WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

A detailed study of machine intelligence in industrial and manufacturing operations reveals the surprisingly different paths companies can take. But a group of leaders shares similar characteristics.

Sometimes the centre of gravity in tech is very clear, but as we enter 2022 there are lots of areas where trillion dollar questions are wide open. These are the questions I wonder about today, from crypto to cars to fast fashion - there are others.

Boards can add value to their business’s digital transformation in five specific areas.

There’s an old saying that the first fifty years of the car industry were about creating car companies and working out what cars should look like, and the second fifty years were about what happened once everyone had a car - they were about McDonalds and Walmart, suburbs and the remaking of the world around the car, for good and of course bad. The innovation in cars became everything around the car. One could suggest the same today about smartphones - now the innovation comes from everything else that happens around them.

Which technology trends are most likely to impact your business in the coming years? Trends are waypoints to help anticipate future states in a world where uncertainty looms. The Future Today Institute's annual Tech Trends Report asks you to examine your assumptions, cherished beliefs and expectations for the future using a bolder, more holistic perspective. In the 13th edition of our Tech Trends Report, we forecast the key technology trends that will redefine businesses in the coming years. More importantly, we offer strategic analysis and guidance on those trends and further explore them in future scenarios to help you understand their implications on your organization and industry.

The WSE (pronounced “wise”) is the largest commercial chip ever manufactured, built to solve the problem of deep learning compute. The WSE is 1.2 trillion transistors, packed onto a single 215mm x 215mm chip with 400,000 AI-optimized cores, connected by a 100Pbit/s interconnect. The cores are fed by 18 GB of super-fast, on-chip memory, with an unprecedented 9 PB/s of memory bandwidth.

Superlatives abound at Cerebras, the until-today stealthy next-generation silicon chip company looking to make training a deep learning model as quick as buying toothpaste from Amazon. Launching after almost three years of quiet development, Cerebras introduced its new chip today — and it is a doozy.

Machine learning continues to gain traction in digital businesses, and technical professionals must embrace it as a tool for creating operational efficiencies. This updated primer discusses the benefits and pitfalls of machine learning, architecture updates, and new roles and responsibilities.

The retail industry is rewriting the laws of physics. Change is coming at an ever faster rate each year and 2030 will be upon us before we know it. Explore the world in 2030 and the future of retail 2030.  

LUMA is the leading investment bank focused on digital media and marketing. We provide strategic advice, proven M&A expertise, and extensive industry knowledge to optimize outcomes for our clients.

“We chose right from the very start to not hide the technology,” Hanrahan explained.

In this report, TDWI uncovers deeper insights that give users new perspectives on business questions. AI will transform BI and the way people make decisions and act. Rather than start with a hypothesis, data analysts will begin with an AI-driven insight. Instead of querying data to prove or disprove their hypothesis, users will query data to expand or validate a machine-generated insight or recommendation—or they might act on the AI-based insight at face value. But to get to that point, AI-infused BI tools will need to gain people's trust by consistently delivering accurate, relevant, and transparent insights within the context of a business user’s existing workflow.
In the future, AI-infused BI tools will go beyond just surfacing insights; they will recommend ways to address or fix issues, run simulations to optimize processes, create new performance targets based on forecasts, and take action automatically. And yes, machines will make some decisions for us—especially operational decisions in real-time environments. We see this today with fraud detection and online trading systems, but it will become more pervasive.

The Montreal Declaration for responsible AI development has three main objectives:​

1. Develop an ethical framework for the development and deployment of AI;

2. Guide the digital transition so everyone benefits from this technological revolution;

3. Open a national and international forum for discussion to collectively achieve equitable, inclusive, and ecologically sustainable AI development.

This report lays out a maturity model for AI adoption in the enterprise. It outlines five stages of AI maturity based on how organizations approach business strategy, data science, product and service design, organization and culture and ethics and governance.

« Dans tous les domaines où une décision affecte la vie, la décision finale devrait revenir à un être humain »

Cette semaine, qui verra également une réunion du G7, sera aussi l'occasion de la présentation d'un texte historique, la « Déclaration de Montréal » que nous publions ci-dessous en exclusivité. Signée par plusieurs chercheurs éminents comme Yoshua Bengio, professeur à l'université de Montréal, Joëlle Pineau, professeure agrégée en sciences des données à l'université McGill, ou encore Marc-Antoine Dilhac, professeur au département de philosophie de l'université de Montréal, elle dresse une liste de principes pour encadrer les recherches en intelligence artificielle.

We’re announcing seven principles to guide our work in AI. We believe these principles are the right foundation for our company and the future development of AI. This approach is consistent with the values laid out in our original Founders’ Letter back in 2004. There we made clear our intention to take a long-term perspective, even if it means making short-term tradeoffs. We said it then, and we believe it now.

Economist Andrew McAfee suggests that, yes, probably, droids will take our jobs -- or at least the kinds of jobs we know now. In this far-seeing talk, he thinks through what future jobs might look like, and how to educate coming generations to hold them.

The AI Index is an open, not-for-profit project to track activity and progress in AI. It aspires to be a comprehensive resource of data and analysis for policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists and others to rapidly develop intuitions about the complex field of AI.
AI is the new electricity, and is transforming multiple industries. The AI Index will help current generations track and navigate this societal transformations. It will also help future generations look back and understand the AI's rise.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology point out that when automotive transport arrived, a whole group of workers—horses—were displaced, never to be employed again. They lost their jobs and vanished from the economy.
I would add another historical precedent. Offshoring in the last few decades has eaten up physical jobs and whole industries, jobs that were not replaced. The current transfer of jobs from the physical to the virtual economy is a different sort of offshoring, not to a foreign country but to a virtual one. If we follow recent history we can’t assume these jobs will be replaced either.

Blade Runner 2049 misses modern strides in artificial intelligence, which is now capable of performing creative work alongside humans. The newly-emerging field known as “generative design” seeks to incorporate the computer more actively into the design process. In these kinds of computer applications, the designer uploads a “seed geometry” — akin to a keyframe reference drawing an animator might use — and then sets a series of requirements ranging from the aesthetic to the functional. The software then searches through a series of procedurally-generated designs based on the seed geometry and surfaces those that meet the requirements. The designer can select one of these “solutions” for production or to function as the next seed geometry and the process begins again.

The robots are coming. We (as in the people who attend TED talks and things) tend to think we will probably be fine. You know, knowledge folks and all. We might not be. What will be our coping mechanisms? What can we do to be OK?

The era of easily-faked photos is quickly emerging—much as it did when Photoshop became widely prevalent—so it’s a good time to remember we shouldn’t trust everything we see.