If recent television shows are anything to go by, we're a little concerned about the consequences of technological development. Black Mirror projects the negative consequences of social media, while artificial intelligence turns rogue in The 100 and Better Than Us. The potential extinction of the human race is up for grabs in Travellers, and Altered Carbon frets over the separation of human consciousness from the body. And Humans and Westworld see trouble ahead for human-android relations. Narratives like these have a long lineage.

This blog post has been contributed to the Salesforce Blog by one of our Dreamforce '19 Innovator sponsors. Technology is at an inflection point. In this next chapter of digital transformation, companies must reinvent their entire business with data to create a more personal and relevant customer experience. Yet while today's companies are awash with data, unlocking its value requires them to change how they operate and make decisions. That's where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in.

Technology in today's Age of the Customer is simultaneously increasing customer expectations and making service more complex. In the last few years, smarter algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), self-service channels and analytics have exploded, and 56% of global consumers say they have higher expectations for customer service now than they had just one year ago. This wave of innovation is also bringing exciting opportunities for service managers to transform their brand's customer experience. Bluewolf, an IBM Company, predicted that AI will impact customer service in four key areas in 2018. Guiding -- Predictive and machine learning models to instruct next best action with the customer.

As Augmented Intelligence (AI) continues to rapidly progress into prominence across sales, service, and marketing for companies of all sizes, the anticipation that surrounds AI is met with skepticism among healthcare providers who question whether AI will diminish the personal touch of patient care and communication. More specifically, the concern about how AI impacts the patient experience comes with a side-eye towards automation in the call center. However, automation in the service of delivering value-driven and patient-centered care is designed to reinforce–not replace–the human connection between healthcare providers and their patients. Here are three ways AI is treating healthcare customers' paint points in the contact center. Patients expect their healthcare providers to be familiar with their medical record history as well as their record of calls, payments, and messages.

The rapid advance in the relationship between IBM and Salesforce has largely been driven by IBM's acquisition of Bluewolf, one of the earliest and largest of Salesforce's systems integration partners. Corrine Sklar, CMO of Bluewolf, told CRN that the conversation between the CEOs resonated, and the channel also has a huge role to play in presenting artificial intelligence to customers the right way. Even if customers don't ask, "it is our responsibility to bring up those issues," Sklar said. The Russian manipulation of Facebook is a great example, she said. Big tech companies have lots of data, but often don't spot the problems they're not looking for.

Global consulting agency Bluewolf, an IBM Company, has released its sixth-annual The State of Salesforce report that uncovers insights and emerging trends from Sales, Service, Marketing and IT professionals who use Salesforce, the world's #1 CRM platform. Based on insights from more than 1,800 Salesforce customers worldwide, the report found that companies are encouraged by the results of early artificial intelligence (AI) investments: 77 percent of companies already using AI expect to increase their investment over the next 12 months, and 38 percent of Salesforce customers expect to invest in AI within the next year. Bluewolf's report explores how some of the best companies are committed to ongoing innovation with Salesforce. Bluewolf defines the "best" as companies that are embracing the increasing necessity for smarter, faster decision-making and are embedding AI capabilities into Salesforce across their entire organization. Continued AI investment drives impactful customer experiences The C-Suite is placing big bets on AI, with 63 percent of C-level executives surveyed counting on AI to improve the customer experience.

It's safe to say that the next generation of successful businesses will look to Augmented Intelligence (AI) to revolutionize their entire organization. Look no further than IBM and Salesforce's landmark global strategic partnership, which will seamlessly connect IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein to enable new levels of intelligent customer engagement for companies of all sizes. Rather than be isolated to databases, pulled by queries in response to an ask, data is being integrated throughout an organization's business processes–across Service, Sales, Marketing, and IT–turned into actionable and predictive analytics by intelligent customer and employee-facing apps. However, the conversation in today's global market pivots around not how much data an organization captures, but how it leverages that data to get closer to its customers while maintaining scalability across the enterprise. Data intelligence is powering a new kind of business-customer relationship, based on delivering personal, simple, and consistent experiences.

IBM and Salesforce announced a global strategic partnership to deliver joint solutions designed to leverage artificial intelligence and enable companies to make smarter decisions, faster than ever before. With the partnership, IBM Watson, the leading AI platform for business, and Salesforce Einstein, AI that powers a world leading CRM, will seamlessly connect to enable an entirely new level of intelligent customer engagement across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and more. IBM is also strategically investing in its Global Business Services capabilities for Salesforce with a new practice to help clients rapidly deploy the combined IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein capabilities. The partnership will bring new insights from Watson directly into the Salesforce Intelligent Customer Success Platform, combining deep customer insights from Salesforce Einstein with Watson's structured and unstructured data across many sources and industries, including weather, healthcare, financial services, and retail. Together, Watson and Einstein will ingest, reason over, and derive recommendations to accelerate decision making and drive greater customer success.

Take advantage of a new practice created by Bluewolf, an IBM company, to help clients rapidy deploy the combined IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein capabilities. Bluewolf will also develop new industry-specific accelerators to speed up adoption of cognitive applications.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the future for improving customer experience, according to home appliances manufacturer Fisher & Paykel. As a result, the New Zealand-based company is following up its cloud computing overhaul by looking into implementing both AI and self-learning systems to personalise some of its customer touch points, Rudi Khoury, former GM of customer experience and current GM of global sales at Fisher & Paykel, told ZDNet. "We're seeing automatic chatbots through Facebook coming up, AI live agents that are able to respond to 80 percent of enquiries without needing a human. I can see that really taking off in the next five years for sure," Khoury said. Fisher & Paykel has already improved its customer experience by overhauling its IT systems and moving them to the cloud, according to Khoury.