It took less than six hours for drug-developing AI to invent 40,000 potentially lethal molecules. Researchers put AI normally used to search for helpful drugs into a kind of "bad actor" mode to show how easily it could be abused at a biological arms control conference. All the researchers had to do was tweak their methodology to seek out, rather than weed out toxicity. The AI came up with tens of thousands of new substances, some of which are similar to VX, the most potent nerve agent ever developed. Shaken, they published their findings this month in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence. The paper had us at The Verge a little shook, too.

Making good use of data and analytics will not be done in any single bold move but through multiple coordinated actions. Despite the recent and significant advances in machine intelligence, the full scale of the opportunity is just beginning to unfold. But why are some companies doing better than others? How do companies identify where to get started based on their digital journeys? In this episode of McKinsey Talks Operations, Bruce Lawler, managing director for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Machine Intelligence for Manufacturing and Operations (MIMO) program, and Vijay D'Silva, senior partner emeritus at McKinsey, speak with McKinsey's Daphne Luchtenberg about how companies across industries and sizes can learn from leaders and integrate analytics and data to improve their operations. The following is an edited version of their conversation. Daphne Luchtenberg: Earlier this year, McKinsey and MIT's Machine Intelligence for Manufacturing and Operations studied 100 companies and sectors from automotive to mining. To discuss this and more, I'm joined by the authors, Vijay D'Silva, senior partner emeritus at McKinsey, and Bruce Lawler, managing director for MIT's MIMO. Let's start with the why.

This week, we launched our new series of interviews with brilliant women working in the critical space of AI Ethics and discuss their groundbreaking work. Our first 6 episodes are sponsored by IBM…

The book The Age of AI and Our Human Future is a graduate school level text. The Age of AI is the future, and it's coming way too fast. The human race has never been more challenged. We are all about to make some huge decisions. It is almost a magisterium for human life in the Fourth Industrial Revolution age. It is written by thought leaders of the highest-level, each in their respective fields. The first author is Henry Kissinger the former Secretary of State and NSC advisor to two US presidents, a philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. At age 98 he has seen it all and done it, and remains an international counselor to politicians and business magnates. The second author, Eric Schmidt consolidated Google into the cutting edge technology giant that it is today. In this role he is a sought out counselor and business mogul. The third author is Daniel Huttenlocher -- the inaugural Dean of the MIT College of Computing. It is the place where AI is reinvented and recreated on self-teaching algorithm development and data aggregation from the global network platforms and the internet that occur 24/7 at a neck breaking pace. This compendium though incomplete, has more authors, contributors and editors. Meredith Potter is a contributor who augments Kissinger's intellectual pursuits she drafted, edited the texts and made the chapters flowing clearly and seamless. These and other editors made this textbook intellectually rich, informative, and easy to read. The Age of AI introduces the reader to the occurring changes we experienced in our society today. You are about to encounter many topics that involve the future in its continuing evolution. Every high school student is adapting to the new classroom intellectual reality. Here are two points to consider. First, the technology that this text discusses is not available in your community college courses or on other educational websites.

Lanfrica is an online resource centre that catalogues, archives and links African language resources. These resources include research papers, datasets, projects, software and models that have to do with one or more African languages. The team behind Lanfrica is Chris Emezue, Handel Emezue, and Bonaventure Dossou, with contribution from Daria Yasafova. We caught up with them to find out more about the project, what inspired them to begin, and the potential that Lanfrica offers the AI community and beyond. Chris: The inspiration came while Bona and I were working as undergraduate students.

