Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:10 This is the Owlcast, the official podcast of ACS Athens. Listen to the exciting story of the American Community Schools of Athens. Check out what drives all the members of our international community, of learners as we create the education of the future. Here's John.
Speaker 2 00:00:42 Welcome to this week's Owlcast on March 9th, 2023. An expert panel discussion was hosted by ACS Athens, organized by AmCham Greece, and moderated by Apostles mages, journalist, and anchor of Greek National TV Earth. The title of the event was AI is Here. Where are We? More than 300 participants registered to attend this unique event at the Theater of a CS Athens. The keynote speakers and expert members of two panels addressed pivotal questions like how education can respond by aligning human and artificial intelligence, how important it is to explore the unquestionably positive impact of AI on our lives in an ethical and regulated manner. And what are the skills required for success in the future? The first panel discussion delved into the subject of skills needed in an AI driven professional environment from a variety of perspectives. Today in the Outkast, we are talking to Al, a panelist representing the shipping industry, a young and driven engineer with a degree from the University of Cambridge.
Speaker 2 00:01:51 Alkistis is the chief of staff at Deep Sea Technologies, a leading AI company in shipping her unique perspective at the panel discussion in March, along with her expertise in AI tools brought many interesting points to the forefront with Al. Today we discuss the problem solving skills and mindset needed to be successful in the shipping industry, the need for role models in order to encourage women to get into engineering. The challenge of reskilling and adaptability as AI emerges in the business world, the transparency and accessibility to the core of operations that can be provided by AI using case study type interviews and exercises when hiring to determine ability of new employees, to learn the right questions to ask when deciding a career path, and the role of internships and the need for learning to unlearn versus the a cumulative process of learning.
Speaker 2 00:03:04 Sis, thank you so much for coming and welcome to the Outcast. This is your second visit to our school, the first being as an expert panelist in our recent event about AI, where you talked about the role of artificial intelligence as a tool in business and especially in the shipping industry. Your role in your company, Deepsea Technologies as chief of staff, allows you to have an insider look at the people that are in this industry, which along with tourism, is the driving force of the Greek economy. First, could you tell us specifically what is your role in Deepsea Technologies?
Speaker 3 00:03:42 Hi John. Thank you very much for having me at ACS for a second time. Uh, so first I'd like to start by explaining what we do at Deepsea. So, Deepsea is a startup. It's a company that's grown very quickly in the past few years. So Deepsea has an AI technology that models the performance of a specific vessel, the performance model of the vessel, and it manages to reduce CO2 emissions for our customers. Uh, and is a very good example of how technology, of how AI, um, can have an impact and save the environment, make processes easier, and bring financial savings as well. So what do I do? Um, so my background is in manufacturing engineering. So I'm an engineer of processes. So when you're a startup, you have to do everything <laugh>. You can't really focus something, you have to be able to understand every single thing. Uh, I work very closely with the C E O and the founder of the, the other founder of the company, um, in order to coordinate various departments in the business, um, and work on strategic projects. So the job changes every day. So now that we've grown quickly, I end up doing a lot of hr. If something new comes up, then I, I have to work on that new project. So every day is an adventure.
Speaker 2 00:04:57 And from what you say, in a sense, the main idea behind your company's operation is environmental. Yes. You're talking about CO2 emissions, you're talking about this kind of stuff. So you also have a lot of things to do with the sustainable development goals, uh, because environmental friendly operations are part of the SDGs, correct?
Speaker 3 00:05:18 Yes. So there are new regulations that have come into the shipping industry lately, which means that soon, um, shipping companies will have to pay tax mm-hmm. <affirmative> for their emissions. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we started off with aviation with other things. Now it's shipping. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> shipping is 2% of the global CO2 emissions. It's a very large number. Um, what's positive for us as a business is that, um, one of the biggest causes of emissions is fuel. So we save CO2 and money for the company at the same time. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,
Speaker 2 00:05:50 So you are introducing yourself as an engineer. How important is to have the engineering skills and mindset in order to fulfill your capacity in this sector?
Speaker 3 00:06:02 Um, so engineering, and it's not the only subject that you can study in many other subjects are good. The benefit of engineering is that it teaches you how to think. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you learn problem solving. It starts off with math equations, little diagrams, mechanics, quantitative, everything. Skills. Exactly. So you're given a problem and you have to just sit and figure out and find a solution. And this is what you do in your life in general and everything you do in your job.
Speaker 2 00:06:27 How did you decide to go to that? What, how, how did you decide that this is what I want to do?
Speaker 3 00:06:32 So I was quite lucky in the respect that my grandfather, <laugh> was an engineer. My father's an engineer. My brother went and studied engineering. So it's the
Speaker 2 00:06:42 Genes.
