Leapfrogging Middle East Tech with Mark Diamond

Welcome to Born to Disrupt, brought to you by Disrupts and Ming Zulu. This is the podcast exploring the forces reshaped in the industry where bold ideas shape the future. Join hosts Mark Walker, Grant Niven, and Simon Hardy as we delve into scale-ups, disruption, and the Middle East rise as a global innovation hub. Let's dive in. Hello, and welcome back to this week's edition of Born to Disrupt. Today, we're joined by Mark Diamond, but alongside our faithful stalwart Grant Niven, as co-host. Welcome Mark, good to have you here. We're going to be giving a CIO's perspective on technology, specifically technology within the region. You may remember from our previous episode, we were talking about cyber and cyber crime and bad actors in the system. I think today's conversation will be really interesting because it sort of sets the framework off. You don't get a digital ecosystem. You don't get a technology ecosystem if it's not adoption. Adoption is driven by trust. Our last conversation was very much around how do we detect risks so that we can maintain that trust? Today, I'd like to think that we're going to be focusing more on the architecture, which is obviously the other component to driving massive adoption use and changing the technology landscape. So Mark, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you here. It's been a couple of years since you and I last caught up. So it'll be great to hear what you've been up to in that interim period. And perhaps we can kick off the conversation by your journey to through the region across multiple industries. You've worked in payments, you've worked for collateral services. How do you feel the region has progressed over the last few years? And what have been some of the learnings that you're seeing that the region has really taken on board? Because we're hearing a lot about the strengths and the breadth and the pace of change in the region. And we're hearing a lot about the region leapfrogging other markets. Give us a give us your sense of where we're at and at this juncture. Well, Simon and Grant, first of all, delighted to be here and nice to see you guys again. Yeah, I think I arrived in the region in 2018 and it was, I guess, relatively immature in that sense in relation to digitisation and adoption. But I think using the term leapfrogging, it's one of my favourite words has been for some time. And if I look at the GCC in particular and put leapfrog in the sentence, I think it's very, very appropriate because when I was in Deutsche and back in Royal Bank of Scotland in that West, the conversation in the 2000s right up to maybe 2015 was very much about, we've got 40 years of core banking legacy and infrastructure, we can't just switch it off. And so the digitisation was very much built in top of it. Purely because the scale is the big famous story of course, of Royal Bank of Scotland, too big to fail. And it was very, very true because these institutions have been running payroll for millions of people processing trillions in transactions and historically sitting on mainframe, right, the predated internet. And so the cost of replacing that was existential. So innovation was very much something that was getting bolted on. Fast forward to coming to the region day 18. And I would say that the banking industry was very much suffering from this same but slightly different thing. And it was fundamentally different because the institutions that we were talking about hearing the Middle East are younger. The core systems were less heritage, less legacy. I don't want to say they were more modern because there was still quite a lot of mainframe and stuff going around. But the culture of the shareholder and the governments was very, very different because they were actively pushing for transformation. Maybe look at Saudi, in Vision 2030. It means not just a slogan. It came with 40 billion investment. And so when you ask me, no, can the gull, is it leapfrog and can it leapfrog Western banks? I'm sure we'll come onto AI as a big topic soon. My honest answer is, I don't think they're just capable of it. I think some of them are actually doing it already. And the question I think for, if you like, the West, if I can use that term, isn't whether they're going to be overtaken, which I think was a conversation 10 years ago. Is how quickly do we wake up to the fact that it's actually happening? Yeah. I mean, no pun intended. But, you know, it always strikes me the difference between the West and the West. And certainly the West and the Gulf. Where you are is energy. And I don't mean the stuff that comes out of the ground. It just seems to me that there is energy to do stuff. There's money, obviously, which is obviously something that much of the West, far possibly the US, doesn't have access to quite the same degree. But ultimately, it does come down to that cultural thing, which is even where there is legacy, or that all there just isn't anything but possibly. There's energy to do stuff, to change stuff, to invent stuff, to make something happen. And I wonder if you've got some examples of way of seeing that sort of really come to life. Or is that just an anecdote? Do you think is a bit a bit airless? No, no, not at all. It's definitely not just an anecdote. I mean, just a few days ago, I think, as fairness as excellence, they shake Mohammed, made the commitment that the government sector in the UAE, I think specifically, Dubai, will be fully AI, or 50% of it, of the roles and the capabilities, will be run on AI in the next two years. Now, you go into a boardroom in the West, it's not talking about a two-year strategy, to transform half of your organization in your business, moving to AI, when currently some of the questions are, we're not quite sure what use case to go after, to