On this episode of the IoT For All Podcast, Ryan Chacon is joined by David Ly, the CEO of Iveda, to discuss the evolution of IoT. They talk about AI and IoT and their impact on society, AI and IoT security and privacy, and the current state of smart city deployment.

Episode 302's Sponsor: Troverlo

Troverlo Autonomo is rewriting the rules of asset tracking and data collection. No more chasing elusive devices or losing sleep over data breaches. Autonomo's unique background app ensures you stay in control, even when devices go off the grid. It's scalable, platform-compatible, and delivers a rapid return on investment. Visit Troverlo.com now and harness the power of Autonomo to transform your IT department!

About David Ly

David Ly is the visionary founder of Iveda, having served as CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors since the company’s inception in 2003. With over 20 years of experience in wireless data, cellular, IT, and cloud video surveillance, David has built a pioneering cloud video hosting and real-time surveillance infrastructure with use cases across the globe.

Interested in connecting with David? Reach out on LinkedIn!

About Iveda

Iveda (NASDAQ:IVDA) is the provider of global solutions for cloud-based, video AI search and surveillance technologies that protect the people, places, and things that matter the most. Iveda’s technology has the power to provide instant intelligence to existing infrastructure, enabling cities and organizations around the world to seamlessly enter the fifth industrial revolution. Iveda operates at the forefront of digital transformation of cities across the world, using IoT platforms with smart sensors and devices developed to aid with use cases surrounding public safety, security, elderly care, energy efficiency, and environment preservation.

Key Questions and Topics from this Episode:

(00:39) AI For All announcement

(01:02) Sponsor

(01:35) Introduction to David Ly and Iveda

(05:39) The evolution of IoT

(09:35) AI and IoT and impact on society

(12:28) AI and IoT security and privacy

(17:14) Smart city deployment

(27:27) Learn more and follow up

Transcript:

- [Ryan] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the IoT For All Podcast. I'm Ryan Chacon, and on today's episode, we are going to be focused on talking about the evolution of IoT, how AI is coming into the IoT space, impact on society that these technologies are going to have, privacy and security concerns, a whole lot of topics that I think you'll find a lot of value in.

With me today will be David Ly, the CEO of Iveda. They are a company that is a provider in global solutions for cloud based video AI search and surveillance technologies. If you are watching this on YouTube, please like this video and subscribe to our channel if you've not done so already. If you're listening to this on a podcast directory, we'd really appreciate it if you'd subscribe to see the latest episodes as soon as they are out.

And last announcement is if you have not already done so, our AI for All content has been released. So we have a podcast now with experts from all over the AI industry focused on enterprise AI, as well as a newsletter that is going out weekly and sometimes daily depending on what's going on in the space, and the website is coming soon.

So please check that out and subscribe to those channels as well if you're interested in AI. But other than that, let's get on to the episode. Troverlo Autonomo is rewriting the rules of asset tracking and data collection. No more chasing elusive devices or losing sleep over data breaches. Autonomo's unique background app ensures you stay in control even when devices go off the grid.

It's scalable, platform compatible, and delivers a rapid return on investment. Visit troverlo.com, that's t r o v e r l o dot com, now and harness the power of Autonomo to transform your IT department. Welcome David to the IoT For All Podcast. Thanks for being here this week.

- [David] Awesome. Thanks Ryan for having me, man.

- [Ryan] Yeah, absolutely. Super excited to chat.

Before we get into it, I'd love it if you could give a quick introduction about yourself and the company to our audience.

- [David] I'm David Ly, CEO and Founder of Iveda. And I founded Iveda back in 2003, so literally 20 years ago. And I myself, I'm a civil engineer by education, certainly not by trade. By the time I graduated, I fell fortunately into the era of the dot com back in San Jose, California. So that's where my technology background and experience really started is with all the early dot coms and the growth of the the era of the internet and data consolidation, et cetera.

Given that, I advanced in my career, not as a civil, totally outside of discipline, I went into wireless networking. With a wonderful company back in late 1999 into the early 2000 out of San Jose, California. We were one of the first companies, but their name was Ricochet, in case anybody's interested in history.

One of the first companies that had wide area wireless connectivity. And guys, you know what that means is, we're so used to our 5G today and Wi Fi today. Back then we had a modem about this big velcro to the back of our laptop and, with a serial port screw in, USB was not even around back then.

And guess what? We got online with Juno, Go America, Prodigy. This is how early internet I got started in. Fast forward. With that background. Here in Arizona, I met a physical security company and the ownership there, and it just dawned on him that if they can verify an incident remotely or at another geographical location before they sent out a person in a vehicle, that would be wonderful. Now mind you this is 2003, 2005, internet was still T1, T3. We were one of the first companies, Ryan, that did remote IP video assessment in real time. Now IP video cameras were 900 bucks a camera back then, not 59.99 on Amazon, right?

