Biographical sketch in 90 second “skyscraper elevator pitch” for APN:

APN is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup designed to help companies, nonprofits, and governments with their AI strategy. Basically, most people are scared that they are going to be replaced by robots and business owners are worried that they are going to be seriously disrupted by all things AI and exponential technology that they don’t  understand. There are basically 3 kinds of entities in the world right now:

1. Those that have an AI Strategy.
2. Those that think it’s probably a good idea to create one.  
3. Those that don’t have a clue as to where to start.

We believe at APN that we can help folks in all 3 categories. Right now in the world there are two skill sets in extremely short supply, people that understand AI strategy and data scientists that understand the most pertinent subset of AI called Deep Learning. We address this situation in two ways. We have a proprietary service we call a ‘Fossa Singularity Diagnostic’ which we perform on businesses. . It’s designed to educate a business (both its leaders and employees) on the relevant AI and other exponential technologies that affect its industry. It helps reduce fears by showing that employees aren’t going to be replaced...only some of their tasks are. They are entering the era we call the “Augmented Age” which means they will have unprecedented productivity gains from human + machine (humans working with artificial intelligence machines). The second way we help is with our data science division. Today it is well known that data is the new oil. But not every company is set up to extract this oil. Our data science division assists our Singularity Consultants in finding this oil embedded in entities. More importantly, it is designed with helping the build or buy decision in acquiring  the AI necessary to help employees do their jobs more productively.

Your talent joining APN:

In the Summer of 2016, we focused on solving some problems in Afghanistan. Actually, it was a nonprofit called Global Citizenry which we used as the vehicle to do this. We had some friends inside the Afghanistan government that asked for help in creating a unique multimillion dollar assistance package to be funded by large donor agencies like US Aid and Democracy International. We don’t shy away from big challenges and solving complex problems and it was like “fixing” war torn Afghanistan. Dr. Coburn, who joined our team, is a professor at Bennington College in Vermont. Anthropologist. This guy writes his PhD dissertation while living in an Afghanistan village that makes pottery during the war. Anyway, to be concise, Dr. Noah (as I like to call him) said that you have to go after the water problem. It’s killing the kids and they can’t learn without clean, fresh water. We took the challenge. 

To solve the problem we had to think a little outside the box. First thing we did was acquire a map of Mars put out by National Geographic called “Colonizing Mars”. We still have it taped to an office door to this day:

We decided to focus on the city of Kabul first. We knew it’s powergrid and municipal water/sanitation system was in shambles. We figured Mars doesn’t have these things either so perhaps the solution is on this map. And in fact it was: atmospheric water generators, advanced solar power technology, powerful batteries, etc. And this technology had just been or was about to launch. The technology was expensive but we knew that it was in a class we call “exponential technology” which means it was information enabled.That means the cost was going to drop rapidly over the next 10 years. We got a lot of our inspiration from the Singularity University, headquartered in Silicon Valley and founded by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis.  We created a plan to help approximately 1,000 families (about 8,000 people) with water, power, food, sanitation, and education. We actually had the audacity to see if we could meet the specifications outlined by The United Nations General Assembly (2002) regarding the right to water. It was crazy specific: had to be within 1,000 meters from home, safe, sufficient, affordable, and culturally appropriate and sensitive to gender. Basically, almost impossible.

Put the water machines in the mosques!  40 mosques in fact.  We noticed they try to avoid bombing the mosques.  Solar tiles on the roofs...thank you Elon Musk and Solar City. This powers the Tesla Powerwall 2 batteries which powers the Sun2water atmospheric water machines (thanks Singularity University for pointing these guys out).  We found that there has been a big resurgence in going to the mosques in Kabul, particularly the ones that have power (intermittent at best however). The mosques are where the Kabul citizens power their smartphones. Anyway as part of our solution, we crafted a special computer tablet design called a “Fossa Tablet” which we planned on issuing to all the families which was to help with education including how to rig hydroponic gardens at their homes with their newfound water.

