Ep. 16 – AI Ethics and Impact with Neeti Mehta.

Transcript

00:00:09 Ellie Tehrani

Welcome to the elusive consumer Neeti Mehta. We’re very excited to have you join us today. And in our podcast, we often talk about data and insights and the importance of that, and how data-driven businesses can gain a competitive edge while also better understanding their ever-elusive consumers out there in your line of work, you digitise data at a scale that further enables that. And we’re keen to learn how you feel technology is impacting our society at large. And before we dive into that, I’d, of course, like to start with what led you to where you are today.

00:00:56 Neeti Mehta Shukla

That’s a very loaded question. And a journey as an entrepreneur takes many, many turns and many, many pivots, and somehow it all comes together to take your idea or your technology. In my case, to a certain level. We started the company, my husband and I, together in 2003. We were full founders that brought about this idea that we had worked in technology and we’d worked in businesses, and automation was still such a grand was project that almost always it didn’t make economic sense or commercial viability for an organisation to automate some of its processes and really enable its employees as humans to do more. And our idea from the get-go was, you know, this birth of the thought of a very easy-to-use automation and very quick and easy technology that will allow powerful automation, a very agile form, a very democratised form. It did not need an engineer. It did not need ten people working over two years to automate a process. It really has to allow businesses to utilise technology in the way it was meant to be. And so that’s where the idea came from. And that mission hasn’t changed in all these years. We really are about making the humanity do his or her best work. You know, how can we enable them to really utilise the knowledge, value, add the experience, add the skill set, the creativity, the innovation that they can bring to an organisation, and really leave the repetitive and mundane to automation. And for that, automation really has to be very easy to use. It has to be low code, no code. It has to be, you know, utilising the state-of-the-art technologies available at that time. For example, right now we have generative AI, which is on top of mind for everybody. And how can a business or an employee really utilise all the technologies available to them to really do their best work? That’s where it started. That mission, as I said, hasn’t changed in 20 years. The technology has, of course, matured and done so much and become so much more intelligent and so much more utilised across all verticals, all industries and we’ve learned along the way and the product roadmap has evolved along the way, but the mission has not changed.

00:03:22 Ellie Tehrani

Right. And we’re going to talk about that quite a bit in terms of how to help humans do more of the human work and leave the repetitive tasks to the bots. But before that, let’s talk a little bit about RPA in simple terms. Could you explain to our listeners what it is?

00:03:46 Neeti Mehta Shukla

So if you’re a business, think of any process in your business. It could be an HR process, it could be a finance process, it could be a logistics process, it could be a customer service process. It doesn’t matter. Any process has certain elements of it that are quite repetitive. For example, you might be taking data from one system and utilising that data to input into another system, to create reports or to create a process management for your employees in some form or fashion. And any process that has repetitive elements should be automated. Anything that can be automated should be automated for multiple reasons. One is, it’s not the effective use of the human skill set, number one. Number two, it is very prone to human error, which we want to reduce. And three, time is king, of course, and for everybody, the faster you can do it or the better you can do, it enables that business to serve its own customers faster, better, easier. For example, in healthcare, you want that report or the patient to be taken care of faster. If you are in logistics, you want the goods to be delivered faster. If you’re in banking, you want that account to be opened faster. If you’re a back end operation, you want your employees onboarded faster and again, done in the right way, of course. And then there’s compliance and governance and regulations and things like this as well. So it really is, RPA really is about allowing humans whether or not you are coding centric. So whether you’re a developer in it, whether you’re a business user, whether you’re in HR, whether you’re in finance, doesn’t matter. You should have technology in your hands that allows you to automate that repetitive process. Whether it’s a piece of a process, end to end, doesn’t matter, right? So really it comes from there. And then you add a layer of intelligence because it’s artificial intelligence-enabled or it’s intelligent automation. It really understands what you’re trying to do and makes that work easier. So that’s kind of in a nutshell what RPA is. And as I mentioned before, automation is not new. It’s been there for a while, of course, but it used to be this really heavy lift for most customers to utilise that as a solution for their businesses. And in this case, because it’s such an easy utilisation of technology to automate parts of a process, if that process changes, you can redo it, so to speak, versus recode the entire process if you were doing it the old way, really is a game changer in the industry. It allows every business to become more competitive, treat their customers better, innovate better, become more creative and treat their employees better, right?

