Five things business leaders should know about machine learning and AI

For Deep Knowledge Ventures, the Hong Kong-based venture firm that added a machine learning algorithm named VITAL to its board in 2014, it was about adding a tool to analyse market data around investment opportunities. For global professional service firms experimenting in this space, machine learning could allow deeper and faster document analysis. And though you may not think you are competing with Silicon Valley salaries for talent, you are if you want great people: a great data scientist can easily be 50 times more valuable than a competent one, which means that both hiring and retaining them can be pricey. As the machine learning ecosystem evolves, companies will find interesting ways to combine in-house industry experience with a range of off-the-shelf tools and open source algorithms to create highly-customised decision-support tools.