basically test it. It's completely transformational. In the sense of endowment, it's very opposite thinking of the Eastern sort of the West in the Middle East is incredible. And I think it's really because of the, I'm going to say the youth, I don't mean the youth, the people, I mean the age of the country, right, the age of the region. It's not even a hundred years old, the overall region in the sense of modernization. The UAE, I think, celebrated. It's 50, third, 54th anniversary, I think last year. You know, the UK, Europe has been, you know, historically changing itself for thousands of years, is the Middle East, is very, very consistent, up until perhaps the last 55 years. And it's on this superfast scaling transformational journey that I think drives the attitude, drives the energy, the desire. You know, the desire to be first, it's very cultural, the desire to be innovative, whether it's built or by, we don't quite mind as long as they're out there to be seen to be first. And I think the use of the region, and I say the age of the region, there's very much a driver for that. You know what Mark, just listening to that, we've had a recent example where we were, we was actually in Riyadh with some execs from a large, large multinational tech company, who were genuinely surprised at how much further ahead, in particular some leading banks were in the region, versus some of the European markets, where there's a perception that they're significantly advanced, they're around adoption of AI, for example, in a banking ecosystem. There's a lot of, that energy that comes from youth, it's actually playing out, and people coming to this part of the world, and actually seeing things have been accelerated a lot faster. There's bigger appetite to test and experiment in many cases, than maybe other markets. I thought that was, it was interesting. I don't know whether you've seen that yourself. Do you think that is the case? Because I've seen the opposite in this part of the world with regulation, often holding things back. You know, so yeah, I've seen, I think, both are true. Actually, Grant, and it really depends, the organization that you're dealing with. But I think at the core, there's a desire to change, adopt, test and learn, and quickly, I think, as you said. But the real difference, I think, and this is something that you realize, like your good self when you're in the region long enough, that much of it is driven because of the governmental leadership. It's not driven purely because of the private sector ambition, which is obviously very, very critically important. But there's a governmental, an enormous push and desire for the government, for the country, for the region to go back to the word leapfrog, to advance, to progress. I think progress is a really important work in this part of the world. Again, because it's young, because it doesn't perhaps have the enormous industrial revolution legacy of all the wars and all the change and everything else that perhaps happened throughout much of Europe. Notwithstanding, obviously, the Persian Empire. But the reality being, I think this different mindset from the government, whereas it's not governing an overseeing and preventing and taking care, of course it is, it's encouraging, it's advising, it's driving, it's demanding. And I think that goes extra personality types or persona types are very different from the West. And that makes the difference. Yeah, I mean, it really interesting. It was going to come onto that interplay between vision and regulation. So Europe in particular, very highly regulated. Many people would say it's far too regulated, and that's the stranglehold on the innovation. But you have, as you've just said, you do have regulation which thoughts stuff in the region. But that vision thing is what's missing here, whereas in the Gulf where you are, there's there's oodles of it isn't there? It's coming out of the it's coming out of the ground and we we we we first met in conjunction with a mega project in the region and it strikes me that you know that the west sort of looks at these mega projects and and very cruelly dismisses them ridicules them in some cases but of course even if those mega projects don't necessarily come off they do something to to the feeling of the people they do something to the feeling of what what's what's possible for the region don't they? And I wonder you know what's your feeling around what's been learnt from some of some of the some of the kind of piloting the pushing and the trialing of some of these big big projects which are you know some some are I wateringly ambitious but nevertheless you know something does come out of those of those so grant will be alive to this and we're going to bring in some of grant historical experiences earlier because having a work together so I work for a fascinating very successful CEO in the region who was beyond demanding and incredibly unreasonable and this is your point about let's say neon for example the sheer scale and ambition the audacity of neon is absolutely off the scale. Similarly you see that type of expectation demand enthusiasm let's go back to energy across the culture because it comes from the top and therefore you end up in an environment that is very challenging very demanding some may say unreasonable and many say unachievable but what does happen is that culturally everyone gets behind it and they build momentum they might not deliver on time you might not deliver the full scale of the ambition but they will still deliver something faster and better than anything you would have seen in the west but when you when you come from the west and you're being very practical quite you think oh that's just doesn't sound right it's going to take another two years or four years or take another billion or take this and take