AI Transformation: Shaping the Future of Computing | The Six Five Summit

Welcome back to day three of six five Summit. Lisa Martin here with Cory Johnson. Diana Blast.

Just coming out of a great conversation, guys, on collaboration. We, we almost take for granted the technologies that are, that are empowering us to collaborate so effectively and so seamlessly, but we also know that, that the customer experience that we expect has changed and it can become a huge differentiator for businesses. And I think we're gonna see a lot of change.

And I think that, that, that, um, that's I think the reason people get so excited about technology. It's why the market gives technology a, a higher multiples because they really believe in, uh, this, uh, this sector, if you will, as a, as a, as a prism to change and a prism to the future. And we can hear that from Avaya as well as all the companies, frankly, we've been talking to in the last three days.

Well, One of the things that struck me is how Avaya was talking about how AI fits into the contact center. We've been talking about that over the last couple of days. Um, the empowerment and, and why the future belongs to companies who, who put the customer experience and the employee experience together.

Like to me, they've always been inextricably linked. Definitely. And it makes it that much more interesting to learn how these models are being trained, because that's how they're answering the question so seamlessly.

And, uh, and that speaks into just the open ecosystem that we've been touching on about all these integrations with different technology partners and, and just how fast the technology is spreading across the industry. I mean, clearly collaboration is becoming a highly competitive spade. Yeah.

And that's also due to the rise of the A IPC, right? That it, that everything's becoming smarter and just so much more accessible. The modernization is, is fun to see the speed up with which it's happening.

It's crazy, but it's a perfect segue, guys into our next track, which is on modern work. We've got HP kicking things off, talking about the future of computing. They're gonna be talking about how to make AI real for people and businesses.

So we are so excited to be able to share, uh, Alex Cho a vision of a future where AI isn't just an emerging technology according to hp. It's a fundamental driver of innovation and success. With that said, here's hp.

Welcome back to the six five Summit 2024, where we are talking about making AI real for businesses and consumers, and of course, building all the infrastructure and devices that needed to support that. It is our modern work track opener. And unless you've been hiding under a rock, you can see that modern work is on fire.

AI is the accelerant. Uh, on top of that, I can't imagine a better person to talk about this than Alex Cho who heads up HP's personal systems group. Alex, welcome back to the show.

Thank you. It's great to be back with you. I'm enjoying this.

Absolutely. Uh, I do have to ask, uh, can you tell us a little bit about that awesome background? Oh, You, I'm glad you caught it.

How could you miss it? No, actually, I was recently, um, at our garage, the HP garage, and not just in the garage, but the house. And I had a chance to, to bring a partner there and walk around.

And I personally was so inspired because it's a reflection of where innovation and really so much of what we think of the compute industry grew from, and just been an inspiration for me and for our teams. And so I thought, why not come and talk to Pat with what's driving that inspiration for our company? No, I, I love that, uh, a lot of history and the great news.

You've continued that in. And I, you know, I've talked about, I really do appreciate, uh, your, your approach, starting with the end user in mind, uh, starting with use cases, and also looking at what you do from a, a solutions, uh, standpoint, and when it comes to, to ai, uh, that's, uh, as important as, as it's ever been. But what I'd like to do is, I'd like to start, um, 50,000 foot here.

What is the vision that you have for AI in personal systems group? Yeah, I mean, I'd say that when you look at what AI means for the world, for our customers, we are so excited because we believe that AI will enable us to deliver disruptive productivity. And we think that is just a massive opportunity, 10 x productivity that we can unlock, unleash, deliver to our customers, what a huge contribution that would have, and also enable people to just do so much more and contribute so much more.

And we think that we're really at a great place to do that. Because you talk about knowledge worker. Yeah.

We're already there with a knowledge worker. Yeah. We have a huge portfolio of PCs, printers, room solutions now infuse AI into that to make all of those experiences that much more productive.

We're super excited. We, our our ambition on this is only growing the more that we get into this. Yeah.

It, we talked about this, um, a couple months back, but this does feel like an unprecedented time. You know, you and I are both experienced, um, have seen a lot of things, uh, come and go, but how does this compare to you from, from other moments in technological, uh, history? Uh, think about, uh, you know, I call it the 1999 moment.

