A Talk on Artificial Intelligence by Distinguished Alumni, Dodjie Simon

Elizar “Dodjie” Simon, author of the recent New York Times’ bestseller “A.I. Hacked” and UP IE Alumnus (Batch ’85) gave a talk on Artificial Intelligence last 19 October 2019 at the Maynilad Room to an audience of third-year IE students, IEOR faculty, and visiting alumni. The talk is part of the IE Alumni Association’s Professional Enhancement Initiative.

Dodjie spoke of a new emerging Industrial Revolution, the logical continuation of man’s use of robots, computers, and other intelligent machinery to perform more and more of tasks and work activities previously done only by humans.

He spoke of the growing industrial applications of facial and voice recognition technology, autonomous algorithms (that drive vehicles or operate factory machinery that make real-time adjustments to changing conditions without human intervention), and neural networks in the fields of health care, medical research, food production, transportation, security, and cybercrime, among others.

How can our future Industrial Engineers survive, let alone flourish, in such an environment? Dodjie Simon encouraged them to continue cultivating creativity and enhancing skills in problem analysis and problem solving – the hallmark of true IEs – as A.I. technology is still far behind human capabilities in these aspects. He also advised them to remain grounded in their own personal empathy, as in his view, this very human emotion can never be replicated even by the most advanced A.I. algorithms. He further enjoined them not to fear A.I., but instead to expect it and embrace it as an inevitable development of modern civilization, and more importantly, to harness and use it as an enabler to deliver better results to the organizations of which they are can be part.

See more details on his book at https://www.elzarsimon.com/