that you become very practical I think in some cases the lack of practicality in the culture is very refreshing right because they don't feel anchored or chained with their ambition they just go and have a go at it and I think that that can be very very powerful but that also takes an understanding leadership and that's when it gets a little bit more challenging because you need a leadership that's allowing you to test an experiment that's allowing you to feel and that bridge hasn't quite been fully built and walked over I think in the Middle East quite yet and because it is quite unforgiving sometimes I mean nevertheless you know the region has had an inflection point globally the entire world feels at an inflection point there's there's priorities all over the place aren't there's AI there's talent there's demographics in some markets favourable in some not favourable in others and now there's there's sort of massive geopolitical issues where where are the what are companies on the ground in the region feeling in a minute about you know the priorities what's keeping the what's keeping the CIOs awake at night at the moment given given the kind of sheer scale of of the list of things that are coming at them yeah so um my best guess and personal feeling in this is all around availability disaster recovery business continuity um the ability to stay if you like available for your customer we've seen quite a bit of surprising disruption here in the region with the conflict and data centers becoming target which we saw with Amazon and recently in the UAE so the thing that's really keeping the CIOs and CTOs up at night for sure I think is availability and data that what do I mean by data why really mean by data is your ability to recover grant and I worked with and I worked the summer in the past in the grant and I've done quite a bit of work with them if you look at the way that the regulations have been historically very much sovereign based around data about your ability to own manage and retain and recover your own data but I think use the word inflection I think is a real inflection point and we've seen it with one organization one large bank and now having regulatory approval to have data outside the region now that was unthinkable probably six months ago yeah and yet in the last two three months what now seem an initial mindset shift in the geopolitical risk and impact changing the mindset and therefore the regulatory oversight to ensure that actually the real game in town is for the large corporates the banks the governmental utilities to continue to run during crisis can they do that if their country is under attack and everything's in that country do they need a tertiary third third leg third arm to revert to I think that's a very very if it's not the number one topic in all the boardrooms just now it's definitely in the top three yeah that that topic of resilience is coming up a lot in a lot of dialogue in boardrooms at the moment and to your point the evolution of severity of data in country is even there's a lot there's a lot now being talked about in terms of almost creating like you've got sovereign states of land that is an extension of their own their own soil in other countries there's almost the extension of that to data centers and data now being governed and regulated in a very different way even though it's maybe been hosted in a totally different continent and it was it's going to be really interesting see how fast that moves because that's that that's a massive change versus I mean if you think about the infrastructure requirement for that of the legal aspects of the regulation that's needed and if there's anywhere that's going to happen and happen at speed it'll definitely be here going back to your point earlier Simon about the will the energy the drive and I think my point about the need to progress I mean let me give you a great example which I think has passed some people by but it's a good reflection could look at the U.S. Cloud Act and my opinion is created a nightmare and for certainly Europe and I'm not quite for the Middle East I think it's because it's not quite landed in the mindset let me explain to where I'm going with this so U.S. Cloud Act was in 2018 some time ago and it basically enables the U.S. law enforcement to compel any U.S. based technology companies to provide the data and it doesn't matter for the data physically stored so if you're using a U.S. hyperscaler the data in Germany is still technically within the reach of the U.S. right now that's interesting for quite Amazon as you're in Google when you get to the position of the terminology of sovereign cloud because the concept of sovereign cloud is very much around its within your jurisdiction it's within your sovereignty you won't run and manage it but the reality is if you've got a U.S. hyperscaler in the background that U.S. law then can be invoked and get full access to your data in that particular country and origin so that's an interesting dynamic equally there's been a lot dialogue in a lot blogs recently about the famous term the kill switch and if you've got a hyperscaler from outside of your region providing you the service then are you truly sovereign because the run managing operate for many of the hyperscalers is done outside of the country at the patching the data the cyber is typically done in the U.S. or in subsidiaries around the world that run by the U.S. organization so I think sovereignty is going to come under the microscope even more and I think the word is going to start to evolve into something that's very very precise and meaningful not just about where your data sits also about the run managing operate do you need to sovereign citizens to run your cloud there's an interesting question because the common sense would make you think sure if I've