AI hype vs AI reality: interview with Tolga Kurtoglu, Lenovo’s Chief Technology Officer

Tolga Kurtoglu, Lenovo’s Chief Technology Officer, has had a fascinating career. Until two months ago, he was doing the same job for HP. Before that, he spent ten years at Xerox PARC, having previously worked as a scientist at NASA. But he’s also registered 40 patents and helped to found companies, including Leap AI.

I caught up with him at Lenovo Tech World ’24 in Seattle, to find out why he joined Lenovo, how he thinks AI will evolve and how we can bridge the gap between the current hype around AI and what can actually be delivered.

The Lenovo effect

So, first things first. Why join Lenovo from what was clearly a great job at HP? “I’ve always been impressed by [Lenovo’s] commitment to innovation, particularly in the new AI era,” he said.

“[And] some of the best innovation comes when you operate at the intersection of disciplines. That’s important, because Lenovo plays in the entire tech stack,” he added, referring to data, networking and infrastructure as well as the laptops we all use. “There’s a lot of feedback loops between those different layers of the tech stack that one can actually exploit to create better user experiences, better solutions, better products.”

Tolga added that he also admired Lenovo for its approach to open ecosystems and partnerships which he thinks “will be really key in winning in the AI era”.

Then there’s the final and perhaps most compelling reason: impact. Lenovo is proud to declare itself as number one in computing worldwide, with seven billion devices out there in the wild.

“So we all get to interact with one of these things on a daily basis, multiple times. And bringing AI and new AI innovation to that kind of a space holds the potential to be one of the most impactful things that you can do as a technologist.”

The Tolga Kurtoglu effect

I then asked a slightly cheeky question: why, he thinks, Lenovo wanted him. Much, he thinks, stems from his varied and unusual experience – starting as a mechanical engineer.

“Even my graduate studies was at the intersection of AI and engineering design and product development, and certainly that experience across hardware and software, devices and computation was somewhat of an appeal,” he said, “because that’s the vector where you need to be to carry the next-gen innovation.”

He also thinks Lenovo was looking for someone with entrepreneurial spirit, who looks for pain points and how to solve them. As he calls it, a “user-centric viewpoint”.

The fact he’s spent two decades building up a vast spider’s web of contacts across Silicon Valley doesn’t harm things either. “I’ve built quite a bit of network there, [and it’s] where the innovation happens, especially when it comes to AI and other technology areas as well.”

AI hype vs AI reality

My next question focused on what I see – and this is where my views and Tolga’s views digress – as a problem between companies’ promise of what AI can do and the reality.

For instance, I pointed out, he had talked in his keynote address about AI super-agents. AI agents that would know you so well that they can take decisions on your behalf, that can augment your intelligence to a new level. In particular, Tolga compared humans’ cognitive intelligence with AI’s sensory intelligence, and suggested they will combine to form “connectional intelligence”.

Wasn’t he contributing to the AI hype? “I did paint a picture that’s more kind of long-term thinking, but then that comes back to my role, part of which is to bridge today with tomorrow. If I only think about today, that’s just not the best innovation strategy for us.”

He explained that “what I wanted to do in my keynote was to give people a sense of our thinking, that it doesn’t stop with what we’re describing today, or the product announcements that we’ve made”.

But, as Tolga pointed out, long-term visions don’t necessarily tie up with reality of what companies deliver. “It has never been the case in the history of technology that people deliver all of the things that they said,” he pointed out.

“I think what it boils down to, for today, in the near term, is whether the technology is solving real pain points: is it helping with productivity or efficiency, or whatever other metrics there are, either on the personal side or the or the enterprise side.

“My belief in AI, very strongly, is that it does.”

When will AI deliver on RoI for enterprises?

A running theme throughout Lenovo Tech World ’24 was return on AI investments, particularly for enterprises. And this was a subject Tolga returned to in our interview.

“The only way to [win over sceptics] is to continue to identify the real pain points and the needs in the market and then build technology that actually answers those things. That’s the way to prove the value.”

On the specific subject of RoI for enterprises, he said this. “I think this is a gigantic technology shift, essentially, almost like a once in a lifetime type of thing. So we’re in the very beginning stages of that and it’s normal that you don’t necessarily know how to quantify, you know, how to think about it in the long run.

“But what I see, since what happened in November 2022, the advancements of technology ever since ChatGPT came out to today is significantly different, and is being channeled towards solving some real problems that, again, results in higher productivity or efficiency or what have you.”

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