Leadership Insights: Upgrade 2025 with NTT Research’s Chris Shaw

Hello, and welcome to the digital CXO Leadership Insights series. I'm Amanda Ani, and I'm excited to be here today with Chris Shaw. He is the CMO of NTT Research.

How are you doing today? I'm great, Amanda. Good to be here.

Thank you for having me. Yes. Happy to have you on our show.

Can you talk a little bit about NTT research? What does that division do? So, NTT research is, uh, it's a fundamental research arm of NTT Corporation.

Uh, we're based out of Sunnyvale, California. Think about, um, the old Bell Labs or Xerox Park. That's a, that's sort of a similar narrative of what we're doing at NTT Research.

So basic fundamental research, uh, almost academic like, that's sort of foundational for how we get to the innovations of today. Think about something like the LLMs that, you know, everybody's talking about now. Well, that started with a research paper.

So it's the same story at NTT Research. We've got scientists working in a, a number of fields, cryptography, photonics, uh, medical informatics, and in the all those areas developing, you know, new theories, new research that ultimately, uh, become the products we use today. I love hearing about what y'all are working on.

And speaking of that, we are here this week at Upgrade 2025. And you've had some really interesting announcements. So I just wanna dive right into those.

Can you share some of the top key announcements with our audience? Happy to. So, uh, yesterday we, we held a, a press conference to make some pretty big announcements.

Uh, some things I'm very excited about, uh, to, we started out announcing the, uh, translation of a book about iion. Iion is the innovative and optical wireless network, which is sort of our vision for the future of how networking is gonna work, going from electronics to a photonics. We made that bet about six years ago.

Uh, when we started this, this thinking, realizing where things were going in terms of sustainability, compute, power, uh, energy, uh, use, we realized that something needed to change. Uh, three years into that, the LLM explosion happened, and suddenly we realized that BET was even better than we thought. Because as you know, the, the, the power that's needed, uh, to compute for the LLMs is essentially unsustainable, let's just say.

I mean, it's gonna work for a while, but we need a solution. And Iion, we believe it's a solution for both. You know, that type of compute, power processing, those LLMs, uh, and even just in the training, so for the machine learning side of it.

So it's, we really feel like it was the right bet at the right time. Um, and those are a lot of things we're talking about at Upgrade. But this book was published, uh, at the time, and we've got a, a, a new version that's out now.

Uh, the second announcement we made, um, is around a, a new chip that we've developed. It's a, it's an ai, uh, AI based inference chip, uh, for high, high definition video. So what it's able to do with using a high definition is think of a security camera that can see, you know, quite some distance and, and be able to pick up facial recognition, um, and essentially give us a, a society that's a lot more secure, a lot more safe, um, using ai.

But what it does, and this is the part that really excites me, we're also include beginning to include, uh, technology that was developed in our cryptography lab, which means not only will we be having, you know, using the AI to identify people and, uh, and have a more secure society, but we're also gonna include privacy in that. So it's great to see cameras everywhere and knowing that maybe, you know, it's watching us and we're safe because of that, but it's also nice to know that we, that that data is secure. So we don't need to worry about somebody capturing you or I on video and seeing your face.

It's unnecessary. The only time it's necessary to know who was on camera is if some type of a, an infraction was committed crime or something. And at that point, you really only need to identify the one person who, who did commit the infraction, not everybody else.

And the technology that we have brought into this is to both be able to, to use the AI high definition, see the people and mask everybody unless it's necessary. So we encrypt all that data and that's, to me, that's a world I'm looking forward to seeing is, is one where we have the security that I think a lot of us want, you know, but we don't realize sometimes with all that security and that, that sort of surveillance that happens, you know, if you're standing on a subway platform or on a street somewhere, you're giving up a lot of privacy. We're bringing privacy into that story, and that's something I'm very excited about.

Finally, this was really the big announcement for us, I feel that is that we, when we opened NTT research in 2019, we had three laps and we've had, you know, quite a few breakthroughs in the labs in with the advent of AI and this revolution and LLMs, um, we're opening up a, a fourth group, and that's gonna be focused on the physics of artificial intelligence. The reason we're doing that is to really understand what's inside the black box. 'cause the truth is, we can see the output and we can kind of see the input.

We don't necessarily know how it all works. And, you know, to, if, if you think about AI is almost like a small child, right? We're trying to teach that child how to be a more responsible, trustworthy, you know, member of society, let's say.

And right now it's, we don't know how that's working. So what our scientists are gonna study is how that black box box works and therefore, let's just say raise a better child, one that is more reliable and trustworthy, just like we wanna raise good members of society. We like to see AI being a, a good member of society.

And that's, that is to me, very, very exciting to understand what's going on. So those are the three big announcements. Yeah, some major technological announcements.