got a sovereign cloud then Germany I should have German citizens running it after it's going to be sovereign right is that the case probably not in many many locations including Middle East and so I think that's going to come under the microscope even more now in particular because of the geopolitical events coming on going just now practical realities of that though because I mean if you take Europe Europe has you know once again I sort of jumped up at this and said we need we know we need our own visa we need our own mascara like they did you know 40 years ago 30 years ago it didn't go anywhere FT put out a report this morning I think the full big hyperscal is meta Amazon Google and Microsoft are going to spend north of 700 billion dollars on capital expenditure mainly IT and data architectural investment what are the realities of being able to compete to compete with that at the at a sovereign level or is it simply going to be a matter of architecture you know the where the where the servers are located and trying to mitigate some of these some of these rules which make sovereignty less possible yeah but I think and this is the kind of the point I don't think it's just infrastructure anymore I think sovereignty has been infrastructure and I think the physical deployment of the infrastructure has been very critical as the foundation of the start of the soil. to discussion because you feel better that your data is physically in a building that's perhaps safe from your office. That wouldn't be a good move. You want it needs to be 100 kilometres away at least, but you know you feel you know as a regulator, as a government entity, as a bank, as a regulated utility, you feel more comfortable that your data is still within your country. But then again to the quite challenging point as you said is okay who's running and managing and operating. And that then drifts into the talent challenge of skilling of capability. Also, it's an interesting and inflection point, I think, for AI operations. Do you start to get more AI operational capability to run your data centers in your sovereign cloud and remove that need for individual talent, which everyone's going to stuck on? I see that as an area of growth somewhere where you've got the data center sovereign cloud agents that are running and managing that on behalf of the government or the bank or the and legislative them industry. Well, we're certainly seeing it's happening now, the that shift of automation beyond kind of like helping turn around times and then using processes within a large enterprise organization like a bank to full scale adoption of authentic AI within operations IT departments, business teams. I had an example in the last few weeks of the full digital proposition of a bank was led by a cross functional team, but it was led by a team of AI engineers and delivered a project in months that would have previously taken even a couple of years ago six to nine months to a year plus in terms of reengineering the whole digital application of a bank that was being used by its retail clients. So the speed at which that changed happened is leading to a massive change in how those organizations operate. And with that, Mark, is the evolution of you've been sitting in many different organizations as CTO, CIO, but there's now the chief AI officer on the scene, building on top of what the chief digital officer was doing and other C-suite members are doing. But what's your perspective on how the office is going to fit together because again, there's the roles and response of the police at an executive level, but also in terms of controlling that agenda, it's changing like the topics we've just been discussing very fast, but even the C-suite agenda is changing very fast in terms of priorities, in terms of how AI's been used to transform in a very different way. Yeah, I mean, that's I think that's a fantastic question. And just as a as a funny or a humorous aspect, I do quite chuckle sometimes when I see people CVs talking about having worked in AI for the last 15 years and being an AI advocate, etc. When actually everyone knows it's it's a handful of years old of anything that's meaningful. So yeah, I was thinking about this chief AI officer the other day and I think it's a great topic for this particular podcast on to disrupt fascinating light. I think that there's there's different lenses. If I give you a CIO, CTO heritage lens, you know, I would say we get very precious about its technology. So the CIO should own it and the AI officer should report into the CTO and the CIO, etc. Very, you know, historical legacy mindset. I think that there's a bit of a shift here. People haven't quite dropped on yet. And I don't think it's the digital aspect is data. The big swell and focus that kind of happened, I think, during the mid 2000s with the advent of some of the infrastructure for things like data lakes and the initial analytic capability. And you weren't quoted unless you'd a chief data officer, right? And this new person would have arrived, you know, on the C-suite and been in charge of data. And I think the chief AI officer is the evolution of the chief data officer. And I think they're very much one in the same but the new version. And because if you don't have data, you don't have AI. And it's really that simple. If you have data, the data is not good. It's not clean. It's not all the all that stuff that you know about being cleansed and no learned and labeled and sectioned and all that kind of good stuff. Without high quality and comprehensive data service, you can forget AI in your company. So I think there's a real moment here whereby the chief data officer should be emerging into the chief AI officer. I don't think it's a different role. This is my, you know, it's an evolution of the role, right? And if the chief