AI Dev World 2025: A Wake-Up Call for Data from Documents importance for AI

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Today, I had the opportunity to attend AI Dev World at the Santa Clara Convention Center. I’ll admit, I walked in with low expectations—after all, we’ve been inundated with hype about generative AI over the past few years. But within just two visits to expo booths and conversations with vendors, my skepticism transformed into sheer excitement. The relevancy of ‘data from documents’ to AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) is not just theoretical—it’s happening, and it’s significant!

A Vision for TWAIN Direct and PDF/R in AI

Over the past few weeks and especially in preparation for the upcoming AI+IM Global Summit in Atlanta, I’ve been socializing a concept that integrates TWAIN Direct and PDF/R technologies into an AI/LLM solution. To date, the response has been lukewarm at best—many see it as too ambitious, outside our scope, or better left to systems integrators. But after what I saw at AI Dev World, I believe that anyone who isn’t seriously considering participating in some form or fashion in this reference solution is making a huge mistake.

Real-World Validation: Edge AI Innovations and Moorche

Let me share one real example that underscores the importance of document data in AI: a company called Edge AI Innovations. They’ve developed a Semantic Search engine called Moorche, designed specifically to train AI using your own documents as the primary data source. Right on their sandbox UI, there’s a button that says, “Upload Document.” That’s how integral document data is to their solution!

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Edge AI Innovations

Here’s how they describe their technology:

“Introducing Moorche Serverless RAG—the simplest way to build secure, high-performance AI chatbots and assistants. Designed by Edge AI Innovations, our platform removes the usual hurdles of setting up and scaling AI systems. With just a few steps—log in, upload your documents, pick a model, and start chatting—Moorche makes it effortless to bring your own data to life.”

After a great discussion at their booth, I couldn’t wait to test it myself. So, I uploaded a white paper on proposed SAML 2.0 support for TWAIN Direct that the TWAIN Working Group will soon publish. The result? I asked a natural language question, and Moorche not only understood but generated a well-reasoned answer: “Yes, TWAIN Direct should support SAML 2.0,” providing a rationale based on the single document I uploaded!

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Moorche answers, “Yes, TWAIN Direct should support SAML 2.0,” with rationale

The Takeaway: Document Data is Critical to AI’s Future

This simple yet powerful example reinforces key points I’ve been advocating for months:

  1. Private Small Language Models (SLMs) built from your own data are critical—relying solely on public LLMs is not the best path forward.
  2. Edge-based AI models for IoT devices are not just possible; they’re highly desirable.
  3. Optimizing networks and reducing energy consumption is a priority for vendors looking to gain a foothold in the AI market.
  4. Data from Documents, including the volume, variety, and real-time distributed capture capability of scanned images from document scanners and copy machines, is a crucial onboarding solution for AI systems.

Call to Action: Our Industry Must Act Now

To my colleagues in the document scanning, capture, and IDP industry—our expertise is more valuable than ever. AI developers are hungry for structured, high-quality data, and we are the ones who can provide it.

If this resonates with you and you don’t want to be left behind, let’s talk! I am actively seeking collaborators for our proposed AI/LLM reference solution project. Contact me, and let’s explore how you can play a role in shaping the future of AI through document data.

Life events paired with the Silver Screen

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As I gain more wisdom (i.e. this is just a fancy way to say that I’m getting older), it’s amazing to me how much real Life correlates with Movies.

For you that know me personally I like to float and suggest all kinds of crazy ideas that seem undoable. I do this in my personal life and especially in my business life because I see this as a way to always test-the-limits or push for better outcomes.

However, as fun as being a thought-leader, innovator or evangelist is, it certainly comes with its fair share of naysayers, doubters and plain mean people that don’t want you to succeed. Sorry to say but in my wisdom, these beaten-down types of people are the vast majority. This isn’t to say that they are bad people, in fact not at all, but very few have had to build something from scratch and do whatever it takes to succeed.

This is the entrepreneurial spirit, and most people don’t want to challenge themselves this way, which is just fine. However, my mom and dad were entrepreneurial for their entire lives and I guess it’s just second nature for me.

