Artificial intelligence could guide decisions from the political to the personal,\u00a0if people would seize the opportunities on offer.\u00a0The Mint\u00a0talks to\u00a0Dahlia\u00a0Lamy,\u00a0who says the war and terror in which she grew up might never have happened,\u00a0had digital decision-making been available.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Dahlia\u00a0Lamy\u00a0and her partner,\u00a0Justin Lyon,\u00a0want to simulate\u00a0digitally\u00a0the\u00a0entire\u00a0world.\u00a0They have developed artificial intelligence that could\u00a0guide\u00a0all manner of\u00a0decision-making,\u00a0including the huge and fundamental choices\u00a0required of\u00a0governments, banks, hospitals and the military\u00a0along with choices over, basically, everything else.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe want to simulate the world. That is our objective as a company, right. We think that we should create simulations about everything and anything and that\u00a0it is a possibility,\u201d she says. Her resolute declaration refers to a\u00a0venture\u00a0founded by Lyon in which she too is passionately committed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But right now\u00a0she and Lyon\u00a0are narrowing their focus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While the strategy is global, the first tactical move for\u00a0the venture \u2013 branded\u00a0Simudyne\u00a0\u2013\u00a0is\u00a0a focus on\u00a0the banks. They are,\u00a0Lamy\u00a0says, very receptive to a proposition that might reduce their exposure to\u00a0the\u00a0risk\u00a0of\u00a0catastrophic misjudgement of the economic impact of their actions.\u00a0Again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen we talk to them they understand\u00a0 \u2013 we don’t have to sell it to them. It\u00a0goes down to:\u00a0\u2018How are you going to be better than what I’m currently using? What differentiates you?\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And might the financial sector\u2019s enthusiasm for a digital seer to guide its decisions be related by any chance to a recent global economic crash that it failed to identify? \u201cAbsolutely, absolutely,\u201d says\u00a0Lamy. She adds: \u201cEconomic cliffs and crashes, definitely, that makes\u00a0sense to a banker or a regulator.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lamy\u2019s\u00a0reasons for a move onto the finance sector include also\u00a0commercial\u00a0pragmatism on\u00a0her\u00a0part:\u00a0she estimates the\u00a0market\u00a0for simulation technology in banking is worth some US$900m.\u00a0Lamy\u00a0says a regulatory emphasis on stress testing in the financial sector,\u00a0has added to the urgency of the banks\u2019 need for improved modelling and created a sales opportunity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She emphasises that she and\u00a0Lyon\u00a0have experience in other strategic-scale industries but a focus was vital and the financial sector held the most promise. \u201cWe worked with Exxon Mobil. We worked with other companies in the oil and gas\u00a0industries\u00a0and in healthcare. Insurance is also a big sector but we need to focus rather than be scattered all over the place. And quite frankly,\u00a0there is a market for us\u00a0within the financial community.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe technology is solid and tested.\u00a0We refined\u00a0it\u00a0by working with Exxon Mobil, by working with the Bank of England, by working with Humana, by working with the US Department of Defence, right. So, that is something that we can, hand on heart, go to the client and say, \u2018This is going to work.\u2019 All we have\u00a0to do \u2013 our struggle \u2013\u00a0is to win\u00a0over\u00a0hearts and minds.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She is eager to make it clear that the technology is designed only to guide decisions,\u00a0not to make them. \u201cAt the end, it is up to the human individual or group of people to pull the trigger to make the decision. But at least what we can provide is a smart decision-making tool.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lamy\u00a0met Lyon when he was already involved in the simulation field.\u00a0But her feelings and lasting influences have\u00a0fuelled\u00a0the decisions behind her involvement in the world of simulation-guided decision-making. Those decisions were steered in part by growing up amid three wars in the Middle East.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Baghdad-born\u00a0Lamy\u00a0was five years old when the Iran-Iraq War started. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait, expulsion from Kuwait and the 2003 war in Iraq followed before the rise of ISL.\u00a0Did those experiences \u2013\u202fwhich included ordeals for her and her immediate family \u2013\u202fcontribute to her attraction to Lyon\u2019s work?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWell, first of all, he’s an attractive man!\u00a0But I was\u00a0also\u00a0very\u00a0attracted to what he was doing.