data officers are smart, they should be able to really embrace this very, very quickly. Skill themselves up in more higher quality analytics. Skill themselves up on the whole aspect of the AI journey of machine learning, AI deep search and then into agent tech. And you basically layer that on top of having this beautiful data lake of capability that's emerging and growing. It just makes perfect sense to me. I cannot see how you can just plug in this title of chief AI officer into an organization that doesn't have the data submerged into it. Because what's also very evident is that for for this level of disruption that's happening in governments, large organizations, it's that there's so many different stakeholders and now hold an active interest in terms of adopting new techniques technologies like AI to transform their own departments, but taking control of that. So your CFO agenda, your chief compliance officer, your COO, they're all looking to run initiatives. And typically they're dictating how those initiatives should be run. And then how does the traditional IT organization fit into that? I've just seen this kind of mad world appear where there's many more stakeholders, whereas in a traditional sense, technology used to be very clearly stewarded by the CTO and CIO function. And now it's kind of trickling very, very clearly into many businesses, many business leaders, different departments are all wanting to make sure that they've got their hands on it because it's intrinsic to their evolution, their department's function, their businesses function. If they don't get it right, they're dead and people are going to look to the term leapfrog jump over them in the next couple of years because of things they don't do or do do now. Yeah, I'm looking at the three of us on this call and I'm thinking to myself, okay, if you're the CIO and I say Simon's the chief risk officer and let's say I am the chief technology officer, traditional the three C-suite roles and not pops the chief guy officer. He should be providing the three of us with our new collection of assistants. Now use that term casually because it's an easier term to digest. One area I was looking at and I was experimenting with recently was my, we used the word resilience, I'm going to use my DR-AI assistant and this was an assistant that's basically out there scanning my full infrastructure regularly giving me updates based on the thresholds of what's going on at any point in time with fully automated failover capability and chat-boarding to mean a regular basis saying that, for example, we've just had one million card transactions, CPUs at 99%, I recommend if it doesn't move on in two minutes, you failover, please make a decision, you could say yes, please failover automatically to the backup card system, here's my assistant, the CFO assistant on perhaps things like the influx or the invoicing and stuff that might be getting delayed or the outflow chief risk officer could be interested in what's the last four frauds that happened today or what's happening in the fraud space in the last week and being assisted rather than managed at these meetings. So for me, the transformation of the operating model, if the organization is mature enough and it has to have a bit of patience because these things take a lot of time, I see the rise of the chief AI officer for one of a better description, actually the epicenter of the business operating model, it's not just data, it's not just guide chat bots for the customers, it's not just an operational and authentic autonomous app that's moving things back and forward through a process, it's actually operationally transforming how the business works and I think that the Middle East is best placed for it, doesn't have the heritage, the legacy of the infrastructure, doesn't have the legacy mindset, as they can do attitude, has the willingness to back to sign, does get the energy and actually has the ambition. Question is how risk of earth is it going to be with test and learn? Can it go through that fear of failure to then break through to the next level? I think if we can balance the fear of failure and basically rebuilding very very quickly as you test and learn, I think the Middle East will be on a unbelievable trajectory in relation to AI adoption. Yeah, now it's a fascinating thought-provoking idea, I have to say I think it's right, I think the level and the range of opportunities at this moment creates, particularly for companies in your region, is extraordinary too, given what you were saying earlier about sort of sovereignty and the kind of slightly loosening around, the loosening of the regulations around where data is held, that must create also massive opportunities for the technology supply chain and there must be an ability and opportunity for more companies to come and say anything actually. So yes, we can be in that region now and we can't do things here. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true, but I think there is a time imperative that's very clear and present at this moment and this is where the need to have that, my perspective, my opinion, that third data center or data store outside of the region that's accessible. You might have to forego some of your regulatory and data sovereignty initial concerns and come back to that a little bit later because it's going to take time to build, for example, a GCSE-Sovriting cloud capability that's not in the GCSE, which just doesn't make any sense, right? But, you know, I think Grant made the point, you know, you need this almost little island of capability, and it's allowing you to be, I don't know if you want to call it, in a Switzerland, in the Middle East, there needs to be, I think there's a real demand and there's going to be an increasing demand for that type of capability. And I think the