Crystal Gaze 2021: AiThority Interview with Jim Stratton, CTO, Workday

How do you see AI and Machine Learning growing bigger in their influential roles in emerging technology industry?

Expect developers and business users to demand more insight and reasoning into AI and machine learning algorithms and how they are applied. Wide-scale adoption of these solutions will occur after we build trust in the underlying technology, which can only happen if the drivers for a given prediction are explained to the end user. For example, in the context of machine learning in recruiting—why a given candidate is recommended for a particular role is important both to allow the hiring manager to make an informed decision and also to expose the risk of unintentional (or malicious) bias in hiring practices.

Because most AI/ML models are somewhat of a black box, users and developers don’t have visibility into why the models make the decisions they do. More insight into this process will ensure people understand the factors on which the model is basing its decision, and it will also help developers prevent an adversary from exploiting it.

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How do you foresee the rise of automation in “Everything”?

In 2021, agility will be enabled by automation

In 2021, IT leaders will increasingly seek automation to reduce friction and increase productivity between enterprise systems. Pressured to do more with less—and faster—we’ll see automation technologies experience greater traction as CIOs work to quickly pivot their existing enterprise solutions, enable their remote workforces, and ultimately extend the capacity of those workforces. In fact, Workday’s recent Organizational Agility study shows that nearly two-thirds (64%) of companies report progress deploying AI, ML and RPA technologies to streamline workflows and increase capacity of the existing workforce. The focus is shifting from how to get the most out of a single application to enabling a holistic solution experience.

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Tell us more about how you are working with Employee Experience management.

According to me, Employee Experience will be “reinvented”.

The confluence of advanced front-end user interface technology, open systems with connecting workflows, and machine learning will bring about a deeper level of integration and personalization across systems and devices. For employees, this means the seamless and personalized consumer experiences that we enjoy in our personal lives are finally coming to the workplace. Equally important, a burgeoning focus on design thinking for workplace experiences will emerge to ensure employees interactions with technologies are frictionless and intuitive. With so many employees working remotely, businesses are investing in making their digital workspace as compelling and efficient as possible.

How IT leaders need to work with Next-gen Embedded Analytics

The next generation of applications will give us greater ability to aggregate analytics and insights from across systems and surface it up to solve a business need – no SQL required. This is key for IT leaders who need a full picture of their data to drive business decisions and agility—a difficult task today with so many clouds, applications, and services in the enterprise ecosystem. Recent advancements to connectors and metadata connectors will make it increasingly easier to bring disparate data sets together and put data to work.

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How do you foresee the rise of automation in “Everything”?

As the building blocks of AI and ML become commoditized, we’re starting to see the move toward higher-value services that leverage those underlying technologies. This evolution mirrors that of the major public Cloud providers as they moved from infrastructure to platform to applications. This will enable companies to experiment more with AI and ML innovations to improve products, while building trust in their models and predictions. Businesses will be able to leverage best-in-class algorithms to quickly build ensemble applications and focus their ML on what’s truly unique to their business—without requiring a full data science team.

Thank you, Jim! That was fun and we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.