\u00a0And\u00a0I thought that all the wars that\u00a0I\u00a0and my generation had been through were all needless and avoidable and they were just down to human error,\u201d says\u00a0Lamy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo when Justin was talking about how all decisions should be simulated, that really struck a very visceral chord with me because I had been through situations where very bad decision making was happening.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That \u201cbad decision making\u201d\u00a0brought\u00a0her face-to-face with\u00a0indoctrination, war and oppression.\u00a0 She\u00a0is vehement\u00a0in conveying\u00a0the lasting impact\u00a0of\u00a0those bad decisions on her and people she knew and loved. \u201cYou can never go back. You cannot erase, you cannot delete and start over again in real life.\u201d\u00a0And\u00a0recounting Lyon\u2019s elegant single-line summary of his work:\u00a0\u201cWe create an artificial environment where you can fail safely,\u201d\u00a0she shows a palpable, deep-felt\u00a0resonance\u00a0with\u00a0his words.\u00a0\u201cThat is something I wish my life and my uncle’s life and my mother’s cousin’s life and my father and everybody that I know, if we had\u00a0a\u00a0magic toolkit that is readily available, life as we know it would\u00a0not have been as bad as it is,\u201d\u00a0she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The full extent of the \u201cbad\u201d\u00a0Lamy\u00a0talks is off the scale of experiences for\u00a0most\u00a0people\u00a0in the UK.\u00a0 For example, she tells\u00a0The Mint: \u201cMy brother, by the way, was killed by terrorists.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lamy\u00a0elaborates: \u201cAfter 2003, then we had fundamentalism. Before we didn’t have that \u2013\u00a0we had state-sponsored terrorism. But then we had Al-Qaeda\u00a0and following that you have ISL.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Her brother was born in America when her father took the whole family there while he studied for a doctorate. The family returned to Iraq when her brother was a small child.\u00a0\u00a0When the fundamentalists held sway, her brother was,\u00a0Lamy\u00a0explains, targeted for the simple fact that he was an American citizen even though he had never returned to the US since leaving.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Her family had returned to Iraq during its eight-year conflict with Iran. She tells how during that war, one of her uncles was imprisoned in Iran where he remained for some 15 years. \u201cHe came back in his mid-40s. So it was very, very dire and very difficult.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n These were clearly terrible, terrible experiences. And alongside them\u00a0there were bombs landing in\u00a0her\u00a0street.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOne time we had a very narrow escape, I think I was 11 years old, when a missile landed in our neighbourhood. We were just having an ice cream with my uncle and cousins and\u00a0it\u00a0was very, very close. I don’t want to misquote or anything like that, but it was close to the extent that I almost went deaf.\u201d The sound of bombing was normal\u00a0she says. So normal\u00a0that she and her friends would make jokes about it. \u201cWe used to say sometimes: \u2018OK, the fighting is going to be very intense tomorrow \u2013 they’ll probably call off school so won’t have to do our exam, hooray!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In 2006 while in her thirties,\u00a0Lamy\u00a0began studying for a masters in mass communications on a\u00a0Fullbright\u00a0scholarship\u00a0at Boston University in the US.\u00a0It\u2019s tempting to imagine that that career route\u00a0was influenced by her experiences of the damage that can fall from warped information, marred understanding and biased analysis.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Information of questionable value was a feature of\u00a0Lamy\u2019s\u00a0days during\u00a0her country\u2019s\u00a0war with Iran. \u201cThis is important I think and I always tell people about this,\u201d says\u00a0Lamy. \u201cWhen I was growing up we had one state\u00a0TV channel.\u00a0And\u00a0on a daily basis, before the 6:00pm cartoons \u2013 old Tom & Jerry or Russian cartoons that were dubbed in Arabic \u2013 before those we had what was called\u00a0Images From the Battlefield.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnd they were, basically, gruesome pictures of dead Iranian soldiers. And when I’m telling you gruesome I mean people that are beheaded.\u00a0Flies all over different body parts that were blown off. And we were exposed to that from a very young age \u2013about eight.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile Saddam was inflicting his own brand of terror on the Iraqi people as part of\u00a0its\u00a0indoctrination in the supremacy of his version of the Ba\u2019ath party. That, like the string of conflicts in which Iraq became embroiled, has left an indelible mark on millions of lives.