David Pinn Of Brain Corp On the Future of Artificial Intelligence
An Interview With David Leichner
Augmented decision making: AI can process vast amounts of information in seconds, providing insights that a human would take years to analyze. This means that retailers can use AI to access robot-captured shelf images instantly, recognize what needs to be optimized on the shelf based on a variety of inputs, and take immediate action to improve the consumer shopping experience.
As a part of our series about the future of Artificial Intelligence, I had the pleasure of interviewing David Pinn.
David Pinn is a CEO of Brian Corp, an AI software leader that powers the world’s largest fleet of autonomous mobile robots operating in commercial indoor public spaces. Since joining Brain Corp in 2017, Pinn has held a variety of executive positions including Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Financial Officer. Prior to Brain Corp, Pinn was Head of Finance for Antenna79, a technology startup backed by L Catterton, the world’s largest consumer-focused private equity group and a cofounder of Snaptracs, Qualcomm’s consumer electronics subsidiary.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you share with us the ‘backstory” of how you decided to pursue this career path in AI?
I’ve been involved in technology throughout my career. I studied electrical engineering at UT Austin, and my first role out of college was field applications engineering in the semiconductor industry. My customers were companies like Qualcomm, Skyworks, and Broadcom, and I worked closely with them to improve the efficiency of how they manufactured chips used in cell phones. I was fascinated by these communication technologies, both from a technology perspective as well as from a commercial perspective. I was fortunate to start my career in field applications because it gave me a valuable balance of a deeply technical role as well as a customer-facing commercial role.
After getting an MBA to understand more about the business side of the tech industry, I joined Qualcomm in their mergers and acquisitions group and co-founded a subsidiary called Snaptracs, where we developed consumer applications for wireless technology beyond cell phones (including a dog tracking collar!). These experiences solidified my passion for staying at the forefront of technological innovation.
My journey into the world of artificial intelligence was sparked by my fascination with AI’s potential to drive the next big leap in technology. When I got the opportunity to meet the Brain Corp team six years ago, I was awestruck watching a 1,000 pound cleaning robot navigating gracefully around obstacles in a crowded grocery store. At Brain Corp, I have the privilege of working alongside an exceptionally driven team building automation solutions that are catalyzing improvements across industries, particularly in the retail sector.
What lessons can others learn from your story?
I’m fortunate that my career has brought me the opportunity to lead the team at Brain Corp. Looking back at how I got here, I’m happy to share the decision framework that worked for me as I progressed in my career. While everyone’s career path looks different, I hope that others can take away something applicable from what worked for me.
First, I believe in the importance of staying curious. Whenever I faced a choice between career options, my main decision criteria was selecting the one that provided the most opportunity for learning. I chose a lower paying job many times in my career when that option gave me an opportunity to learn new things. What mattered much more to me than compensation was finding opportunities where I could learn from my boss and my colleagues, and where the role would be very challenging for me. Getting out of my comfort zone has been critical to my success, and finding a boss that was generous with mentorship has been even more important.
Second, I think practicing as an engineer in a highly specialized field early in my career (in my case, wireless semiconductor production testing) helped me tremendously to appreciate the importance of detailed, structured thinking. Having experience working in a technical field trained me to think methodically. Engineering is just one of many disciplines that can provide this training. Executives with a background in any specialized field (inside or outside of engineering) have a natural advantage of being able to work at many different levels of abstraction. Like most executives, they can see the proverbial forest, but they also have the rarer trait of being able to appreciate just how complex the individual trees can be. This ability to “know what you don’t know” is valuable in the constantly changing world of AI and robotics.
Finally, I would encourage anyone with leadership ambition to spend time working in a customer-facing job. In my case, I worked as a field applications engineer, and this gave me deep experience empathizing with customers, spending time in their environments, and understanding their struggles firsthand. This experience (along with my high school experience as a cashier at a grocery store) helps me maintain a customer-driven culture at Brain in which we dive deep into understanding the issues our customers are grappling with. Stepping into their world and experiencing their challenges firsthand sets the stage for infusing empathy into the solutions we create. By taking this approach, we ensure that our products prioritize the user’s experience.
Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now?
