Fully Autonomous AI Running a Wall Street Hedge Fund

With a number of implications/   Interesting claim here.  The emergence of legitimate DAOs Distributed Autonomous Organizations?

No humans required, the fully autonomous AI running a Wall Street hedge fund
by 7wData

I’ve been documenting the emergence of fully autonomous organisations – organisations that are able to run and scale themselves without the need for any human operators, or intervention – sometimes also known as Distributed Autonomous Organisations (DAO), for years now and I’m now starting to see the first production DAO’s appear and enter the market.

Aidyia, a new fully autonomous Hedge fund is a case in point, turned on late last year it’s a hedge fund that makes all of its stock trades using artificial intelligence (AI) – with no human intervention required – and as you’ll see Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, Goldman Sachs and maybe JPMorgan Chase might not necessarily be that far behind. In fact the pace and rate of change in the industry is now becoming so rapid that it even has its own dedicated event – the Battle of the Quants, the next installment of which is in Frankfurt later this month.

“If we all die,” says Goertzel, a longtime AI guru and the company’s chief scientist, “it would keep trading.”   ... " 

Modern Elders in a Multi-Generational Workforce

Am one myself.   Also a kind of diversity, but hardly emphasized these days.    Here a podcast and transcript on the topic of inter-generational workforces and 'Modern Elders',

Wisdom at Work: Why the Modern Elder Is Relevant  I K@W 

Airbnb executive Chip Conley discusses the benefits of having an inter-generational workforce.

Historically, the boss typically has been older than the staff. But in the last few decades, several trends converged that made it more common for employees to have younger managers. One catalyst is the shift from seniority-based promotions toward those based on merit, according to a research article in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Also, as the pace of technology innovation increases, companies promote more tech-savvy younger workers into supervisory jobs. Meanwhile, older workers are staying employed longer due to such things as the disappearance of early retirement schemes.

Entrepreneur Chip Conley knows first-hand what it feels like to have a younger boss. The former hotelier works at Airbnb, where the CEO is two decades younger, as its head of global hospitality and strategy. But Conley believes that diversity of ages makes for a better workplace. His new book, Wisdom At Work: The Making of the Modern Elder, argues the case for this “intergenerational potluck” where everyone brings something to the table. He recently joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM to explain how one generation can learn from another.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows. .... " 

Flash Organizations

Useful idea, now link it to right data.

Stanford Researchers Develop Crowdsourcing Software to Convene Rapid, On-Demand 'Flash Organizations'

Researchers at Stanford University have developed software that integrates crowdsourcing's flexibility and the benefits of on-demand specialists to form "flash organizations." The researchers presented their work last week at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2017) in Denver, CO, detailing tests of their flash organization model. The team supported the model using the Foundry Web platform to help with generating the organization, hiring, task-tracking, and in-group communication. Foundry also featured a tool enabling members to request new roles or tasks as needed. To implement alterations, Foundry has an organizational chart that is used for all reconfigurations, including revising timelines of tasks, redefining roles, and hiring new workers. "By allowing anyone with an idea to go to an online marketplace, recruit all sorts of different experts on-demand, and bring their idea to life in a very short period of time, we're making innovation more feasible," says Stanford's Daniela Retelny.  .... " 

Overcome Resistance to Change by Enlisting the Right People

Just completed teaching a course at Columbia University on Change Management in Analytics.  Used some thoughts from this article.   Good thoughts.

Overcome Resistance to Change by Enlisting the Right People

Todd Warner, September 13, 2016 Harvard Business Review

Change initiatives fail when senior leaders don’t see that their organizations are social systems. Organizations are defined by bundles of local relationships, social expectations, and unwritten rules that exist between thousands of people. These people create tribes — collections of like-minded people who build patterns around how work gets done. This system is highly resistant to change, as anyone who as ever tried to “impose” change on a system knows.

Tribes in organizations tend to be small, and may cut across formal silos; they have their own power structure, and their own ways of rewarding and punishing deviance.  You see this in on-boarding, for example, where new joiners take cues and align with co-workers, replicate work habits, and learn day-to-day, despite organizational attempts to “teach” through formal on-boarding programs.

The secret to changing an organization is to understand the fundamental units that make up the social system — these local tribes — and to invert the change process so that tribes own the change. To influence tribes in organizations, you have to give up control, and recognize that every change always goes through a process of localization as it gets executed.   ....  " 

Why and How is Watson a Cognitive System?

Jim Spohrer sends along a link to a talk by Rob High, IBM Chief Technology Officer, Fellow and Vice President,  Does a good job of discussing why Watson is cognitive, unique, and why it differs from previous attempts at delivering expertise.   Non technical.

I ask: So how you convince a complex organization this uniqueness is useful, stable and scalable? Only through clear operational examples in varying contexts.  That appears to be what they are working on.