\u00a0Lamy\u00a0illustrates this with a story of how a joke\u00a0cost her cousin and his friend dearly. \u201cHe did not tell the joke. Somebody in a group told the joke about Saddam Hussein’s first wife. My cousin was present and he laughed at the joke. He spent seven years in prison; the person who told the joke was executed.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She recalls also how, from age six she and her contemporaries were obliged to chant Ba’athist\u00a0slogans of \u201cone Arab homeland, one Arab nation \u2013 unity, freedom and socialism.\u201d Despite\u00a0the\u00a0climate of fear and\u00a0oppression\u00a0her father declined membership of the Ba\u2019ath party and, in his own home, he would rail against Saddam and in doing so,\u00a0cause her mother great anxiety.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMy father never was a Ba’athist, which is why he didn’t get along in professional life as he should have\u00a0because he is highly educated. But he refused to be a Ba’ath official \u2013 ideologically he did not believe in any of that stuff that they were pedalling. So at home my father would curse the TV when Saddam Hussein came on,\u00a0\u00a0sometimes\u00a0he\u2019d cover it with a blanket and he’d become very funny and then put a shoe on top of it and we’d giggle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut my mother was furious with him.\u00a0She\u2019d say:\u00a0\u2018Do not do that in front of the kids\u00a0\u2013\u00a0if they go and tell somebody or they just mention it as a joke to one of their friends,\u00a0we could get executed. You’re not just endangering your life but the lives of your children. How dare you do that.\u2019 But we grew\u00a0up with the sense that this was not right.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lamy\u2019s\u00a0parents were from the generation that enjoyed what they, and many of their contemporaries, referred to as the country\u2019s \u201cgolden age\u201d before Saddam. \u201cThey always talk about the golden age, which we never witnessed, where people were happy and travelling abroad and visiting Lebanon or London and enjoying themselves and partying and going to nightclubs and things like that. And even when I went abroad, I never wore such a short skirt as my mother did in her youthful days in Baghdad in the 1970s.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The change, from major to minor, in the accompaniment to the thirty-odd years that separated the end of the golden age to the radical insurgency,\u00a0was conducted by questionable major decisions at political and cultural levels. Information and communication featured in those decisions and were prominent notes in the \u201cvisceral chord\u201d struck with\u00a0Lamy\u00a0when Justin introduced her to his work.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In something akin to poetic irony, after meeting\u00a0Lyon in London, and having\u00a0graduated from Boston, she joined Lyon during his work for the US Department of Defence in Iraq in 2009 \u2013\u00a0contributing to President George W Bush\u2019s \u201cHearts and Minds\u201d public relations bid in Iraq.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAmerica was trying to use soft power at the time after invading and their military\u00a0operations.\u00a0We were trying to dissuade people there from joining the insurgency. I wasn’t\u00a0doing the PR work for the US but basically\u00a0helping the locals find jobs and find sustainable means of supporting themselves.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lamy, with Lyon, deployed their modelling and simulation technology to unravel a complex\u00a0array of options after earlier failures.\u00a0\u201cA lot of planning had to go in there. And before that, it was just:\u00a0\u2018OK what do the people need? They need cement. They need tomato paste. They need an oil related product. Let’s just do it for them.\u2019\u00a0And a lot of money was wasted as a result of that from the American side and from the Iraqi side.\u00a0Our mandate was try to help them make smart decisions in providing employment and business opportunities for local people.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lamy\u00a0says, there was plenty of sound data: \u201cSaddam Hussein and the Ba’ath regime, surprisingly, were excellent in terms of data.\u201d But it was all hand written. Key to deploying those data was being in close dialogue with the people involved \u2013\u202fas\u00a0Lamy\u00a0describes it, \u201cembedded.\u201d Her being Iraqi was an important\u00a0ingredient in this.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, the information was classified and not made available to\u00a0Simudyne,\u00a0so\u00a0Lamy\u00a0was unable to confirm whether the modelling provided was deployed or not.\u00a0And this only highlights the purest imaginable irony,\u00a0whereby the prospect that an ultra rational way of informing decision-making might be rejected or taken on by a given group,\u00a0according to the\u00a0whims and mores\u00a0of the group.