INSIDE SAMSUNG'S AI EVOLUTION - IAN CHONG

CRA: [00:00:00] Ian, welcome to the TechBurst Talks podcast. Ian: Hello, hello. It's nice to see you again. CRA: Nice to see you too. We've been spending a lot of time together recently at the Samsung events. Ian: I think I'm seeing too much of you, actually. CRA: Okay, I can understand your concern with that. So, for the listeners in the podcast, can you explain a little bit about your role at Samsung and a little bit more about yourself? Ian: Sure. So my name is Ian Chong and I work for Samsung Electronics here in Singapore. I'm part of the mobile B2B team. And basically we cover Southeast Asia as well as Australia and New Zealand. So just to probably share a little bit of what mobile is so I cover everything that has to do with smartphones to tablets as well as wearables as well. So that falls under my purview and we basically service our B2B CRA: customers. And you've had a bit of a busy year because this year you announced something different, which was AI. And that caused quite a stir in the press because suddenly now we have AI on the smartphones.[00:01:00] So can you give us some information about that? Like what is AI on the smartphones and what does it mean to us as the users? Ian: So during Unpack early this year, we announced what we call Galaxy AI as part of our launch. So that's something that's pretty new in the market. In fact, we are the first to come up with an AI smartphone. We also announced the ability to process. AI capabilities on the device, and we work with some of our partners as well in order to do that. CRA: Okay, so give me some examples of this, like what does Galaxy AI actually do? Sure, so if you look at Ian: Our latest Galaxy S24 as well as our Z Fold 6 as well as Z Flip 6, what we have is actually the ability to do a couple of things. One is we actually have the ability to point at something, an object, and then you can basically do a circle to search, that's what we call it. And this basically integrates with Google. For instance if you'd like a bag that your business is actually looking at and you can actually circle to search and immediately brings [00:02:00] up something that's close to that. So if you think about it you can obviously do this in the past using Google search or image search, but you need to probably, you know, stamp a picture, download it. And then upload it to Google image search. But now everything's all integrated on the device itself. CRA: I've actually used this on the Samsung device. And I thought it was neat, but I never really understood the value of it. Until we were doing some filming a couple of weeks ago. That's right, yeah. And there was one of the cameramen had these crazy socks. They were Chupa Chups socks. And you were sitting there with the phone, took a picture of his socks, circled it, and it popped up where you could buy them. And you went ahead and bought the socks. That's right. And I think that's probably the use case that this was actually designed for. It's just pure Ian: sock purchases. Well, actually the use case for us, because I'm into really fancy socks, and I kind of like that cheaper, cheap socks. And I thought that's a great idea. In fact, I don't, I didn't know where to buy them. And just using a feature like that. And strange enough this is one feature that I thought I won't use as much compared to [00:03:00] the other Galaxy AI features. But strange enough, this is something that I use really frequently. Something that is not just about, buying fancy softs, but ability to not only circle to search images, but I can actually circle and highlight words that I don't understand, and I don't need to copy that into Google Translate or a different app. So everything is built seamlessly into Galaxy. The whole user experience. So I think that is quite unique as well. CRA: It was quite an impressive use case. Actually, once I saw that, no, I'm in love with the feature just because I know I could circle and, purchase socks. So, but we'll come back to your sock addiction later on. That's another whole, we could do a whole podcast on that, but let's go back to some of the other features on the latest devices. Sure. So Ian: Another feature that I think a lot of, people are talking about would actually be the Live Translate capability as well. for instance, if you are in an overseas country like in Korea and you're on holiday and you can actually pick up the phone and you call the restaurant. And as you speak, it actually translate what [00:04:00] you say in English into Korean, and the party on the other side actually hears your speech in Korean. And when they reply, and they speak in Korean, it will actually translate back to English to you as well. So all that is seamlessly done on the device you don't need a different application to do that. CRA: I think it's great that this is getting embedded in now because, I mean, for most of us who have regional roles. We're continually going to other countries where we don't always speak the other languages. So unfortunately not everywhere speaks English because that's all I speak. So but yeah, so that's a great tool and function. I think I can't wait to try and use it next time in Japan. And then what about some of the other functionality? So I think for business users, Ian: especially for B2B customers I think some of the features that has been very useful would actually be the What we call the transcript assist as well. So this is a feature that we've integrated into our Samsung Notes capability as well. So now you can actually record a conversation. I think you've seen that as well as one of our events as well, where we actually recorded [00:05:00] your speech. And what happens is that after you've completed that speech or you've completed the recording, you can actually transcribe that