Speaker 3 00:06:43 So it might be the genes, but I really enjoyed maths at school. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I absolutely loved it. And that's how it started. And then I did, uh, headstart course in the uk mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So this was a week I was actually at the University of Sur mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And it was just a taste of course, to see if I like engineering and I liked it and I applied for it. But because you can't be a hundred percent sure when you're that age, you're very young. Yeah. You're like 16, 17 when you're applying. Right. Um, I wanted to study general engineering so I can try many different things. So I purposely applied to universities which could do that. So in my first two years at university, I studied general and then I specialized in what I liked. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:07:21 <affirmative>, uh, you made some interesting comments in our event about getting more women into technology and specifically into shipping. First of all, do you think that women are underrepresented in the tech field and the shipping industry nowadays? Do you see a glass ceiling in your sector? What can experts like you do to encourage a more inclusive hiring practice for the future?
Speaker 3 00:07:43 I think it's improving, but we're not there yet. In engineering, at least in my degree, it was about 25% women.
Speaker 2 00:07:53 25%
Speaker 3 00:07:53 Approximately. And then in specific types of engineering, it was higher. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So in chemical engineering, manufacturing, engineering, it was around 30. It's quite low. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in maths, it's worse. <laugh>. Right. Um, the main issue is that we need to have role models, women who have managed to do it, who are successful, who we can look up to. And this is something that started to happen slowly. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:08:15 <affirmative>, the artificial intelligence tools seem to be taking the world by storm, but it's not something new. Um, what kind of mindset is needed by society and the business world to have in order to avoid creating a chasm between those who know and those who are scared?
Speaker 3 00:08:35 <laugh>, uh, transparency the number. This is something I discussed in during the panel as well. The number one thing you need to do is understand AI. And you don't need to go in and understand the nitty gritty details. There are very few people who understand them. You need to understand the use cases, cases. You need to understand the impact. You need to understand the process around it. So ask, have an open mind and there are some specific people who are able to explain it. And those are the ones we have to listen to. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So for example, going to attending the talk that we gave is an example of opening your mind and trying to learn.
Speaker 2 00:09:11 There were some very interesting questions from each other. I mean, on the panel I remember that, you know, there was a dialogue, but then at the end there were questions from the audience and some of the questions had to do with this particular, um, difference in, in skillsets. And uh, there was a big discussion about re-skilling, if you remember. Yeah. So people who are trained in one particular sector and then AI comes and changes the rules of the game. And everybody was saying about the need for re-skilling and the concerns that a corporation or an organization might have when you reach that point. Correct.
Speaker 3 00:09:52 Correct. It's like this with every type of innovation. This is the, like we've been innovating this entire time. Cars are an example. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, excel for accountants are an example. This is just another thing. So the number one skill people need to have is to be adaptable and to want to learn new things.
Speaker 2 00:10:11 How do you learn to be adaptable? What makes you adaptable? Is it just being open to new ideas or also be willing to forget some other ideas? What do you think?
Speaker 3 00:10:23 I don't think you necessarily need to forget. It's a journey. You transition mm-hmm. <affirmative> into a new way of working, and you can use the skills you've gained and transfer them into something else. You just need to want to learn more things. You never stop learning.
Speaker 2 00:10:37 So you have to be
Speaker 3 00:10:38 Thirsty, hungry,
Speaker 2 00:10:40 Lifelong learners.
Speaker 3 00:10:41 Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 00:10:42 You belong to the generation that will have to adopt new technology strategies, maybe even create them from scratch in order to succeed in the 21st century. According to many estimates, the next 20 to 30 years, if not earlier, will reveal the true effect of artificial intelligence in the way our civilization progresses. How worried or how optimistic are you with the challenges and opportunities that are currently sowing their face?
Speaker 3 00:11:13 I find AI very exciting, to be honest, because I'm lucky enough to work at a company that creates an impact on a day-to-day basis for other companies. So I haven't implemented it in my company. I'm the provider for another one. And there are vessels currently in the ocean. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And because they're using our platform, we're saving CO2 emissions, we're having a proper impact. And I can see how great this is and it can be used in many different things.
Speaker 2 00:11:39 Can you give us an example of how AI can help? Let's say your company, uh, either in communicating or in a sense analyzing the data that is coming in from the ships. Uh, you talked about the time that it takes now is much shorter to analyze. Correct?
Speaker 3 00:11:56 Yeah. So an example is that there are 19 different like factors, many different variables, information coming from different places. Um, so you have to take them all in, but then what comes in comes out. So if the data that comes in is bad data mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the result you'll get out is a bad result. So there are techniques that AI has, which help you to improve. So for example, we something called transfer learning. We can take information from one vessel, which is similar to another one and fill in the gaps and then it improves the model even more. That's a good example.
