Visionary thinking is inseparable from advancements in technology. And at the forefront of innovations are tech leaders with an eye on the cutting edge and a drive to expand what’s possible.
In our rapidly evolving technological landscape, failing to stay ahead of the curve means getting left behind.
Consider the significant leaps made in AI and machine learning. A decade ago, AI systems’ language and image recognition capabilities were no match for those possessed by humans. By 2021, AI models had outperformed humans in Dynabench tests that measured these abilities.
AI — once the stuff of science fiction — has rapidly become a driving force in everyday life. From self-driving cars and systems to aid pilots during flights to virtual assistants and workflow automation tools and beyond, AI has made an impact across industries and in many capacities.
By tapping into what industry leaders are experimenting with and implementing, you can get a glimpse of what’s happening now and where things are heading.
Built In Chicago sat down with tech leaders from ServiceNow and Checkout to learn more about how their past experiences shaped their present selves and what technologies they’re currently keeping tabs on.
Fintech company Checkout.com is a strategic payments partner that provides brands around the world with tools to launch new products and create experiences.
Tell us a little bit about your career thus far. How have your experiences shaped you into the leader you are today?
I’ve been fortunate to be part of the software industry for the past 25 years, leading product and engineering organizations in various domains. I started my career as a software engineer, and though I’ve moved into leading large teams, I’m still staying close to the technical aspects of product development, helping connect the engineering teams and the business. As a leader, my goal is to make sure we deliver products that create real value for our customers.
In my current role at Checkout.com, I’m leading multiple areas in addition to building and scaling our engineering site in Tel Aviv. One area I lead is the risk and ID group, where we build products and solutions that help keep our merchants and the company safe and compliant. We develop online fraud detection products that leverage machine learning to help detect fraudsters, as well as ID verification tools that use computer vision technologies to validate a person’s identity.
I’m also leading our data groups, which include our data platform and our product analytics teams. They help uncover insights about our merchants and products.
Tech moves fast. How do you stay ahead of the curve? What new technologies are you excited about or eyeing for future projects?
It seems like the rate of innovation in AI has made a significant leap during the last year. Almost every day, we see a new model or capability being released that breaks the boundaries of what we thought was possible. As someone who is passionate about using machine learning to solve problems and who has used it for more than ten years to build products that were used by the masses, this is truly exciting to me.
A significant part of the progress is driven by having large language models more accessible, not just to AI practitioners but also to software engineers and to people that don’t code. This is a game changer, as it enables more people to harness the power of AI for their work. As part of this progress, I’m mostly excited about the capabilities of autonomous AI agents, which can be defined as AI software that gets as an input instruction of a task and breaks it down into sub-tasks, executing and repeating it until the task is done.
Having software that can accomplish tasks just by high-level instruction is mind-blowing. It’s still the early days of autonomous agents and people have just started exploring the space, but the field seems to be progressing fast.
AI has made a significant leap during the last year. Almost every day, we see a new model or capability being released that breaks the boundaries of what we thought was possible.”
What’s your vision for the future of your company’s technology? And how do you plan to get there?
As part of our journey to evolve our product offering through big data and ongoing work with AI technologies, we have started looking into how we can leverage large language models (LLMs) to enhance and expand some of the processes and products we offer today. One example that I’m truly excited about is the ability to better understand our users — what’s their line of business, the type of products and optimizations that we can offer them, and how can we use that information to tailor their experience?
The current process today is part of our platform onboarding process. We check multiple data sources to get a better understanding of the merchant. One source is the users’ website. We can get a lot of information by looking at the website, though it is a very complex process that, in many cases, requires manual review. It would take a human a significant amount of time to go through the site to gather the information that is needed. By using the power of LLMs and fine-tuning them to our use case, we think there are numerous applications within our product suite that can generate value for our merchants.
ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform that digitizes and automates siloed workplace processes for organizations across industries.
Tell us a little bit about your career thus far. How have your experiences shaped you into the leader you are today?
I started off at a small company working with extremely talented people. One important lesson I learned was that technology is a means to an end but not an end itself. Understanding the problem that you’re solving and the customer base who need the solution is more important than the technology.
What also stood out for me in my first job was the mentorship from seniors and the networking with peers. Building a strong bond professionally and personally will create several opportunities for you in the future.
Understanding the problem that you’re solving and the customer base who need the solution is more important than the technology.”
Tech moves fast. How do you stay ahead of the curve? What new technologies are you excited about or eyeing for future projects?
From my perspective, staying ahead of the curve can only be achieved by staying close to your customers, understanding their pain points, and offering solutions that resolve their deepest challenges and make them successful. Technologies change, but what stays relevant is customer obsession.
Currently, I am excited about the potential of applying AI to help companies drive the digitization of their businesses to unlock potential they never thought they had. AI can help process and classify data quickly, accurately and consistently. AI deployment will be extremely crucial for modern businesses to ensure business growth and continuity.
How we define our strategy, operate all our processes, drive productivity, ensure robust security and, ultimately, create and deliver great experiences for our customers are all areas that AI can assist with solving.
What’s your vision for the future of your company’s technology? And how do you plan to get there?
Two-thirds of CEOs believe they need a digital business model. This is driving accelerated digital transformation, fueling the need for software apps. Analyst firm IDC estimates that 750 million new apps will be built by 2025. However, some analyst reports predict a global talent shortage of around 85 million by 2030. To bridge the talent gap and accelerate digital transformation, companies are turning to low-code or no-code platforms powered by AI.
ServiceNow is a low-code, no-code platform delivering enhanced user experiences. ServiceNow offers purpose-built AI for our customers’ enterprise-specific use cases, like enterprise search, smarter chatbots, text understanding, answering questions and summarization. Because we understand how customers use low-code and no-code platforms, we can apply AI to their specific content, conversations and logs, and use our understanding within a customer’s context to derive their intent and come back with an intelligent next step to kick off a back-end workflow.
By embracing the shift to AI and low-code, ServiceNow can enhance efficiency, UX, agility and cost savings, and hire great talent to drive innovations for our customers and communities.