Abstract

IBM® Watson™ represents a first step into cognitive systems, a new era of computing. Watson builds on the current era of programmatic computing but differs in significant ways. The combination of the following capabilities makes Watson unique:

Natural language processing by helping to understand the complexities of unstructured data, which makes up as much as 80 percent of the data in the world today

Hypothesis generation and evaluation by applying advanced analytics to weigh and evaluate a panel of responses based on only relevant evidence

Dynamic learning by helping to improve learning based on outcomes to get smarter with each iteration and interaction

Although none of these capabilities alone are unique to Watson, the combination delivers a powerful solution:

To move beyond the constraints of programmatic computing
To move from reliance on structured, local data to unlock the world of global, unstructured data
To move from decision tree-driven, deterministic applications to probabilistic systems that co-evolve with their users

To move from keyword-based search that provides a list of locations where an answer might (or might not) be located, to an intuitive, conversational means of discovering a set of confidence-ranked responses

This IBM Redguide™ publication describes how Watson combines natural language processing, dynamic learning, and hypothesis generation and evaluation to give direct, confidence-based responses.

For additional information about how Watson can transform how organizations think, act, and operate in the future, see the IBM Redbooks Point-of-View publication "Transforming the Way Organizations Think with Cognitive Systems", REDP-4961:

Table of contents:
What language is and why it is hard for computers to understand
IBM Watson understands language
Understanding language is just the beginning
Problems come in different shapes
Accuracy is improved through generalization  ... 

Layoffs Hurt Companies

The cost of layoffs to companies. In Knowledge@Wharton:  

' ... Contrary to popular belief, there’s not much evidence that layoffs are a cure for weak profits, or, to use the current euphemism, that they reposition a firm for growth going forward. “It’s very difficult to sort out the relationship because firms that are laying off are almost by definition in trouble,” says Peter Cappelli, Wharton management professor and director of the school’s Center for Human Resources. “The research evidence has not found any support for the overall idea that layoffs help firm performance. There is more support for the idea that where there is overcapacity, such as a market downturn, layoffs help firms. There is no evidence that cutting to improve profitability helps beyond the immediate, short-term accounting bump.”  ... '  

Cognitive Organizations

What is the meaning of a cognitive organization?  Can it have direct conversations with us, and also attentively watch and let us know what is useful, and perhaps most problematically, tell us what to do?     The Cognitive Organization.

Creative Leaders

Tom Kelley, co-author of Creative Confidence (Crown Business, 2013) and a partner at IDEO, a global design and innovation firm,  on what creative leaders do.   We worked with IDEO in a number of ways, see the tag below.    Well done short piece in the HBR.

On Silo Organizations

Book review in the NYT.   ‘The Silo Effect,’ by Gillian Tett .  On my reading list.   Silos of value and attention are  very common and often destructive in the enterprise.

CEOs Who Return. Seeking the Triumphant

In the New Yorker, featuring CEO  A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble.   A common discussion these days in former employee groups.

" ... How could someone who, according to Fortune, was known as “an all-time C.E.O. hero” end up being just O.K.? Well, if commentators had looked at the track record of returning C.E.O.s—boomerang C.E.O.s, as they’re sometimes called—that’s precisely what they’d have predicted. A 2014 study found that profitability at companies run by boomerang C.E.O.s fell slightly, and an earlier study detected no significant difference in long-term performance between firms that reappointed a former C.E.O. and ones that hired someone new. We like triumphant comeback narratives—Jobs and, to a lesser extent, Howard Schultz, at Starbucks. But history tells us that Lafley’s rather ordinary second tour of duty is the way most of these stories end. ... " 

Update: Polinode Visualizes Organizations

Continue to follow Polinode as a means to model and analyze organizations.  The Australian company has added some new features that are of interest.  This is a survey based system that allows you to construct a visual graph model of your organization.  Or model an organization you might be merging with. Lots of possibilities.  Future versions will allow means to merge the surveys with other meta organization data. Also output the data to other graphics engines like Gephi.  Apply for a free beta trial at the link.

Polinode: Leveraging Visual Enterprise Networks

Polinode was brought to my attention because we also looked at using visualized networks to understand how our company worked, and could be simulated in its adaptation to changes over time and context, both slow and rapid.   A kind of dynamic, simulation of  corporate people architecture.   The thought was to further add the interaction of people with their data.  We also used highly visual network representations.  Polinode writes:

" Polinode is a powerful and easy-to-use platform for mapping, visualizing and analyzing relationships across organizations  .... We help organizations become more Agile and Innovative ... 
Polinode is a flexible tool that helps cut through complexity. At its core is the ability to map, visualize and analyze relationships. Applications range from identifying change agents and finding critical links through to promoting diversity and improving workplace layouts....plus a lot more.... " 

Check out Polinode here, you can apply for trying a closed Beta.
You can also see a video demo here.   I am looking further.

The Reciprocity Advantage

Reading The Reciprocity Advantage: A New Way to Partner for Innovation and Growth.  by Bob Johansen and Karl Ronn.  Nicely done with real life enterprise examples, including IBM, TED, Microsoft, Google Apple Store and more.

