it knows what to offer you, the type of thing you are more likely to buy then already you’ve stepped foot in the shop and, as you said, it’s almost like you’re understood already. It’s a far better experience than trying to have an awkward conversation with somebody in store and think, well, I’m going to leave.

Speaker 2: 20:28
Yeah, yeah, Do you know? You just reminded me of a pretty woman scene, but anyway, I yes I digress, but you know. So it’s interesting, telcos I mean I was at Vodafone. You know they really started to solve for what you just said quite early on, which I’m not sure. I’m not saying they’re all there yet, but when you walk into a store, imagine they could pull up everything in terms of what you’ve offered by way of zero or first party data online. So they already know quite a lot about you and then they’re not irritating and sending you to the wrong things. So that sharing of data piece is really really fascinating as well. You know to really step up that online. So people do still like to wander in a shop, you know, now and again, and get inspiration and so on. Sephora is a good example of that. People love to have a wonder on there. They might. Then, you know, order online, and so they’ve got the loyalty, the online experience and the retail experience. Brilliant. You can stand in front of mirror and do virtual trions, and so actually they’ve.

Speaker 2: 21:43
I think they’re a really good example of a business that’s managed to triangulate the e-commerce, the online and then things that really affect retention, Like loyalty. It’s a hard thing to do and I you know. If it is fashion or makeup and things, that’s a little easier. But when I find, when you touch, when you get into the pain points or the insights, you find a really deep insight about humans you can start to affect. I feel it’s an excuse sometimes when you say, oh, it doesn’t work for my industry. So if you think of banks, for an example, people love to go into a bank. Now online banking’s taken off. But if you had insights like this is terrible and it’s not a real one. But you know, women are less good at investing, For an example. Women need more confidence when investing. You can really start to use data, AI, market, really effective marketing to move the needle there and suddenly it is very applicable to banking because you can think about the products you offer them, you can think about the way you speak to them. You can think about confidence building. So and I pick on banking because I’ve seen a really big there, I’ve seen the needle move in quite a big way in the use of AI and personal banking and look, people are struggling. Like, if we just take the insight of today, people are financially struggling in a really big way. So what better time to make that experience better? And it seemed sinister before when we talked about e-commerce way back.

Speaker 2: 23:25
How do you get people to click the button to buy? I think we’ve moved on from that. How do you get people emotionally feeling like they love your brand and that you helped them in a time of need and you have utility and function for them? And that’s really where you build good commerce and good loyalty, because they’re going to get repeat purchase, they’re going to get retention, You’re going to get advocacy. So the clicked. And I think that’s when the click to buy philosophy and mentality and mindset was around. That’s when departments were created. So going back to isn’t it? Isn’t it everyone’s job? There are leading ways that we can get people to really think with a commerce mindset.

Speaker 1: 24:18
Sorry, there was some interference outside. I’m muted, that’s why.

Speaker 2: 24:22
I didn’t know if you were sticking up on my mic.

Speaker 1: 24:27
I completely agree with everything that you just said. I also wanted to talk to you a little bit about smaller businesses, because you’ve mentioned Amazon and big e-commerce. So how can smaller businesses or startups leverage AI technologies to compete with large and more established players in the e-commerce sector? If you haven’t got the budget or the skills, the staff, how do you go about that?

Speaker 2: 24:56
Yeah, so I’m going to answer your question in a slightly different way. Ok, so there’s the big ones. I spoke about the Amazons, the Netflix, the Ubers. There’s then other big businesses, so I’m going to pick on the big CPGs, for example, the Unilevers, p&gs, nestle’s, rackets or the Big Farmers. And then there’s small businesses, and I think small businesses have it easier maybe not in budgets and maybe I’m being a bit controversial here than the middle group, and the reason I say that is agility.

