Vikram Mahidhar reminds us all that AI is only as good as the humans supervising it and programming it. The biases and artefacts that come out of the processing are reflective of the biases programmed in at the beginning. A program trained to recognise totalled car bodies for insurance purposes, for example, will need close supervision of its decision-making outputs, for regulatory and consumer confidence and acceptance of the decision. There is a call and a growth in a new class of AI--one that is explainable, and that builds trust by providing evidence. Vikram also reminds us that a governance strategy is key to engendering trust in our organisation, processes and people.

The 2019 trend articles are numerous, and AI is one topic of many. What we love is the excitement out there, illustrated by one headline for an article discussing AI and marketing: "What is AI and why is it awesome?" That's fantastic, because it is awesome, and as communication professionals we must get involved in the'awesomeness'. No time to watch and wait, it's time to do our bit in ensuring our organisations can implement AI successfully--for the success of the business, stakeholders, clients and customers and importantly, our employees. While the debate continues on how much technology and AI will affect our everyday lives, AI's lack of creativity when compared to the human mind, and the potential for routine jobs to become redundant, there are plenty of companies moving their AI models from the lab and into production. Yes, the debate will continue, but as an article from PwC in the USA suggests, businesses can't wait for the dust to settle, AI adoption will accelerate in 2019.

Welcome to the Better Communication Results vidcast, edition 112. In today's edition, we find: SAP Analytics Cloud has published a useful intro to AI. Author Ewan Maalerud spells out how artificial intelligence is of value to much of the organisation. Ewan touches on the definition of artificial intelligence, and then of machine learning, and goes into top-level detail about how AI and ML can solve some of the organisation's headaches. Drawing on examples, he talks about cybersecurity, energy costs, healthcare, consumer goods and services, finance, government, and procurement. The call to action is, of course, to sign up for a free trial of SAP's cloud offerings, but nonetheless it's a great overview article and definitely worth sharing with your colleagues who might be wondering what this artificial intelligence stuff is all about.

G'day, I'm Lee Hopkins, and this is bcr vidcast edition 108. Three things to consider today: AI and the pharmaceutical industry; will AI kill off too many jobs? Pharmaceutical companies are adopting an'Us WITH Them' approach to AI. 'Augmented intelligence' is the catchphrase that Pamela Spence uses; Pamela is EY's global sector leader for life sciences. Data is being analysed by algorithms, then suggestions are made to human decision-makers. AI is not making decisions by itself.

Interesting post from We Are Social's Chief Strategy Officer Mobbie Nazir recently. In her post, Mobbie argues that women and diverse minorities should be included in the development of artificial intelligence algorithms, including machine learning. As with many things in this world, women are under-represented in the technology space (I would argue under-represented in any role that is reasonably well paid and certainly at senior manager and above levels). But the development of superior intelligence needs to have more than male voices, be they Anglo-Saxon, Indian or Chinese. I think the fact that the EU is looking very closely at AI, and wanting to be a major player in its development, augers well for the inclusion of normally-excluded voices.

Just a quick video to let you know that Japan has just announced that it is going to make everyone, even primary school students, AI-literate within the next few years. The Japanese government wants primary school children to be as familiar with AI as they are with the 3Rs. Facing a severe skills shortage of technicians, Japan is having to rethink its entire tertiary system and government governance of technical infrastructure, which includes a massive reskilling operation. AI is deemed to be a key plank of Japan's economy in the near future. But skilled AI technicians are in short supply and Japan's immigration policies are being looked at with a view to opening the country up to foreign workers.