Not it was a logitech webcam. So we, Iveda was one of the first companies that did remote video monitoring. That means we had a managed internet IP video, and we had live humans watching a camera on behalf of the customers. So that's how we got started and after a decade and two, Iveda evolved today to what you know of us today.

From our background of big data management, handling and streaming. We had to find a means of making that more efficient. Human labor in review and assessments, too expensive. Here it comes. In 2014, we applied something called machine learning, and we taught the machines how to look for certain objects within the plethora of data that we had from our customers.

So this is the evolution of Iveda AI. This is where our AI video analytics was spawned and our go to market today and what makes us strong is leveraging our growth and the technology. And going back to IoT now is information sensor data now has intelligence behind it. So that, that in a nutshell is Iveda, an AI IoT smart city company.

- [Ryan] Fantastic. Very exciting background too. You've been, you've seen the evolution of things, really been in the trenches, understanding, playing with building technologies from the early days to now. Let me ask you, as it relates particularly to IoT, obviously we were, this was M2M, now it's IoT.

I've been in the space for about seven years. It's grown. It's changed a lot. It's evolved a lot. What has, tell our audience a little bit about how you've seen the evolution of IoT. Not have to, it can be something like just high level it for audience what you've seen from the beginning till now.

And now we're, because we're right now we're getting into the AI integration into IoT them coming together to provide even more value now that we have access to all this data that IoT solutions are able to collect. But just talk us through the evolution that you've seen.

- [David] Yeah, sure. Most recently the company Iveda has gotten involved in smart power, smart power management for our smart city solutions. But why I start with power, this segues into the whole IoT spectrum is that I know from an early engineering school, back then we talked about, I was in school in the nineties, but we talked about seventies, eighties where the power companies and the telephone companies already had sensors throughout their lines that,, the transfer lines, so that they can measure certain power and even temperature of the transmission just for safety. Now that's what IoT is. It's always been there. It's been around, right? Device sensors and data, but the difference, and I've seen the evolution Ryan, is all the way up until very recently, the data came to us and then it was us again and all the data and the analysis had to happen manually. And then we had to draw upon with the given variables, different models to give us the data that we need to make decisions with, right? So whether it's weather, temperature, pressure, sensors and devices have always been around and really that is the concept of IoT. Evolution, I've seen so many more sensors from the good old days of the RadioShack, open closed door sensors to now we've got coffee darkness.

It's what's happening is there's a lot more detail involved. And this segues into, given all this detail of data and the ease of collection now because of the evolution of just the internet in general, right? Internet of things are beginning to just make more sense. Before, it was just more very professional, industrial, commercial.

But today, you, me, our kids, hey, we touch it all the time now.

- [Ryan] Yeah, without even knowing sometimes. Yeah, without even realizing it.

- [David] Without even knowing it. Correct. So I see now that it's more common than we realize. That's my experience with IoT. And people are speaking about it more, the terms being used more. So it's more prevalent today.

- [Ryan] I think companies are also starting to really see the value of these technologies and solutions and what it can do for their business and access to data they didn't have access to before make, to help them make better decisions, faster decisions. And we're starting to now compile AI on top of that, right?

We have access to this data so we can bring in these AI models to provide more value. In interpreting, understanding, analyzing the data. How have you seen, most of the, from a public perspective, most of the conversations around AI are connected to generative AI tools, talking about ChatGPT, things that people can go and play with and touch themselves.

But AI has been working its way into IoT for a while now. Where do you see or how do you see AI coming into IoT and the impact that has on society and the users of these devices, sensors, and solutions?

- [David] I've got a great scenario I think that will help give our listeners or viewers a very clear, real world perspective. From experience here, Iveda, the company, we have this solution called IvedaCare. Now I'll try to break this down. It sounds fancy, but what it is, Ryan, is a kit that back in the day, we would probably use the term smart home, and I'll even go further, RadioShack had door sensors, window sensors, alarm sensors, motion sensors, right?

But if you take a collective of all these wonderful sensors, and you just add on a little bit more like moisture, humidity, temperature, and you put this into a setting where you have a dementia care patient or just grandma, grandpa at home alone. In the past, these sensors only provided trigger alerts when something physically triggered each sensor.

Temperature too high, door open, window closed, motion in a hallway. Now, answering your question. AI comes in, into that same environment. This is how it's helping society today. With existing infrastructure, this is very important and the highest value I believe of AI. Leveraging existing IoT infrastructure.

AI now comes in and makes sense of all these alerts. Instead of you and I just getting a ding every time a door opens, the AI is smart enough to understand what's normal and what's not normal and then only alerts on what we call abnormality. Hey, grandma, get out of bed, which is fine. But getting out of bed, moving into the hallway, and then not appearing either at the restroom, the living room, or the kitchen in a few seconds or minutes, it could mean that she may have fallen.