00:06:40 Ellie Tehrani

And while doing this and improving your products and services, you are handling massive amounts of data. And data, as we know, comes in many different formats and from many different sources. How does your company handle this diversity in data to improve your products?

00:07:01 Neeti Mehta Shukla

So the one way to look at an automation platform like ours, which is the automation success platform, is that it is application agnostic and it is process agnostic. It’s also industry-agnostic. So it sits as a layer where it allows a business to really automate between applications. And in order to automate between applications, you have to be able to digitise and use the data between applications. And you know, we, in the last 30 to 40 years, we have just a plethora of applications that have enabled businesses to do so much more than they have ever done before. But sometimes these applications kind of live in their own little island or silo. And the business, of course, the process that the business is trying to do runs between applications often. So it allows you to utilise that data, transfer that data between applications, utilise reports from one application into another application. It really is about digitising your data and digitising your processes. And automation is a great tool to do that. And on top of that, it then helps you automate, in which case you can deliver faster, easier, better. So it really is transformative in how it utilises data between applications to allow businesses to do more.

00:08:24 Ellie Tehrani

Right. And how do you think that organisations can balance that use of automation while maintaining that human-centric work environment?

00:08:37 Neeti Mehta Shukla

I will answer that in two ways. One is that humans are capable of greatness. And I don’t believe, and I think most people will agree, that we were put on earth to transfer data between Excel and a database, or Excel and Salesforce, or whatever else it is. We really are capable of so much of innovation and creativity and knowledge value add operations. And that’s what we should be doing for most of our time. With the growth of technology over the last 30, 40 years, unfortunately, a lot of our jobs have become repetitive in some ways and in typical evolution of technology, that needs to become automated so that now you can concentrate on the next generation of innovation. So, to answer your question, the first reason is that humans are capable of more, and technology is about human enablement then automation is a requirement for most businesses because it allows its employees or teammates to do more. Number one. Number two, I think just in general, I think businesses, as we have utilised technology more and more, bear a responsibility to become more human-like in the way we evaluate our performance appraisals, or how we evaluate our teammates, or what we consider is. Is great teamwork, for example. And we have to have that lens on it of what I call future ethical sustainability of human values. I know it’s a mouthful, but it really is about sustaining what we think humans are great at from a business perspective. So the fact that your team leader can do, can spend more time being empathetic or sympathetic, or value the fact that you stood up for your team and were able to do something together that you would not have been able to do otherwise, or value that one person on your team who decided to take on an extra shift because you had a personal emergency at home. These are things that technology, of course, enables. But humans have to value and continue to value more, because as a society, it will take us further. So it’s really twofold. It is the smart thing to do for a business to use automation to become more human-centric, but it’s also the right thing to do for a business to become more human-centric. It really is two sides of the same coin, and together, we will be better off as a society ten years from now, 15 years from now than we were before.

00:11:11 Ellie Tehrani

Right. And I want to touch upon this next in terms of the ethics in this space and also the workforce of the future, like you talked about, in terms of the consumer side of things, or the professionals working in any vertical, like you said, there’s a lot of fears and there’s a lot of conversations right now about the future of work and what that might look like. What would you say to help alleviate some of those fears?