It was expensive, but one has to remember that, for instance, the US has spent a trillion dollars on Afghanistan to no avail.  Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on schools that were never built. Under Hillary Clinton’s watch as Secretary of State, the US built a prison in Kabul, that they didn’t need, for $30 million. Except they never bothered to hook it up to a power source.  Hundreds of millions of dollars to buy 6 Arabian horses to start a breeding operation. Pretty nonsensical. After the 2016 US Presidential Election, all bets were off. The US decided to sell more bullets and not fund things like fresh water. No funding. But we did learn a few things. One of the main lessons was that the people that invent the marvelous new exponential technology are obsessed with their gadgets and don’t really know how to deploy them. Another lesson was we realized there was a tremendous need for a business that could people understand AI and exponential technology and how to use it. 

More on what AI means….

One of the challenges with AI these days is that there are so many definitions surrounding what AI really means. We at APN want to to think of AI as standing for “All Intelligence’, a byproduct of humans and machine working together.  

Scores of books have been written recently on AI, how to define it and its applications.  It’s a dizzying array. Frankly, we think it’s kind of a mess as there are so many different points of view and agendas. We are forced to use the term AI in our marketing materials and website because it is the common denominator.  And frankly, it’s what the search engines pick up on as well as social media. To cut to the chase, we chose to call AI “Prediction Machines” and we use that term when working with clients in our diagnostic process. Here’s why…

1956. They held a conference at Dartmouth University that Summer and coined the term Artificial Intelligence for the first time.  Basically, Artificial Intelligence means the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.  But candidly, the very minute humans drew pictures on caves for the first time, that was the beginning of AI. Homo Sapiens dominate the world because we were able to convey the abstract thought because of our large neocortex ....not to mention we have opposable thumbs.

1956-2012.  Slow going.  Believe it or not, the brainiacs that attended that Dartmouth Conference had most of the math ready to go.  But it took a very long time because Moore’s Law wasn’t far enough along and we didn’t have access to the amounts and types of data we have today.  This was a period where we had lots of hype followed by what they call “AI Winter” (it means no one was investing in the technology...except for the Canadians).  

2012. 2012. Ok. Now things are getting interesting.  This is the year Google published the famous “Cat Paper”. They basically got a computer to recognize what a cat is all by itself.  If you want to teach a 1 year old how to recognize a cat, just start saying cat...do it 20 or so times every time you encounter a cat and finally the kid has got it. With a computer, they had to do it about 2 million times. They got the 2 million cat pictures of course from Google Search.  The “Cat Paper” was the first time Deep Learning was introduced to the world. It is a powerful subset of AI.

2014. 2014.  Google purchases a British company called Deep Mind for $600 million.  Of course it doesn’t have any revenue yet. But it performed something very cool.  It created a computer that could teach itself how to play Atari video games all by itself.  Without watching humans. It got way better than humans...very fast. This was the technology at the core of Google building it’s AlphaGo Deep Learning technology.  

2016.  China’s Sputnik Moment!  It is well known by now that Google’s AlphaGo beat champion Go player Lee Sedol during March of that year.  That was the moment that an “alien mind” landed on earth. It was simply extraordinary. IBM’s Deep Mind beating Gary Kasparov in chess in 1997 or IBM’s Watson beating Chris Jennings at Jeopardy in 2011 was sort of like childsplay in comparison.  The ancient 2,500 year old Chinese game of Go is played on a square board with 361 squares and 150 pieces. That means there are 10^171 available moves. Not only is it more moves than the number of atoms in the universe...it is almost a Google (10^100) times the number of atoms in the universe.  Thus, compared to chess, you can’t beat a human with brute force computing in GO. You had to create an “Intuition Machine”. This was considered an impossible task at the time. But that is exactly what Google did. You could classify all AI before this event as “GOFAI” (Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence).  Now, the real AI is Deep Learning or Intuition Machine if you prefer.

