Exploring the Frontier of Generative AI at Cisco
In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner penned his famous Frontier Thesis to explain the culture that grew from the unique circumstances at the birth of the American nation. It was the great Western frontier, he said, that gave rise to a particular character, driven by the struggle and opportunity that lies in exploring the unknown. The aspirational attitude of the pioneering lifestyle invigorated and energized society, fostering a set of values rooted in inventiveness, inquisitiveness and perseverance that would remain an integral part of their culture.
In the history of computing, we have seen many frontiers emerge in the form of scientific and technological horizons. They also shape our organizations and communities in powerful ways, and exploring them is part of our culture, bringing that same invigorating energy into our teams and organizations. It is not some neomania (the obsession with any and all things new) that drives us to explore emerging areas, but rather, it is the beckoning of the frontier — the urge to explore, to embrace the pioneering spirit, to go where the maps are not yet drawn.
The Frontiers of AI
At Cisco, we have been engaging the frontier of AI for the better part of a decade. While the latest discovery comes in the form of Generative AI, it’s important to note that this is actually a facet of a larger movement in artificial intelligence driven by data science and machine learning that reached maturity years earlier. At Cisco, we make the distinction as follows:
As early builders, investors, and adopters of Predictive AI, we have implemented many features across our portfolio. For example, in Webex we have world-class audio, video and language intelligence capabilities deployed to do noise filtering, cinematic focus, automatic language translation, and more. Similarly, our security products are enhanced with AI-driven threat detection and anomaly prediction capabilities to make the world safer for our customers.
What makes the research and development exciting and unique at Cisco is a broad product portfolio that adds so many different perspectives to the learning experience. We are a key player in many markets and product categories, including Networking, Servers, Collaboration, Security, DevOps, Applications, Monitoring and more. All these groups in Cisco have made significant investments to create additional value for customers by building AI-powered features and capabilities across our portfolio:
As a result of all this work, Cisco has a large, distributed community of AI pioneers: architects, designers, scientists, inventors and visionaries who are already highly engaged in AI R&D. With our broad expertise across all these areas, we benefit from a diversity of perspectives found in different market forces, product visions, and technology opportunities. This makes Cisco a fantastic place to explore Generative AI: a fertile ground for growing knowledge and expertise in our new frontier.
Generative AI at Cisco
The new frontier is indeed invigorating for our business, just as Turner’s Frontier Thesis predicts. The energy from discovery and experimentation across the quickly evolving Gen AI landscape drives a collective and collaborative learning initiative across the company to share knowledge and improve our understanding.
We have formed a massive community of Generative AI explorers and specific communities of practice around topics like Conversational Agents, Security, Design, and so much more. We have multiple enterprise-wide Platform initiatives to make tools and knowledge available to everyone, helping teams build, ideate and experiment more quickly. Importantly, we have a well-considered strategic initiative to drive Responsible AI across all our products and help people understand what it means to deploy AI safely, securely and with applied ethical considerations. It’s a movement, an upswelling, and it is partly powered by our diverse product portfolio and our commitment to innovation and customer success.
My specific interest lies in how we will develop, operate and secure these Gen AI systems at scale. This question of how we will build Gen AI-powered systems is to me even more exciting than the question of what we will build with them. I guess you could say I am more settler than pioneer, driven by a passion for DevOps and “ways of working” that make this aspect of the frontier particularly invigorating for me. To that end, I have been exploring the world of “LLMOps” and Platforms for AI, investigating what it means to enable teams to deliver LLM-powered features and capabilities at scale, and looking to understand what it all entails for Cisco’s customers, partners, employees and the global community at large. I look forward to sharing the new and interesting ways in which Gen AI will challenge us across our product delivery process.
