Digital Transformation

New technologies tend to take two or even three waves to reach maturity. The first wave is usually hype driven, attracts a feeding frenzy, and ends with a decisive crash. In the second wave, as the froth recedes, the truly useful applications come to fore. 

Philosophical reasoning is something that Artificial intelligence cannot yet replace, and therefore represents a key characteristic of human beings vs technology. Something that still makes us stand out. This is not true for analytical reasoning, for example: AI performs calculations much better, faster, and in a much more precise manner than us, and therefore we cannot say that our analytical skills are a main differentiator anymore. On the other hand, our ability to ponder philosophically is.

How will Blockchain, one of the main pillars of Web3 (as we have pointed out, the data infrastructure of Web3), change the role of the intermediary? The truth is that thanks to cryptology it can replace third-party intermediaries as the keeper of trust, with all participants running complex algorithms to certify the integrity of the whole. It is this ability to replace middlemen with mathematics that makes this technology matter. The use of Blockchain can reduce overhead costs when parties trade assets directly with each other, or quickly prove ownership or authorship of information, a task that is currently next to impossible without either a central authority or impartial mediator.

In 2010, even though the iPhone had already launched (in 2007), Blackberry was still the market leader, having 40% of the US market, and 20% of the world market, which was really impressive. But even though from 2007 to 2012, the number of Blackberry users increased by almost 10x (from 8 million devices, to 77 million), the problem was that in the meantime, their market share dropped dramatically from over 50% of the market , to less than 10%... that is, by only looking at internal metrics (which were growing steadily year on year), the leadership did not realize that they were growing much more slowly than the market was growing, due to the widespread adoption of the iPhone.

So how is it possible that conversational A.I. reduces friction in user experience? Thanks to a subfield of AI, namely Natural Language Processing, or NLP: customers can ask precisely what they want using their natural language, instead of interrupting a lot the customer’s experience, trying to fetch information or make a purchase creates friction. By minimizing the number of steps required to finish a task, you take away that frustration from customers when they go through a series of steps while purchasing a product. This issue can be resolved by opting for Conversational AI, and we can decrease the number of steps involved in the process, thus reducing friction. Currently, Amazon offers a ‘Buy now with 1-click’ solution to its users to decrease the friction while purchasing their products. It is a game-changer for the company and in the eCommerce industry. Zero waiting time!