and only transcribe what you spoke. In fact, it can pick up different speakers. So if, let's say we are like now we actually have a conversation, it actually knows which speaker is actually speaking and it actually transcribed based on the speakers. And after that, you can summarize it as well. So we can summarize it into bullet points. I think you've seen it in one of these videos. I've seen that. Yes, CRA: you did it with my, it was a very long keynote. It was a 45 minute keynote. That's right. And then you basically clicked a button to transcribe it and then clicked another button to summarize it. And basically my 45 minutes cannot be read in a couple minutes. So you've basically rendered me to be useless going forward. So I'll have to start looking for another job pretty soon, I think. But I think the other great function on that, and what I like it for is using it in meetings just as transcribing who does it, it tracks out who speaks at which time and actually I didn't like it at first because I wasn't using it, but I was doing things with people who were using it and they basically held me to account for everything I promised. And they had it in writing. So I was kind of like, [00:06:00] did I really say I was going to do that? Yeah. So it's, it's another great feature on the device. Ian: So, but, but, you know, we, we continue to innovate and improve the way that we do some of these features. So in, actually in, in our latest Z Fold and Z Flip series as well, especially on the foldable. One of the key things that we've done is we've actually integrated all of these features into the Samsung Notes capability. So what that means now is instead of having a voice recorder and then transcribing it later and then having to copy that into the notes, now we can actually have it within the notes, record what you're saying. As I write, I can even scroll back to the time where we are talking and it actually highlights the notes as when I write it as well. And if you have ugly writing like me there's also a feature where we can actually you know help to, what we call not only to summarize, but at the same time to improve on in fact, like correcting your, you know, your crooked lines as well as you write. So I think that's a feature that I think a lot of people will actually like. CRA: So we're putting more and more content [00:07:00] onto these devices. I mean, the device I'm using here, it's got my entire work and personal life in it. Now we're putting AI on these devices as well. This makes me a bit nervous. So there might be a lot of people as well. So what does Samsung do to make sure that all of this data is secured and it's not exposed to risk? Ian: So we have something called Samsung KNOX platform. And this is something that we've built into every single device that we have. And it starts, it's a multi-layered security that's built from the chip up. And if you really think about it, everything that we talk about, especially AI and a lot of the B2B customers that you speak with, The concern is really around the security piece of it. So what we've done is that we've worked for the past many years, we've actually certified with people at Common Criteria with with HIPAA, which is actually healthcare certification FIPS as well for financials as well as cryptographic cryptographic certifications around the world, and we've made them available for government agencies or security agencies as well. So you think about it, if [00:08:00] security agencies like. You know, the law enforcement and all that are actually using our devices for security. One more for consumers. So the, stringent guidelines that they have, we've implemented all of that on the device for almost all the devices that we have from smartphones to tablets as well. And what Samsung KNOX does is to segregate and secure all of your personal data. This includes not only your passwords your, pin codes. Also your health information, so we protect all your information at a at a deeper level. So it's not just on the storage perspective, but at the same time making it secure across the entire platform. And why is that important? So if you look at AI now, people are talking about, Oh what about all the data that you're trying to put? Are we trying to learn? about some of your, information as well. I think all of that is secured on the device. So if you think about for B2B customers specifically, I think that security piece becomes the foundation [00:09:00] for AI applications that are built on top of that. CRA: Yeah. Security has been an issue with mobile since I've been in the industry and that's a very long time. And it just seems like the more things we're putting on it, it's great because we have more capabilities, but then it also does expose us for more risks. So I think. Being able to address that up front is very important. And you gave some examples about how, like, some of the police forces are using these devices. I'll give you the one that I like, because I met with the guys down at Telstra in Australia, and the New South Wales Police Force, which I think is the largest police force in the world, or one of them. They all use one of the, a single Samsung device and they used to use before a tablet, a mobile phone, a walkie talkie, everything else they've incorporated everything in all their apps on a single device. And I love that because it's just simpler to manage, but because you have all that data and this is. Police record information, but it means also you're going to be accessing citizen information. So the level of security, you know, they've gone through to make sure those devices and all that data is protected is pretty impressive. So I think that's a great example and great use case. Yeah, I Ian: mean, that's [00:10:00] just one of many use cases that we do. In fact, a lot of people