At Brain Corp, we’re working on automation technology tailored for commercial environments, with a special emphasis on the retail sector. Our automation solutions assist in tasks like floor cleaning and data collection, making processes more efficient. Put more simply, we exist to help retailers put the right product on the right shelf at the right price within a clean environment. By using autonomy in these areas, we help retailers free up store associates for more valuable assignments, like providing friendly customer service.
One of our key focus areas is improving how retailers keep track of their in-store inventory. The status quo at most stores involves sending associates up and down the aisles, often with a clipboard, to painstakingly spot inventory issues on the shelves. It’s a repetitive, dull process that gives retailers unreliable results. So, there’s a pressing need for a better way.
We’re giving retailers a solution to this challenge using robotics, computer vision, and AI to automatically gather data about out-of-stock items, incorrect price tags, and product placement more frequently and accurately. The result is an improved experience for both the staff and shoppers.
Bigger picture, the benefits of this autonomy solution extend beyond the four walls of the store. By injecting more consistent and precise data into retailers’ supply chains, we can contribute to solving global problems, like food waste and rising food prices. These goals embody our commitment to making the world a better place with the help of autonomous technology.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I completely agree with the premise of this question. I owe my success to many people who have helped me along the way, first and foremost to my parents who made the bold decision to immigrate to the U.S. from apartheid-era South Africa with two young children. I benefited from public universities in Texas and California thanks to their courage to take a big risk moving to a new country.
Fast forward four decades and I’ve been fortunate to have had a number of mentors and managers who believed in me and helped me accelerate my career. Since you asked for one story, I’ll mention Steve Altman who was the president of Qualcomm when I worked there and is a director on the board of Brain Corp today. Steve played a big role in helping me understand leadership while I was at Qualcomm. He also introduced me to Brain Corp six years ago and continues to help me gain my footing and confidence as a first-time CEO.
What are the 5 things that most excite you about the AI industry? Why?
What excites me most about AI is its ability to enhance human abilities. Let me give you a few examples from our world of retail and facility automation that speak to how automation plus human intelligence lead to improved outcomes:
Augmented decision making: AI can process vast amounts of information in seconds, providing insights that a human would take years to analyze. This means that retailers can use AI to access robot-captured shelf images instantly, recognize what needs to be optimized on the shelf based on a variety of inputs, and take immediate action to improve the consumer shopping experience.
Augmenting human senses: Inventory checking is a monotonous, tedious task for retail workers. Most humans do not have the interest or attention to detail to compile lists of exact product SKUs for every bin and aisle in a store. However, robots and AI have the ability to do this mundane work multiple times per day.
Endless use cases: AI is evolving rapidly, and this provides avenues for thousands of applications. With up-to-the-minute data on product availability, pricing labels, promotion execution, and shelf organization, AI can optimize the shopping experience, minimize overstocks and out-of-stocks, and reduce waste through a unified inventory management system. AI can provide real-time updates on inventory levels, synchronizing inventory across various stores and channels.
All of this leads to both an improved consumer experience, but also an improved store associate experience. Today, retail has one of the highest employee turnover rates across industries (70% higher than average, according to McKinsey). Tasks like inventory counting take the joy out of a job that should be much more customer relationship focused. By leaving the dull work to the robots, we elevate the human work to focus on serving customers.
What are the 5 things that concern you about the AI industry? Why?
While I can’t say I have five specific concerns, my primary focus is making sure AI is available to everyone. I firmly believe that AI should be within reach for all, with the potential to improve and simplify everyone’s lives, making them safer too. My thoughts on this issue remind me of the challenges we’ve seen with internet accessibility, which has created a digital divide. I see a similar situation on the horizon, an “AI divide,” that could create similar inequalities, giving some people access to knowledge and skills that others might unfortunately miss out on.
As you know, there is an ongoing debate between prominent scientists, (personified as a debate between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg,) about whether advanced AI poses an existential danger to humanity. What is your position about this?
Listening carefully to this debate, I believe that there is merit to both sides. On one hand, I agree with the pessimist’s perspective that caution is warranted. Paying close attention to the risks and taking a proactive approach to mitigating potential misuse of AI technology is critical.
On the other hand, optimists have pointed out that AI technology is developing incrementally. Transformer models (the ‘T’ in ChatGPT) have created a step-function improvement in AI technology over the past couple of years, but we are still very far from the prospect of Artificial General Intelligence.