00:11:42 Neeti Mehta Shukla

Look, the one thing that’s constant, of course, is changed and progress. And to me, if the end result of all these technologies, and I’m not just talking about automation, but the technologies of today, is that we have a better society in terms of we have better healthcare, we have longer lifespans, we have greater job satisfaction, we have hopefully better work life balance and so forth, then as a society, we believe technology is taking us in the right direction, then it’s up to us to put the checks and balances in place. In order to make it more ethical, I guess, in some ways, for that transition to happen. And there are many ways that we as a society can put that together. So we can, as I mentioned, value the human element a little bit more, of course, but, you know, develop technology that’s secure. Develop technology that’s responsible in its intelligence. Develop technology that really is more accessible by everybody and not the select CEO. Bridge that tech wealth gap that we have created in the last few years. How do we help upskill and reskill? So when I talk about ethics, for example, in our case, automation is a catalyst technology, right? So it’s being used across all verticals and all industries. And so it’s a moment in time where I believe if we all do our part in helping upskill or reskill folks, we can make it a more inclusive job profile. We can have folks who traditionally would not have thought of tech jobs get upskilled or reskilled. We can train bots in artificial intelligence to be a little bit less biased if we are more inclusive in that data set that we feed them. So how can we use the accessibility and the inclusiveness that we all want? How do we utilise that into that technology in order to, again, leave us in a better space than we were before? Yes, it’s going to be hard. Yes, it will take a lot of effort on very many of us and probably everyone to make that a reality. But it is a moment in time when we are given that opportunity, and if we utilise that opportunity well, we will be better off as a society. So, to me, technology, as I mentioned, is about human enablement. And if we can enable all humans everywhere, I, in some form or fashion, then we are all better off.

00:14:04 Ellie Tehrani

Right? And I want to go back to something you mentioned. You talked about checks and balances. What responsibility do you think corporations have within the RPA space, within the AI space, versus governments and regulations? Tell us a bit more about that and your thoughts on that.

00:14:27 Neeti Mehta Shukla

That’s a tough one, because I don’t believe we have a clear answer yet. What I take, what I understand and what I value is that everybody is thinking about it. It is top of mind. It is top of mind to governments. It’s top of mind. We just went to the World Economic Forum in January this year. Top of mind. So many conversations on artificial intelligence, the ethics of it. How are we going to be, be responsible around it? Is it a regional dialogue? Is it a government dialogue? Is it a country dialogue? Or is it a societal dialogue? Or is it just a corporate dialogue? And how do all these dialogues work together in order to create checks and balances that we really haven’t had to do before at this level. And so to me, if everybody understands that we have to think about this, that we have to find solutions around this, and we work together to find those solutions. Again, my faith in humanity is very high. I think humans are extremely intelligent, very focused, can definitely find the answers, but we must want to work together to do so, and we must bear a responsibility to do so. And so I do see that. I do see people having learned from the last ten years and some of the issues that have come with some of the new technologies that we’ve seen, whether it was social media or whether it was data and how we use the data and so forth, we’ve learned from all these experiences. And so at this moment in time, we can take those experiences and probably create better checks and balances for AI than we could have ten years ago. And we all bet that responsibility, right?

00:16:11 Ellie Tehrani

So, talking about shared responsibilities as a society, another concern that is often raised, particularly within the tech vertical, is the lack of diversity, and ultimately also unconscious bias, starting with diversity, how do you at automation anywhere approach those challenges when developing products and services?

