To succeed in the world of AI, business must collaborate with academia

Pearl Sullivan is dean of engineering at the University of Waterloo. Whether we like it or not, computers are getting smarter. As more and more of us ask Alexa to add bagels to our shopping list or ask Siri to tell us what to wear today, artificial intelligence is permeating our world in increasingly surprising ways. Although we aren't anywhere close to the kind of dystopian futures imagined by Isaac Asimov or in Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror, pressure is mounting on companies to capitalize on the potential of AI to help them change the way they do things. Whether it is tech giants such as Google and Apple, or retailers, taxi firms and factories, every business is eyeing the potential promised by AI to make them leaner, smarter and richer.