In 2019, Amazon's facial-recognition technology erroneously identified Duron Harmon of the New England Patriots, Brad Marchand of the Boston Bruins and 25 other New England athletes as criminals when it mistakenly matched the athletes to a database of mugshots. How can artificial intelligence be better, and when will companies and their customers be able to trust it? "The issue of mistrust in AI systems was a major theme at IBM's annual customer and developer conference this year," said Ron Poznansky, who works in IBM design productivity. "To put it bluntly, most people don't trust AI--at least, not enough to put it into production. A 2018 study conducted by The Economist found that 94% of business executives believe that adopting AI is important to solving strategic challenges; however, the MIT Sloan Management Review found in 2018 that only 18% of organizations are true AI'pioneers,' having extensively adopted AI into their offerings and processes. This gap illustrates a very real usability problem that we have in the AI community: People want our technology, but it isn't working for them in its current state."

Waymo claimed last week that its autonomous vehicles are outperforming human drivers. In a report it compiled, between January 2019 and September 2020, the company's fleet of AVs logged 6.1 million miles in Phoenix, Arizona. Sixty-five thousand of those miles were without a safety driver behind the wheel. Waymo says that its fleet was not responsible for a single accident in that entire time. There were 18 minor accidents in which AVs were involved.

The position of Data Scientist is rapidly becoming a highly desired role as financial institutions consider how to implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) projects within their organisations. Identifying the need for a Data Scientist is the easy part of the process, however, the real difficulty is in finding the right Data Scientist with the necessary skill set and knowledge needed to create real business benefits. The high value placed on Data Scientists is a direct result of the unique set of skills and expertise needed to implement and effective AI strategies, allowing them to have a huge influence on the nature and direction of projects. Based on the data that is given to them, it is they who make a judgement on the tools that are used and the characteristics of the investigation that will ultimately lead to the identification and delivery of the business value from AI and ML. Throughout the various stages of the project, Data Scientists have arguably the most important role working alongside the Developers, SME's and Data Engineers in realising the value.