Live Events and Movie Analogies – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Sometimes I feel these strange coincidences like the movie ‘Back To The Future’ where I’m living life in real-time but in a different dimension. You might call is Deja Vu, or I’ve been here before.

Those of you that know me can appreciate that I’m a huge Clint Eastwood fan and especially his spaghetti western films such as For a Few Dollars More, Fistful of Dollars and especially the classic of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

For those of you that haven’t seen the movie, you can know that the plot of the film was very simplistic. There was The Good, but this does not mean in the least that he’s perfect or a good person, but he’s a genuine person, although a bit rough around the edges.

Then there is The Bad, and this character is just not a good person who hurts people at every opportunity, almost as their default behavior, for their advantage. The Bad is very belligerent, lies and can’t be trusted. We probably all know this type, but this person thinks they are slick, but in reality, they are nothing but a total loser. In the end, The Bad, ends up alone, miserable and although he claims spirituality, God knows better.

And finally, The Ugly, is just a mess of talks-a lot, false promises, personal gratification and a pure gold-digging money-hunger fool. No one really pays attention to The Ugly, but she thinks she’s important, nonetheless. The Ugly is an opportunist and is totally consumed with materialistic possessions.

So now that I’ve described the three basic characters of this film, let’s imagine a life event situation closely mimics the movie of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Imagine there is this treasure somewhere that you didn’t earn yourself, but it’s legally and without a doubt your entitlement because this is what someone had gifted to you.

Then imagine, you, as The Good, is not this money-hungry gold-digger of The Ugly, or the lying deceitful hurtful person of The Bad, so you just live your best life and be respectful of your trusting gifters.

In the movie, and not to spoil the ending, but there is a final confrontation and in the end The Good prevails with their fair share. Which is reasonable and not the whole sum, as a matter of fact. The Bad gets his in a bad way because of all the previous horrible things he has done during his life and The Ugly is probably the most pathetic of all the three characters because she is a nothing, nobody loser sucking up as much money as possible.

Of course, in the movie the final confrontation was a good ole fashion gun fight, yet in this case with life events we will let the legal system play out and expose The Bad and The Ugly for their horrible behaviors.

Proud of Brandee

One important thing that I haven’t expressed nearly enough is that I am a lucky guy to have married the most wonderful woman in the world. Brandee is a very smart person whom I am continually impressed by her daily.

It’s a very special experience to watch Brandee thinking about stuff. I can always tell she is ‘channeling-her-mother’, who was a wonderful person, and we miss tremendously. Brandee’s mom was an extremely resourceful person raising five children and always making the best of situations.

She has a wonderful spirit and kind heart. I can see these amazing characteristics in Brandee as well. It’s heart-warming to know that Brandee, and her mom’s legacy live on, and Brandee wants nothing more than to help humanity be family, have fun and live your best life.

As if Brandee’s personal character wasn’t amazing enough, I am seriously impressed with all of her self-learned technical skills. I tease her that when she started to do IT Support a few years ago she was gun-shy about working on Servers and doing things with Active Directory.

Nowadays, I am SO impressed that all this apprehension is gone and she’s doing mission critical support for key clients all day, every-day. Not only are her technical skills amazing but her communication skills and client advocacy are simply outstanding.

Stargate, DeepSeek and Energy Efficiencies of AI with the TWAIN Working Group

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Last week’s announcement of Stargate—a $500 billion collaboration between SoftBank, Oracle, and OpenAI—got me thinking deeply about something even more critical than the technology itself: the energy required for such massive artificial intelligence projects. This was top of mind even before this week’s announcement of DeepSeek, China’s alternative AI system, and I touched on it during the 1/24/2025 Post & Walters Ask Us Anything live podcast. When asked about my most urgent priority, I said “Energy,” and for good reason.

Oracle’s construction of massive new data centers highlights just how much space and energy these infrastructures demand. We’re now at a point where nuclear energy is being seriously considered—and in some cases, implemented—as a power source for data centers. While this level of energy use isn’t inherently bad, it raises an important question: How can we consume energy more economically and use it more efficiently?