do not know, but we also. Produce and manufacture rugged devices at the same time. So for a lot of frontline workers that, it's, it's a device that the company purchased, you might not take good care of it, but we make sure that we ruggedize those smartphones so that they can use as well. So for, for. In many cases you know, whether it's law enforcement or police all the way down to, you could be a person at logistics or retail. We actually cater for the entire range of customers at the same time. So those are some of the use cases that CRA: That we, we use. I almost wonder if we really need ruggedized devices anymore because the other devices are getting so strong. But also like in the old days, ruggedized devices were cool because they were big and chunky and they were a self defense mechanism. You could take out a charging rhino with one of these things. Now they're actually nice looking devices and it's kind of like, I kind of miss the old school stuff where you had to carry it, you know, your arm would be sore at the end of the day because it was such a big clunky piece of Ian: kit. I'm not sure if you [00:11:00] can stop a charging rhino but the latest rugged smartphones that we carry like the Xcover 7 and the Tab Active 5 they are all ruggedized devices but they are, they still look very sleek and I think that's the difference that we have from a consumer perspective and the design that we apply to them still look pleasing for a lot of people Actually, it's not just that it's ruggedized where you can drop it and all that, but the ability to connect to other devices. And if you think about some of these industries they need to mount this on forklifts. They need to have the ability to connect. Like for instance, if you're using as a walkie talkie, you can't have like a fleet of people, a hundred people, and then you charge them with a USB cable. Can you imagine? You just need one person to keep charging that throughout the day. So, what we do is we actually have POVO pins on them so you can actually put it just like a walkie talkie does. And that doesn't collect any dust. So you can actually just wipe it off and you can still use it, especially for rugged environments like mining and manufacturing. So, [00:12:00] all of that. Built into a single device like that. CRA: What's interesting is before those ruggedized devices were always just for work because they were so rugged. But now you, you're right. I mean, they do look a lot sexier than they used to. And you see a lot of industries using them and actually the people are happy to use those as their personal phones as well. Ian: Yeah, you'd be surprised actually. I know you like cycling as well. And we do have customers actually use our ruggedized devices for cycling too. Because obviously in the environment they are in and they are cycling at fast speeds. Yeah. Actually mounting that on some of the bikes that they have is also useful. CRA: I've lost a smartphone while I was riding one time and it was yeah, it got run over. So hopefully the ruggedized would solve that problem next time. So we've talked about the device and the latest advancements within Samsung. What about from the customer side? What are your customers talking to you about when it comes to AI? Do they understand how they can potentially use this in the future? So, I, I think Ian: to, to talk about that, we need to probably dial back a bit about. What's the difference in terms of Galaxy AI that we, we offer as well. So one of the key [00:13:00] differences is really on device AI. So maybe for the listeners on, on this podcast, I think if they don't understand what on device AI is, basically what it means is that we process some of these AI capabilities on the device and not on the cloud. So if you think of the benefit of that is twofold. One is that it keeps all the data within the device itself from a security standpoint. Second point is also the fact that because you are not connected to, to the cloud and having to push data out to the cloud and back the speed of that. So you can actually process that on the edge on the device and make it faster. Now, obviously for larger, you know LMs or large language models that you need to process on the cloud you can still do that. That's the difference that we have, right? So some of this translation we spoke about earlier all that is done on device. So you don't require that to, to connect to the cloud. Now where we see some of those ability where our customers find it useful. So we, we spoke about law enforcement, I think new softwares [00:14:00] and some of these other customers that we have. What they have done is that, and not specifically to New South Wales, but to the customers that we're talking to is actually the ability to, one, if they are actually interviewing a victim and all that, they can actually transcribe that information and quickly come up with a summary and then use that as part of the report. The other one is actually very useful. It's especially most times and we have seen this in some of the countries is that when people who go to the, the law enforcement and all And they're asking for help. But they might not speak the language, so having something like the interpreter actually helps. So some of these are some of the features that can actually help to improve the overall experience, not only for the law enforcement officer, but also for the people that are actually approaching them as well. But that's just one case and if you look at other people, I think for working professionals, a good example would be within the financial sector as well. So especially people who have you know, [00:15:00] high value clients and they are talking to them, they, they are screwing down notes and having to bleak it with note assist actually would actually help. The other one is, of