Speaker 0 00:12:34 You are listening to the Owlcast, the official podcast of ACS Athens.
Speaker 2 00:12:47 You talked before about uh, getting excited and being excited Yeah. About AI. Um, has it happened to you that a colleague of yours or maybe a customer, um, needed to be excited about AI in order to maybe get the account or to make his processes a little bit more effective and you had to intervene and try to convince them that this is a good tool?
Speaker 3 00:13:09 Yeah. So the most difficult type of customer that we have is when you go into a company and they've decided to implement their own solution. And you have someone there who's done a great job, they've created a model, they've created something that works. But fundamentally, when you go to a service provider whose job is to do this one thing, and like we're working with universities, we're doing research, we've been working on this one thing for five years, it is gonna be better. So when you have to go into the company and convince this person to use yours, they're emotionally attached to the thing they've built
Speaker 2 00:13:42 Emotionally. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:13:44 <laugh>, it's quite difficult. That's where, that's where you usually find the brick wall
Speaker 2 00:13:49 And you have to go over that and you have to make sure that they understand what's the benefit.
Speaker 3 00:13:53 Yeah. You have to find someone in the business who believes that what you're doing is good. Sometimes there's someone else in the business who believes in it sometimes. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they're not the right customer. Right. You have to go somewhere else. Seems
Speaker 2 00:14:04 To me there are a lot of politics in this business
Speaker 3 00:14:06 In every business. <laugh>, <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:14:09 I understand the mentality of AI as a tool, um, as a plus to every potential capacity. For example, such G P T, the large language model powered by AI, which is very popular discussion nowadays, can offer answers to almost every question with human-like responses. And the latest version can easily pass the bar exam and can identify images and provide non-verbal context. Um, taking the example of the passing bar exam, some people believe that AI will change forever, the litigation system. Others believe that the difference will be between a lawyer without the knowledge of AI versus the lawyer with the knowledge of AI. So in, in your sector in shipping, what kind of disruption AI is bringing to your operations
Speaker 3 00:14:58 In shipping? Based on what we do at Deepsea, at least AI gives transparency and it gives us visibility of what's going on. A vessel is this giant, really expensive factory in the middle of the ocean <laugh>. And in the past what happened, there was one report that went to shore once a day, noon report at noon, and it's just a sheet of paper. They, they measured some things, put them in by hand, you can put whatever you want in and that's all you saw. And you've got this really expensive, really big thing in the ocean. You wanna know what's going on. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and Vessels also have many different stakeholders involved in it. You have the owner, you have the charger. So this is a way of centralizing the information, actually getting insights and improving
Speaker 2 00:15:40 In the event, uh, that ACS Athens and AmCham Greece, uh, organized about AI in which you participated. There was a big discussion about re-skilling and up-skilling Yeah. Of the workforce. If this is a necessity, how can we make sure that there is transparency in our evaluation of employees who either need more professional development or re-skilling as it's called, or they are apprehensive of using the new skills that they get?
Speaker 3 00:16:05 That is a very good question.
Speaker 2 00:16:07 <laugh>. So you, you teach someone something, right?
Speaker 3 00:16:10 Yeah. This is what we're trying to see in our employees when we recruit. Uh, what we've started doing is what does this mean in practice? You need someone who can learn new concepts and new things really quickly. So then you go to the concept of a case study type interview or um, you give them an exercise to do on a specific topic and you see how they'd actually do a real life problem. And then you start and you talk about it with them and you explain it and then you see how they learn. This was actually how the interview process was at the University of Cambridge. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> when I applied mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they just gave me questions and I had, they had, they wanted to see how I think.
Speaker 2 00:16:44 So the critical thinking part Yeah. Is important in this case, not just, uh, you know, raw information regurgitation.
Speaker 3 00:16:51 Exactly. Um, can you see what questions they ask as well that's also interesting
Speaker 2 00:16:56 And coming, uh, you know, from what you just say, um, they say about the new AI tool that in a few years a very popular position in every company would be the prompter. Meaning who's asking the questions? You have to ask the right questions in order to get meaningful answers. Such G P T is not Google. Yeah. In the sense of, you know, just giving you information. So the prompter is a new capacity that everybody's talking about. And I'm sure this is gonna be, you know, a protagonist in the companies of the future. So going back to your professional capacity as a leader in a technology startup, you don't have many years behind you since you got your academic credentials. Uh, but I'm sure you have some things to advise high schoolers who may feel the frustration and insecurity of what to do in college. Um, the marketplace changes every day, and knowledge gained in colleges becomes increasingly irrelevant by the time someone graduates. What should a 16 or 17 years old student consider as they are drafting their college essay? What, what should they be thinking as they try to decide their way through college, in your opinion?
