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Joining creativity and technology to embrace the future

Jamshid Alamuti, CEO of Pi School, defended yesterday in Tabakalera that Artificial Intelligence should be an entrepreneurial bet.

Credits: Iker Azurmendi
Credits: Iker Azurmendi

After working as an educator for more than two decades, Alamuti came to a conclusion that changed his perspective. “I realized that not all creatives have an idea of ​​the business world, and that not every investor can call himself an entrepreneur,” he said.

Starting from that idea and after checking first hand the reality in San Francisco, “where there is an ideal environment to start every idea”, Alamuti and Marco Trombetti founded Pi School, a startup inside the Pi Campus district, a place where technology and the creativity gather to “predict the problems of the future”.

For the Iranian, raised in Europe, artificial intelligence is the result of that union. “Technology always seems like magic, but there’s nothing strange about it,” said Alamuti, referring to an episode from his childhood. “In my house there was a wooden box with two doors, and if you opened them, they showed a screen. Actually, it was a small closet that hid a television, but for me it was incredible”, he confessed.

“Ignorance is the first mental innovation. When we eliminate it, we seek knowledge. Machines work the same way”, he said, while describing artificial intelligence as “a copy of part of our brain”.

Arriving to this conclusion, there was an obvious question: what do we need artificial intelligence for? “Technology is offering us something we can never buy: time. It is able to do in a couple of seconds something that we take ten hours to do”, he said, indicating that, for this reason, artificial intelligence must be an entrepreneurial bet.

“I believe we’re afraid of not knowing what to do with the time we win if a machine executes part of our work”, said Alamuti. For him, what is a concern should be an opportunity, and he gave as an example the business ecosystem of the countries of northern Europe. “We’re getting to the conclusion that four hours a day of work are more efficient than eight,” he said.

“There is still a long way to go”

Currently, there are a number of products in the market, using artificial intelligence, mostly used by international companies. Alamuti believes that all entrepreneurs should analyze them and see if they can be applied to their projects.

The educator goes further and encourages creatives to experiment with the technology. “Artificial intelligence is something new. Twenty years ago, we knew nothing about it, despite the fact that it had been a subject existing around 50 years. In this time there has been very little progress, there is still a long way to go”, he said.

“You have to interact with technology. This gives us an accurate advantage and a better overview of what we want. AI can never replace a human being. Emotions are something that artificial intelligence can mimic, but can’t possess. Only with one out of two parts, we can not achieve success”, he said.

To emphasize the lack of knowledge about technology today, Alamuti gave Rocket AI as an example, an innovative company that applies artificial intelligence in any business. A fake company that actually never existed.

“A group of entrepreneurs from Barcelona sent over 300 invitations for a party at their headquarters. In that occasion, they spoke with many businessmen who were interested in the project and came even close to signing contracts”, said the professor, who indicated that the truth did not come to light until the arrival of the police. “Several agents showed up at the party because of the noise they were making, and found that the company did not exist and that the building was actually abandoned”, he said.

Apparently, several young people had passed themselves off as the owners of a Ai driven new startup, setting up at an unused floor of the building and sending the invitations, all in just eight hours. “It is an example of how little people know about artificial intelligence”, he concluded.

Alamuti participated in the event Tomorrow by Etorkizuna Eraikiz”, a reflection on the future of the territory that was attended by the deputy general, Markel Olano, and the deputy of Governance, Imanol Lasa, among others.

Article translated from Spanish. Originally written by Alex Zubiria and published at Noticias de Gipuzkoa on the 12/02/2018.



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