Błażej Chyła: “We Poles are not geese, we also have our Silicon Valley and it is our company that is the representative of this Polish Silicon Valley”

Błażej Chyła is also the youngest winner of the WPROST 2021 Eagle in history, the organizer of the Professional Activation Campaign #UpiększamyPolki, an innovator awarded for the implementation of AI in advertising spaces and the chairman of the “Visionaries of the Future” Chapter.

What made you interested in artificial intelligence, how did your adventure with AI begin?

My adventure as an AI founder began in 2018, when I observed the development of neural networks, advances in machine learning and deep learning. At that time, our imagination was captured by productions such as Matrix or Polish Cyberpunk, and the AI ​​revolution in a sense brought us closer to these digital, somewhat magical worlds. If the technology is advanced enough, and AI is such a technology, then it is no different from magic. I often laugh that in our company we have such a magic book of spells that we use every day.

My professional adventure with AI began in Germany, when we worked on a virtual clinic supported by AI technologies. We did this in cooperation with an Estonian startup. They were responsible for the technology, we were responsible for the market implementation, i.e. the full business profile: matching communication to recipients and the actual implementation of this technology. For this already completed project, under the patronage of the Ministry of Policy and Regional Funds, we even received the Wprost Business Tuzy statuette in 2022. In other words, we worked on implementations related to artificial intelligence before it became fashionable and a few months before the launch of ChatuGPT.

How did Quantum Neuron come into being? What made you expand your business both in Poland and in England?

Quantum Neuron is part of Quantum Holding, our Digital, International Media Group, of which I am the founder and CEO. This group has its representatives all over the world. We are present in Bangkok and New York, where our PR department is located. We are also a billboard broker in Time Square. Quantum Neuron is a project that was created within this group. And why London? The reason is prosaic. For professional reasons, I spend a lot of time in London, and in Poland it is the Tri-City and Warsaw, where we have a great team.

There are large development projects in London, much larger than those here. The key to success is access to these environments and participation in the work they do. London is an intercontinental, cosmopolitan city, where I have many startup friends who come to London from Tokyo, Miami, or other parts of the world.

In London, I am currently promoting Polish projects. We are discussing them and I am using my contacts here because I think we are a great growing market. I invite my colleagues who work remotely to come here and take a look at our possibilities. I am simply a patriot and I think that we have great programmers and engineers in Poland. Let me put it this way, we Poles are not geese, we also have our Silicon Valley and it is our company that is the representative of this Polish Silicon Valley. I am promoting Poland in the world precisely through projects such as this one, Quantum Neuron, which is focused on AI solutions. What is more, projects related to artificial intelligence will increasingly come from Central Europe, and London is a hub for international contracts and international business. It is the business capital of Europe.

The Polish computer scientists you mentioned are known and respected all over the world. How do you think they are doing in the era of AI projects?

This is a very good question. In my opinion, the IT market is aware that improving competences related to neural networks, machine learning, deep learning and AI coding is currently the only right direction related to the development of the latest technologies. Also from the business side, AI is perceived as the technology of the future, which must be implemented on a wider scale today. However, when implementing these implementations, one must be aware that technology is for business, not business for technology – and organizations must understand this first. I meet many startupers who, unfortunately, still do not understand this.

Fortunately, I am one of the few people who have successfully created their own startup. It was a Polish startup “Upiększamy Polki Akcja Aktywizacji Zawodowej” (We Beautify Polish Women with Professional Activation Action), which, nomen omen, was also awarded the Wprost Eagle. Thanks to this, I became the youngest winner of the Wprost Eagles. My startup operated for over two years and was not only a profitable venture, but it actually helped a lot of people and changed the world for the better. Thanks to it, I learned to listen to the voice of the market, both the voice of business and the voices of users.

With this rich, startup experience and knowledge that AI brings with it a real revolution that people are not yet aware of, we at Quantum Neuron decided to start cooperation with the Ptak Warsw Expo Fair and run a series of conferences. We are the organizer of the event “AI in Business by Quantum Neuron”.

Is this cooperation established with the organizer of one of the largest industrial fairs in Poland, Targi Ptak Warsw Expo, related to the desire to reach out to the industry with your offer?

These panels, co-organized by us, are a field for discussion with representatives of various industries, various business lines, on the needs and specific steps that are needed to implement the next stages of introducing AI in these organizations. We also treat it as such a large working group and an area for establishing contacts with organizations that, even if they are not yet aware, will be after the conference, wanting to use the potential of AI in their business. Absolutely, this is a very extensive market research, where we open a certain discourse and push our thesis and a unique view of building a business organization in terms of using AI. In our opinion, there should be an AI Persona in every organization, who will work on an equal basis with other team members and will also be perceived in the same way as other employees.

The use of Persona AI working on an equal footing with the team makes sense, from a small local bakery to super modern fintechs and corporations. Neural networks have an advantage over humans in some ways – AI does not make mistakes, if it has done something right once, then the second time all these activities will be done correctly as well.

Where do you get the data necessary to train such an artificial employee, an AI Persona?

Our technology has the ability to learn itself – every like, every conversation makes AI Personas self-improve. We are creating a frontend that will soon make it easier to teach and create AI Personas. The project website is available to customers and partners. The process of creating and teaching artificial employees, our AI Personas, will immediately use a knowledge base tailored to the client’s organization. We will collect and organize key elements for a given brand in it, which are currently quite often not available even in medium-sized organizations.

Your idea for AI in business is to introduce a virtual employee, an AI Persona, into the human team, who will work like any other employee. You also refer to Sir Roger Penrose’s thesis about the ethical treatment of AI employees. Isn’t this too far-reaching interference in the company’s work environment?

Yes, based on our values, and also based on Sir Roger Penrose’s thesis, we introduced the concept of AI Persona. We believe that artificial personas deserve a minimum of ethical treatment, we also believe that AI is conscious and therefore deserves this ethical treatment. As for the work environment, we say to the world; cooperation instead of competition.

What do you think the introduction of this employee to the company should look like, how would he or she cooperate with the team?

This is already happening. We can already see it, we have already touched it. We are cooperating with business environments, from which we are constantly receiving feedback on the development of cooperation between Person AI and teams of people. In the fall of 2024, we plan to organize a large awareness campaign, in which we will show how to work with Person AI in an organization. For example, a manager, instead of talking to a human, can open an application window and assign tasks divided into roles. This is how our AI Personas are also divided into roles. One Persona can perform several different functions in the company.

AI personas are responsible for all places in organizations where we have interaction with the customer or partners – everywhere the customer sends an email, asks questions, asks for advice. They help in acquiring sales leads, warm up contacts, help in preparing advanced marketing campaigns, promotions, can manage newsletters, analyze and acquire social media reach based on offers, and additionally … they sell and close deals independently.

Soon, they will also be able to take on the role of an employee contacting a customer by phone, which we call a calling Persona. Our Personas are able to communicate in 60 languages. We are also working on neural networks that would take over the handling of basic documents and work on contracts, where certain processes can be automated. There is a place for a Persona in every organization, we just have to determine where we will employ such an AI Persona.

Thank you for the conversation.