Howie Xu, CIO & Chief AI Officer at Gen

To properly go beyond the hype and explore actual use cases, challenges, strategies, and experiences around AI, HumanX has started a Q&A series featuring some of our renowned event speakers. Join us as we explore the ever-expanding role of AI alongside today’s biggest thought leaders and industry experts–and learn how to navigate your AI journey with confidence. 

Howie Xu is the former Senior Vice President of Engineering AI/ML at Palo Alto Networks. Previously, he served as Vice President, AI/ML at Zscaler. Prior to that, he served as the Founder/CEO of TrustPath and worked at Greylock Partners as an EIR. He ran the entire engineering team at Cisco's Cloud Networking and Services Group and was the founding VP of engineering at Big Switch Networks. He founded VMware's networking team and ran it for a decade. He is an alum of Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

The Discussion 

Q: What key industries do you believe are the most ripe for AI disruption in the next 5-10 years, and why? 

A: Industries that cannot afford to have a lot of software engineers but need a lot of software engineers. Education and Health Care are two examples.

Q: How do you separate truly groundbreaking AI technologies from those merely following the hype? 

A: Interdisciplinary use cases do not take groundbreaking AI technologies, but have groundbreaking implications. Multi-modality AI

Q: What is the most important thing you look for before investing in an AI-driven company?

A: Why is it important? Does it have a profound impact on humankind? 

Q: In terms of AI-driven transformation, what does success look like for your organization over the next 5 years? 

A: 70% of today's work is automated by AI. Employees are at least 2x if not more productive than before.

Q: What are the key AI-related trends or technologies you're watching closely, and how do you plan to incorporate them into your business model? 

A: Deepfake detection is a big deal. Personal brand & reputation will be even more important in the AI era - how AI is going to help people to build reputations

Q: How do you see AI reshaping leadership roles and decision-making processes over the next few years? 

A: Humans are not always good at asking questions, but AI will be able to ask good questions and ask unbiased questions.

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