The recent increase in Zoom calls has generated a thousand disgruntled memes, sarcastic Facebook posts, and legions of weary workers suffering from “Zoom fatigue.” Steve Nouti sees things differently. Steve, an official member of the Forbes Technology Council, recently joined Ben Taylor, Chief AI Evangelist at DataRobot, on the DataRobot More Intelligent Tomorrow podcast and explained how the proliferation of Zoom calls can actually help push augmented reality (AR) . 

Steve acknowledges the misery brought on by the COVID pandemic, but also highlights the abundant silver lining: 

“Imagine what would happen if instead of Zoom calls…[if] you would have actual people in the room with you that you can interact with, and it feels more natural. You just use a camera and sit down in front of a cam for a couple of hours. It could be more realistic. And I’m so excited to see how that will evolve, and where it might be available for the public to get more [of a] sense of it.”

Steve also notices the tremendous upside of more people trusting chatbots: “I have noticed that a lot of people are using [robots and chatbots[ to get some psychological help, and if they want a consultant they can trust a robot…and they said even that sometimes it feels a little bit better because they can just share whatever they find, and they feel more secure and kind of more enabled to be open about it.” 

At the same time, Steve is highly aware that the advance of AR might lead to an addiction to a fully augmented life and a mass exodus from the real world:

“The incentives that might be available in the virtual world or augmented reality world would be totally different, and it will become like a game for many people that just live inside the augmented reality world because they don’t want to face reality.”

COVID Has Generated a Phenomenal Amount of Data

Steve, a Member of the Harvard Business Review’s Advisory Council, also observes how the pandemic has changed the face of data: “The amount of data that has been generated during the pandemic is kind of phenomenal. A lot of people started podcasting, making videos, [and] delivering content. These are all data. These are all data available for people like us to just dive in and generate some interesting insights.”

Steve, who also loves weekend hackathons, also describes how this increase in data has helped companies like Amazon and Netflix, but advises that they still need to return to the data after the pandemic subsides:

“Netflix is probably loving it right now. The algorithms are getting all the feeds from people. But the other side of the problem is that it will be highly skewed because of the situation. We might need to revisit many of these algorithms later on because it has been impacted and things might not be the same.”

Leveraging LinkedIn to Inspire Others and Lead a Masterclass

Steve, a LinkedIn Top Voice 2020 Finalist, uses his influencer status for altruistic efforts:

“I try to help my followers to get inspired by interesting projects and also learn and up-skill in data science and AI.”

Steve’s passion for interacting with his LinkedIn audience has inspired him to set up a LinkedIn Professional Masterclass for his followers: “Within [the] three years that I’ve been working on and interacting with people on LinkedIn, I’ve got to know things—little bits here and there—tips and tricks that I have learned about LinkedIn that I really want to share with my connections, followers out there. I really want them to understand how they can leverage LinkedIn in the best way possible to get some value out of it.”

To hear more about understanding the future of AR, the changing face of data in a post-COVID world, and leveraging the power of LinkedIn, check out Datarobot.com/podcast or http://datarobot.buzzsprout.com/. You can also listen everywhere you already enjoy podcasts, including Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google.