course, for research. So we have a feature called browsing assist. I didn't talk about it earlier, but if you are actually surfing the internet and doing your own research or reading out some papers you can actually quickly summarize that either in a, a very detailed summary, Or something that you just want because you're a busy professional, you want something on the go. It can summarize it very quickly all using Galaxy AI. So those are features that I think any working professional would probably appreciate. CRA: I'll be honest, that's the one feature I use the most is the browsing assist. From my line of work, I have to read a lot of articles and in the last couple years it's become more and more difficult because all the articles have so many different advertisements in the middle. You're scrolling, you're scrolling and I get frustrated and I just stop reading the articles. So what I'm using now is I'm going to these articles and I'm clicking, the browsing assist and it just gives me a summary of the article and I can see if I really want to go through and read it in detail. But it means [00:16:00] I'm getting through a lot more articles than I know I would be able to because this gives me the summaries and it's making me a little bit lazy, but I like that because I'm much more efficient that way because we time to do other things. That's right. So the other thing I want to talk about which is more of an industry trend. So when you're doing this, you're actually part of a wider ecosystem. You're partnering very closely with some of the biggest tech brands that are out there. Now, in this industry, if we go back the last 25 years, the tech brands don't play nicely with each other. They have them viewed as a zero sum game where if I give you anything, I'm losing something. But now you're partnering with Google, you're partnering with Microsoft how is that helping you deliver better solutions for customers now? Ian: So I think in contrary to popular belief, I think Samsung is an organization that has always been open. So, and I'll give you a fun fact, that's why, you've seen our logo, right and within the word Samsung, the letter A. You'll notice that there isn't a line that cuts across the the alphabet. And the reason for that is because we, [00:17:00] it's, it's ingrained into our value, which is the openness part. And we do not have the line because we want to show that it's open. Another very common logo that you see is our group logo, which is the oval shaped logo. So the S and the G at the end of the both letters where the, the oval shape actually touches, it's actually open. It's not closed as well. And the oval shape. It's actually depicts the galaxy. So, this is just a fun fact for you, but, if you really dial down to the value that we have, we are, we've always been open. So, like, to give you an example of that would be our operating system. We work with Android. And Android is Google, basically. And all these years, when we started, you know, producing smartphones, we've been working with Google. And, and of course, we gather partners as well. And a good case of that with Galaxy AI is a circle to search. It's actually a integration with Google as well. And some of the work that we've done from a Gemini AI powered capability on the device as well, it's actually working with Google. And [00:18:00] we are definitely co collaborating with a lot of these partners and it's ingrained into the openness ecosystem that we've built. So all the different partners we work with is to ensure that we provide the best. Capability on a, on our smartphones and our tablets as well, as well as our wearables to our customers. CRA: I want to go back to the logo and the openness. Samsung's been a client of mine for over 12 years or so, I think. I never knew that. This is, I've learned something new today. I'm thinking about it, I'm like, Actually, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that's right. So, Ian: I think openness is definitely one thing. And I think earlier, I, I did not mention this, but I, while we talk about I'm from Mobile B2B the organization I belong to is called MX. So, we changed that the entire division's name probably back in 2021. And what MX stands for is actually Mobile Experience. So the experience part is also an important part that's ingrained. So besides [00:19:00] openness, the experience part as well. So if you think about, we talked about some of those features that we mentioned, it's actually to help to improve the overall user experience, not only for consumers, but also for enterprise customers at the same time, making sure that it becomes very seamless to them. CRA: Okay. Next thing I want to talk about is some of your other partners that you have. So obviously you saw through almost all the mobile operators in the region, if not everyone, I'm guessing. How have they reacted to this? Because I think part of what you're doing by being first to market with AI means that you're taking on a lot of the responsibility of leading the market, trying to have to explain to people, this is why it's important, why it's really transformative. So how are the operators responding to this? Are they seeing the value of AI on the smartphones now? Well, I think Ian: obviously. You know, AI has been around for a long time. What has changed is really Gen AI. Specifically, and I think in the last couple of years with the introduction of LightChat GPT and all that has really ballooned up this entire thing. But if [00:20:00] we, we look at it, Samsung has been investing in AI for long periods of time. In fact, we actually have global AI centers around the world. So we have AI centers in, down in Canada and Montreal. We have it in in Korea, in, in America, in Moscow and other locations as well, like UK. And we've invested our time into global AI forums where we speak together with some of the leading. I think that creates a credibility of what we are doing. And I think our partners, like our operators, actually start to see some of that. Obviously, if we dive it down to specific products that we've done obviously from a smartphone perspective, there's on device capabilities. I think it's still something where a lot of the users are starting to appreciate, like yourself. Like you see some of these features are starting to improve the quality of the work and the efficiency of work that you're doing today. But if we expand it out, the AI capability is not just within the mobile ecosystem, it's now building out into everything from the lifestyle that you live, the, the refrigerator, the TV.