00:16:37 Neeti Mehta Shukla

I will go back to intent and opportunity a little bit. As I mentioned, we are a catalyst technology. And so we do see utilisation of our technology across all verticals, industries, regions, etcetera. So we have created the impact office using three pillars. But the second pillar for us is reskilling. And the reason why this reskilling pillar is so important to us and we focus so much on it, is because we believe that we can utilise it in order to bridge that gap, bridge that diversity gap that we have created. So our impact office works with social partners in different regions and governments in many regions, really bring tech skilling, upskilling, reskilling to folks who traditionally not had access to it. So it could be women in Africa, it could be in the Mississippi delta, folks who really never had tech jobs. It could be the youth who are left behind or didn’t get the opportunity to study further, or folks who have in India, for the first time, stepped out of the farming community, the first people within their own communities who are getting a formalised education. Now, if we can help train these folk, we basically make tech more accessible. Number one, as we mentioned before, the tech gap and the wealth that it has created, but it also makes the technology more inclusive. And so we really put a lot of effort into reskilling and upskilling folks from all walks of life. Wherever possible to enable them to have that opportunity. Because again, talent, you know, we all say this talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. So if we can create that opportunity, then they can all leverage that, number one. And then the second part of your question was the biases and how we can do it. Again, they are linked to me. If you have a more accessible pool of people, more inclusive pool of people working with these technologies, automatically those technologies will then become a little less biased. And if we feed the bots the right data or a large enough set of data where those biases can be left behind, again, bots have no inbuilt biases. It’s the biases that we feed them. So we really can take that moment to step back a little bit and feed them more inclusive data in order for those bots to then create processes or I solutions that are less biased, if that makes sense. So it’s really, you know, connected in a way. What can we do to bring everybody together to leverage these learnings? Because it can be used in a hospital, it can be used in a logistics, it can be used at the Walmart warehouse, it can be used in a bank, or it can be used by an entrepreneur. And that’s what’s key, that we, you know, really take the voices of all of these folk to enable them to use these technologies, of course, and then also help train the bots for artificial intelligence.

00:19:42 Ellie Tehrani

Right. And that makes so much sense. Even in our line of traditional market research, we often talk about your products and services are only going to be good, as good as the data that you collect. And if you don’t have a representative sample, your product is not going to work across every population, every age group and so forth. And you mentioned a little bit about earlier in terms of the social impact, and I want to touch upon that and the work that you do with non profits in particular. So your role beyond being the co founder, obviously, is the social impact officer. Tell us a bit about the background of how that was formed and some of the work that you’ve done.

00:20:27 Neeti Mehta Shukla

Happy to. You’ve got me talking about my favourite topic these days, so I’m really happy to talk about it. You know, over the last 20 years, we’ve seen the technology mature, evolved, become really powerful in so many ways, and we’ve seen the effect and the ways that our customers and partners have utilised this technology to really deliver something that we could never have before. So I’ll give you one quick example. We had the NHS during the pandemic. The NHS is the National Health Service in the UK, you know, they reached out this from a team in their it department to say, hey, we see our nurses going around trying to monitor the oxygen flow from bedside to bedside, and it’s really not a great use of their time because it’s a very manual process. It takes about 2 hours per nurse. How can I help these nurses do more for their patients? So the intent was very human. The intent was, how can we enable these nurses to not be overtasked and really spend that time with the patients versus monitoring oxygen levels? We were able to work with a partner and the customer to create oxygen bot within 48 hours. That enabled this to be done automatically automated, and it saved about 2 hours per nurse per day. Now, if you put it in context of a society like, like the UK, in the NHS, there are tens of thousands of nurses. Each of them could utilise this technology and imagine the value add from a time perspective, not to mention the patient’s perspective that is created. Now, you could argue that the technology was there and they could have done that before, and the innovation happened at that moment of time, but really it was about using a technology that existed to do more for society. And that’s where the intent comes in. When I kept seeing this, I really felt that I wanted to focus a lot of energy from our impact office, which is one of the reasons I created the impact office, to see how can we bring this technology for nonprofits to do more. If nonprofits do more, we’re all better off as a society. Whether the nonprofit is a medical nonprofit like the Red Cross, or whether it is a refugee crisis center, or whether it is a homeless shelter, or it could be a Ford stamp division of the government. All these societal organisations are so mission-driven, and often funding, of course, is always an issue. Resources from a volunteer perspective are always an issue, and their missions are almost always critical. And so how can we reutilise this technology, which we know in customers and partners have changed the world and bring it to these nonprofits? So the impact office was started with the first pillar of being. How do we enable nonprofits to do more with this technology? Because we’ll all be better off as a society if they were to be able to utilise this and we really partner with them versus throw licenses at them, because, you know, sometimes they’re tech laggard, sometimes the volunteers are not very technology focused, and we really want to enable them to utilise it versus solve it. You know, teach them to fish versus just give them fish. It’s the same concept. So that’s our first pillar in the impact office. The second reason for the impact office was, as I mentioned, the reskilling revolution that we wanted to be part of, because we do feel a sense of responsibility to do our part in making it a more inclusive, more accessible future of work for everybody. And then the third aspect of what we do is community involvement, where we work towards some of the UN sdgs. We have a robust vto program, volunteer time off program that enables our employees to give back, either creating bots and such things for our nonprofit partners or for a cause that they believe in and how they want to give back. So it’s just bringing a focus to say, what can automation anywhere do from its own strengths and advantages that it has and bring it to society at large that we couldn’t do as individuals, that we couldn’t do as any other technology, but we can do it as automation anywhere. And the impact office is focused on this to do our part, of course. But hopefully we help leave the world a better place than we found it, right?