Speaker 2: 25:33
Now, obviously there’s different flavors of small business, but if you’re a digitally native business, so you launched online in the first place or you’re an industry where actually you’re really first party data rich and you know small businesses often are, because, whether it’s email signups, that value exchange is sometimes a lot more obvious. So if you’re a big CPG and I’m buying products that are five pounds per product, for example, I have a basket or a basket size of 30 pounds versus. You know I’ve signed up to. Let’s pick on BeautyPie. Okay, so BeautyPie subscription based beauty business launched online Okay, subscription, you get discounted beauty products. I know, with BeautyPie and this is touching on your small business piece anything I tell them about my skin is going to end up with better product recommendations and I’m going to get more out of my business. I also know that ratings and reviews are really, really important, so I’m going to, you know, be able to go on and really see what people have thought about the products, because they’re not a brand. That company is then quickly building a profile of me and they become first party data rich. They’re use of AI. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Actually, they’ve got good data, they have the ability to make good relationships and they can really go far.

Speaker 2: 27:08
And the other thing I would say is, if you needed to build a website and you’re a small business previously, or any of the owned channels, set up email campaigns, have a website, any of the owned ecosystem you used to have to hire a technology. You know a company. You could now sit in your back room and buy the basic version of Shopify and over simplify it. You can probably start selling products in a month, or you can go on Amazon and become a seller really easily. And so I feel those small business it’s never. You know, the walls are down. The walls are down for those small businesses. They are able in different ways, you know, can they access cloud infrastructure from Google and Amazon and Microsoft. Yes, I mean you can access hosting on your credit card. Now you could set up a website to start selling in your back room. So the walls are down now. I’m not advocating that people don’t go to experts, because experts can really make it fly. I just mean the barriers to entry are down.

Speaker 1: 28:14
Yeah, and ever or not. You think that’s something you want to continue with as well, because if it’s, it can be very expensive to to launch your own business and think, actually, will this idea work? But you’re absolutely right. If you can launch a website, start selling. You can get AI to do all of your copywriting, for instance, and kick off there. I heard one recently about legal terms and contracts. You know all of that legal speak that you kind of think actually do it. If I were to sell something, do I have at least a box standard contract? That sounds like I kind of know what I’m doing. Who’s going to write that? I don’t want to pay for a legal department. If I’m a small business is starting, you can actually set everything up with. You know some standard benchmarks in place just to get started. And then, if it’s not for you, it’s not like you’ve spent the earth to get it off the ground as well, and perhaps your idea didn’t work and you can try something else. But yeah, I mean you can make yourself very professional.

Speaker 2: 29:15
You can, and then also companies like ours. We’re not just interested, we don’t turn away like small businesses or, yes, we have the biggest companies in the world but we also have consulting teams. We have, you know, we have people who are just one one of them. If the client came to you and said, I’m this small, but I want IPO in three years and these are the services I need, I mean that is so attractive. So you, you know, I still think you get a share of voicing attention If you’re a business that people believe in.

Speaker 2: 29:49
I mean, I advise quite a lot startups and I feel they have yes, they have smaller budgets, but there are always innovative ways to to access all of the innovation around AI in the world and I mean chat she bit is a very obvious example of anyone can go in and use it, you know. So I know people freelancing in and around you know prompt engineering and how that might be used. So, yeah, I think I think this is a really exciting time, no matter what, what, what size you are, it actually do you know what the barrier is with the smaller businesses? It’s not the access to AI and the access to the technology, it’s the mindset of can I? I’m too small, yes, and the risk right. So I think people are bold and have courage and prioritise in the right way. There’s absolute, yeah, absolutely no reason, reason why.

Speaker 1: 30:49
I completely agree and we’ve mentioned on here a little bit already. Things are moving so fast in AI, which is very exciting, but it’s exciting for customers. It’s exciting to work in as well as an industry. But with the rapid advancements in AI and technology, I wanted to ask you a little bit about how do you anticipate the future of e-commerce evolving over the next decade and what key trends do you believe will shape the industry in the coming years.