That's AI. So it's that data processing and analysis done in split seconds, and then adding common sense to that in a unique way, gives you and I the data points that would be more useful to us.

- [Ryan] And how have you seen, I know you all play a role in when it comes to security and different solutions related to security, which as you're talking about this example, from when it comes to aging in place solutions, elderly care solutions. There's a privacy point that often gets brought up when we're talking about collecting data and then when AI is coming in how that's also going to affect privacy and security concerns. How have you all from your perspective seen organizations best handle and balance that security and privacy concerns with AI, bringing in AI and IoT technologies into their business to still be to have the solution be valuable and the data be useful, but the people that there may be looking at, tracking, collecting data from are not at risk of being exposed on a personal level or ensuring you're adhering to those privacy important things.

- [David] Yeah. The privacy concern, especially for a video surveillance startup company two decades ago, it's nothing new to us. That's one of the biggest concerns and conversations I've had is throughout the years is privacy. But given that, the experience that I've also engaged with our end users, every, from all walks of industries, from private business owners to enterprise and even government agencies and municipalities. Though we are all keen and aware that there is a public concern of privacy, as a practitioner, we, the reality is the data that is being consumed or the data that is being so called collected is already flowing in most of the environments that we exist in, Ryan. We're not going out there punching a hole, tapping anybody, or doing anything. It's about making sense of the data that currently already surrounds all of us.

Example. We all take for granted that the stores we walk in, Walmart, everything like that is by choice, timing, location, all of that is considered data collected by the organization and how they use it within that is to improve safety, efficiency, operational effectiveness, and of course, increased revenue.

No harm to anybody. But when you talk about video and seeing people's faces and what they're doing in public areas, again, there's always two sides to every story but taking precautions, I've learned from our partners out there in the field is is frankly the data that is flowing in now with the support of AI is actually safer.

And I'm going to try to add some color to that. In the past, it would take a human. It always, the human is always the troublemaker here, right? Not the technology. I'll speak to that. It always involved a human doing something foul. It's an emotional decision to take action, good, bad, or ugly. I believe that with the support and benefit of AI, the AI is being asked to do a very specific task.

And when that task says, alert me when a dangerous abnormality arises. So many cars piled up and stuck in one spot, that's an abnormality. Someone holding something, a weapon, that's an abnormality. Frankly, that is the only time that the human today will even pay attention to that piece of data.

What we, the misconception is that there's, we're all concerned about our privacy and what we're doing as we're roaming around the streets. The reality is all the organization that I've engaged in the past two decades do not have enough time nor resource to care about us, Ryan. We all think we're so special and important.

No one has enough time to be nosy. But then to be nosy, it is the human. So this is really awesome that AI can now support the monitoring of critical situations for safety, efficiency, and we can rely on that now more than we can a human. I know that's going to be a controversy, but that's reality that I'm seeing out there.

I'm a total technology proponent.

- [Ryan] And let me ask you. So as we break out away from just security side of things when it comes to privacy, we also been seeing obviously increased adoption in communities and cities where people live, right? And new technologies are being implemented to provide better experiences to municipalities, to the residents of certain communities in these smart cities.

Where are, from your perspective and the work that you all do, where are we right now with smart city adoption but also education for those who are interacting with these new solutions, whether it's the user or the residents and citizens of these communities, understanding their value, understanding what they do, why they're there, and how it's hopefully providing a benefit.

- [David] That's a big question. I'm gonna try to encapsulate it here. Smart city adoption, I would have to say smart city awareness is picking up dramatically. Adoption is still at a not so favorable pace right now, in my opinion, and there's nothing wrong with that. And what that means is, you asked about education.

That's very important. Educating the stakeholders and practitioners. I think that's ramping up. The builders, the parties that are deploying the technology and the applications, I think that, there, that group is now more aware. More aware means that they finally today understand the technology that is involved and the applications that do take place in order to formulate a valuable end result of some kind.

Now I'm encapsulating a lot, but where this goes is this. We say smart city. In order for a city to be smart, all of its segment of existing infrastructure, the roads, the gas lines, the power lines, the water lines, everything that we see from street lights, air conditioners in our buildings, automatic doors that open at Disneyland, etc.

Do you know all of that is sensor accessible? IoT. All interconnected. Once they're truly interconnected, again, it's nothing new for we, the citizens. It's already there. It's in existence. The benefit now is a smart city becomes smart when it can gather all of this data that's already flying among us.

I'm gonna come back to that story. Sensors are already submitting information somewhere. It's best that if a city is receiving this information and data, that they have some means of organization or else it would be useless to you and I as citizens of the city. Some fear that if a city has all this information, they'll know all our movement.