hyperscalers that are in front of it first, there's a few of them already, you know, meaningfully in the region and doing work already and sovereign, I think they're best placed to try and solution it. Yeah. Coming to the kind of close of the conversation today, but I mean, given what you were talking about earlier around AI and data, you're right, every part of the business is impacted by it. And increasingly, because of the way the nature, because the nature of the ability to access the technology has changed, it's natural language, we can ask it to do things. Every part of the business now wants to be able to leverage to use AI the best way it can, can't it? And I think that creates enormous internal pressure. So you've got massive increase of access. You've got more part in every part of the business wanting, wanting to use it. And at the same time, you've got this sort of external narrative of breathlessness around technology and the pace of change, the pace of AI adoption, the pace of advancement. What would you say to CIOs in the region that are trying to kind of grapple with how to manage this, this is not an evolutionary step, it feels like a revolutionary step. What would you say would be those sort of three, four priorities that they should really focus on, to kind of keep a handle of this, so that the possibility, the access to AI doesn't overwhelm the businesses of the whole? Well, I think there's a lot of pressure on the CIOs and the CTOs in the region, on the topics that were previously mentioned. And I think staying keeping their head above water for this moment in time is very challenging. The cause of where they find their infrastructure, where they find their business continuity and their disaster recovery and the surprise, the recent conflict that's made everyone rethink what are the key priorities. I would offer that a couple of things, let's talk about talent first, I think talent's very important for each organisation. I think historically, I'm putting my good self, I know Grant did this as well when he was in Saudi. We seek this Gen Z youth high energy capability, but we forget about what experience in wisdom can actually bring. And I think you need to have a multi-generational operating model in your organisation to enable success in this current climate, because the youth, the younger aspiring career developing engineers, developers and experts, many are concerned about AI displacing them, whereas at the opposite end of the career of Jerni, those have been experienced and in the technology waves of change over the last 20 or 30 years are less concerned about it, because they are more in the leadership, organisational problem solving kind of orchestration space in of business problem solving, you don't really, you don't see how the AI is going to completely displace them. Well, at different moments, and so I think you need to have a multi-generational talent field, this available thing, they can give you wisdom, energy, experience and innovation, and the combination of that will basically help you with any of the challenges that materialise when the current space, second I think, so I genuinely think that sovereignty and this aspect I made about the third leg data centre, really goes to data. I think that is going to become a governmental position in the very, very near future, and I think the smart CIOs and CTOs and C-suite out there should already be exploring the art of possible of what they can do that perhaps breaks existing mindset and regulation, but would provide the organisation with that future state capability in the event of real crisis or conflict or being able to stay alive. And I think probably, the third point would be maybe governance, I think that governance has, for a very, very long time, I don't want to say hampered innovation, because in the Middle East sometimes it actually accelerates it, but I think governance in certain sectors needs a little bit of a rethink, I tell you what I mean by that, the thing that I think CTOs and CIOs are still to grapple with is their accountability for AI decisions, right? When you really go down the road of introducing AI into your operation, and where it can be making decisions, could be credit decisions, right now it could be fraud alerts and decisions that go up, again very common in banking, as relatively straightforward with the data, that's going to progress pretty soon, going to making payments for you, digital payments are going to become pretty much fully agitated or automated for you, and I think that the CIOs and CTOs and the chief AI officer, in particular, is going to have to be prepared to explain how that decision was made in front of a regulator or any other authority or body or governing factor, and to explain how that happened, and so the governance of the AI aspects when you're trying to introduce and build and be first and demonstrate in value and really be out there leading, if you don't have governance at the heart of that, I think that's going to be a huge problem for you, because AI is going to accelerate even faster, and the governance of that has to enable great decisions, has to enable great outcomes, but also has the evidence so you need to be able to evidence what these decisions have been, and I think if that's not keeping you up at night in your AI approach or organisation, then you're in big trouble. You know, there's very wise words, Mark, because that is the biggest fear for many regulators in particular, is what could this lead to, and the fear of, it could lead to huge destruction in a very negative way, as well as the huge positive and the advantages that could be seen by organisations to consumers, so it's a brave new world moment, isn't it, and so is it worth it? Good lead to. For sure, it's brave new world, and I was amusing myself recently