You know, when, when, uh, when I put on the background screen, I guess the other one is to put on, uh, uh, prince. But why, because the internet was really a ma major milestone where we saw new customer experiences, business models, we saw innovation thrive, and it drove a decade of computing growth. I think this is another 99, 9 moment because AI and particularly what it means for the consumer, is gonna drive all these experiences, new value, new business models, and another decade of growth.

And for us, we think that's a game changer. Again, it's also happening faster. If you look at the data and the statistics, as, you know, if you look how long it took for the first million people to use the internet or to use other services, uh, phones, the first million users to use chat, GPT was far faster.

So this thing's also moving faster than anything else before. Yeah, it does feel like a special moment. And I think I was a product manager, uh, doing, uh, internet, uh, PCs at the time, and it feels a whole lot like that.

And what I'm really inspired about too is, is, you know, with the internet, uh, went, went up and the build out, it kind of crashed, right? It was called dot bomb. And where I think this is different is I'm seeing benefits at the end user, uh, at a, at a incredible pace.

And, you know, you talked, I don't know if you said a hundred x or 10 x, but I'm seeing 10 x improvement, uh, in employees. And I think, you know, shortly we, we could see some miracle experiences related to consumer. But, uh, that is a different, the, the difference that, that gives me, uh, a lot of, um, uh, motivation.

Um, so let's talk about the developer tool chain here right now, right? Developers, uh, seem to be hit with this in incredible, uh, amount of choices in where and how they do things, right? It's like, hey, pick it on the client device, pick it on the cloud, but these things shall never be connected.

Seems a little bit disjointed to me. Um, and I'm curious, how are you addressing, uh, AI developers to increase their efficiency, increase their productivity? One of the key areas that, uh, we think is gonna fuel a lot of growth for us is really in addressing what you're talking about and what is that?

What is a big, what is every company? What is every company responding to because of what their board and their executive staff has asked them to do? And that is figure out how to use AI to drive productivity in, in my company or in our company.

And for that, we see that the whole world of enabling data scientists to take models and customize and tune them and add in their own data to create meaningful productivity improvements in those companies. That is happening at a, uh, just unprecedented level in energy across the world. And, but for that, most data scientists today are operating in a world where it's a little bit DIY.

They need to find the right configuration to go do that. They're trying to grab data in different places. They have different toolkits and tool sets that they're using.

They need to make sure that they all work together and compatible. And by the way, this no longer is a hobby by one data scientist. You've got teams of data scientists that need to work together, and today, there has not been a great way for them to collaborate.

And in that space, what we have been delivering and building on is what we call AI Creation Center. It's the world's most comprehensive workstation based solution for AI development that allows data scientists to configure, pull in tools, test, have all their data mapped, and collaborate with other data scientists to dramatically improve their productivity so that they can help their companies use AI to improve productivity. So it's kind of a win upon win that we're excited about.

Yeah, I appreciate you filling in the, you know, I talked about the, uh, the gap between the client and client computer and, and the cloud. And what I'm glad you pointed out is teams working together, uh, and being able to share, uh, share maybe different modifications to frameworks, maybe some tweaks that they've made to a small or a medium sized model, or even the data workflow that they're hitting. I'm, I'm really glad you, uh, pointed that out, really Is, you know, we, we talk about the word hybrid, hybrid workforce, which is obviously a huge trend.

But in the world of ai, you know, one of the things that we really believe in is that customers, data scientists, developers, they should be able to operate in hybrid environments. And that's why our AI creation center, um, enables people to work in cloud environments, local environments, share across them, not be, uh, constrained by one unique environment and do that together with other data scientists. So for us, enabling that or velocity is really important.

So a lot of these industry transitions, I think, begs the question of, Hey, uh, where does this device, or where this service, how does it, how does it change the role? Right? I, I think I remember, gosh, was it 10 years ago the PC was dead and everything was gonna be replaced by, uh, tablets and smartphones?

Well, that didn't happen. I knew it wasn't gonna happen and it didn't happen. But some people were, were questioning it, and then the, the pandemic hits, and it's like the PC is critical, and the pc, uh, is vital.

And that didn't mean that we didn't need tablets anymore. We didn't need smartphones anymore. But I gotta tell you, it did move the PC up the food chain, uh, of, of, of importance.

