Photo ©Vincent Fournier from the Man Machine series. Courtesy photo
You’ve heard of business for a greater good. Make way for artificial intelligence for a greater good. That’s the mission behind a recently launched robotics and AI competition created by TRIUM Global Executive MBA alumnus Philippe Nacson.
If the thought of a robot competition sounds too futuristic for your liking, it’s that kind of view that Nacson says his competition, The Robot Of The Year, is meant to dispel. Fears of artificial intelligence wiping out jobs or — for worse — humans are the kind of Hollywood fictions Nacson intends to counter with this year’s challenge, which centers on AI’s potential to help foster a better, more sustainable world.
For those who still aren’t convinced AI is good for anything beyond verbal commands to Siri and Alexa, Nacson invites them to consider robots working with children who have autism and helping them grow in a better fashion; exoskeletons helping disabled people work in the same manner as those without disability; and robotics used in the health sector to improve treatments provided to humans.
‘I’M NOT TRAINED AS A CREATIVE. I’VE BEEN WORKING IN FINANCE THE LAST 20 YEARS.’
The fact that he’s created The Robot of the Year challenge and launched a company to drive AI investing has no one more surprised than Nacson himself. A 20-year career in investment banking, finance, and private equity led him to the TRIUM Global Executive MBA. The innovative degree program is jointly issued by NYU’s Stern School of Business, London School of Economics, and HEC Paris School of Management with modules that take place in six different cities around the world.
Nacson enrolled in 2010 and graduated from the program in 2012. His motivations for going to business school were to explore more fields and to enlarge his vision and understanding of business. Never was it his intention that his MBA experience awaken the entrepreneur in him or send him off exploring a line of work outside of the financial sector.
But that is exactly what happened.
“I remember we were in London for the module located at LSE,” Nacson says. “We were in one of the coaching sessions when the coach asked what our ideal job would be. What would we love to do in our lives if we had the choice?
“My thought was, ‘I’m 40 years old. To me this is not a relevant question. I’m doing this MBA, but more than likely, I’ll still work in some kind of finance job.’” Still, Nacson says, he decided to play along. “Since I had to answer, I said I would love to do something creative and I’d love to work in robotics. But I’m not trained as a creative. I’ve been working in finance the last 20 years and I’m not a robotics engineer so the chances of fulfilling my dream were pretty slim.”
TRIUM Global Executive MBA alumnus Philippe Nacson is the founder and creator of The Robot of The Year Challenge. Courtesy photo
‘MY WHOLE STORY IS A SERIES OF GOOD COINCIDENCES’
Nonetheless, a year after graduating from TRIUM, Nacson found himself quitting his job in private equity and doing something creative: furniture design.
“I didn’t train at all to become a furniture designer. I got selected for an exhibition in Milan for the Salone del Mobile and decided to quit my job and concentrate my energy there.”
That led to Tokyo, Japan where he went to spend some time on work related to his design activities. As he’d always been intrigued by tech and artificial intelligences, and the extreme fears associated with robots being super destructive machines set out to replace humans, he visited the Miraikan Museum, one he’d been longing to visit since its opening in 2001.
“I found it extremely interesting to understand it a bit more, and soon started to get into projects that were doing good for humans and using new tech to counterbalance this whole fear.
“I’m from Paris — born in Africa, but I’m French. For Europe and the U.S., the culture we have is not very geared towards interaction with robots and AI. The way we look at those things is on the contrary to Asian countries like China and Japan — they become used to interacting with robots since they’re very young. It’s embedded into their own culture, but not ours.” Nacson says this is what prompted him to create a worldwide competition that will favor and promote the positive innovations for humans in different sectors.
“For 20 years I worked in investment banking and private equity, then suddenly I’m a furniture designer, then that experience brings me to travel to Tokyo. That’s when I decided to spend more time in this museum I was dreaming of going to for a while. It was just a line of coincidences. A year before, I had no idea I’d be quitting my job, no idea I’d be doing furniture design, then no idea I’d end up where I am now. My whole story is a series of good coincidences.”