00:25:06 Ellie Tehrani

I mean, that’s great ambitions. And it’s also good for our listeners to hear about these types of initiatives, because oftentimes companies, especially in the tech space, are not seen to be doing as much good for society. Thesis we often talk about data and insights for good, and it’s important for us to highlight these types of organisations. I want to talk a little bit more about other fears that society consumers in general might have in terms of organisations or processes that involves RPA or AI, and that is regarding data privacy. What steps has automation anywhere taken to ensure that data privacy and security is fully built into your solutions?

00:25:59 Neeti Mehta Shukla

Let me think on that and come back, because I think some of it is very technical and some of it is not. And maybe Lisa can help identify what we are allowed to communicate.

00:26:13 Ellie Tehrani

Of course.

00:26:13 Neeti Mehta Shukla

So I will have to come.

00:26:14 Ellie Tehrani

That’s not a problem. We can move on to other initiatives that you’re working on across the globe, because I know that your company is globally based and that you are supporting companies across multiple different markets. Can you tell us a bit about some of the initiatives that you’ve taken across other markets? You mentioned the work with NHS in the UK that have been particularly interesting to you.

00:26:42 Neeti Mehta Shukla

So there are two ways that it makes it interesting for me. Of course. One is when technology is utilised in a way that we didn’t, we had not thought of. So this oxygen bot was a typical example, which is why I brought it up recently. We did work with an organisation called center for Humanitarian Technology. And they were working with an organisation in the Ukraine where again, the war started. And immediately capacity was required to take in aid requests. And by automating the asking of aid requests and some of the data that had to be obviously made compliant and across the governance requirements of that process and so forth, we were allowed, or able to allow is the wrong word, able to increase the aid requests by about 400% per day per volunteer. Now, to me, that was just fantastic. The fact that a child could get a diaper, you know, one week earlier than it, you know, than it would have otherwise in a war, in a war zone. And not to mention that volunteer who took that aid request is able to maybe spend a 1 minute extra talking to these folks who are displaced. To say, how you doing? Is just so human. And the humanity of it is so important to me. So that’s a fantastic use case, the utilisation of that technology. Hats off to our partner and the organisation. Step with hope in the Ukraine that do so, because again, a fantastic use of our technology. We have in the past, for example, worked with an organisation in India who was creating an app to take data from seven satellites and feed it into the app to form a report that allowed farmers to know where to dig a bow. Well, a few years ago, India had quite a difficult time with water, with fresh water for farmers and for farming. And it was causing a lot of farmers, obviously, a lot of stress to the point where they were giving up on their farms. Some of them were abandoning it, some of them were even giving up their lives. And this is something that they had kept for many, many generations, or of course, it was their bread winning mechanism. And so allowing a better chance of success was key in that point, in that particular use case, where really we were enabling those farmers to use the data, right. With a better chance of success. Again, a fantastic use case for our technology. And again, you know, whether it’s patient care, whether it is, if you can deliver a result to a patient who’s waiting on a diagnosis even one week earlier, is not just a better mechanism to treat them, but it’s less stress on the, on the patient, less stress on the family, especially for, you know, illnesses that can be fatal or illnesses that are sometimes chronic, every day matters. And when technology can help you deliver it that much faster, that much error free is also a big aspect of it. And these are use cases that I think draw the humanity of what technology can do. And to me, that’s really fantastic.