2017. November. Google releases AlphaGoZero paper.  Basically, Google taught AlphaGo how to play GO without watching a human.  AlphaGoZero clobbered AlphaGo 100 to 0. No contest. This lead to AlphaZero which can learn the game of GO and chess in about 4 hours.  Simply incredible. Americans aren’t paying attention at all. China invests $20 million in this new Intuition Machine and aspires to be the world leader in 5 years.  The world’s leading Deep Learning guru, Andrew Ng, former CEO of China’s Baidu (China’s Google) calls Deep Learning the new electricity that will impact every person, organization, and industry on earth.  He’s right.

2018. May. Lead by Dr. Ajay Agrawal, a team of economists release a stunning book called Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence.  (See tab Prediction Machines for more detail on this).  It’s important to note that these guys are from the University of Toronto, which is where all the Deep Learning talent came from that now populates firms like Google, Amazon and Facebook.  It is our opinion at APN that this book is going to go down in the annals of AI history as the Rosetta Stone. They have created a model which reduces all AI (which to them is the “new electricity” Deep Learning”) technology down to one thing: a Prediction Machine.  AI simply means cheap prediction. They reduced it to an increasingly cheap commodity and created a framework to enable businesses to enhance human judgement and thought with AI. It’s simply brilliant. One of the reasons we had to delay launch of the website is because it did us no good to launch without the final analytical tool in place.  This is a common issue with folks writing books in this area because the research is moving so incredibly fast. But alas, we now have all the necessary analytical tools to help our clients harness Prediction Machines.

The significance of The Exponential Organization (ExO):

When you visit www.apn.ai, under the Singularity Tool Box menu go to  “The Exponential Organization (ExO)” you’ll see this picture of a funny looking brain:

Our website explains the basics of what it is. What you are really looking at is the common blueprint of exponential companies that have literally exploded in terms of growth and reach in the 21st Century. This is a simple picture of how companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook operate. Same goes with firms like Uber, Airbnb and Instagram. Much like how humans and animals and all living things evolve via Darwin’s “Survival of the Fitness”, business structures evolve in a similar fashion. This analytical tool comes from our friends at The Singularity University and the Ray Kurzweil ecosystem.  It is contained in Salim Ismail’s book Exponential Organizations (2014). To understand the genius and magnitude of this analytical tool, it is important to understand where it comes from and how it was created.

We’ve had a little over 20 years of business history in Silicon Valley since the rise of the internet in the last 1990’s. What that means basically, is that we have had lots and lots of failure. Organized, planned and well funded failure.  The unofficial motto of Silicon Valley is “fail early, fail forward, and fail often”. Obviously, versus most of the world, Americans are good at one thing...they take lots and lots of risk in pursuing the “American Dream”. Not only is Silicon Valley the birthplace of all this cool technology, but it’s ecosystem includes the most powerful and successful venture capitalists in the world.  These folks live in a special place in Silicon Valley called Sand Hill Road. In exchange for the money these venture capitalists put up to fund the entrepreneurs who take on the risk of creating a startup, they ask that these startups include most or all of the 10 attributes you see above plus a galvanizing Massive Transformative Purpose. To make it from a startup to a successful company in the 21st Century is very very very hard to do.  You have to remember that compared to the 20th Century, we have already had a full century of technology already. As Kurzweil states, we will have 20 thousand centuries of technology in the 21st Century. A company like General Electric is a good example of a huge dinosaur company, one of the best business models to come out of the 20th Century. And then boom! Just this year its stock price drops by half and it is kicked out of the Dow Industrial Average (30 top American companies) for the first time in over a century! One of the leading causes is that it can’t compete with that brain structure you see above. Dinosaur  companies can’t compete with a nimble company that was constructed as an ExO!