Photo ©Vincent Fournier from the Man Machine series. Courtesy photo
BUSINESS SCHOOL AWAKENS ENTREPRENEURIAL THINKING
A series of coincidences indeed, but Nacson credits his B-school experience for awakening his entrepreneurial spirit. “The cohort that I belonged to was very much composed of entrepreneurs and people who had gone through the entrepreneurship experience in different fields. That brought my attention to the excitement and interest already embedded in me,” he says.
“With 59 people from 32 different nationalities, I remember the scope of exchanges and quality of exchanges with people from around the world and really senior level in their own fields. Taking the time to drop out from your day-to-day life and be challenged intellectually in a different fashion than your day-to-day job opens windows of thinking and approaching things from a different angle. It’s a classic way of describing things, but this really was the case for me. It made me think, ‘This is what I really want to do. I really want to be an entrepreneur.’ But at the time, I had no idea. It ended up being a series of coincidences and being able to grasp opportunities that had been placed before me.”
As many B-schoolers often do, Nascon has since been able to tap into his alumni network. Working alongside him on the Robot of the Year challenge are two HEC Paris MBA alumni he met outside of his cohort.
Nacson tells Poets&Quants 30 projects have been submitted for The Robot Of The Year and he hopes to have 150 by the end of September. Winners will be announced in Paris on November 26 with financial support of up to 2 million euros awarded to the best ethical AI and robotics projects.
11 INDUSTRIES, 10 CRITERIA
Photo ©Vincent Fournier from the Man Machine series. Courtesy photo
Healthcare and education are just two of the 11 industries involved in the competition. Others include energy, environment, fintech, retail, agriculture, and more. Each entry into the competition must fall within one of these categories to be judged by a “jury” of renowned experts, scientists, philosophers, and entrepreneurs in the robotics and AI fields.
“We’ve identified these as industries where the application of AI is interesting and aligned with our core principle which is the ethical use of AI and robotics,” explains Nacson. In short, he believes that artificial intelligence and robots can significantly improve people’s lives, as well as help us to build a better and more sustainable world. “There are a whole bunch of projects in this field helping humans living a better life.”
Nacson explains there are two angles to the robotics and AI challenge: prizes that will be awarded to competitors in the form of financial backing for their projects as well as a global ethical investment fund to help spur investments into ethical AI which is currently being finalized.
‘INSPIRED BY THE UNIVERSAL LAWS GOVERNING HUMANS’
Challengers must meet certain criteria when they participate in The Robot of the Year: In so many words, competing participants must design AI or robotics projects that adhere to 10 ethical principles to ensure the projects are grounded in the idea of making the world a better place. “Inspired by the universal laws governing humans,” the competition website declares, “The Robot of the Year principles are consistent with international and ethical laws recognised worldwide.”
Such principles include “human responsibility,” which says robots are the creation of humans and humans cannot ignore the laws that govern them — therefore the laws aimed at securing human lives also apply to robots. The second core principle: “physical integrity.” Robots do not kill or harm. The list goes includes other guiding core beliefs such as well-being (robots ease human labor), privacy (robots never disclose personal data, information, or inner thoughts entrusted to them), and education (robots help humans become better individuals and help humanity navigate its expending landscape of knowledge and diversity).
The competition officially launched last week in France during a tech convention alongside KPMG, one of the event’s heavyweight sponsors. Nacson says sponsors are “helping us communicate the competition and obviously tapping into their networks as far as bringing in experts to take part and participants to compete. They’ve also introduced me to other key partners that we’re currently in discussions with and they’re helping me for the fundraising side of the project.”
DON’T MISS: MEET THE HEC PARIS MBA CLASS OF 2019 and HEC PARIS & YALE SYNC UP IN NEW PROGRAM
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