Speaker 2: 31:18
Yeah great question and e-commerce in general. I feel we will drop the e, yeah, right, and we will just think about people as people. I also feel we won’t necessarily distinguish people with people going shopping. People will always be shopping, right, you won’t even know you’re shopping sometimes because you’ve spotted something. You know you’ve gone to an art museum and you’ve seen someone wearing something and you know you can use visual search, with their permission, to go and find out where to buy that. You know your people are going to just be shopping all the way, all the time, and I feel the focus will then be on data understanding people, knowing where they are and creating shopping opportunities and, you know, making all content shoppable wherever it makes sense, making search results shoppable. So I really feel like commerce won’t be a thing in the future. It will be their thing, and you know whether you’re in a creative department, coming up with a big idea that’s going to, you know, move people emotionally about a brand or, on the other end, you are creating the technology platforms that allow people to add to cart and buy something in two clicks very Amazonesque. You’re always going to be in there and I love, I will love the day when there isn’t any commerce department, but every C suite leader in an organization has a mission to sell product and services. But in a and this, but is really important, it’s an and actually in a way that’s really responsible, right, in a way that is thinking about sustainability and is thinking about accessibility and diversity. I mean, growth at all costs is not okay either. So you know, I see a world where it is everyone’s job. There is in a department, but you’re incentivized to sell, but really responsibly. We call it, you know, good business like good growth, not just growth, but good growth With AI.

Speaker 2: 33:22
Look, right now it’s a big conversation and what I find fascinating is in 2007, when we had that big tipping point of the launch of the iPhone and the invention of, you know, uber and everything was coming on to. That was all AI drew, but it was invisible. Yeah, we people got so excited about what they could do on their phone or how they could travel, or, and actually AI winning should be that it’s invisible. It’s just a part of the way something works. It’s not necessarily in the eyes of the customer, or the customer should feel is, or the user is. I’m having a fantastic experience. I love this brand. They really listened to me. They understand me. You know I want to buy it again. I want to talk about the products and it’s invisible right now.

Speaker 2: 34:10
It’s quite visible because there’s such a big conversation about gen, ai and the impact and is it hype?

Speaker 2: 34:17
And what will happen to our talent.

Speaker 2: 34:20
So I see that going forward, it will start to become just used as a matter of daily life and people won’t think necessarily, it’s just all of the accessible tools become like largely democratized and things just get used and actually, as it evolves, there’s just more and more and more and more that that comes out that we start to use very naturally.

Speaker 2: 34:43
What I will say is, when the height comes and I mean not that it’s not going to be a value, because I’m one of the biggest believers in the impact and the big impact is going to have in the world, but when you know when it becomes goes from hype to realism. The things I think we’re going to see the most gains in this productivity, the shaping of talent in organizations, the liberation of people and what they feel they can do now in their jobs. So you know all the themes we talked about better sales processes, better logistics, personalization all of those are key trends. I think they just get stronger and stronger, but in a way that is actually just felt rather than talked about. This is where I see it going.

Speaker 1: 35:36
Yes, definitely, and I think you are right. It will change the way that people use their skills. I think, also in terms of shopping we spoke a little bit about this before it’s still important that you still have that human touch to everything, and I wanted to touch upon that about you know how important do you think it is to strike that balance between AI driven automation and that human touch? It’s always going to be there, isn’t it? It’s still incredibly important. As you said, it’s important to make everything seem like it’s invisible, but you still need that human touch for everything Eately.

Speaker 2: 36:14
I think that automation needs to be invisible. Then the human giving you that phenomenal experience wherever you are absolutely should be seen and felt. Right. It’s a risk, it’s a really big risk to exclude the human from this. The machine is not going to come up with a big creative idea. It might fuel the idea. I have seen some very bad product descriptions if you think of, if you’re staying with commerce and write-ups. I’m sitting next to a lady on a flight in September and she was a lawyer. She was telling me some really scary examples of where people had used AI and it had backfired and cases she’d been involved in.

Speaker 2: 37:02
We’re all as humans and I know there’s different cultural needs and nuances, but we thrive on connection and we thrive on meeting and feeling. We are inherently not rational beings. We have the rational and emotional side and the machine’s not going to fulfill us fully. I never see the human part going. One, it’s risky. But two, if we just think about basic human needs and the way the world goes around and by way of connection and humanity, then you also wouldn’t want it to go away there. There’s other.

