Two Hispanic Cuban- American Technologists Talk AI [Video]

Latin Biz Today advisory board member Irving Wladawsky-Berger (MIT Research Affiliate, former IBM)  and fellow Cuban American  immigrant technologist Honorio Padron (7x CIO/CTO, former NASA, C3 AI, now Experience Bypass CEO), discuss enterprise AI transformation realities.

Editor’s note: These AI insights while specific to corporations mirror a number of similarities of SMB or small businesses.

Highlights.

AI’s Solow Paradox Moment: Like computers in the 1980s, AI is everywhere but not showing up in productivity. Only 5-30% of companies are successfully scaling AI. The “What vs. How” Problem: Technology executives at non-tech companies focus too much on building AI infrastructure (the “what”) instead of selecting proven platforms and implementing them (the “how”). Stop Building, Start Buying: 80% of companies are ‘stuck in the mud’ trying to assemble AI factories from Google/Amazon tools.

Solution:

Buy complete platforms from Palantir, C3 AI, or IBM Watson X. The 80/20 Transformation Rule: Only 10-20% of business processes need to be unique competitive differentiators. The other 80-90% should be standardized. Agent Standardization is Coming: AI agents will force process standardization even more strictly than ERP did. Economic reality will drive this – why build a ‘pay the bill’ agent when you can buy one for 1/4 the cost?

Technology Takes Time:

From 1990s Burger King reengineering: 85% of ‘restaurant of the future’ innovations still aren’t implemented. Transformation is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Practical Implementation Path · Identify 15-20% of top enterprise AI drivers for Phase 1 · Select AI platform architecture from proven vendors · Start with 1-2 high-ROI use cases that self-fund transformation · Roll out in waves over 2-3 years · Examples: preventive maintenance for industrials, demand forecasting for retail/CPG

Notable Quotes:

Honorio:

“If you want to be a technologist, then go work for one of those companies. But if you are an industrial enterprise, if you are a retail enterprise, you’re not in that business. You’re in the business of What I’m going to Select and How I am going to Implement, not what I’m going to build.”

Irving:

“Unless the technology can be deployed at scale in the marketplace, in companies, in industries, in governments, in the overall economy, we don’t have anything.”

Enjoy the video…stay tuned for part 2 of Irving and Honorio’s AI conversation.