[00:21:00] So if you have a call the TV will actually reduce the sound, for instance. So some of these things are all built into the capability of the portfolio that we deliver from Samsung. CRA: And I think the experience part is the important word there because it is, it's all about enhancing the experience. I could still go and just read all the articles and go through it, but if I can read them in a summary of them, that's much better. I could take notes at a meeting, but if I can get my phone to actually do it for me, summarize it and send it out to people, it just makes that overall experience better and allows me to be more efficient and do things that I want to be doing instead of things like note taking and sending out meeting notes. I think it's great because there's been a lot of really cool advancements on it. So now the tough question about this. Whenever there's a new advancement in technology, there's going to be a lot of skeptics and some of the things you heard when you first made the announcements back in January, and then some again in July, when you did the last unpacked event. People are saying, well, why do I really need AI on the smartphone? So what do you, how would you respond to somebody who says, I don't think I need AI on Ian: my smartphone? CRA: So Ian: I think AI in general is going to [00:22:00] be inevitable. I think everyone is going to start to appreciate the ability to, to use some of these capabilities on our devices. And I think as, as time progresses, I think, yes, there will be, areas where people might think that, well, I do not require this capability. And I mentioned this earlier where I felt like a little search for something that I don't use as often. But even myself, I, I start to see that this become, this actually helps me in my day to day life as well. So for people who have not really used it, I think it's good to experience it. And it's really hard. I think if we are on a podcast now and I were to show it to you I think your audiences that's listening in, they might not be able to appreciate or see it, I will recommend them to visit one of our stores and experience some of the AI capabilities that we have, because I think it's really believing that these things can actually help improve what you're doing today. CRA: And I think that's not just with your phone, but that's with a lot of technology and trends. I mean, I remember when ChatGPT came out, I went out and tested it right away. I'm [00:23:00] like, oh, that's interesting. And I didn't really use it for a while. And then I went back one day and looked up something on it. And then like within a matter of two to three weeks, I literally do everything on it now. I hardly ever use Google search anymore. I do everything through ChatGPT. And it's just a matter of, it was like this slippery slope where I put my toe in the water and then suddenly it just, it took off. And I'm just, I'm loving it because I feel like I'm so much more efficient. And I can't believe how much better it is than what I was doing before. I would say the same thing that you said there. Go out there and try this stuff. Because, I mean, I, I had questions about some of the functionality on the Samsung one. I was like, why would I want to use that? But then as soon as you start doing it, you realize what you could use it for. It's fascinating. To be honest, it's a lot of fun. Ian: Yeah, but you know what's fascinating to me? Is the fact that you actually have a powerful PC in your pocket today. It's probably. the most powerful device that you have, that you bring around every day. In fact, it's the most hyper connected device. I mean, you have a laptop with you, but that laptop will not be able to compete. with t In fact, the phone [00:24:00] I have in my hand here it has more storage. It has much better processing capabilities as well. Hyper connected, right? Yes, I have WiFi 7 on my, on my smartphone, right? How many devices out there on wifi 7 Today is the most hyper connected device, and you really think about where AI is heading We are talking about multimodel now, so chat, GPT is also getting into the whole multimodel and having a smartphone and, and a, a powerful piece in a pocket of your hands where it can accept vision from a camera perspective. It can accept speech where you're putting input of voice. You have the input of text and other capabilities where all these are amalgamated and be able to help you to process that from a GenAI capability actually improves performance. The usability and, and in fact, your I would say your productivity and efficiency in the work that you do every single day. CRA: Now let's have some fun and let's look at the future of AI and let's look at the future of Gen AI in [00:25:00] particular. So how do you think people will start using these things for their jobs or for their interactions throughout the day? Ian: I would split it into two parts, right? I think where Samsung is heading in terms of AI capability. Earlier I mentioned that we actually have global AI centers around. In fact, we