No, they don't care about who you and I are. What we're caring about is the community at large, the whole. So once we have temperature, once we have weather, we have traffic conditions, where it piles up, where it's light, we as drivers and as citizens, we sit in traffic and go, Oh my God, why are they doing construction now?

Can't they do it at night? Man, why don't they expand this? All the things that we complain about, a smart city truly is designed to reduce those types of burdens on us if we give it a chance. So where I see smart city evolve, I've been out of country in Southeast Asia, Middle East, Africa, and you know what, the foreign countries, developing countries I see, are adopting smart city at a much more rapid pace than we the developed nations.

Why is that? It's an obligation. Traffic sucks, infrastructure sucks, they cannot build new. No one can build new. So you have to take advantage of existing infrastructure and get, and, you know, the old adage, work smarter, not harder. So these countries are obligated to work smarter in order to fulfill the services that is required by the citizens to do more and be more safe.

Adoption here in the States, it's slow. It's slow. But, I think awareness is highly increased and because of that awareness is where we're getting the question of oh my gosh, privacy issues.

- [Ryan] There's always going to be a group that has an issue with change. Each municipality is so different when it comes to budget resistance to new technology adoption. So it is tough, I think for us to see the or I guess it makes, I understand why adoption has been slower than I think we wanted it to be when it comes to smart city solutions.

But it's important for people to know that these are oftentimes built with the best intentions in mind to make the experience better, to collect data without having to bother the citizens of the community, and have enough, have access to the data that they can make decisions more quickly to again improve that experience for the people who are living day to day.

So it's been a topic that's come up since I joined the IoT world, just seeing the evolution of smart cities, yes, I feel like it has not grown as quickly as some anticipated, but the very, I'm still very optimistic on what can be done and what this can do for the quality of life in different communities.

- [David] Quality of life is the biggest selling point, right? And the biggest marketing words that we hear and but on the back end, someone that's working to actually deploy this technology, again, I speak with you only from the experience that I have, where the industry's going, where the conceptual thoughts are going is one thing, but I'm working with cities right now, Ryan, that are leveraging existing infrastructure.

And I'm going to say that a lot. There's electricity is required for a lot of things to power our buildings, but imagine this. In the streets, there's something called streetlights. Streetlights are already existing infrastructure with power supply to it. You know how wonderful IoT and AI plays to, into existing infrastructure now?

The developing countries leveraging where they work so hard to get a pole up and electrical lines to can now add on to that existing pole sensors. And what do we, what are these sensors? Sensors not only to make their lights more efficient, turn on and off only when necessary. So that's power efficiency.

But beyond that, you have weather stations that can be added to that. And now, of course, cameras that can be added to that. Behind all these IoT sensors and video systems, the system now will help citizens. That existing infrastructure has just increased better traffic flow, information and management.

It just increased public safety by having the public understand that these cameras here are protecting you day and night and officers have access to them rather than walking off in a boondock somewhere. That little example of how a smart city deployment or implementation can almost immediately enhance the lives of the local existing citizens, not just general concepts.

So I'm a big proponent for that. I've seen it. And then there are cities that experience a lot of flooding in major weather that we don't experience here too often. It is that sensor. It is that same smart city sensors that can now detect abnormalities that say, hey, this street is, will be flooded in X amount of hours.

This is where technology comes into play that has a very direct impact to the benefits of the citizen. So that's why you want a smart city. And for the little things I just described to you, there's so much more.

- [Ryan] Your point about the light fixtures in the existing infrastructure has been something that has definitely come up before and not just for different sensors, but also for gateways to expand coverage and to, I know we talked to people in the LoRa world and they talk about different, being able to deploy LoRa gateways and connectivity to a town, to a city, and using those light fixtures as places to expand coverage.

So it's a great idea to utilize that existing infrastructure to do exactly what you're saying, which is to allow multiple solutions to be deployed, to collect more data, to do things that are better for everyone involved. It's a very interesting space to follow, to continue to see new cities adopt different technologies ...

- [David] You brought up a good point, yes. Instant enhancement of communication and internet access, right? Just adding on to the wireless topography without relying on the cellular signal that may not reach all the world communities. So that's another great immediate benefit as well. You're right.

- [Ryan] David, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, this conversation, you shed some light on some very important topics and had great insights to share with our audience. The last thing I want to ask you before I let you go is for our audience who wants to learn more about what you all have going on, maybe follow up on this discussion, chat further, what's the best way they can do that?

- [David] I think the easiest way is to go to iveda.com, i v e d a dot com. And as far as application to learn more, I suggest not just going to the website and traditionally looking at products, that our audience looks at some of our press announcements within our website because within those announcement will provide the real world perspective and applications and work being done, leveraging IoT and AI.

So there's, I invite everybody to do visit and look at those.

- [Ryan] Fantastic. David, thanks again so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it and excited to get this out to our audience.

- [David] Thank you, Ryan, for having me, man. It was fun.