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It’s clear now that the general emergence of AI, particularly with companies like Lakeba Group at the forefront, are going to not only change business for the better, but life in general.
Whenever someone asked me about AI I delivered this same, cynical message. One Saturday at my local cafe, for example, when a younger and more optimistic colleague cornered me in the sunshine and asked for my take on AI, I went in with both barrels. He nodded sagely and left with a cappuccino and a suitably adjusted mindset.
Job done, I thought. But from the corner of the cafe a quiet, accented voice called out to me. “Hey!” the voice said. “That’s bullshit!”. I turned to find a middle aged, tanned man in reflective sunglasses sipping on a mocha. “Not AI,” he explained. “You. What you just said. That’s bullshit”.
“Excuse me?” I replied. And with a gesture to ask permission, the man left his table and joined mine. What followed was a heated, multi-beverage debate about AI.
Giuseppe, my new sparring partner, pulled apart many of my arguments. I spent 25 years of my life teaching at various universities which means I am now afflicted with “professor’s disease” a serious complaint in which middle-aged sufferers opine on everything with total certainty and an absolute inability to listen to anyone else’s perspective.
But Giuseppe was insistent. Persuasive. Knowledgeable. Experienced. The next time I saw him at the cafe I made a beeline straight to his table and we continued our discussion. Gradually, over many coffees and many hours, I started to change my mind. Yes, marketers are magpies. And yes, they have lost their collective minds over an array of relatively pointless tools in the past. But that doesn’t mean AI is just another distraction. Or that the AI revolution that we keep hearing about is just marketing hot air.
Of course, Giuseppe was not just some random mocha lover who happened to live on my street and enjoy an argument. He was Giuseppe Porcelli, the founder and CEO of Lakeba Group. It’s a company that has not only spawned a series of AI solutions, it employs them successfully at large Australian and global clients to great effect.
Every Australian has struggled with identity verification, for example. You can only get so far with digital applications before you need to physically submit all kinds of 20th century evidence of your existence using 19th century modes of delivery. We scramble for passports and drivers licences and birth certificates while accepting that it will take time to get things approved.
Through DoxAI, one of Lakeba’s businesses, a company can verify anyone’s identity legally in seconds. Using your phone’s camera and an extensive AI analysis anyone can prove they are who they are to anyone else.
Documents can be verified in seconds. Processes can be sped up. Hundreds of employees can be moved to less mundane tasks as the protracted business of documenting proof is reduced to a few efficient seconds.
And I became a convert. I came to see that AI is not bullshit. I am. And such has been my damascene conversion I recently became a non-executive director at Lakeba. Giuseppe made me an offer I could not refuse. And who better to help customers get over their cynicism for AI solutions, than someone who once held the same position?
This is an extract from an article written by Mark Ritson for The Australian, published on 30th October 2023.
Read the full story: How Giuseppe Porcelli converted this AI cynic - The Australian
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