To put this into perspective, let’s draw a parallel with the evolution of personal computers and operating systems. In the early days, when CPUs, RAM, and storage were expensive, operating system developers worked hard to optimize resource usage. However, as these components became cheaper and more abundant, efficiency often fell by the wayside, giving rise to “bloatware.” For example, the size of operating systems ballooned from Windows 3.1, which required just 6.7 MB, to modern versions occupying several gigabytes. Similar inefficiencies can be seen in software like Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tools.

Now consider Stargate, which relies on an immense data center infrastructure and consumes vast amounts of energy. Just days later, China announced DeepSeek, a competing AI system built at 1/1000th the cost ($5.6 million vs. $500 billion) and designed to use significantly less energy. According to this article, DeepSeek achieves remarkable energy efficiency, partly because sanctions on chip exports forced its creators to innovate rather than rely on resource-intensive “bloatware.” Early reviews suggest DeepSeek is an impressive competitor to ChatGPT, showing what can be achieved through intelligent, resource-conscious design.

This focus on efficiency resonates with my work on energy-conscious innovations at the TWAIN Working Group (TWG). It’s thrilling to collaborate on designing intelligent AI systems while having a meaningful, positive impact on our planet—a trifecta that aligns with my professional and personal values.

One of TWG’s key initiatives is our integration of TWAIN Direct and PDF/R technologies into RISC-V CPU chips. This enables document scanners to operate independently of external computers, reducing the need for additional CPUs, RAM, and energy. With these technologies embedded directly into IoT devices, we can develop smarter systems that consume less power. For instance, machine learning models can train in the cloud to recognize document patterns and classifications, then push those models down to the RISC-V chip for on-device classification. This approach minimizes data transmission to the cloud and enhances energy efficiency, while continuously improving through feedback loops.

Another exciting project is the addition of JPEG-XL to the PDF/R specification. Our recent white paper, “The Benefits of Adding JPEG-XL to the ISO PDF Standard and PDF/Raster,” highlights how this advanced compression format reduces file sizes, conserves storage, streamlines transmission, and encourages digital collaboration over print.

These initiatives are part of a broader strategic objective: providing secure content collaboration solutions. While this challenge might seem solved, it’s an ongoing process of innovation to combat cyber threats and ensure content authenticity, provenance, and transparency. TWG has developed reference platforms for secure documents, integrating blockchain hashing for document verification, C2PA standards for content authenticity, and advanced access controls with biometric and multifactor authentication. These solutions span various types of digital content, from photos and videos to PDF files produced by TWAIN Direct scanners.

Putting all of this together offers us all the promise that A.I. can provide, encourages safe, secure and authentic digital collaboration and, which is of great importance, converses energy so that we can all live our best lives and provide a healthy planet Earth for future generations.

With so many groundbreaking projects underway, the TWAIN Working Group and P3iD Technologies welcome anyone interested to join us. Whether you want to dip your toes in or dive in head-first, there’s a place for you in this journey of innovation.

The Beekeeper (2024)

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The Beekeeper (2024) movie with Jason Statham is one of my new all-time favorite movies because, surprisingly enough, this flick actually has a good moral storyline.

So, needless to say, I was going to watch The Beekeeper eventually no matter what because I was looking for 2 hours of mindless Jason being a bad ass. However, what I got from The Beekeeper was very much the same Jason I love, but also, I great movie plot that all reasonable people can support.

I don’t want to ruin the movie for anyone considering watching this great movie so I won’t go into any details other than to say that the storyline is good versus evil. And the evil is something that is very real and most of us can relate!

For The Beekeeper, I would say this might not be an Oscar-winning type movie but it’s worthy of nine out of ten Steelers Stars.

2024 – Sincere Friendships, Giving Back and Setting the Record Straight

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As I mentioned in my last blog recapping the Year of 2023, my wife and I have been happily married for 18 years now, we have five wonderful furry babies, and been together for nearly 25 years; so, it’s safe to say that we are content with the direction of our lives.