And, and I'm curious, does this new generative AI wave, uh, change, uh, the relationship or the role the PC plays in our lives? Yeah, you're right. That's a great summary of some of the historical, I I literally remember the email that I got, uh, that said the PC category is dead.

Oh, oh, MIT tech review. I, I have that, I have that, I have that meme and I pull it out about once every five years. And then remember, during, during, uh, the pandemic, that time when we're watching the roll of pc, we're the ones who said the PC is essential.

So we wanna be clear. It's not dead. It's Essential.

Well, Alex, I gotta give you, I have to modify that. You said it before the pandemic, right? Yeah.

Like, and they were like, Alex, you, you nailed this. How did you know this? And, and what we think we are entering into is with now ai, and it feels a little bit about back to the future, but it is probably a very good term.

And that is the PC will become even more personal. And, and we use that obviously personal computers, you know, is what's in the pc, but it's really based on the truth, the product truth, that what AI enables is for this device to, to provide a far more yes, productive, creative experience. But the hallmark of that is that it's gonna be more personalized.

It will be catered to you, your preferences, your settings. It will take your data, it will create a, uh, reflection of what you have seen and done to date, and it becomes that much more personal. And so this device that Yes, is, has a lot of utility value, adds a new dimension because it becomes more personalized for you as it delivers more productivity and creativity.

And in that way it's, I mean, this is exciting, and it's not just slideware. We're seeing it happening as the world of ISVs are starting to take generative AI models, embed them into their applications for the value of doing it locally on the pc. And that is what just makes this the beginning of what I call the next decade.

Okay. So you got everybody excited here, right? On the preview, historical viewpoint, your strategic background and how do you, how you wanna align to it.

Let's talk about some of the latest innovations that, that you've brought out. You've already talked about the workstation, uh, end-to-end development, um, uh, solution that you have. But let's talk about the others.

And I, I know you love all your AI babies the same, but give us the highlights here. Yeah. Well, um, we are, uh, using the occasion to just, I mean, we are refreshing the entire, um, portfolio of PCs that we have.

And it's including and starting with what we call the Omni Book X for our consumer line and our elite book ultra for our commercial line. Uh, the other world's most powerful and secure ultra mobile, uh, AI PCs. And the reason why that's important for us is it's enabling people to use all these new AI applications locally on the device.

And local has so much value because it's faster, it's more cost effective, it's more private and secure. The other thing that's important for us is that we've been able to use AI to optimize the device through a lot of first party, um, models that we put on there to deliver unprecedented battery life, I mean, battery life. And I know we've had discussion in the past, this is real battery life or how people use a device, whether it's video or collaboration and getting 26 hours of battery life.

We've also infused into them what did, what did we get when we acquired Poly? We acquired a lot of great audio and video capability. It may be more than ai, probably what impacts the knowledge worker, it's hybrid work.

So we've incorporated Poly Kimra Pro that allows you to have the best in AI video experiences on that device, because we know that's the reality of how people work. So a lot more in there, but this is more than just the next product in another year that the company announces this is the brave new generation of a class of devices that's powered by, uh, ai. And so we couldn't be more excited, really, for the customer, customer wins in all of this.

Right? Hey, you talked, you've interspersed in the conversation here, uh, some of the end user benefits that, that the new class of IPCs can bring. But if you had to pick the top three, I mean, what would be the top three customer benefits that comes from these?

So first is you will be able to do new things that you couldn't do before. And I know there's been a lot of discussion about what, tell me what I couldn't do on this existing set of pieces. You can do new things, right?

I, by the way, I, I may have asked you that on a stage in, in January of this year, you, you Had that big white like, you know, sweater, see, cabin sweater. I Remember, I know, I know you wanted me to wear that today, you know, but I, I, I got way too much shame. So I decided not to.

Well, you looked, uh, very comfortable. But that, that is the question. And that is the inspiration, the motivation for our, for what we're doing.

That is customers can do things now that they couldn't do before. You know, a good example, and I think what Microsoft has been doing in championing is a great example. The ability to create using generative AI models locally on the device, it's faster.

You're not paying for a subscription. It's always there on your device. And, you know, I'm a stick figure kind of jar.

I'm a big whiteboard flip chart person to take flip charts into immediate beautiful renderings that can be used and passed along. Couldn't do that before. Didn't matter if I spent more money on it, did I just couldn't do before.