I feel like we're in such a, a, a tech revolution right now. So, uh, let's go back and talk about that first one. How quickly do you think, um, do you envision that everyone's eventually going to need to use this type of iion technology?

As you said, it wasn't sustainable. Um, the methods currently being used are not really sustainable. So how far in the future do you think this is gonna be a widespread used technology?

That's a, that's a, that's a that's a big question. So it's already beginning. I mean, it's, it's, it's been implemented.

We're, we're beginning to implemented, uh, in some data centers. It's by own, I mean, if it's not just NTT, we have, there's the companies that are working on this with us. We've got, uh, we have, uh, the ion global forum that we are part of which, because we can't, no one can do this alone.

This is about a new infrastructure recreating everything that exists today. Think of all the electronic transfer of data, and you think about the fiber optics, that's, that's, that's photonic, but it's everything in between the switches, all of those things that need to go to photonic. Um, so it is a long term change, but it's gonna be incremental.

And as I said, some of it is happening now. So when you say, well, you know, who's gonna have to use it? You know, everybody would be the thing because it will just be the infrastructure, right?

We will go from electronics to, to photonics. Think about before the internet, you know, on telephone lines. And then the internet comes along.

We had dial up, then we had, you know, after dial up, we started having, you know, new, new networks. We had, you know, 3G LTE 5G. So it's, it's just, think of it that way.

It's just an evolution. But now going to photonics so that, yeah, I see it, it will just be used by all of us. Um, but it, but in terms of the, the time, that's gonna take years, but it'll be, it will be implemented, you know, along the way.

So there will be certain things that will come sooner than others, you know, within data centers we'll start to see, we'll see it more. We'll see, you know, we'll start having, uh, the technology to, to use, you know, chips that are, are photonic versus electronic transfer. All those things will be gonna happen, but it'll just be incremental.

And so meanwhile, you're at the forefront of this research with a lot of other companies. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.

So moving on. Okay, so this is interesting with the AI chips, uh, for the cameras. Um, can you share some, some use case examples of this?

'cause I'm trying to, uh, figure out, um, why do we need all this, uh, all these cameras and all this information? So, I mean, the example that I gave, I think is really one of the better ones. 'cause we see it every day, right?

All of us, we see wherever we go, there's a camera, you get on an elevator, you get, you, you're standing on a a on a platform for a train, waiting for a bus walking down the street in a, you're in a shopping center. Cameras are everywhere, right? And they're not gonna go away.

We're having, you know, we live in a world where there's increasingly more, uh, security surveillance. And so what you wanna have is you want to have those kinds of systems that are trustworthy and that are working better. So in this case, it's better technology to, to, to get better recognition of faces and the people you're seeing.

But again, the part that I think is critical to understand is how can we have that and have, we have that safety, but we also have our privacy. And that's where you really want you, you don't necessarily want to give, you know, whether it's the state or a company or your neighbors with their ring camera in front, on their front door. Do you really want everywhere you go for people to know exactly where you are, who you are, and visually and identify it?

That's something we, we give up easily and don't think much about it. So if we can do, have the, have the safety feature with these cameras, but also the encryption and the privacy of our data, that's, that's why I think this is a very big deal. The way that the, the encryption technology works is that, uh, based on the access controls that you have as a, as a, let's say a, a government employee, I might only be able to uncover unmask, you know, certain things about a situation, maybe the license plate of a car or a somebody's face.

But I can't unmask everything. So it's, so we, we protect the privacy of individuals while still giving all of us as a society, the security. That's, that's really the, the benefit here.

Got it. Okay. And you mentioned the ring doorbell, and I remember, I don't remember maybe about a year ago when that got hacked.

So you're saying, would this, um, also, uh, be a bit a big prevention against hacking into the cameras? Well, they can certainly hack in, but the data is encrypted, so it doesn't matter. Right, right, Right.

We don't get anything from it. You're not gonna get anything. And I think, you know, the ring camera, we see them all the time.

If you open up social media, you know, not to, not just to say ring. It could be any one of these types of cameras, but you'll see people showing, someone giving a delivery and they'll show some funny thing that happens. Or, you know, maybe a neighbor getting angry and yelling, and they, they share that, that is not right.

You shouldn't be able to just, you know, just because you, you got a video of someone coming to your house that you can share some embarrassing moment or, you know, just because you think it's funny. And in this case, I imagine a world where that would be encrypted. You don't, you don't need to know who it is.

You need if you're, if the, the FedEx UPS Amazon driver is delivering something, you can see it's delivered. There's no, there is no legitimate reason to know who the person was, right? It was just delivered.

They worked for this company. That's it. So their, their face should be masked.

If there is some kind of an infraction, then you should be able to unmask that face. But otherwise, or somebody in the background, if you're walking in the background and, and you're captured on camera, have nothing to do with it, why should your face be visible? So that, that's, that's the technology That makes a lot of sense.