In this new year of 2024 there is a lot of interesting, if not very significant, life and professional events that I want to share, ‘for the record’. Some of these things you won’t believe. These are real back-room stories which some are from my experience in the ECM market, and other stories from my personal life, that I want to share to set the record straight.

As everyone that knows me personally, I’m an extremely humble person, and while I’m not interested in petty-politics and water-cooler talk, it’s come to my attention, and I’ve verified, that certain individuals had no problems with lying to make themselves try and look better by lying about me. So, it’s simply a matter of setting the record straight.

This might sound like also like something petty to set the record straight, but it’s very important as I move forward in my life, that people have absolute trust in my words and my actions. I’m working on the next phase of philanthropy in my life basically. So, people that tried to hurt me, when I’m trying to genuinely help others, need to re-evaluate their duties of being decent people and quit.

I will, or have already confronted these individuals, as a learning moment for them, and, surprisingly enough, most of them have admitted their indiscretions and said they’ve improved their lives to quit gossip. I have my doubts, but I trust them in their words, yet again, but they will never be trusted or endorsed by me ever again. Burn me once – shame on me, burn me twice – shame on you.

2024 – The Year of Layoffs and Trusting Friends

I share this wisdom of experience for trusting friendships, both professionally and professionally, to make a serious point and prediction.

Most people are living paycheck-to-paycheck (which means most likely you – the reader of this blog article is one of those people). It’s nothing to be shameful of but my advice is do yourself a favor and control your own destiny by having some sort of side-gig.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t pay full attention or not give your fullest to your employer, because is they pay you, then you have a moral obligation to give them your fullest, however, in your spare time, you owe it to yourself to do something to control your own destiny.

While I try and be an optimist on most things, I’m also a realist, and as far as the labor market is concerned, I think there will be many more layoffs before hiring begins again. In the past few weeks to start 2024, I’ve already seen a few of my extremely talented friends get laid-off from their companies. Most likely not from lack of performance, but it’s just something companies do in times of uncertainty, such as the US elections in November 2024, to conserve cash flow.

Leaving Law Cypress Company – A real world Trusting Friends example

As one real story to set the record straight I will briefly explain my leaving Law Cypress Company (LCC) in 1993.

I started at LCC in 1989 as a warehouse worker driving a forklift and packing boxes for a wonderful manager, Jack Brooks, who had a big heart on the inside, yet pretended to be a bad person on the outside. Jack was my manager in the early days of my professional life but later he was a true friend and like a second father to me.

From a pure managerial perspective, he was awesome because when I was offered a promotion from my warehouse position to a sales position, Jack was not jealous nor hurt, and he genuinely was happy for me to get this promotion. I’ll never, ever, forget how tense the negotiation was between Jack and Jeff Zontos. In retrospection, it was one of the best learning experiences for me ever and I thank Jeff for his amazing trust.

What’s important as far as my telling this quick story of Jack Brooks is that even after I moved into the Sales Department of LCC, he really cared for my career and he gave me probably the most important tip ever, in my life! Seriously.

Jack tipped me off that one of the sleazy new LCC middle-managers was about to fire me despite our territory smashing revenue numbers, going from #3 to #1 sales territory and over-accomplishing on many other metrics. The fact of the matter was that I was not an “insider” with the cool group, and I preferred hard work and judge me by my performance sort of attitude instead of his petty personal management.

In the end everything worked out great from myself as well as LCC. The sleazy middle-management was eventually ridden, and I came back to the Company in 1999 until the closing in 2001.

Controlling Your Own Destiny

In conclusion and in summary for this blog article, I want to encourage everyone to Control Your Own Destiny in life and business. In life, I won’t even to venture to go there because I don’t know. However, in your professional business life, you have much more control than you likely know.

The first thing you MUST do is to have some sort of side-gig whether it’s a professional hobby, furthering your business education or continuing to network with other professionals; you simply must do this. No other choice.