While this existential debate is personally interesting to me, the reality of our role at Brain Corp is a bit more prosaic. Something I’m very proud of about our role is the targeted scope of our AI development. We are 100% focused on applying AI technology to solving specific operational challenges in commercial environments. In our particular case, we’re creating tech to do jobs that are unfulfilling and going unfilled in retail stores. The quit rate for retail workers is 70% higher than for other U.S. industries, according to McKinsey. While our applications are perhaps not as ‘sexy’ as the advancements in generative AI, we are improving the physical world by automating mundane, repetitive tasks that humans generally don’t want to do.
What can be done to prevent such concerns from materializing? And what can be done to assure the public that there is nothing to be concerned about?
While I don’t think the public should freak out about AI, I think it’s appropriate for everyone to remain interested and concerned about how these breakthrough technologies will impact the future. As a company that focuses on applying AI technology, the biggest questions in this area that relate to Brain Corp are less about “existential dangers to humanity,” and more about the future of work.
When I first joined Brain Corp in 2017, I got a lot of questions from reporters asking about robots taking jobs. Today, I hardly get this question at all. The reason why this question is no longer top-of-mind is that the unemployment rate is at an historic low in the U.S. And people are starting to see that the reason for low unemployment is not a blip, but rather a long-term trend related to demographics. With falling birth rates around the developed world, our populations are aging and the ratio of people of working age to overall population is beginning to decline significantly. Simply put, there won’t be enough working-age people to support retirees and children unless we increase automation. I strongly believe that AI technology will be a major ingredient to ensure that countries are able to continue improving their standard of living in spite of the challenges of an aging population.
As you know, there are not that many women in your industry. Can you advise what is needed to engage more women into the AI industry?
Gender inclusion has been a longstanding issue in the tech world, and it’s a topic that we’re passionate about. At Brain, one of our most active employee groups is We-R: Women Empowering Robots. We-R supports the advancement of women through education, speakerships, networking events, and community outreach programs. Brain’s We-R group participates in WomenHack recruiting events and the Grace Hopper career fair. Locally in San Diego, we’ve participated in events with UCSD’s Grad WIC (Women in Computing) to strengthen ties between academia and industry for women in tech.
In addition, we’re proud sponsors of several FIRST Robotics teams because of their emphasis on inclusivity, teamwork, and hands-on learning, which aligns closely with our own values. FIRST is the leading youth-serving nonprofit advancing STEM education, and according to their website, 50% of female FIRST alumni declare an engineering or computer science major. Fostering interest in robotics, AI, and automation for girls at the high school level is one of the most impactful things that we at Brain can do to improve gender inclusion in our industry.
What is your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story of how that had relevance to your own life?
My team will tell you that I love collecting witticisms about perseverance, curiosity, and drive. One of my favorites, which captures all three, is “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison.
Applying AI to an existing industry is all about getting the details right. And getting the details right requires an iterative process. At Brain Corp, we embrace the spirit of grit and curiosity to continue to drive solutions forward in the highly complex environments of our customers.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world? Can you share a story?
Mentors have been a huge part of my success, and I feel strongly about paying it forward by providing mentorship to people who are earlier in their careers. For me, having strong mentors has accelerated my understanding of the tech industry, helped me expand my professional network, and helped me gain confidence through challenging periods.
Now that I have achieved some success, I’m honored to be able to give back by providing mentorship to others. Helping the next generation of leaders grow and succeed is one of my most rewarding experiences.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I spoke about how automation is desperately needed in a world of declining birth rates, an aging population, and a shrinking ratio of workers to overall population. We won’t have enough workers to support the overall population without advancements in automation. But even though I strongly believe that automation is a hugely positive force, there will be individuals displaced by automation and this is something that I am concerned about. I would like to see significantly more emphasis on education and worker training programs to ensure that everyone who wants to participate in the labor force has the skills to do so. One thing that we emphasize at Brain is providing training for janitors so that they can elevate their skillset to become cleaning robot operators. The movement that I would like to start would include a rethinking of education that considers the skills that will be needed in 5, 10 and 15 years from now as automation technology evolves.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Brain Corp: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brain-corporation
David Pinn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpinn/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is the Chairman of the Friends of Israel and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.