Protecting their rights. I know when I've gone to someone's house and I didn't realize there was, uh, that type of doorbell, and we might be sitting there having a conversation that maybe we we're like, hope they didn't hear, you know, And they did. So, um, so okay, moving on.

What are, what is the vibe here at the conference? What are you hearing from business leaders? Why did they attend and what are their, um, you know, top key issues and concerns right now?

So, you know, we put this conference on, you know, as I said at the beginning, this is sponsored by NTT Research. So fundamental research, which is foundational to, you know, the technologies that we develop at NTT. But it is also foundational to every technology we use, it, it doesn't matter what it is.

You, you know, we talk about an iPhone, the computer that we're on right now, there are the amount of patents and, and, and, uh, coming out of fundamental research that live on all the technology we have, uh, it's important to understand that we don't get anything without this fundamental research. That's where it all starts. You know, bell Labs, you could say a company like that, almost everything we touch now came out of work done at Bell Labs or the universities around the world, or places like NTT research.

So that's the foundational part of the story, and that we come to show that, but also to show that continuum of technologies that started in fundamental research that are now maybe in point of, in, uh, proof of concept and seeing what's being developed to com to commercialized, uh, technology. So we, we sort of showed that whole narrative. And so the people that are coming here, we've got technologists, we have, you know, you know, customers, we have, uh, you know, analysts and journalists and, you know, VCs in the valley.

And it's really to look at, to remember and look at this story of this is how the new technologies get developed. It starts in fundamental research. And we get to, we get to the commercialized research.

So this is, it's, it's sort of like a world's fair, you know, you have, there's an expo, we have lots of hands-on technology, and we have a number of, of panels, I think 14 or 15 panels that we're gonna be doing around all of these different technologies that are happening. Um, the, and the theme of the, of the conference is innovation, uh, for the new reality. And that new reality is, uh, is ai.

Um, and the way that I wanted, you know, the people to approach it is not just what you're doing in terms of developing new AI technologies, but also what are you doing? Even if it's not a new AI technology, what are you doing to respond to it? So for example, the encryption technology that I just told you about, that's not AI related at all.

The CHIP is for the video. But the encryption technology is something that because we're having this powerful technology in, in inference and, and video capture, we want to have something to protect the, you know, ION is not specifically AI technology, but it's gonna allow AI to, to continue to grow and, and use it more compute power by having a photonic system. So it's both the response and the new, the new applications, which you'll, we're gonna see a lot of that as well.

There is so much to consider when it comes to the world of AI and it's advancing so rapidly. Indeed. So what do you envision as far as the future for AI and AI use, say I, um, even a year from now, because it's moving so fast.

You know, I would be, I'd be hard pressed to say what it's gonna look like a year from now, to be frank. I mean, it's just, it is moving so fast. But what I would say in the, the future that I envision, I think a lot of people see sort of these singular, sort of monolithic ais, like an open AI or a Gemini or something, like a very small number from say, hyperscalers.

I actually would expect to see, um, I think we're gonna have a lot more than that, and I think it's gonna be a lot more interconnected. Um, and I think, I think that's gonna give us, uh, a more trustworthy SI system where they're almost like checks and balances of AI and that we're working together with them. So that's, that's a future that I see.

And I think given the work that we're doing in the new AI group and understanding how it works, I think, I think that's what we'll get to. It's, I, you know, I imagine something like, um, the, you know, agentic AI where we all have these different agents, those are individualized to a degree, and how do we have, you know, how do we make sure that those are, are safe and trustworthy? So that's, I really think we'll get there.

I don't think there's going to be some singular winner or just a few like we've seen in the past. I honestly think this is, it's kind of reminds me of the beginning of the internet, you know, when, when all of a sudden everything was just popping up. I think we're gonna see more of that, I think, um, I don't think it's just gonna be a singular winner.

Absolutely. Well, this is one of my favorite conferences to attend every year, because I love seeing the demos of all these amazing technologies. If there was one key takeaway you could leave our audience with today, what would that be?

Key takeaway on the demos or the conference itself? Both, let's say both. So I, I, I guess overall, to me, the key takeaway is, is this narrative of fundamental research that how critically important that is to advancing the way that I sort of see the world, you know, in of a, a business.

But even just in general, is there, I kind of look at, there's two types of people. We have creative people and we have process people, and we need them both. The creative people who would be like researchers are people who see the world as it could be.

And the process people are the people who, who make that vision work and continue. And that's how we keep moving forward. And what you'll see at this conference is a mix of both.

You'll see the creative people who are seeing this world as it could be, and the process people who implement it and make it work and function. And that's how the world moves forward. So that's what you're getting.

All right. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on to talk on the show and share your insights.

I'm having such a great time. I can't wait to hear and see more. Thank you so much for having me.

Have a wonderful day. All right. And thank you to our audience.

Stay tuned. There's more.