AI in the workplace: efficiency versus privacy, with David Yang of YVA

Macro Micro Michael Marco & Startups at the Edge (M4Edge)

Our guest is David Yang and he is the founder of a company called YVA, which is the subject of today’s show, but he’s no novice in startup world. David has founded TWELVE companies, starting in 4th grade, and including ABBYY which you may not have heard of but is actually pretty huge; it has offices in 11 countries and more than thousands of enterprise customers in 200 countries , so you can be sure that David thinks YVA has some serious potential. The World Economic Forum named him as one of the top 100 World Technology Pioneers. David’s resume and story are fascinating, but that’s not what makes this episode so good. It’s because YVA represents much of the great potential of AI but also embodies a lot of what makes people really uncomfortable about AI’s power. YVA is an AI offering in what’s called “People Analytics” which to me sounds vaguely Orwellian, but it’s a real domain and there are other companies in that space. David calls YVA an “MRI scanner for organizational health." It improves the quality of life at a company, improves efficiency, and generally makes the company a better place to work. But of course, in order to get that data, like an MRI, YVA peers deep inside, and analyzes many, many things you do at work, for example not just what words you use in your email or instant messaging app, but when and how often and to whom you write. M4Edge is about tech that can change how the economy functions, and YVA goes right to the heart of our workplaces. Is this big brother and too intrusive or is this simply a more efficient way to doing what HR does anyway, all while making employee’s performance and company performance better? As you’ll see at the end of the episode, David is very Gung-Ho about having AI in our lives. Do you think you’ll be as comfortable? Will you have a choice?