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Indeed\u00a0Lamy\u00a0says she has seen instances when people fail to make a right decision because they lack evidence but would rather rely on their gut than consider even a demonstrably accurate simulation. \u201cEverybody’s swimming\u00a0in data. This is not a problem. We have data but execution’s key. The question is: are you actually going to commit to giving us the data to build the simulation, and then actually to use it?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPeople are driven by bias, by election cycles, by feeling their job is threatened\u2026 That is why, similar to our strategy in Iraq, we have to embed ourselves within that company or that bank.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cEven in the private sector, what we\u00a0run up against, time and again,\u00a0are\u00a0the politics of it. When something requires large-scale change,\u00a0they want to be able to do things in their own way. It’s very difficult to convince them. And that is one of our missions \u2013 to change the hearts and minds of the world, if you will. We’ve done that on a very small scale in Iraq. But our larger mission is global.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Her ambition is that anyone trying to make a decision \u2013\u202fbe it one that will have a profit and loss impact or life and death consequences or just personal consequences \u2013\u202fthat person will naturally consider first trialling the decision in a synthetic environment. That way,\u00a0anyone could \u201cgain a bit of wisdom, and know the variables involved, before jumping in,\u201d she says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cYou can bring the horse to water but you can’t force the horse to drink it. But we are hoping that people will grow more attuned to our technology by\u00a0having more exposure\u00a0to the messaging that we and our competitors \u2013 not just us \u2013 are creating.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Artificial intelligence that can avert unintended, unwanted outcomes and\u00a0increase the opportunities for\u00a0the good stuff in a business plan or a public policy was a natural thing of interest to\u00a0The Mint. Not least because it holds great promise for new economics\u00a0as a possible means to\u00a0inform a better understanding of the complexities we face\u00a0and\u00a0averting unintended downsides.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But while better decisions and sharper analysis might provide a company or a government the outcome it desires, that outcome will only be for the greater good if the greater good is what the company or the government seeks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lamy\u00a0understandably wishes that the tool kit she and her partner are advocating had been available when she was younger to avert the tragedies that befell her family. But could it ever curb the rise of a Saddam or an ISL insurgency? Might better-analysed, artificial intelligence-driven decision making by Saddam\u2019s predecessors, the Iraqi electorate, other Middle Eastern nations and the global political community have taken away the vulnerabilities that provide fertile ground for despotism?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And we have to ask: at a time when\u00a0pluralist\u00a0economists\u00a0are\u00a0looking to topple the\u00a0dominance\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0neoclassical\u00a0school, could a tool that enables banks to hone their decisions pose a threat\u00a0in that it reinforces their power? On the other hand,\u00a0might it enable governments to\u00a0develop better\u00a0policies\u00a0to work within\u00a0the byzantine complexity of interactions that\u00a0pluralist\u00a0economics\u00a0highlights?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u200b<\/span>Or both?\u00a0And more?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n An important message from the\u00a0Simudyne\u00a0venture it seems, is that, irrespective of the power of artificial intelligence or any other technology to iron out the creases in human planning and choices, the benefit that technology offers will only be realised if people like\u00a0Lamy\u00a0lead the way with it. Her outlook is fiercely affected by her experiences of some of the worst behaviour humans are capable of.\u00a0Lamy\u00a0is motivated never to see that again and all power to her elbow in that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lamy:\u00a0the possibilities of digital simulation struck\u00a0\u201ca visceral chord.\u201d Artificial intelligence could guide decisions from the political to the personal,\u00a0if people would seize the opportunities on offer.\u00a0The Mint\u00a0talks to\u00a0Dahlia\u00a0Lamy,\u00a0who says the … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,58,2,52],"tags":[252,77,253,254,249,257],"class_list":["post-3073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-sector","category-government","category-interviews","category-middle-east","tag-abm","tag-banks","tag-conflict","tag-dahlia-lamy","tag-iraq","tag-june-2017"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}