Transcript 0:00 [on hold music] Might have read recently there's a huge disruption in the supply chain of semiconductor companies like Ford have halted production, and this is a very big disruption, but you see this disruption throughout across all the supply chains. 0:16 The reason is, of course, very realistic lockdowns that prevent manufacturing, and some of it is just that the uncertainty has challenged the planning of these supply chains. 0:30 [upbeat music] Welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:45 My next guest brings with him a decade of software and engineering experience from the Israel Defense Forces elite technology unit. 0:54 In his role, he coordinated many of the unit's largest and most complex interdisciplinary projects, ultimately earning the Israel Defense Award granted by Israel's president and the Creative Thinking Award bestowed by the head of Israel's military intelligence. 1:12 Please welcome Or Danon, CEO and co-founder of Hailo. Or, welcome to the show. Hi, Peggy. Thanks for inviting me. So Or, thank you for joining us. 1:24 I'm really excited about having our conversation today because I'm really interested in your insight in talking a little bit about what industries are doing when we talk about edge AI, because I've been talking a lot about this month about artificial intelligence and what we've really been seeing happen in the past few years and what's exciting about it. 1:47 But we've seen the pandemic, and we've seen a lot of things happen, and I think what I'm really intrigued in is your insight, seeing what you've happened and your knowledge, what you've seen from a global perspective, but really your knowledge in Israel right now. 2:03 But I would love for you to kind of drill down and give me some insight into some applications, and even more so as it comes to the edge. Just, I guess, overall, your thoughts. 2:13 I mean, you have some really wonderful experience. I just want you to tell me what do you think as we look at these applications and where you think it's going. Okay. Yeah. 2:23 That, that's a really, uh, fascinating topic, where edge AI is, is coming, specifically the, the aspect of the edge. AI in general is making huge steps. 2:33 Edge AI is kind of the, I think, one of the next waves that is hitting us. And you can actually see the implications of it. 2:42 As you said, first of all, worldwide, this is a, um, a trend that is, uh, quite uniform across all the major, uh, economies that are using edge-- starting to use edge AI in various applications. There are many examples. 2:56 I'll try to give a few, I think the ones that I find most intriguing. 3:01 So, uh, one example which was actually accelerated by the pandemic is the whole, uh, trend of industry-industrial automation, part of the Industry 4.0, uh, buzz. Uh, and the idea there is 3:16 you, you can use artificial intelligence, especially at the edge points, to enhance the productivity of, uh, production lines. 3:23 So think, for instance, you're, you're inspecting products at high speed, and you want to improve the yield or find out, uh, defects, and you can do it... 3:31 To do today, you can relatively easily do it, uh, with a camera that are employing edge AI right on the production line. 3:40 Same goes, for instance, to, uh, robotic pick-and-place arms that are part of any advanced manufacturing or many advanced manufacturing, uh, manufacturing lines. 3:49 Other areas which once again were impacted, uh, significantly by the pandemic are all the field of, uh, building management, let's call it this way. 3:59 Basically, cameras that are spread throughout building and help to manage it. So one thing that has become crucial is the, 4:07 uh, enforcement of social distancing and/or other, or kind of other, uh, policies that are required for our, our safety and health, but also contactless admission into, uh, into buildings. 4:19 Uh, if you take, uh, more specialized functions like in hospital monitoring patients or monitoring the elderly, uh, in many cases nowadays it's harder to, uh, keep close watch, and this really helps in, uh, uh, ensuring health of elderly people. 4:35 So you see companies and organizations across all these different sectors using edge AI to implement these appe-- these kind of technologies and ki-- these kind of techniques, I would say. 4:45 Another field which is, uh, uh, using edge AI quite significantly is retail. 4:52 So, uh, one trend that is, uh, has already been on the go and accelerated is, uh, checkout-free stores, but also, uh, things that have been for years, like theft prevention, which is quite easy to understand why edge AI is a very good solution for that, uh, and optimization of the floor space. 5:12 All these fields are basically relying on AI and are moving more and more towards AI at the edge. I love how you talk about using AI at the edge in, in the various industries, because right now we need to see that. 5:27 But has the pandemic itself disrupted or challenged these industries? 5:33 Now, I know you talked about pick and re-- and pick and place, and you talked about retail, you talked about social distancing in general, but are we seeing industries right now seeing the disruption in a way that they're concerned about where they go going forward or where they see it go and, and where it was in the past? 5:54 Where do we see right now? Are we going to see AI at the edge? 'Cause I love the camera idea 'cause I see the great opportunities. I see it's like an infrastructure. I see sensors doing it. 6:05 But are we right now seeing COVID as saying it's stopping industries from being able to really take advantage of it? 6:11 Or do you see, no, this is at the edge when we think about autonomous vehicles, there's the opportunities are here, and this is where companies have to use it to disrupt themselves, or they're going to be disrupted?So I think, uh, funny you, you mentioned autonomous, uh, driving and actually the whole car industry, you can see the side effects of COVID, which I think are, uh, may cause, uh, more f- more significant long-term effect than the direct, uh, the direct effects. 6:43 I'm not talking about health and the s- safety perspective of, of course, things that are the most important ones. But when you look it from a business perspective... 6:51 So I've mentioned, for instance, instance, uh, enforcing social distancing. I think this is important, and this is a, a burning topic, but I h- I think we all hope that this will go away a year or two from now. 7:03 This is not intended, I hope it's not here ten- We hope it's sooner than a year or two, right? We don't want another year or two in lockdown, right? We don't want that. [laughs] I'm, uh, I would say pessimistic. 7:17 I'm, uh, trying to be- Optimistic. Yeah. We want that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Or at least realistic. In any case, I think the more-- if you look at the more strategic movements, so, uh, look, for instance, at supply chains. 