Hi Hilal, and thanks for this question-it's part of a very important conversation.
Technological innovation has always been a disruptive force impacting all aspects of our society. This no doubt includes the human workforce. And we've seen this play out several times in the last two centuries starting with the so-called industrial revolution where steam power, factories and machinery changed the nature of work and boosted productivity. Or Electric power spurring the creation of new industries like electronics and telecommunications. More recently, the internet and World Wide Web revolutionized communication, advertising and commerce, powering the creation of new industries including e-commerce, social media and even online education.
A common theme in all these disruptions was the need to reskill the labor force. With AI it's likely no different. But I think the pace of change will be a bit nuanced. See, I think that there are areas where AI excels well.
A concrete example: in our Mist AI solution, Marvis can identify a bad Cat 6 cable. Sure, a seasoned network engineer can also dig through log files and deduce that there's a bad cable. However, they would only do so as part of troubleshooting some broader, more vague complaint, like when a user creates a trouble ticket stating their connection is slow. The engineer would then be activated, looking for all possible reasons for a slow connection. They may ask the user for more information or set up time to try to reproduce the issue.
Instead, Marvis does things proactively, and doesn't need to be prompted. Marvis never sleeps. An AI can be programmed to remain constantly vigilant. And an AI is much faster with large sets of data. In our example, Marvis consumes connection information from the switch, running it through a decision tree algorithm and if the data is abnormal, Marvis flags the cable as potentially bad. A new Marvis Action is generated alerting the IT team. And in this case, maybe the user didn't even notice yet.
Also, I like relaying the example of Google Photos. When you upload your pictures to Google, its AI will identify people like your kids, your family, your friends-heck, even your pets! Now, could you go through your photo album over an afternoon on a weekend and sort your album? Yes! But Google's AI does it so much faster and with high accuracy.
Now to bring it back, you'll notice that the recurring pattern is this: the AI performs a singular, very specific function really well and it requires lots of data to do it. However, professionals in the networking and telecom industry don't just work on singular, specific problems. And instead need to make many more types of complex decisions that aren't as clear cut. I would argue that it's good to give more repetitive, rote tasks to AIs and instead have people driving the more complex work.
The work in our industry will gradually shift overtime and I believe AI will improve the quality of life for workers in our industry, allowing teams to scale with the continued increase in network users, devices, applications while also working on the new, disruptive projects in IT technology that drives innovations and advancements at their respective companies. And I believe there will be reskilling over time as AIs reduce the dependency on conventional interactions with the network such as using CLIs or dashboards and introduce new ones like troubleshooting through a conversational interface, like Marvis, and simply ask, "Marvis, are there any unhappy users today?"
Thanks,
Tarek
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Tarek Radwan
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-11-2023 20:50
From: HILAL SAEED
Subject: ASK-ME-ANYTHING with a Juniper Director!
Recently, there's a lot buzz about AI.
People are talking about it'll replace the human workforce in most of the sectors.
What are your thoughts on AI will disrupt the telecom/networking industry like it'll eat the networking and telecom jobs.
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HILAL SAEED
Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2023 15:15
From: Kyla Jiayi Zhao
Subject: ASK-ME-ANYTHING with a Juniper Director!
Hi Innovators, we have a very special event in store for you…
ASK-ME-ANYTHING with a Junivator!
Have any questions about Mist AI, AIOps, ChatGPT or anything AI-related? Then this is your guy!
Tarek Radwan
Product Marketing Director
Juniper Networks
Tarek leads enterprise product and portfolio marketing at Juniper Networks, covering switching, security, and network management solutions for enterprises in their campus and branch domains. Tarek has prior experience in the semiconductor capital equipment industry in process development and software engineering. He holds an MBA degree from Santa Clara University and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from The University of California, Berkeley.
Post your questions for Tarek in the comments below by April 16 and he will choose a few to answer!
If you like a question asked by another Innovator, click on the 'Recommend' button in the top right corner so that it's more likely to be seen by Tarek.
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Kyla Jiayi Zhao
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