Speaker 2: 37:41
We talked about pandemics and the world, but there’s a loneliness pandemic. Why would you want machines to take over everything? You’ve probably had the digital twin conversation for a long time. There are some leaders who are philosophical leaders or spiritual leaders who strive to create digital twins of themselves, and they’re really well followed in terms of video and their materials and everything. The minute the digital twin experiment started, the following was not there. Yeah, so I don’t see a world where it’s all machine, but I do see a world on and this bit is a risk and I think people need to stand up and be realistic about it. We do have to evolve and keep learning and keep learning about what’s possible with AI, where the world can go, how people do want to shop and move with it, learn with it and then find the ways in which it gives you the 80%, how you make the last 20% really beautiful. I had someone who was absolutely terrified that he was going to have to fire his entire department when Gen I.

Speaker 2: 38:57
AI blew up and that same guy three months later is nowhere near in that space. I think we’re all still learning and we’re all still sort of moving down that path. I also will just say that I am watching carefully and paying special attention to the talent I’ve worked with on how technologists are feeling, because Underneath all of these commerce, innovations we’ve talked about is technology and people who code, and so again in that community we’ll code be entirely written. You already see, for many years, no code solutions and so on. So the impact on the technology community, which is a feeder to all of these solutions, is also going to be, I think, a trend to watch. You know what happens there, but again, does our need for code is going away now.

Speaker 1: 39:53
Yeah, there’s always going to be that need for a human to step in and check things and just freeing up their time. We are almost out of time. I did have one question, extra question I wanted to ask you about your role and how you came into tech. Lots of our ladies who fall into tech a little bit later in life they didn’t take computer science at university and they studied later in life they always worry should I do it? Am I doing it too late? Is it too technical for me? And a topic like AI? It sounds very daunting and would I even want to go into the area? Would I enjoy it? Would I be able to learn those types of things? Do you have any advice for those ladies about whether or not they should give it a go, whether it’s really what has daunting as they think it is? What would you say to them?

Speaker 2: 40:46
Yeah, I look at my headline. Advice is go for it. Nothing’s ever too late. In fact, we should be constant students. You know, whether it’s AI or whatever it is like, we should all have the confidence to keep learning and if it’s something that you’re really excited and passionate about, but please go for it, because we spend so much of our time in the working world. If all of our goals should be to love what we do, I absolutely can probably tell I absolutely love what I do, and I, you know anyone that works for me and with me. I, you know that’s what I wish for them. So, not too late.

Speaker 2: 41:21
What I will say is you can, if we stick with AI as a topic, think about where you want to play, because we talked today about it being democratized, so you don’t need to be technical anymore to use AI. So, picking where you want to play. So do you need to learn to code? You want to play in the building and architecting and the real deep subject matter, expertise, space, or do you want to be, you know, be a strategic advisor of innovation to somebody? Then maybe you don’t know to learn to code. You could just go with the basics and come at it a different way.

Speaker 2: 41:58
So to really find your where your interest lies, right, is it strategically as a AI? Is it experimentation of new innovation in the market? Is it building, and then really sort of find yourself, that also tap into your personality. See, I know about myself that I like to know how things work, and in depth, and maybe many women have this, being pasta syndrome, I love to really understand things in detail and really know them. Other people and they’re not right or none of these are right or wrong are comfortable with knowing 20% and you know learning on the fly, the other 80 and getting there, and you know strategizing and innovating around it. So just know who you are and where you’ll feel the most comfortable and authentic. Yes, and then pick your journey according to that. But yeah, I think nothing, nothing is ever. You’re never too late for anything.

Speaker 1: 42:55
That is lovely advice. I love that to use the word authentic there, which is so, so important in the workplace and knowing what you’re good at and the direction you’d like to go in. That is a brilliant place to end it because we’re already out of time. Like you, keep talking to you all day on this topic, but thank you so much for joining me today, jaina. It’s been a pleasure having you on here. So thank you.

Speaker 2: 43:17
It’s a pleasure being here and I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. So you know, even out of this podcast, I hope we can. We can continue to talk.

Speaker 1: 43:26
Yes, definitely, and to everybody listening, thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you again next time.