Our partners both in China and the Middle East in addition to Portland, Oregon USA:

First, a few things about what is going on with technology and science training in the United States. The US school system, particularly math skills and science is lagging. Ironic that USA has these academic institutions like Harvard and Stanford and have this place called Silicon Valley, and yet we rank 32 in math and 28 in science worldwide. Most Americans have no awareness whatsoever regarding the magnitude of what AlphaGo did. Less than 1% of Americans could tell you what Deep Learning is. China of course is going bonkers. The Trump administration has paid little attention to how AI is likely to affect Americans...or the world at large. America Treasury Secretary Mnuchin doesn’t think AI will impact American’s for 50 to a 100 more years. The Office of Science and Technology Policy is a mess. Trump ignores  exponential technology like solar power and is trying to bring back coal. It’s dismal to say the least.

Another thing is that the big AI firms in the US have gobbled up all the AI talent from American Universities. They even raided all the talent in Canadian Universities. That talent is paid very handsomely of course. At the end of the day, AI talent and data scientists are in very short supply and we at APN have to go elsewhere to get the talent we need.

Most people in America are unaware that it was the Arabs from the Middle East that invented our numbering system. 1,2,3,4…  yeah, they created alphanumeric characters. Try doing long division with Roman Numerals for instance! They invented zero “0”. They came up with the word “algorithm”. That’s what these Prediction Machines are….they are simply algorithms.  While Trump is bringing back coal, countries like Qatar know that fossil fuels are doomed, and they are doing something about that problem with their Vision 2030 Program. The Middle East has a different academic ecosystem and cost structure.  In the US, you can hire a Deep Learning Data Scientist who specializes in autonomous vehicles, but it is going to set you back to the tune of $6,000 per hour. Let’s just say we are going to attract and retain Prediction Machine talent outside of Silicon Valley. We have had such a pleasure to have had the opportunity to work with so many wonderful young people all over the Middle East over the years. They are incredibly smart, loving, fun, absolute aces at math and science, and extremely motivated. I am so lucky to have that privilege.  

As far as China, likewise. China has 5 times the people as America, and thus at least 5 times the talent pool. It will soon have the largest economy. If you think New York City or LA is cool...take a look at Shanghai. Wow. That is an eye opener. These folks have had their “Sputnik Moment” and are extremely motivated to say the least. They are very aware of who beat them at their beloved game of GO..a Prediction Machine, and they are definitely doing something about it.

Why APN will succeed and has competitive advantages:

Like any startup, there are an infinite amount of challenges to say the least.  Our core advantage is our passion for Prediction Machines and all things exponential technology, including the exponential organizations created to harness these machines. It was 13 years ago when Kurzweil’s ‘The Singularity is Near’  book was published. The book’s applications are far and wide. The academic ecosystem Kurzweil spawned is amazing in scope and breadth.  Kurzweil still stands by his predictions that the Turing Test will be passed by 2029 and we will achieve the Technological Singularity by 2045. You have to realize that these predictions were made before mankind invented Prediction Machines. That is a major game changer. We think very few businesses out there today have a chance in the long run, if it’s employees do not understand these concepts and what they mean.

Harvard’s Michael Porter wrote Competitive Strategy  in 1979. In it he introduced his now famous “5 Forces”.  A decade later, after Porter published his seminal tome, no professors were teaching it at Cornell Business School.  They were at KUL Belgium Business School only because their business strategy professor came from Harvard. This is an important issue to consider, we think, because these tools you see on our website [ExO’s, Fossa Singularity Diagnostic, Diamandis 6 D’s of Disruption, and Prediction Machines] aren’t being taught yet in business schools. Many American corporations are unaware of these tools.Yet these tools are so incredibly important and valuable. 

Initially, here in Portland we are going to be working with the CPA community and help their clients harness these new Prediction Machines.  We even have a 1 credit professional education course for CPAs approved by the Oregon governing bodies. Here’s a picture of the certificate they receive:

We at APN aspire to attract and retain talent from all over the world as our needs arise.  When you are talking about Prediction Machines, you are talking about a technology (and frankly a philosophy) that impacts every man woman and child on the planet.  We are setting up our entities in the format of an ExO and aspire to compete in all 10 attributes. Our Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP) is simply.