When we hear about AI in the contact center, it's usually about chatbots and augmented agent. But in this conversation, we hear at how contact center AI can help with sales and marketing. Invoca is doing some fascinating stuff with its conversational intelligence engine. The company's technology has analyzed over 1.5B conversational minutes. Its customers analyze their call center interactions to optimize marketing, improve digital conversion rates, automate contact center QA, and enable agent coaching. Invoca just announced it saw 70% revenue growth during the past 12 months. Invoca's customer base now includes over 2,300 of the leading B2C brands across a number of industries. The common theme, according to Gregg, is they tend to have complex interactions. The small company seems to be doing a few things right. It was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Conversation Intelligence: Sales And Marketing, Q4 2021 report. Just this week it was selected for the Innovation Showcase at Enterprise Connect. Invoca was also recognized in the Inc. Best Workplaces of 2019 list and achieved the difficult Great Place to Work certification. Dave Michels 0:12 Welcome to talking here today, Evan and I will be talking with Brent Johnson of invoca. But before that Evon must be the pandemic is over, because it's time for Enterprise Connect. I know I'm gonna be there. Evan Kirstel 0:24 You know, after a two year hiatus, I will be there in person at Enterprise Connect in Orlando, and at the Innovation Showcase which you are spearheading I really actually looking forward to it to seeing, well, you not so much, but a lot of other people that I haven't seen in person for a while. You mentioned the Innovation Showcase, because that is without doubt the most valuable session.

The good news is that we have the AI technology to uncover the rampant investor fraud that has gotten exponentially worse over the last two years because of the convergence of several factors: the pandemic (which made remote meetings the norm), the rise of cryptocurrency (which by definition has no institutional safeguards) and easy Wall Street money (which means deals are being done in a matter of days without the due diligence that would usually protect the investor). While the technology is there to fix the problem, it's not being adopted quickly enough by investors.

The pandemic ushered us all into this experience together, and now that we have "graduated" into a post-pandemic world, we can reflect on the lessons it has taught us. The lessons include living and working together to create a world and organisation unified by a purpose. It also helped shake the mindset of the global economy as we strived to make the impossible possible. Instead of employees following a fixed schedule, it has transitioned to employees being on-demand as per their choice of time and place. As a result, employees are now free from the office walls - it is limitless, and they can meet the needs of their companies and consumers.

When COVID-19 first hit, I was terrified to leave my home. As the father of three and a husband of 25 years, I felt helpless to protect my family as the narrative changed seemingly day-to-day. I knew fashioning medical masks from scarves was far from ideal, so I made masks for my family, friends, and any elderly customer that wanted one, using my 3D printer and some micron-level cloth filter material intended for residential HVAC systems. Still, I felt like I had no control over what was happening. The CDC reported in 2020 that between June 24 and 30, close to 40% of adults in the U.S. reported at least one adverse mental health concern--including anxiety, depression, substance use, and suicidal ideation, among others. UK-based researchers introduced the term "COVID-19 anxiety syndrome" in Psychiatry Research, noting avoidance, worrying, daily symptom checking, and threat monitoring as key traits.

Stanley Black & Decker is best known as the manufacturer of tools for home improvement projects, but it also makes products the average consumer seldom notices, like fasteners to keep car parts secure and the electronic doors typically used at retail stores. Me, Myself, and AI podcast hosts Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh sat down with Mark Maybury, the company's first chief technology officer, to learn how artificial intelligence factors into this 179-year-old brand's story. As Stanley Black & Decker's CTO, Mark Maybury manages a team across the company's businesses and functions, advises on technological threats and opportunities, and provides access to all elements of the global technology ecosystem. Previously, Maybury spent 27 years at The Mitre Corporation, where he held a variety of strategic technology roles, including vice president of intelligence portfolios and chief security officer. Before joining Mitre, he was an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he also served as chief scientist from 2010 to 2013. Maybury is on the Defense Science Board and the Connecticut Science Center Board and served on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and the Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee for several years. He is a fellow in IEEE and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Maybury has a doctorate degree in AI from Cambridge University. During their conversation, Mark described how categorizing the technology-infused innovation projects he leads across the company into six levels, ranging from incremental improvements to radical innovations, helps Stanley Black & Decker balance its product development portfolio. He also shared some insights for organizations thinking about responsible AI guidelines and discussed how Stanley Black & Decker is increasing its focus on sustainability. If you're enjoying the Me, Myself, and AI podcast, continue the conversation with us on LinkedIn.