7:31 I think maybe this is the most interesting topic. I, I'm a CEO of a semiconductor company, and as you might, might have read recently, there's a huge disruption- Mm-hmm. -in the supply chain of semiconductors. Uh, 7:44 companies like Ford have halted production, uh, due to shortage of chips. This is unheard of. And, uh, but this is... And, and this is very, uh, this is a very big disruption. 7:55 But you see this disruption throughout, across all the supply chains. 8:00 Some of it is, uh, the reason is, of course, practic- uh, very realistic lockdowns that prevent manufacturing, and some of it is just that the uncertainty has challenged the planning, uh, of these supply chains. 8:14 And this caused many, uh, advanced countries, advanced economies to understand that their reliance on oversea, uh, supply chains is a, a weakness, and they would like to increase their, uh, manufacturing capability and make themselves somewhat more independent. 8:31 I don't think anyone can be completely independent, but you want to have more and more capabilities, uh, internal. Think about the few-- first few months where all the countries were rushing to get face masks. 8:43 Yes, and they found out that they are not able to manufacture them on their own. A relatively simple product. Uh, but on the other hand, there is a reason why supply chains are so, 8:53 uh, diverse globally, and that is the cost of labor. 8:56 And for the advanced economies, the- there's a bless-- a curse or a blessing, I think, in the, in the broader perspective, but a curse from a manufacturing perspective, that the labor is, uh, more expensive, and the only way to be competitive in the manufacturing world is to incorporate advanced technology. 9:14 And so I think the effect of the COVID, of, uh, is that many policy makers are understanding they need to strengthen their industrial capabilities, and they will-- the only way they can do it is by incorporating advanced technology. 9:27 And I think Edge AI is a key enabler to this, uh, to this trend because it enables to automate processes and make, uh, a more, uh, 9:39 uh, make the m- the, the manufacturer more reliant on technology rather than on labor [clears throat] which is, of course, a, a trend which is much more fit for advanced countries. 9:50 So in looking to do that, it's going to take time in order to do that, the types of skilling and re-skilling. I mean, you talk about the innovation. 9:59 You still have to have people in order to make some of these technologies work and enable that to happen in manufacturing s- uh, operations or supply chains. 10:10 I- it's a shifting of, let's say, the guard that kinda makes this happen. Is it not? Well, um, I, I agree. 10:20 It re- it requires, it, it requires a lot of change, but I think the unders- the, the leaders of the industries already, uh, under- understand this change, and it's, and it's coming whether we like it or not. 10:33 So manufacturing will become a more, uh, advanced field, and I think since the advanced economies have the workforce to support it, um, it will require, of course, the enabling technologies. 10:46 It's part of what we as a company do, build these, uh, technologies that enable AI at the edge. But there's a very wide ecosystem that is evolving, um, and I think it will... 10:57 I, I think it's a change that is inevitable, and, uh, will come one-- either way in the coming years. And those who will not do it will stay behind. 11:05 But how long will it take before these organizations are where they need to be? Because they're already lagging. We know lag-- manufacturing's lagging. They don't have it. So innovation will get them there. 11:16 Is it a year away? Is it two years away because we've already said the pandemic? We've just got about a minute or two left. 11:23 Where do you think to take this AI at the edge or the innovation that they need, how long will it get these organizations back up to speed to make them really the disruptors and not the disrupted? It... 11:38 My personal opinion is that organization that will not evolve the next year or two, because everything takes time, and to... It's not... You don't reinvent yourself in a day. 11:47 But if a organization will not make concrete steps in the next year or two, look five, six years from now. And this is also true for, uh, retail. It's also true for robotics. 11:58 It's also true, uh, for cars, uh, mainly for cars [chuckles] maybe. Uh, those who will not make the change today, uh, in '21 will be left behind in '25. Looking ahead, what do you see are the big changes? 12:12 Uh, is there some things you're talking about AI at the edge? What about what we see then at the cloud and, and we see 5G? Are all of these going to really transform us in a much faster way? 12:24 'Cause we saw the pandemic moved us very fast. 12:27 Are there other things that are going to advance us as well?So from the perspective of, uh, of AI, which is my field of interest, I think we are mo-we are moving, and five G is definitely helping this trend. 12:41 Uh, we are moving to a very, uh, hybrid approach where, uh, instead of having things that are only done at the cloud, which was the first wave of AI implementation, uh, we are currently with some enabling technologies, we are moving to a phase where we'll have a hybrid architectures where the major, uh, portion of data crunching will be done close to the sensor. 13:01 And this has many advantages from latency, from bandwidth, from privacy, which is extremely important. The more data we gather, privacy and security are becoming a major concern, at least, at least for me. 13:14 And, uh, and the heavy lifting of data crunching will be done at the edge, and you will see the core of the intelligence and the orchestration moving to the cloud. And we're gon-we're gonna see a very, uh, um, 13:27 uh, distributed approach to im-implementing AI, which is gonna take all the world of software, uh, implementation and deployment to maybe different regimes than what we're used to. 13:39 Well, I have to tell you, Or Danon, CEO and co-founder of Halo, thank you so much for your time. Where can our listeners go to learn more about what you're doing in the future? 13:48 So listeners are more than welcome to visit our website www.halo.ai and learn about our activities. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much. Okay, listeners, that's all the time we have for today. 14:00 Check out our website at connectedworld.com or show website at thepeggysmidleyshow.com. But most importantly, we want you to tweet at us at ConnectedWmag, and we are broadcast every Tuesday at twelve PM Central. 14:12 All right, this is The Peggy Smidley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. Have a great week. [upbeat music]