built our own large language model on top of that. We have something called Samsung Gauss. So it actually breaks into Samsung Gauss language, code, as well as image as well. And, and all of these components that we actually use fundamentally some parts of it within our Galaxy AI capabilities as well. And if you look deeper into those capabilities that we've started building I think what you would see where this is heading from a consumer perspective would be the ability to create, the ability to improve their overall lifestyle. But if you start diving into from a B2B standpoint, I think there's a whole range of possibilities. And similar to what we mentioned about openness, and I think the openness also comes from a, a galaxy of opportunity. That's how I put it. Because [00:26:00] if you think about it this would be an area where if you are working in, for example, in retail, and you have a customer that walks to you, you would have the ability to access all the information or inventory from the back end. Be able to provide, recommendation back to your customer on what will be an alternative if something is out of stock. Especially in a retail environment, you do not want the customer to walk out because that's a lost opportunity for them. So having the ability where there and there, where you have the power of AI, the ability to provide recommendations, and the ability to give them an, an, an option where They can give and provide their input of their things that they like. The shop assistant can actually help as well. And we talked about the power PC at the same time, right? In the pocket of your hands is the, is now you can use this for communication. You can use it for note taking and everything else. In fact, this is something you can't live without today. And if we, we look at some of our B2B customers specifically, like [00:27:00] even in the logistics space as well. Now you can have the ability to point your camera up and using vision, right? You don't even need to input any text to say I'm looking for an object. You can actually have the ability to use vision or the camera capabilities to receive input And use that to process that as part of what you need For example, I'm trying to look for a pair of shoes this size and then you just point your camera up and having the ability to then receive back information of where that shoe practically is within a huge warehouse, for instance. CRA: Okay. So one of the things that I've been looking at that I really love because it's just so simple is a solution that Telstra came up with and it's their one sentence summary. And what Telstra has been doing is over all the people who call into their contact centers, If you're my client, it says Ian, it gives me a one sentence summary of the account. And what I love about it is, it's so simple but it's so valuable, so it helps them reduce complaints, helps them resolve issues faster, but they're [00:28:00] also rolling it out now to all their stores and every contact center they have. But then, that's just Telstra. If you use that exact same concept, I love what you could do for a doctor, for instance. Think about how doctors and how overworked they are, how many patients they have to see during a day. Now, if you've got eight to ten minutes to see a patient, and you have to spend the first two to three minutes understanding what's going on with that patient. What if, maybe not a one sentence, but a one paragraph summary of the patient before you go in? And then I started thinking about it, well what if we could start doing it with machines and I could almost talk to my espresso machine or something like that to find out how it's doing and if there's any problems with it. And I just think this concept, it's going to transform the way that we do things going forward. At first I was kind of like, it's just another trend, but I think what I'm realizing is it is one of these transformative technologies where things just won't be the same ever again. Same thing that happened, like when we had search engines. Now we've got this, I think it's that next level leap of where it's going to. Ian: Talking about doctors, what would be a successful hospital? What do you think would be a successful hospital? Would it be one where you have a lot of patients, or [00:29:00] one that has no patients? I would hope less patients. That's right. Because, actually, If you can diagnose the problem quickly, you can actually send them home. And in fact, then you can actually have more patients coming in who require, you know, beds and, or the ability to diagnose for other issues that they might have. But if a hospital is full, you cannot take in more patients. But with what we are doing today in, in Samsung, it's actually helping to do like remote care, remote monitoring with some of what we are doing. But at the same time, if you think about it what you say is also very true, right, is if we can actually help the doctors summarize and be able to improve on how they can diagnose an issue using the devices that they have in their hands versus having to flip through a lot of notes. That could be something that would be game changing as well. CRA: I think that's the scariest thing is when I go into a doctor's office, I see them writing anything down. Like, why are you not just directly putting it into a computer or using, you know, transcribed transcription to actually capture what you're saying? And I know people always say, well, there's privacy issues around [00:30:00] that, but some of the biggest healthcare organizations in the U. S. have already started recording all the patient doctor interactions and they're putting those into the system. And they're summarizing it. And that's a great start going forward because. Why not? If we can improve this, we can help people treat their conditions