Soft Skills (2)

This is an amazing video. I encourage you to see it by yourself (direct link).
Anyway, here is an TL;DR:

"High-achieving groups were not those where they had one or two people with spectacularly high I.Q. Nor were the most successful groups the ones that had the highest aggregate I.Q. Instead, they had three characteristics, the really successful teams. 

First of all, they showed high degrees of social sensitivity to each other. This is measured by something called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. It's broadly considered a test for empathy, and the groups that scored highly on this did better. 

Secondly, the successful groups gave roughly equal time to each other, so that no one voice dominated, but neither were there any passengers. 

And thirdly, the more successful groups had more women in them."

My Private Space Oddity

Yesterday Elon Musk sent a car towards Mars. See more details and pictures here:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/space-oddity-elon-musk-spacex-car-mars-falcon-heavy
One of the funny things planted in the car was David Bowie's song "Space Oddity" that's playing in loops (look and listen: Space Oddity nice clip). The original song was released several days before the first man landed on the moon. The song's lyrics were inspired by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and its melody by the same movie's song Also Sprach Zarathustra (📳🎶🎵🎶 my ringtone 💙💙💙)

Speaking of 2001: A Space Odyssey - besides envisioning what space travel would look like, it has many elements from Artificial Intelligence. More than 50 years ago, when computers could barely solve basic math, it envisioned a super computer (called HAL) speaking in natural language, playing chess with humans, reading lips, taking responsibility for unexpected missions and more...
See the next video, a scene where HAL is working up a psychology report:

Transcript from the video above - HAL (the sentient computer) in action, working on a psychology report

Deep Blue, IBM's chess-playing computer winning world champion on 1996

We are not there yet but we are definitely on track. Artificial Intelligence is competing against humans in the most complicated games (see also how AlphaGo won Lee Sedol). No one exactly programmed its moves. IT LEARNS.
In some sense, computers have basic "understanding". When we search for something in a search engine, we get good results.
The question is not whether but, WHEN will computers have a DEEP UNDERSTANDING of human beings and HOW we humans will give them that skill. WHAT will be the technology that will allow us to do that?
I see it as a real challenge that the whole world was waiting for, for many years.
Because I love challenges, I'm concentrating now on researching the Natural Language Processing domain and in particulate with Psychology data, wishing to teach computer to "read" people.
As in all research, no one knows what it will lead to, and for me that future is an intriguing oddity.

How does a Startup Start Up? or - A visit to the Google Campus

I already miss the action I had in the corporate life: meeting new people every day, hearing ideas, getting exposed to different industry roles, getting updated in the latest technology through firsthand stories, lunch with colleagues, sharing my thoughts and accessible opportunities for mentoring, volunteering and society contribution.
Fortunately, every Sunday and Wednesday Google dedicates its 34th floor in the Electra building in TLV (near Azrieli) for entrepreneurs. I thought about visiting in order to smell the aroma, to learn about the newborn startup first steps and maybe even find people to whom I can contribute my acquired knowledge and expertise and my network connections. I also hoped to meet an old friend (currently working at google) for lunch.
So I didn't need to think twice -- I was on my way to the Google Campus.

If you are planning to visit, I suggest you come with public transportation since the parking in Tel-Aviv is a rare commodity and quite expensive. I use the free-of-charge "Fast Lane" shuttle (the parking for the car is also free). It has a stop next to the Hashalom train station. Yes, getting by train is a good way too. The station is a two minute walk from the Google Offices.
Walking in the heart of the city in the rush hour is an energizing experience.





I sat there and was in an observing state. There were some young people with books. I guess they were students that came to study in a nice place (like in a public library). There were also freelancers/self-employed who came to enjoy the comfortable offices. Eventually I opened my laptop and worked on my things. Several minutes later an impressive-looking woman (let's call her ILW) sat next to me.
ILW: "Is it a 'work from Campus' day today?"
Me: "Yes, Actually this is my first time here. Do you come here often?"
ILW: "Yes"
Me: "What are you working on?"
ILW: "I'm founding a startup"
Me: "Really! And why here?"
ILW: "I'm sitting here with another co-founder"
Me: "What is your startup about?"
She told me about her startup, which sounded quite complex, not because of the technology but rather because it requires deep knowledge in high level management in industry.
Me: "How did you get this idea?"
ILW: "I was previously VP in a different company and had to do all these things on my own. Now I'm automating the process".
...
The atmosphere was very pleasant there, people were friendly and I even saw one demo.