00:30:02 Ellie Tehrani

Those are some fantastic examples. Thank you for sharing those. I want to return back to the US and how you feel the society and people in general today are reacting to AI and automation. Do you feel that people are generally accepting? I believe your company did some research on the topic as well. Could you talk us a little bit about that?

00:30:31 Neeti Mehta Shukla

I cannot talk to the research, at least on this podcast, but I can come back to you with some information on it, especially with the data aspect that wasn’t. I’m not ready for it, but I can talk a little bit about the US in general. Let me start with. So to me, the United states has a fantastic x factor in innovation. There is a mindset in our businesses and our industries to go to what’s possible or what’s possible now, or what’s possible five years from now. What should we aim at the, and this is across all industries. Who knew Amazon would be a thing? Who knew we’d have rockets going to space for tourism? Who knew? At least, well, we dreamt of it. But who knew it would happen this fast or happen so prevalently? Who knew healthcare would be where it is today? Look at us coming out of this pandemic. It has become front and center for so many folks, and there have been so many fantastic innovations around it. The fact that we could deliver a vaccine in record time, right? These are things that I think are driven by imagination and innovation. And to me, technology, all technologies, it could be automation anywhere or any other technology is really about enabling that innovation and that imagination. And in the US, you know, I have seen, you know, people, the Silicon Valley is, you know, so many people that just think outside the box that are so imaginative in what they envision. And it’s, it’s really, it’s really a joy to see how, how they bring all these technologies to, how they bring these solutions together to really create that innovation and that creativity. I mean, you know, who, who would have thought Uber would be Uber or Lyft would be Lyft? Who would have, you know, it’s, it’s really about utilising what’s available to get to that next level of whatever society is about. That’s one aspect. The second aspect is I really hope us, you know, leads the world in this reskilling revolution because there are pockets of this country that we have worked in where we really believe people have been not given the opportunity. We set up an RPA center of excellence with a social partner called People Shores and the Mississippi Development Authority in the Mississippi B Delta. Again, there’s just a lack of jobs available in that area. Folks still live below the poverty line. Sometimes they just don’t have access to training, but they don’t have access to jobs of the future.

00:33:15 Ellie Tehrani

Right?

00:33:15 Neeti Mehta Shukla

And our endeavor was to see what we can do to help that. And so we started this reskilling center with this partner to help train folks, trained folks who have, you know, literally gone from flipping burgers at McDonald’s to a tech job, folks who are single parents who. Who really never thought that they could do anything beyond the minimum wage job. And they have been transformed, not just themselves, but they transformed their families, the lives of their families, the lives of the next generation. So there are pockets of the US that we can help uplift, number one, but we can help with this reskilling revolution and use then this model to help upskill, reskill different parts of the world as well. And it does require everybody. It requires technology organisations like ours. It requires governmental institutions. It requires social partners who just are so mission driven and so fantastic in what they do. And it requires a society at large, the community at large, to come together to make this a possibility. But I think these two things, for me, stand out in the US especially, and I think it’s something we can leverage and utilise worldwide.

00:34:26 Ellie Tehrani

Right. And I want to talk a little bit more about what you think in terms of the future holds for this industry. You often talk with such optimism about the human race in general, and that we’re capable of greatness, which is fantastic to hear, and that technology is only there to enable that greatness. So do you think that we’re moving in that right direction as a society? Or do you think, what do you see or predict for the future?

00:34:59 Neeti Mehta Shukla

My take is a synonym for entrepreneur is optimist or a positive thinker, for sure. But I’ve been very blessed in my line of work. I’ve met some absolutely fantastic human beings, and they are not far and few in between. They are everywhere. And there are so many of them. So many of them. So, to me, you know, again, if we look at it from a consciousness, and if we look at it with intent, my bet is on the humans, always has been. And so the right solutions will come to be the right intelligence. I mean, have you met us? We are superbly intelligent as a species. You know this. It will come to be where the solutions and society and history has shown us we are better off as a society today. We’re more peaceful, no matter how many wars there are, than we have been in the past. We are better off in health, and we’re better off with our children. Right? Our children are better off. And so I do believe, you know, that with the right intent and the right focus and the right lessons from history, humans will crack the code on this right.

