Council Post: Covid-19 Has Accelerated Digital Transformation -- With AI Playing A Key Role

Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses had been on a steady path toward digital transformation to achieve vast improvements in worker productivity, public health and safety, quality of products, services and customer experiences and even to obtain a sustainable planet and a circular economy. The benefits of the next digital era seem almost endless, but the challenges of adopting the technologies that will enable it to transpire -- AI, machine learning and deep learning at the edge (where rapid automation takes place) -- have made businesses pause because it forces great behavioral and structural changes, like new business models, operating procedures, worker skill sets and mindsets. It can even affect cultures. These have been some of the biggest stumbling blocks to reaching the next digital era -- until recently. With our livelihoods at risk, the pandemic has served as a wake-up call to expedite the timeline for digital transformation exponentially.