Shares in Alphabet, the owner of Google and YouTube, surged after it issued its first ever dividend and revealed that profits had surged in the last quarter. Sundar Pichai, CEO, hailed the transition to artificial intelligence as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" as his company races to integrate the technology across its business. Investors cheered the firm's earnings, and news of a 70bn stock buyback. Google posted 80.5bn in revenue for the first quarter of 2024, up 15% on the same period last year, and reported 1.89 in earnings per share, up from 1.17 – surpassing analysts' expectations on both counts. Shares in Alphabet were up roughly 15% in after-hours trading.

According to a recent McKinsey survey, just under a third of organizations use artificial intelligence for multiple business functions. Scaling AI transformations appears to be the most important challenge in this arena, and based on my experience, the key limiting factor here is that AI projects are typically human-workload intensive, resulting in lengthy and expensive projects. But what if AI could help organizations implementing AI? New technologies and concepts have recently come to the market to help accelerate and improve the AI implementation process. While most of these technologies are still maturing, they have already delivered significant benefits to the organizations that have adopted them. For each of these three steps, I will describe the new concepts available and their impacts.

According to a recent McKinsey survey, just under a third of organizations use artificial intelligence for multiple business functions. Scaling AI transformations appears to be the most important challenge in this arena, and based on my experience, the key limiting factor here is that AI projects are typically human-workload intensive, resulting in lengthy and expensive projects. But what if AI could help organizations implementing AI? New technologies and concepts have recently come to the market to help accelerate and improve the AI implementation process. While most of these technologies are still maturing, they have already delivered significant benefits to the organizations that have adopted them. For each of these three steps, I will describe the new concepts available and their impacts.

Rastogi shared great insights on how companies can empower all individuals by using artificial intelligence and machine learning-powered tools.

On the left-hand side you have automating the mundane; the automation of highly repetitive tasks, such as invoice processing, to which Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is being applied. This is anything done by someone using a keyboard, doing repetitive tasks over and over again such as invoice processing. One of the notable aspects of the market is the massive valuations these companies (Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism & UIPath being the top three) have received, especially given some of them are not startups – the youngest of those three is 14 years old. And there's not a lot of actual AI in there, beyond document understanding using NLP and other technologies but more is coming. But they scratch a current itch and are benefitting from it. On the right-hand side, you have automating the complex, the most notable example of which is autonomous vehicles, such as Alphabet's Waymo and eventually, Tesla.

In recent years, the importance of developing targeted strategies to pursue opportunities in the Asia Pacific – that is, 'Asia Strategies' – has come to the forefront of policy discourse.[1] As noted in global strategy advisor Parag Khanna's bestseller, The Future is Asian, Asia is increasingly becoming more prosperous and confident. For Canada, sustained engagement with this region is now critical to the country's long-term economic prosperity. Propelled by its young population and increase in productivity, Asia is predicted to make up 65 per cent of the world's global middle class by 2030 and it is expected to account for 53 per cent of the world's population and 52 per cent of global GDP by 2050. The need for trade diversification and deeper engagement with Asia is clear, but Canada often falls short of the Asia-specific skills, resources, and, most importantly, strategiesthat are required to take advantage of these opportunities.

The use of AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) will be the disrupting influence changing entire industries throughout the next decade. The use of it is occurring in a wide range of applications from ERP (enterprise resource planning) and manufacturing software to content management, collaboration, and user productivity. Predictions show artificial intelligence and machine learning are being considered by many organizations today. According to the recently updated IDC (Intl. Data Corp.) Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Systems Spending Guide, spending on AI systems will reach $97.9 billion in 2023, more than two and one half times the $37.5 billion that will be spent in 2019.

Artificial intelligence is transforming business and offering significant strategic and practical opportunities, from natural language processing and smart speech to IoT and edge computing. While the technology has become increasingly democratized, allowing businesses of any size to reap the benefits, some companies and innovators are leading the charge -- and they'll be at this year's Transform event in San Francisco on July 10 and 11. Join us to get in the room with them and look over their shoulders at how it's done. They'll offer inspiring and practical takeaways that are crucial to your business. Here's a look at a few of those thought leaders: In an increasingly competitive cloud market, Google is positioning itself as the go-to for everyone from startups to enterprises, with dozens of new AI-powered products and services that are easy to access even for non data scientists.

If a picture tells a thousand words, these are the two jostling foremost in a patient's mind when a radiologist scans their body for a better image of that suspicious lump or mass. But there is so much more a picture can tell us about cancer, particularly if we consider the possibilities of artificial intelligence. In 2017, US scientists announced they had developed an algorithm, or a computerised tool, to identify skin cancers through analysis of photographs. The algorithm scans a photo of a patch of skin to look for common forms of skin cancer, performing on par with board-certified dermatologists in identifying malignant melanomas (the third most common cancer in Australia) and keratinocyte carcinoma. This technology might enable skin cancer detection in country clinics and suburban GPs' offices at the highest accuracy available.

Sankar Krishnan, executive vice-president, banking and capital markets at consultancy Capgemini, says CFOs need to recognise that AI can transform and reimagine both their role and the departments they oversee.