Irzan Raditya on the Future of Tech: AI Has The Ability to Humanize Technology

Humans are complicated creatures, to say a machine can replace one is obviously not a simple matter. Irzan Raditya is fully aware of this fact, yet he still believes in the power of technology can make a better human ecosystem. He, through Kata.ai, allows technology to interact with people in a human-like way, with conversational AI (Artificial Intelligence).

Early ventures

As one of the privileged kids who have access to technology in early childhood, Raditya did not take it for granted. His father held an important role in the development of his interest in tech matters. Having a crush on drawing since elementary school, Paint was his first gateway to the computer. Around the same age, he gains the conviction to learn about IT and to become a programmer someday.

His flair for business has seen since 6th grade. Being obsessed with video games has sharpened his creative mind. Using all the tools and tech knowledge at home, he was able to collect money from creating some popular game mod for his friends. By the time he was introduced to internet broadband, sometimes around late junior and early high school, he can afford his passion for music by selling game [ragnarok] bot. Everything he did is self-taught, thanks to the internet.

The pursuit of a career in IT began when he entered Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin to get his bachelor's degree in Computer Science. The year was 2009, German's tech company was not as blooming as in the US. Raditya loves drawing, but when it comes to career and business, he decided to major in the mobile app instead of graphic design. 

He made the most of his time in Germany by exploring valuable experience, he became an intern Engineer at Zalando (a subsidiary of Rocket Internet). This is where he learned that programming wasn't his best talent, but he kinda has the ability to see things from a different perspective. He discovered lots of questions without certain answers and finally intrigued with role/skill on product management, as you work not only from the technical view but also the business and design part. 

While busy studying, he managed to start a small project called Amplitweet, for musicians can have their music downloaded by users who tweet and follow. In the first attempt, Raditya gets that being the sole founder requires extra work, he then quit and focused on the study. However, there's always this itch to keep doing something in his leisure time. Another idea comes to mind, a clothing line for geeks featuring illustrator from Indonesia called Cape&Fly. The plan was perfect but the execution flopped. Bad timing and lack of opportunity had to come in the way. Moving on to the next venture. Around 2012, Instagram started to boom but not a single platform provides people to have feeds for fashion and shopping. Styyli can be the answer, but they met the wrong partner and the product was a mess. Another failed story.

Anyway, there is always a pearl of wisdom behind every failure. At that time, he was the Head of Mobile Product in mobile food delivery in Jerman, in charge of 11 multiple business line countries with around 10 people reporting to him every day. His boss was quite the role model, young and ambitious, and he got motivated. Raditya's last try in Germany was Rumah Diaspora, a platform that connects people from the same origin country who wants to live together. That time, it worked, it was launched.

From the journey, Raditya learned three things, (1) You cannot do it alone. He was working with Reynir [currently Kata.ai's CMO] and learn many things together through Styyli. Also, he found dedication and good work ethic in Wahyu Wrehasnaya [currently Kata.ai's COO] while trying to make things worked with Rumah Diaspora (2) Solve the problem in the right proximity, this is the reason he created Rumah Diaspora in Germany. (3) Start with what you have, one of the reasons for Styyli's failure is because the fashion brand usually used by iOS users, while Raditya has a background in Android. In other words, It's not a match.

Building a tech company

In 2015, Raditya decided to come home to Indonesia and exercised his passion to build his own business. He also heard that Indonesia is a country with lots of problems, it’s a paradise for entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, there are not as many problems in Europe. As an entrepreneur, it's not as sexy as in Indonesia. 

At first, he studied the market in Indonesia. Inspired by a company in the US that provides virtual assistants, combined with the culture of Indonesian people that is chat-based and craving for anything practical. Eventually, he decided to create YesBoss – a company that offers virtual assistant services with two Co-founders from his previous companies, Reynir [Styyli] and Wahyu [Rumah Diaspora].

"I believe to building a strong co-founding team, there must be trust and commitment as the basic foundation, other things can be learned and will follow. That’s why I've been thankful to be able to stick with my Co-Founders." Irzan said.

YessBoss finally gained exposure and have VCs lining up with term sheet. One of US' VC for late-stage even does the favor to connect them with 500 startups' Managing Partner. Since the first day, our team aware that this technology is not quite automatic. This will never be scalable without having the capability in machine learning and NLP, which is the AI part. We requested Jim Geovedi to be the tech advisor for the NLP algorithm. The company managed to raise funding and within a year and a half has expanded to the Philippines [by acquiring a similar company, HeyKuya] with 100 employees in total. 

However, things didn't go as smoothly as planned. Here comes the dark episode, time passed and the company still can't find a sustainable business model.

"It was very hard to scale if you tried to be everything for everyone. On the other side, we have an obligation to investors and to survive. As a result of changing business models, we have to lay off 90% of our employees. It was devastating," Raditya said.

The rest of the team worked hard to figure out the solution, and the future is AI. In late 2016, the company officially pivots into a B2B business that offers conversational AI technology for corporations named Kata.ai. The first time they were approached by LINE and Unilever for a chatbot. They start with 10 people at that time, and they’re back to 100 people. Currently, the company has reached business growth 3 times a year and still counting.

The remarkable works of AI

Raditya said that he came across AI by accident. He used to do part-time jobs in Germany, one of which is becoming a call center agent. He was working around 4-6 months for an outsourcing company in England to receive complaints and inquiries. He thought this is just repetitive work and people are suffering from the shouting and pressure. Kata.ai can be the best solution for this kind of problem.

He also mentioned, "AI is actually a tool, it’s not a magic wand. There is always a side that sees AI as a threat, another side is quite extreme, considering AI as a savior. I’m somewhere in between, and it goes back to us, to people. With every kind of technology in our hand, if we can't make it useful, it'll just go up in smoke."

AI will be the biggest thing just like the internet and electricity in the next 5-10 years. Every day, we interact with AI-powered apps. Google speech to text, youtube recommendation, and what Kata.ai's been doing with conversational AI through the chatbot. Every product/company that didn't use AI will soon be left behind. Many problems out there can be solved through AI, especially in Indonesia. The thing is, we are yet to explore and expose further on this. AI in healthcare, AI through education, AI featuring the government, AI for the smart city. AI has the ability to humanize technology and make it more seamless.

From the remarkable works of AI, it's necessary to know the worst scenario of this thing that can affect the human world. First, when Indonesia far left in the adoption of AI technology, therefore, the opportunity goes to other players and they ended up leading the market. Second, we're talking about AI to cost some job losses. People have compassion, they always find ways and look for opportunities. In the age of disruption, different kinds of new jobs are founded. There wouldn’t be any job lost but there will be a shift of task. Using conversational AI, the task can be quite high-touch works. People tend to forget and thought that AI can learn by itself. Meanwhile, there is a lot of work and the need for human labor behind AI's remarkable work. 

The work of Artificial intelligence has been captured and channeled through some medium. For example, there are many films highlighting the remarkable works of AI, some of those are giving a vision that AI can be so powerful, it can outgrow the human as its brain. Raditya tried to explain from the AI experts' view on this matter, Kai Fu Li and Andrew Ng. He said the artificial intelligence used in some of the movies that can outgrow the human capacity is called AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). However, from the present status quo towards the utopist vision, we still digest away. The current deep learning is yet to be sufficient, it performs good curation but still focuses only on a specific task.  With exponential growth, it still lacks the cognitive capability.

Aside from conversational AI and AGI, this technology has quite a large branch of science. Neurotechnology, for example, is another discipline that Raditya quite has an interest in. It is the kind of process where machines can read people's minds. The research is still ongoing, but the idea is breathtaking and frightening at the same time.