At lunch time I was invited by my friend to join her in the Google restaurant, catching up on years we had no time to talk. Surprisingly we found out that one of her team members is a good friend of mine -- and that is how I found myself eating lunch with the Google-Waze team. I felt like I was hanging out with celebrities. So many times I would wonder who that engineer is that improves the ETA algorithm. When Waze perfectly predicts the time it should take me to get from one place to another, I think "that engineer did a good job!" On the other hand, when Waze mistakenly ignores the predictable traffic, I think "I'll have to talk to that engineer some day...." imagining him debugging and rewriting the algorithm. When one of the team members introduced himself to me as working on the ETA feature, I pointed out: "I can't believe you are the one who is responsible for the ETA algorithm!" and he immediately answered "I can't believe its me either!". They were a really nice group, it was fun having lunch with them.

A good pointer for beginners (Hebrew):
https://www.themarker.com/st/c/prod/tm/technation/startup/

Campus official web page:
https://www.campus.co/tel-aviv/en

Leaving IBM-Research

This week I'm leaving IBM-Research and moving on to my next chapter.
I joined IBM-Research at the age of 28 holding an M.Sc and with 3 years of experience in the industry.
I was already settled in my personal life - happily married with two children and living in a permanent home. IBM-Research gave me the present of feeling settled in my professional path as well by providing me the title of "Researcher" in a company that I admired for its rich past of innovation and values: professionalism, excellence, open-mindedness, diversity and many more... I was honored to be part of it. During this period my third child was born. Being a career-mother was not an easy task, and IBM was there for me by giving me total trust and flexibility in time and space allowing me to excel in both roles. I remember nights where I was holding my baby in one hand, nursing him, while programming and chatting with other colleagues with the other hand. Speaking in front of student girl visitors while carrying my baby with a carrier on me. This baby boy is celebrating 3 years exactly today.

I got a lot from IBM. Being involved with the most interesting and fascinating projects, the state of the art technology and non-stop innovation with a lot of responsibility.  Everything was moving fast to a large scale.  When a POC (proof of concept) developed by 2-3 researchers in our laboratories went well, the next quarter we had a customer and a fleet of developers to help us go through production process. Managing meetings with Chinese engineers in the mornings, Americans in the evenings and sometimes everyone together at noon (Israel is located in between). Working with the best experts inside IBM - Distinguished Engineers, Senior Technical Stuff Members, Architects, Product Managers, getting consultation from other research groups and colleagues researchers with different expertise etc...  and partners outside IBM - working directly with the CTOs and the CEOs. The next quarter we worked with data from more than 3000 stores all over the USA. Producing reports and analyzing data. Even with all this action we found time to write down some of our work as patents and for a research paper. I had the privilege to fly around the world and present our research.
And if I thought that I saw everything, I didn't know what was coming the following year...
When this research project came to an end, IBM gave me the opportunity to team up with a different group and acquire new skills. As I wanted to be involved more in "heavy" research projects, in high level algorithms, in AI domain and projects that make the world a better place - I joined an ambitious long-term exploratory grand challenge project, more than 40 researchers in Israel (many more overseas) working together fighting cancer by building the next generation of radiology assistance. I have worked with research experts in deep-learning, machine learning, computer-vision, NLP, data science, UX, reasoning, cloud platforms, medical doctors and more... to build a mega-POC (see also: Eyes of Watson).
I also had the honor of leading (as a secondary researcher) a major research project with a leading healthcare provider in Israel, handling medical files of thousands of patients.

It was a great pleasure working at IBM. I have had the chance to be part of three different research departments: Big-Data Analytics, Mobile & IOT and Health Informatics. It allowed me to get to know IBM-Research very well, to be exposed to hundreds of "startups" (since every research group is actually developing something new), to meet a lot of talented and brilliant people from which I have learnt a lot, to create friendships and mentoring relations - much of my success is thanks to them. I attended the best research and engineering courses. Visited interesting conferences. Was a member of the patent review board. Part of the ambassadors group. Represented IBM on stage in volunteering activities. Wrote on behalf of IBM and received a lot of respect just because I'm a researcher in the prestigious "IBM-Research" unit.

For me, the peak of all this fun was - participating in exploring the IBM-Next-Grand-Challenge.
I wrote a proposal, pouring all my passions, visions and beliefs into it. This proposal was chosen to represent Israel. It was unbelievable to me that IBM, a company of 400,000 employees, gives equal opportunity to each one of its researchers to design the future of the company and to have a real influence on the company's direction and as a result - the whole world's.

Next week I will join the new Data Science Institute at Bar-Ilan University as a PhD student, combining Computer-Science with Psychology, two of my passions. It is going to be fascinating!

Goodbye IBM. You have been good to me.

Soft Skills

I'm a strong believer in soft skills. Here is an article I just read and liked:
The surprising thing google learned about its employees and what it means for today's students

TL;DR:
Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.