I love that creativity and productivity element. The second thing that you can do on these devices is, uh, still as much as we have worked on devices, there's a lot of friction in them. There are there, there are things that just make it more difficult a lot of times because you have drivers and configurations that are just not on sync.

We've enabled and we've created our own AI models to optimize that device so that it is running more efficiently, it's more effective last longer. And if you have a problem, you, we can more efficiently get some, uh, resolution to that. Like eliminating that friction might seem boring.

I'll tell you, for our customers, if you're listening to them, they want net promoter scores to be improved by eliminating friction much better than it was before. And I love that we can do that. And then third thing, collaboration, the ability to do this thing, but to do it better, to see me better track me faster, don't compromise on battery life because I'm doing it through the CPU versus the NPU to do it in a way that makes it look like I have a professional agency who is video, uh, taping me or capturing me.

I love that. These are, that couldn't do before, not just a little bit better, but substantially different, uh, reasons why we're so excited about this next generation. I'm glad you, uh, talked about collaboration and, and in May I saw a very provocative announcement from, uh, you and Google on Project starline.

Now, does Project starline inter intersect with AI at all? Or, or is it, is it independent of it? Uh, very much a part of the, the master plan, pat.

So think about what, what did we say our vision is? It's about enabling disruptive productivity. Number one is with companies who are working on customizing tuning models that they can be more productive.

Number two is for people and how they work on their devices. And number three, it's all about enabling AI to make what we call spaces and places more productive and con connected companies, people and their devices and spaces and places. And this is why Ali, the AI we're driving and enabling through our poly portfolio.

We called it director ai, to give you a better experience. That's why the partnership that we've announced and going really deeply with Google on leveraging and bringing starline to life, which is all about ai, it's all about taking data points and, and enabling that, that interface to be far more lifelike and intuitive. That's all about bringing AI to enable people to be more productive, more creative, more connected.

And again, we think it's another step function improvement in how people will, um, work and live. So Alex, uh, at any intersection that we've had of just we're technology reshapes, uh, experiences. Sometimes the bad guys use these technologies to, to come in and, and disrupt things.

And, and we've seen it. We've seen that everywhere. I mean, we went from, you know, the mainframe to the mini computer.

And as we distributed, uh, that compute, there were challenges. Then we went to the PC and, and client server. Uh, it, it, it added challenges, uh, like security, I mean internet, right?

I mean, you could download things that could end up being, uh, you know, Trojan horses, things like that. So how are you building, uh, trust and sorry, security and trust into you, into all of your AI portfolio? And we are, um, uh, we think this is really only going to become more important for our customers.

And secondly, built on something that, as you know, we have been investing in for a while. This didn't start when we started to work on our AIP PCs. This has been something that we have been investing in and, and continue to provide leadership in the industry.

And that's really our device security. Uh, what we have, um, leveraged and continue to build on is our embedded security controller and what we call our wolf security stack. And why is that important?

AI is about data, right? It's more than data. It's about data models, inferencing, and to all of that, we are leveraging not only our, our security stack, we introduced, um, earlier in the year that the next gen, the next generation of our security stack is the first out there to also protect against potential future quantum compute hacks.

That becomes the bedrock of how we're enabling our new PCs. 'cause we wanna make sure that not only with the new capability and, and processing and data and models that we step up, how we protect that data models and all the inferencing that happens on there so that we can enable a more, um, secured environment for our customers. We we're actually, uh, more passionate about this than ever.

'cause number one, all of that historical capability is becoming more important. And b, for our customers, this is top of mind. We keep hearing about it.

Tell me what it means about AI being about data. Am I gonna be like, protected? And so that's where those two come together very well.

Yeah. So the TLDR is, is that, you know, AI provides all of these beneficial technologies, some of the technologies, incremental ones that we haven't seen before, like models, like saving interactions that we wouldn't normally save, uh, uh, on the pc, uh, provide a, a target rich environment. And you're using AI in addition to the other features that you brought in with Wolf.

I mean, you had, you had, you had AI capabilities, uh, five years ago, uh, or more. I was at an event at New York when you, you, you rolled that out. So it's good to see that you're taking care of this.