Speaker 3 00:18:13 I think when you're doing university applications, yes. It was quite recent. <laugh>, uh, for me it's very, very stressful. It's a very stressful time cuz you're deciding what you're going to do for the rest of your life. But you have to just remember, you can always switch path. If you don't enjoy something, you can change. And sometimes you have to try something and eliminate it and that's still a very useful piece of information. So you need to see, you need to try things. For example, I did that summer course. It was really, really interesting. You need to ask other people who've done it before, what it's like
Speaker 2 00:18:46 Before you join college.
Speaker 3 00:18:48 Yeah. Before, yeah. Ask, ask questions, ask the right questions. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and you know what questions to ask cuz it's what you're actually afraid of and you try it and then your life is a journey. And like when I read cvs, when I, when I'm interviewing people, I do something that nobody else does. I read them from the bottom up. I never read them from the top down cuz I want to see the journey the person went through. Mm-hmm In order to reach that point. Cuz you're growing. So I started, for example, in year 11, I wanted to study chemistry cuz I did well in my GCSE. Then I thought I wanted to do maths, then I decided to do engineering. I studied general engineering. I thought I was gonna do electrical engineering. Then I ended up doing manufacturing engineering and then I realized I like management. But all of these skills I gained along the way have been really useful for me right now. And I still use university lecture notes. It's always useful in a way. You just need to keep learning new things. We learn things every day.
Speaker 2 00:19:42 Can you think of the point where you said, I'm not gonna do chemistry, I'm gonna do business. What was the feeling that you had? I mean, you chose something and then the middle you say, ah, no, that was not right. Let me try something else. Was it something that threw you out or is it something that you say, okay, that's my point to go to the next level. What what was your thinking?
Speaker 3 00:20:04 Well, I also worked every summer since I was 18, so I did internships.
Speaker 2 00:20:10 So the internships maybe changed your opinion.
Speaker 3 00:20:13 Yeah. Cuz I actually tried Jo, I tried different jobs, I tried different things. So
Speaker 2 00:20:17 That's another advice. Yes. To try different things. Yep.
Speaker 3 00:20:21 From a young age.
Speaker 2 00:20:23 Okay. So you took us through a whole journey here, <laugh> and um, what do you think finally, why is it so important to learn how to unlearn?
Speaker 3 00:20:38 I don't agree with that.
Speaker 2 00:20:39 Okay.
Speaker 3 00:20:40 Is that okay?
Speaker 2 00:20:41 Why? Of course you don't agree to the need of learning how to unlearn or that it doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 00:20:48 I understand that you have to learn new things mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but I think I personally think you need to use the things you've learned in the past to help you.
Speaker 2 00:20:58 So it's a cumulative process. So
Speaker 3 00:20:59 It's a, for me personally, it's a cumulative process. Everything you learn could be useful to you at some point.
Speaker 2 00:21:05 But because before you said you go to a customer that his has done something forever and you're trying to introduce something new and they have to, in a sense adjust. So it's not a matter of unlearning, it's a matter of adjusting
Speaker 3 00:21:21 Because things are changing, new technologies are coming in. Um, the way you need to do something completely changes. So you need to be able to adapt quickly to the new way of working or you will be left behind.
Speaker 2 00:21:35 So how can a student who goes now in college be ready to unlearn? What should they be doing in their day-to-day lives while in college
Speaker 3 00:21:45 They should be researching, seeing what's around them. So when you're in college, uh, sometimes you learn things in a very academic way and <laugh>, many times the things you learn have been there since the eighties, for example. And they're still doing the same.
Speaker 2 00:22:00 So you define academic something old and
Speaker 3 00:22:04 No, it's different. It's research. Sometimes you're trained to be a researcher, but when you go into the real world and you're working, you need like a different skillset as well. You need both. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So it's about seeing the world of work, seeing what's going on around reading newspapers, reading articles, online newspapers, I assume, and seeing what's around you and constantly trying to learn new things and discovering new things.
Speaker 2 00:22:29 I think what you just said, uh, wraps it up. You have to be lifelong learner. Yeah. And always look out for the new ideas. So Alki is, thank you so much for being with us. It's been enlightening.
Speaker 3 00:22:42 Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 1 00:22:46 You were listening to the Owlcast, the official podcast of ACS Athens. Make sure you subscribe to the Owlcast on Google Podcast, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. This has been a production of the ACS Athens Media Studio.