00:36:11 Ellie Tehrani

I’m conscious of the time. But before we wrap up, I want to ask you in terms of any key points, advice that you would give the businesses wanting to improve their operations and productivity, and then also from the consumer’s point of view, who might be fearing this next generation that we’re going through in terms of automation and AI and the rest, what advice or what.

00:36:40 Neeti Mehta Shukla

Would you say to each of those parties, to companies? I would say we are in the midst of a technological revolution, and if we don’t leverage every piece of technology that we can, we will not be able to continue differentiating our businesses to succeed, number one. And number two, we are not leveraging everything we can for our end customer. And customer is king. So you must utilise all these technologies to do better or to do something new or something different or something more for your customers today, what was possible ten years ago as a one off, is now mainstream often today. And that comes with utilising technology in a way that we can deliver that solution to many more people than a select few. So to every business, I would say, especially where automation is concerned, it has come so far in the last 20 years. It is so accessible. We have, for example, just regenerative AI and automation. It’s a game changer for so many businesses, for so many processes. Look to all these solutions to see how you can leverage it for your end customer, for your mission in itself. And you must. I think anybody who doesn’t utilise any of the future of work technologies bears a risk of being left behind, really at this point, for consumers. I look at it both ways. I look at it from the fact that I think intelligent automation definitely, and many of the artificial intelligence solutions, I won’t speak to all of them, will better our lives in some ways. But at the same time, our asks of it must be right and intent, full and ethical. So as a customer, push your solution providers or your product providers or your service providers to really deliver that exceptional customer service that you’re looking for. You know, the human traits, the empathy, the care that we know humans are capable of, and the responsibility with which we deliver those products and services is very, very important. But I am looking forward to it. I feel that we will have. I give you a couple more examples. Who knew insurances could deliver claims in a few hours versus days and months? We had the paradise fires here in California a few years ago. If you have to wait six months for the insurance claim to come through for you to rebuild a house versus, hey, can we use technology to deliver it in a month or a week or a. Dave is a game changer for all of us. And so I’m excited as to what every industry and every vertical will do with these technologies of the future. And hopefully, if most of it is correct and true and towards betterment of society. There are always some bad actors, of course, but if most of it is for the betterment of society, then we’ll be a better society five years from now, ten years from now, our kids will have a better world.

00:39:52 Ellie Tehrani

Absolutely. And before we go, are there any resources that you’d like to share with our listeners? Any online sites or reading material that you think could benefit?

00:40:05 Neeti Mehta Shukla

Absolutely. Please check out automation anywhere’s global impact page. See the work we’re doing. Reach out to us if you think there’s something we can do together. We’re always better together. Look at some of the work that we’re doing with generative AI and automation as well. Again, very topical, of course, but it is a game changer in many industries, and so we can leverage that. Of course, we have a lot of work that we’ve done in healthcare especially, and we’ve written two white papers that talk about some of the learnings we’ve had from public health systems utilising technologies like ours. And our hope is for other healthcare organisations to utilise those learnings, including the failures to really build on top of it and do more, because healthcare is, of course, very important to all of us, you know, every single one of us. And so just a lot of resources that are coming through, you know, stay in tune with what automation anywhere is doing. We’re seeing some fantastic work by our customers and partners, and some of the innovation that’s coming through is just, you can geek out on it. And so it’s really fun to see how they’re utilising it. And we’d love to partner with any nonprofit out there, any organisation that wants to work with us to do some good. We really care, and we’d love to work together.

00:41:21 Ellie Tehrani

Thank you very much, Neeti. We appreciate your time and all the work that you’re doing.

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