So, uh, great conversation. I I wanted to end here talking about, uh, sustainability, uh, and the amount of energy that AI takes. I mean, one example, you know, Reston, Virginia, they don't have any more power left on the grid for EVs, for people, uh, for homes.

I mean, it just, there is none. And we're looking at all of the power to do the training of these models, uh, in the data center. And while, while PCs aren't sucking as much energy as these AI training clusters, uh, it's still important because they're additive, right?

We might sell 300 million of these in a, in, in a year. So, uh, they're additive. How, how are you factoring in energy and saving energy as you create, uh, your new devices and solutions?

Well, such an important part of this equation dialogue. I mean, and it really is, and I would say it's in two segments. First is, many have said with all this ai, can't I do it in the cloud?

And this, and why do I need an A IPC one is the rationale as to why the A IPC has value in this whole space. And that is because when you run models locally, they're gonna be more energy efficient, it's gonna be more cost efficient for the customer because of doing that locally versus, um, going to the cloud and back. Now the reality is it's a hybrid compute environment, and we're gonna be, and you're gonna see increasingly from HP how we optimize and orchestrate against both.

But that's really the unique value of the IPC and why we think as a category, there's so much, uh, value to the A IPC because of the cost and energy, but also the latency benefits or the speed benefits and the privacy. The other goes back to what, uh, we have been talking about here for quite a bit of time. And that is, for us, it's all about sustainability in our devices.

And a couple years ago we hit the magic hundreds, a hundred percent of our devices. I mean, every PC HP ships and display uses recycled material. 100% of the paper-based packaging has been moved to more sustainable sources.

100% of our PCs are EP gold, which is the highest rating around energy efficiency that we are keeping up and actually continue to, to raise a bar with our A IPC. So not only does the definition of an A IPC become more efficient, how we deliver the A IPC has become more efficient. And so with our latest omni Book X and Elite book Ultra that I mentioned before, they're both part of this most sustainable PC portfolio.

50% recycled aluminum in the a c and D covers. I know you're PC guy, so you know what I'm talking about. That's the top, you know, deck and the bottom 50% post recycle material in the key caps.

And then we go further speaker boxes. We're using ocean bound plastics. So we're just rehauling that entire thing to be the most sustainable device, uh, out there.

And so we get energized by that, as you know, Yeah, you have made some incredible, incredible progress and where people want to buy new devices, um, you're per, you're, you're breaking new ground on the environmental impact of that happening. I'm really glad you brought in too. The fact, and people aren't cluing into this yet, 'cause a I PCs are relatively new.

Is, is is the more AI capability you have on your client device, the less, uh, AI capability you will need, uh, in the cloud. And it's not an either or. It's gonna be hybrid like you said, but that, that is just, that, that is the, uh, reality.

And you don't, you also don't have to, uh, uh, have the energy to move it to the cloud and back to the cloud as well. And that's something when with it takes a tremendous amount of energy as well. So Alex, you are the modern work, um, opening keynote here.

Any words of wisdom or uh, words, uh, you'd like to end this with? Uh, for the audience? I'll give you the, uh, I'll give you the file word here.

Okay. Well maybe I can tell you what we are excited about. Customer wins.

Customer wins because we absolutely believe that AI unlocks disruptive productivity, creativity and also connection. That's why our focus in all of the collaboration space is so important. And, you know, we are so excited because we believe it's a decade of new innovation and growth for this segment.

It is a 1999 moment as, uh, I like to say, which means we're gonna be energized, we're gonna be creating, some people will be singing, not me, but, uh, you know, definitely we are, uh, very energized by this and customer wins, which is good for the industry. Yeah, I'm super excited as well. And by the way, uh, I think your team has my address.

Um, I would love to check out whether it's, uh, you know, Omni or any, any of your solutions. I, I'd love to, I'd love to try them out. So Alex, thank you so much, uh, for coming on the six five again and opening the modern work track here.

I mean, you have delivered exactly on the theme of the show, which is, is delivering tangible value, uh, AI value, uh, to enterprise. And we've just begun here and I'm super excited, uh, to see how this rolls out. Thank you very much.

Great to be here. So thank you for tuning into the modern work track opener here to six five Summit 2024 out, and check out all of the tracks. Could they possibly be better than Alex's?

I don't know, but you need to check it out and let us know. Take care.