Social Impact Tech: Jon Gaster of KSI Data Sciences On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
By: Jilea Hemmings
Tags: Social Impact

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in a middle-class family in London, in the UK, with one older brother and 15 aunts and uncles! Dinner table conversation was always lively!

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Too many to tell — because I never knew what I wanted to do (and sometimes still don’t), so I have tried lots of things. I sold big sliding walls to hotels in Singapore, I worked in the construction industry building power plants in New Zealand and I spent nearly ten years at that most formal of institutions — IBM. And then, after that, 10 years in that most informal of environments — Hollywood TV and Movie production. For me, each job was an opportunity, not a pre-planned career path. I guess I was a very early gig economy worker! Each job delivered lifelong friendships, as well as great experiences. Despite the ups and downs (and there were a number of them), I was able to be comfortable in many different social and corporate environments.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I have been extremely lucky in finding supporting partners in every business that I have been involved with; they’ve been straightforward and a joy to work with. Most importantly after 9 years with IBM in the UK, I wanted to strike out on my own and my boss at the time was incredibly supportive to the extent of offering me a leave of absence so I could continue my career at IBM in case things didn’t work out. That safety net was a great stress reducer — I never did go back.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My father who was also an entrepreneur had a quote on his desk that has always resonated with me. I’m not sure of the provenance but it has stuck with me. “The opportunity of a lifetime only lasts for the lifetime of the opportunity”; In other words, timing is everything.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Listen — pretty self-explanatory, that one.

Don’t force the conclusion….it may not end up where you want it to. We spend our lives trying to have customers/stakeholders align with our priorities. Until you reach alignment it is almost impossible to get a result, and it is very unusual to get that alignment by forcing the pace (other than in an employer /employee relationship). Again — timing is everything.

Don’t be the smartest person in the room. When I moved from IBM my first start-up was in the entertainment industry because a good friend came from that world and saw a tech opportunity. My second endeavor was in the defense world and finally, we are in the drone/video space. Each of those needed significant learning on the job… the big lesson was you can’t create or sell a solution unless you understand who is going to use it, why, and how. That means really understanding their pain points, and in turn, that means learning about their job. So I was lucky I had great partners who were steeped in the various businesses and gave me the time and space to learn on the job — so even though I was CEO I made sure to continue to surround myself with really smart people.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our society. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?

In a nutshell, too much information is worse than no information at all. While we are often overloaded in our personal lives, especially our online personal lives, our professional responsibilities may require us to make consequential and sometimes even life or death decisions based on being able to discern signal from noise — in other words, how do I figure out what’s important?

How do you think your technology can address this?

Our focus is video, and there are thousands of video sources out there that are being deployed every day. From dashcams to drones, from smartphones to Ring doorbells. Our technology live streams from any source and does a couple of things — it delivers them into a cloud environment. That is both secure and collaborative. That is one of the true answers for the signal/noise question — collaboration, the more expert eyes on something the more likely it is that a good decision will be made. So, we create a secure environment for real-time collaboration. Secondly, as more and more analytics are being developed to help with the problem, we make sure the video and associated data can also feed those analytics. Thus, we are able to deliver real value today, while providing raw material for today’s analytics and training data for the AI and Machine Learning systems of tomorrow.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

I have always tried to break things down to their simplest components. When I was at IBM I honestly didn’t know much about computers because they were big abstract pieces of machinery. The second I got my hands on a personal computer I was mesmerized. Not by the coding (I still can’t code) but by how they could actually make life easier — The very first ATMs in the UK used punch cards but were completely revolutionary. I also realized that one person’s perception could be very different from another. I remember our first client in the entertainment industry was looking for us to develop a database of film and television locations that the UK government could use to attract foreign filmmakers to the region. This was in the days of Windows 3 and given we had to include imagery this was not a trivial task. I was used to working with IBM internal systems, which were super-fast and had email, etc, — all long before it was available to the public. So, when our programmers showed me the results, disappointment didn’t even begin to describe it. Slow, clunky, blurry… but we had to present it the next day. The customer was absolutely blown away — they had never seen an image on a computer. It was a lesson I have never forgotten — perception = experience.

How do you think this might change the world?

I am not arrogant enough to think I am going to change the world but what I am striving to do is remove the hype — in the sense that all the tech press is focused on fantastic technologies that may or may not ever deliver on their promise (like IBM’s Watson). The message can become cloudy and overwhelming (there’s that signal to noise thing again). I have developed a concept that I hope will help — “Competent Autonomy” — this means, make sure that whatever is being developed is going to solve the problem at hand — and that it’s going to satisfy all the stakeholders. This may seem obvious, but many projects and products fail because they were too ambitious (perhaps to sell the project) and weren’t able to deliver on their promise. Other times, because they ignored one group of critical stakeholders — often the folks that are going to have to use the technology.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

The potential pitfalls of Machine Learning and AI have been discussed at great length by extremely smart people from Isaac Asimov to Tim Berners-Lee so there is not much I can add. Our technology enables collaboration — it is designed to allow people to make decisions faster and more safely based on what they can see which can be augmented by information that they can’t see. At the end of the day, I do believe that a programmer’s priority may be different from a user and if that seeps into the AI decision-making process, then we are heading for trouble.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

The term social impact is extremely broad. The world is much too complex, as there are obviously trade-offs for everything. We can say that the car has had a positive impact, but it has also created a fossil-fueled economy that is having dramatic downsides. Google’s “do no evil” and subsequent “do the right thing”, were very laudable but many would argue that they have fallen well short. The concept is a bit abstract — I like to think about it as a means to feeling good about yourself because you have made someone else feel better

Deliver technology that users can relate to — if it’s easier to use and solves a problem you have made their lives easier and had an impact Think about your end game — creating a world-changing technology may not in itself make a positive impact but the wealth it creates can empower real change. McKenzie-Scott (Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife) has given away billions of dollars to really worthy causes. She didn’t create technology, but the wealth created by Amazon gave her the opportunity to make a positive social impact. You can say the same about Bill and Melinda Gates and many others. In other words, don’t think that chasing the unicorn and making a positive social impact are mutually exclusive. Think people, not technology — again, at the end of the day the only things that matter are people. Do what you say you’re going to do — it’s often uncomfortable to say no — but better than saying yes and not delivering. Ignore the naysayers — take advice but if you are convinced then go for it!

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

I’ve been in business for over 30 years so I’m playing catch-up here — I’m afraid the next few generations are going to spend a lot of time cleaning up the mess. In a perverse way that has created endless opportunities to get involved. For example, tech to help us as we age, bacteria that eats trash in the oceans, endless power from renewable sources, food distribution (so that no one needs to go hungry), and many more, are all fields crying out for innovation. The best people to innovate are those that don’t ignore the phrase “but we’ve always done it that way” — namely young people.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

Ekhart Tolle — He is a great spiritual teacher. I love his books, reading a chapter or two seems to provide a different perspective on a problem. I always make better decisions afterward.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

I am on LinkedIn, and I do try to respond to messages there. Otherwise, our company is KSI Data Sciences (www.ksidatasciences.com)

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.