The public's trust of governmental budgeting, fiscal management, and reporting is at an all-time low, especially in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, where only four out of ten people in OECD countries expressed confidence in their government. Cases of fraud, bid-rigging, and pay-to-play are never far from the headlines, and have continued to undermine trust in the public servants and elected officials tasked to oversee the complex work of managing government finances. A large portion of this mistrust can be attributed to the struggle that government finance managers and auditors are facing in analyzing the increasing amount of financial data. Current financial control and audit techniques, including legislated audit requirements, are not able to scale to keep pace with the massive data explosion coming from their own accounting, payroll, and expense management systems. One government response to this issue, open data, enables a sense of fiscal transparency with the public but it doesn't replace the rigorous professional analysis required to identify fraud, errors, and omissions in large amounts of data.

Sudheesh Nair, CEO of ThoughtSpot earnestly campaigns for artificial intelligence as a panacea for restoring our humanity - by making us able to do more work. Whether AI is helping a commuter navigate through a city or supporting a doctor's medical diagnosis, it relieves humans from mind-numbing, repetitive and error-prone tasks. This scares some business leaders, who worry AI could make people lazy, feckless and over-dependent. The more utopian minded - me included - see AI improving society and business while individuals get to enjoy happier, more fulfilling lives. Fortunately, this need not launch yet another polarised debate.

Machine learning is changing aspects of our lives from surgery to driving. But the most interesting question to many people is whether artificial intelligence will eventually surpass human understanding and ability to act in the world. Anthropologist Abou Farman argues that this question offers a potential solution to a crucial issue facing modern humanity: the Weberian "disenchantment" of the cosmos. Philosopher and early sociologist Max Weber argued that premodern people understood the world as a place ruled by magical or religious mystery. The triumph of modern science meant that "there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come in to play, but rather one can, in principle, master all things by calculation."