better. But if they have a chronic condition, you can help them manage it better. And that means less people going to the hospital, less pressure on the doctors. That improves their quality of life as well. So I mean, technology really can help them. It's just a matter of getting them over that hurdle because as we know, digital transformations not that easy. And there's a lot of people who try to resist it and just keep with the status quo. So now we've talked a lot about tech, but I now want to have a little bit of fun because I want to talk to you about You're addictions. So you've got a couple things that I know you're famous for with your addictions, and it's nothing bad. Well, I guess in excess, it could be a little bad. Let's talk about the first one. How did you become so addicted to coffee? And I am an espresso addict, and I thought I was freakishly addicted to it. But then when we were talking up in [00:31:00] Vietnam, you explained to me what you go through as part of your coffee process. I just felt like an amateur, right? Ian: So I guess how I started, I guess I've been drinking coffee since I was young, but one day I walked into a coffee shop coffee academies. Time Out magazine or something mentioned that they were one of the coffee places to be, before you die kind of thing. So I went in and I was talking to the menu and they had something called V60. Sounded cool to me. It's like, you know, I work in the tech world and anything that says V means like version, right? You have a version 6, it's fantastic. I'll try that, right? And, Actually, I did not like that coffee the first time I tried it. To be frank, I still like my espressos with my cappuccinos and all that. And so for those people who don't know, V60 is actually a dripper. And then what they do is actually it's a filtered coffee or pour over coffee is what they call it. So it's black coffee, basically. And what happened was I walked in one of the shops and I, I saw this V60 kit [00:32:00] and decided to buy it and try to make coffee myself. I've been doing that for, I think, I don't know, 10 years or so. Doing it all wrong for 10 years, but I still enjoy the coffee that I have. But only up to maybe right around COVID period where everything was closed. I started to learn more about what coffee was. And I think that started to grow further. I, because I got sick and tired of drinking the same coffee. So I bought this coffee bean that I will buy like I've, I think my, my team knows this, I'm sort of like a hoarder, right? I'll buy in bulk. So I'll buy like, supply of coffee for a year. And and I'll just drink it like the same coffee. And I got bored of it, so I started buying and procuring different type of coffee. So what happened was from then I realized that, hey, coffee could taste different. And I started tasting, besides caramel notes and, you know, your, your regular chocolatey kind of coffee. I started tasting coffee that was like blackcurrant. Floral tastes like you know, you get like [00:33:00] jasmine and, and violet this kind of flavors within the coffee. And that started me down the rabbit hole where I started procuring different kind of coffee. And maybe for people on the who's listening, who don't know, but coffee, it's actually a fruit, right? And then it comes from the seed. So it actually it takes like a couple of years for it to absorb all the nutrients around the the tree. And then you get the kind of flavors, all the natural flavors, like, like what we call it. CRA: But now let's get down to the important question. What's the most amount of cups of coffee you've tasted in a day? Ian: So we do what we call coffee tasting I can't remember, but I would say we did there's quite a few of us, but in general I tasted roughly about, 400 different types of coffee in three days. And did you get a nice coffee buzz out of that? Towards the end you do, but I somehow have the ability [00:34:00] of I don't have that kind of, like, coffee buzz and I can actually have coffee, like, in the middle of the night and, like, as you fall asleep. That's your superpower. Yeah, that's right. CRA: Okay, that's very good. So, okay, let's talk about your other addiction. I remember when I first met you, you had a crazy pair of socks on and then I was talking to one of your colleagues and they said that you always love wearing your crazy socks. What is it with the crazy socks? I mean, first of all, I love the concept because let's face it, we work in B2B in an enterprise space. It can be a bit boring at times. So anything we can do to spice it up is good. What got you into the crazy socks and what is your favorite pair of crazy socks? So Ian: first off I have this mantra, right? So in every meeting or every presentation that I go into, no matter how bad the meeting or the presentation turns out, I know that I'll walk out looking good. So the the socks is one of them. So if I can't dress up I at least have fancy socks that I wear. So that's one of the reasons. My favorite socks would be, I'd [00:35:00] say I actually have a pair of, avocado socks that I, I really like. I actually have two pairs. I think the avocado is one of them. The other one is egg yolks. So the reason why egg yolks is, I always think that you know, when you do a poor presentation, people start throwing eggs at you, right? So I've, I have that on my socks already. So I don't need to worry about how bad the presentation is. I can still continue on. CRA: I think it's great. This industry that we're in sometimes can be a little bit dull and drab and the events can be a little bit dull and drab. So anything you can do to sort of spice it up a little bit, and especially in the appearance, I think is always a good thing. That's right. So you've spent a lot of time in the tech industry now. What would you be doing if you