in relation to, and I was working for Network International, as you know, huge digital payments, leader in the Middle East and Africa. I was thinking around, you know, when I was in there, not sleeping at all, because you had to keep the payment platform up, that's running the majority of device, point of sale, and taxis, and RTX, I'm really quite stressful, but colourful and exciting role, I was thinking, so who's the person when the agente AI digital payments be made on someone's behalf, when that doesn't go through, or the wrong number happens, or it went to the wrong account, who's the person that's going to be accountable for that in the organisation? Is it the compliance officer, the COO, the CTO, the chief AI, who's responsible when you've got the full process in play, this automated and this amazing service that said, "Hey, agente AI, go ahead and live in 10 dirhams please for last night's dinner." No problem Mark, even done, right, and it goes to Simon Hardy, and it's a thousand dirhams in a different jurisdiction, so who's responsible, that's where it starts to become quite interesting that, you know, understanding accountability, roles and responsibilities in the governance of AI in the different layers, I think, is something that needs more time spent on, by most organisations, because it's going to eventually rebound back and link that boomerangie through away, and then return some days later and hit you in the back of the head. Yeah, I mean, it definitely seems in a way that it, you know, certainly in my living memory, I don't remember a time similar to it, where lessons of history really bear fruit, they can sort of combine that with an ability to take a very cool, calm look at, you know, the implications, the opportunities of course are the implications of what's happening right now, and pair that then with a vision of what the future might look like with those implications and those opportunities built into it. I think, you know, interestingly enough, back to sort of the beginning of our conversation, perhaps the region, you know, you're probably right, I mean, the region is been tremendously successful at building a vision of what it thinks is the future, and there's no reason why that shouldn't continue, you know, well into the AI revolution. Mark it's been a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much for being with us. Grant any any famous closing words for today? I don't know about famous but I think it's been it's been enriching Mark you've given us a very candid views and there's there's obviously a huge to come down the road you've you've been through probably what three decades of technology change so you're certainly sitting at wise alteratory. I think for my last question to you be what it's pretty two two two questions in short fire. What what do you miss would you miss the most about all those those decades of experience working in various different tech leadership roles and what you're most excited about? Well it's a double-edged sword that question. Oh it's as we wrap up. It's a double-edged sword because look some of the most exciting times are also the most stressful right and my experience in the last 25 years has been that the teams that have been fortunate enough to lead primarily technologists and change agents they love a crisis in fact sometimes they even create an environment so the crisis can happen because it allows them to perform what they believe is at their peak and so I've been in many a crisis 24/7 from Royal Bank of Scotland being down for several days globally impacting the economy through to regional banks being unavailable for digital services and tens of millions of dollars being lost and in each time the satisfaction of getting the fix and finding the solution and bringing the organization back on line to serve the customer is always the most satisfying but it's never a satisfying as living in no crisis because I would much rather not be running crisis but it's a great thing for learning you need to learn very very fast so would I miss I missed and I don't miss some of the late night 24/7 calls they get you up when there's system problems I definitely don't miss that what was the second point sorry what was the second one well what you're most looking forward to those late night calls maybe be handled by an AI agent 100% and this would be that very bad stuff and you know what it's not even a dream it's not even a dream it's reality I mean not less than 12 months ago I was sitting in the network operation center of a very large bank looking at 50 screens they were monitoring the infrastructure and people there 24/7 phoning up other engineers telling them about the problems to come and fix or dial in remotely when that needs to be gone that needs to be fully automated in AI run as a service and you're getting these messages but you don't need to worry about going into the office or dial in remotely because it can do it for you you can tell it what to do some quite excited about what a genetic AI can really provide in the same way that digital banking stopped you going into the branch and you did all your banking from in your pocket I'm quite excited about what AI can actually bring to running a technology organization within an industry I think it's going to be very very exciting and some of it's here already but just don't think we've done enough yet so I'm a bit impatient with it I love it well on that note thank you Mark we've covered a lot of ground and Simon great job chairing this this podcast so let's let's see what plays out on a lot of these topics I mean each one of these there's resilience in particular it's probably a that's going to be a very interesting one to look at over the next six to 12 months good good good guys thanks for having me it's been a pleasure thanks Mark thanks Simon