I like in particular an outline about how each company partnered and what the partnership exchanged.  Also what assets where involved.   Then  the scaling advantage involved.  I also like the emphasis on experimentation being done to figure out what the real value is and how it will be developed.   Included in that is how 'gameful engagement' can be used to figure out how the partnership will work.   The latter parts of the book provide direct  'How to' steps.  Well done.

" ... Bob Johansen, best-selling author and Distinguished Fellow at IFTF, has partnered with innovation expert Karl Ronn to uncover what they believe will be the biggest innovation opportunity in history in their forthcoming book, The Reciprocity Advantage. Through illustrative examples from leading organizations and an eye to the future, Johansen and Ronn present a four-part model that shows how organizations can give away assets to form partnerships, leading to collaborative experimentation and scalable new business opportunities.  ... 

" ... Johansen and Ronn explain that reciprocity, an old concept, will be reimagined within a future context of connective technologies, generational shifts, and new organizational models to provide a distinct competitive advantage. To win in this world, businesses will need to  (1) uncover their right-of-way, the underutilized resources they already own that they can share with others; (2) find partners who can help them do what they cannot do alone; (3) experiment to learn through cloud-based systems; and (4) scale the results, but only when the business’ reciprocity advantage is desirable, viable, and ownable. If it’s not scalable, it’s not worth doing—and the authors describe technologies that make scaling up faster than ever. .... " 

More and ordering information.   Video.   @Reciprocityadv

Reciprocity Advantage: Innovation and Organization

New book by my two former colleagues: The Reciprocity Advantage.

" ... Bob Johansen, best-selling author and Distinguished Fellow at IFTF, has partnered with innovation expert Karl Ronn to uncover what they believe will be the biggest innovation opportunity in history in their forthcoming book, The Reciprocity Advantage. Through illustrative examples from leading organizations and an eye to the future, Johansen and Ronn present a four-part model that shows how organizations can give away assets to form partnerships, leading to collaborative experimentation and scalable new business opportunities.  ... 

" ... Johansen and Ronn explain that reciprocity, an old concept, will be reimagined within a future context of connective technologies, generational shifts, and new organizational models to provide a distinct competitive advantage. To win in this world, businesses will need to  (1) uncover their right-of-way, the underutilized resources they already own that they can share with others; (2) find partners who can help them do what they cannot do alone; (3) experiment to learn through cloud-based systems; and (4) scale the results, but only when the business’ reciprocity advantage is desirable, viable, and ownable. If it’s not scalable, it’s not worth doing—and the authors describe technologies that make scaling up faster than ever. .... " 

More and pre-order information.   Video.   I plan to read and comment here later.

Senior Executives Online

Should senior execs of large enterprises like Wal-Mart, be on Twitter?   Some interesting thoughts.  But is this an example of attempting to micro manage consumer interaction?  Sure they need to know what is going on in Social Media, whats trending in their areas of interest.  But do they really need to answer every message, every idea?  Isn't this what your employees should help you with?  What PR firms do?

GotoGlue and the Personal Brand

An enterprise colleague of mine pointed me to GotoGlue.  I much like the idea of having a personal brand while connecting Job Seekers, Organizations and Employers.  Just launched.  " ... In Glue, users populate a series of content galleries to demonstrate their "complete self" all in one comprehensive, interactive, digital portfolio. There's a gallery for a resume and cover letter as well as a gallery for a First Impression Video where job seekers can introduce themselves to employers and speak to their professional capabilities. Glue also allows users to add an unlimited number of "user-defined" galleries for any additional content that supports their personal brand. ... "

Advanced Analytics from TDWI

At the TDWI conference, Fern Halper talks about what they call 'advanced analytics', which appears to include most statistical and numerical models beyond simple regression.  She is in the process of building a model for using Big Data best practices.  Including organizational and political challenges.  Looking forward to her reports on these topics.

Mckinsey & Company Documents in New Location

Always interesting.  Now published in a new location.   Lately about big data and related issues.   They write: " ... We work with leading organizations across the private, public and social sectors. Our scale, scope, and knowledge allow us to address problems that no one else can. We have deep functional and industry expertise as well as breadth of geographical reach. We are passionate about taking on immense challenges that matter to our clients and, often, to the world.... "

Agile Organizations

Some good, very general thoughts on agile organizations and management.  You are always dealing with changing context, so you have to be ready for it.  But can you predict the nature of that change?

Community Managers and Equity

In Word of Mouth Marketing Blog:  A resource I have just started to cover, some good thoughts about being a content and community manager. Reminds me of conversations I had with (unofficial) brand equity managers in the enterprise.    Seems to be an interesting conversation starting.  Links to the documents mentioned in the full article.    " ... social media practitioners from an array of organizations came together for two and a half hours to create one document: The Community Manager Manifesto. The goal of this first ever summit meeting was to create a document that would exist as an aspirational set of ideals for community managers. The resulting six-theme manifesto reveals a common aspiration across all its declaratives: As a community manager, it’s time to become a much more strategic asset to your organization at the highest levels. “Marketing” as a theme was not included. Should it be? .. "