weren't in the tech industry? So you can start all over again, what would you do? Ian: This is a very interesting question. So, when I was young, and I think I'm generally a techie, right? I love tech, I'm, I, some people call me a nerd when I'm much younger. I have white hair now, it's a bit difficult. But the fact is that I, I have a creative [00:36:00] side as well. And I think it, it doesn't really translate very well in a tech organization. You know, you've been in IT for a long time. That's why I go into photography and everything else. I think if, if I were to restart and do everything again I'll probably look at the creative industry as an area that I would probably love to try and do something there. See, I thought you were going to say you were going to find a way to combine sax and coffee. Ah. So I think both coffee and socks, in fact coffee and socks might be a good name for my cafe in the future. There we go. Alright. But I guess that's a retirement job, right? But if you're going to start from the beginning, I think if I'm young and all that, I think I'll definitely go into the creative side. If I'm retiring, yeah, maybe a coffee shop and you can come and drink coffee. CRA: I always make sure I wear my funkiest socks. I have a lot of work to do to keep up with you. So I did try. I think we'll share a picture of how I dress to try to match you for this event. Cause I can't compete in socks, but I tried to compete on overall outfit. So we'll see how that goes. Last [00:37:00] question on this. So what's the best piece of advice you've ever been given in the tech industry? Ian: So I think the best piece of advice that Someone had actually given me and I think it's something that I've, Stuff on through and through. I think I think my team knows this very well, right? It's that information is only useful when it's specific. And it's something that I think I continue to work on. And I want to make sure that when we communicate to people, it's very important to make sure that We are very specific on either the asks that we, we have or even in a meeting or instructions that we give people or in fact, you're trying to write an email. Just make sure that it's specific. And I think that's very important. Okay, very good. Final chance, over to you. Any questions for me? So, question I would have would be, where do you think the AI trends would be heading? CRA: I had an interesting debate with somebody recently about whether this is really enabling Industry 5.0 And at first, when [00:38:00] I heard the term Industry 5.0 I wanted to bang my head on the table because I thought, Oh, here comes another crazy buzzword. The more I've looked at it and I see how it can be applied to the industrial sector, the same way that I can talk to ChatGPT to find out anything that I'm looking into and researching. I can talk that same non-technical language now to a, a wind farm, to a piece of machinery, to a building. And I think that literally is so transformative. If you go from industry 1. 0 to 2. 0 to 3. 0, it was hundreds of years, then like 50 years, and then suddenly we had industry 4. 0 and it's gone seamlessly, I think, into industry 5. 0. And a lot of people will still say that they don't believe it's the next one. I actually do now because I'm seeing So much about the possibilities. Now, the question is, can we deliver on it? It isn't easy. There's a lot of transformation as an industry. We haven't been great at it. I mean, 70 to 90 percent of digital transformations fail, but the capabilities we have at our disposal. This is one of the biggest things I've seen in my lifetime that I've, that I've looked [00:39:00] at and I was not bullish on this at the start. I thought it was a fad. I thought it was overhyped, but the more I'd used it, it's literally taken over how I'm doing things. It's changed the way I live my life now and what I do on a day to day basis. So I'm really excited about that. I think it's going to take a while for everybody to catch up. But because there's so much opportunity, and also, we're not, everyone thinks it's something new, and it actually isn't. All we're doing is shrinking down a process. Something that would take you weeks before might take you days, then down to like hours. Or from a day to hours to minutes. It's like, the same process is going through, but with AI we have so many tools that can shrink it down, that it makes us that much more productive and we can do other things. You know, I always go back to like when I was at university, I had to I studied finance and economics, and I had to use a calculator back then. We didn't have Excel, but we had these financial calculators so you could do net present value or IRR functions. For our exam, our teacher thought it was cheating [00:40:00] if we used a calculator, so he made us memorize these long formulas and couldn't use calculators for the exam. Which is absolutely stupid because I took the exam, I passed it, but I never used those formulas again. Why would I? Because I used the calculator and then I used Excel when that came out. And you wouldn't go back and do that because there's better ways to do it. And just because I'm using something that's more efficient doesn't mean I'm not learning the concept. So I've always been fascinated by what those barriers and how people try to resist. So I'm hoping we can break that down as quickly as possible. All right. Well, thank you for the question and thank you for spending your afternoon with me. You're my second to last guest in this Singapore flat. So this is going to be the second to last podcast from Singapore. So Ian, thank you very much for your time and sharing your insights on Samsung, on AI, and especially on Galaxy AI. And coffee and socks. And that's the fun bit. Yes. The coffee and socks. All right. Thank you. Thank you.