When algorithms rule: 5 priorities for leaders in the AI age

Just as the industrial age was heralded by a new type of industrial firm, so too the age of artificial intelligence is defined by the emergence of a new kind of company, says Marco Iansiti, Harvard Business School professor and co-director of the school's Digital Initiative. In the recently released book, "Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World," he and co-author Karim R. Lakhani paint a picture of the digital firms that dominate this disruptive era, marked by both outsized risks and rewards. AI enables the massive, scale, scope, and learning potential that opens up a wealth of new opportunities for the digital enterprise, Iansiti says, but the possible downsides – from privacy concerns to algorithmic bias to wealth inequality – are equally enormous. That's why the age of AI demands a new kind of leadership, Iansiti says. Some time-honored assumptions simply no longer apply.