He works with our accounts, makes monthly closing, collects information from our invoicing system, ERP and online payments and enters them to the accounting system. "I just hired a guy--his name is Mark II--to process insurance claims. He can also analyze the claims and make decisions. Both of them are obviously effective guys, but there is even something better. He doesn't just handle the routines and processes we had earlier, but we can redesign all our operations not only to save costs but multiply our sales.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to radically shift the way professionals use technology to get work done. With the proper dataset behind it, AI can help alleviate many repetitive and redundant tasks, changing the way humans approach work. While the biggest controversy around AI is its potential to replace jobs, the technology will affect other aspects of the economy in major ways. A recent report from CB Insights highlights some of the key AI trends worth paying attention to in 2018. SEE: IT leader's guide to the future of artificial intelligence (Tech Pro Research) As AI-powered robots and other forms of automation take over repetitive roles, those roles previously held by humans will shift.

Silicon Valley celebrates artificial intelligence and robotics as fields that have the power to improve people's lives, through inventions like driverless cars and robot carers for the elderly. That message isn't getting through to the rest of the country, where more than 70% of Americans express wariness or concern about a world where machines perform many of the tasks done by humans, according to Pew Research. The findings have wide-reaching implications for technology companies working in these fields and indicates the need for greater public hand-holding. "Ordinary Americans are very wary and concerned about the growing trend in automation and place a lot of value in human decision-making," said Aaron Smith, the author of the research, which surveyed more than 4,000 US adults. "They are not incredibly excited about machines taking over those responsibilities."

Artificial intelligence is all over the news, with tech titans arguing over whether it will be a force for good or bad. An equally important question is whether AI will stratify society even more, and create a world of haves and have nots. AI is already impacting multiple industries and will take over many blue collar and white collar jobs in the years to come. The speed and severity with which this happens are what creates the biggest challenges for the US and countries around the world. Add to this the geopolitical implications, recently outlined in an important op ed by Kai Fu Lee, and even weak AI can be seen as a scary thing.

Artificial intelligence is all over the news, with tech titans arguing over whether it will be a force for good or bad. An equally important question is whether AI will stratify society even more, and create a world of haves and have nots. AI is already impacting multiple industries and will take over many blue collar and white collar jobs in the years to come. The speed and severity with which this happens are what creates the biggest challenges for the US and countries around the world. Add to this the geopolitical implications, recently outlined in an important op ed by Kai Fu Lee, and even weak AI can be seen as a scary thing.

With soft, nimble fingers, an arm stretches out to delicately pluck an apple from a shelf and place it gently into a basket. In this special series, Future Now takes a close look at the biggest, most important issues we face in the 21st Century. For two months, we'll bring you insight from leading scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs and influencers to help you make sense of the challenges we face in today's rapidly evolving world. It performs the task again with a bag of limes and again with a pepper, never tiring, never complaining. This is a prototype robotic arm being tested by Ocado, the British online supermarket.

Recently I've been spending time looking at the various initiatives that the accounting software vendors have in terms of applying automation (via artificial intelligence) to their core offerings. While my assessment is that there is little happening in the enterprise space around this topic, in the small- and mid-sized accounting space there is huge amounts of work being done on this. I have seen development from a number of the main players in the space aligned to this automation theme and recently spent some time at Xero's global HQ talking to their own machine learning team. It is hardly surprising that Xero is at the forefront of talking about machine learning -- its CEO, Rod Drury, has been waxing poetic for some time about the company's move to Amazon Web Services and what that move enables in terms of utilizing the higher-level machine learning services that the Amazon cloud offers. But beyond cool functionality being talked about, I've been thinking about what the end result of all this automation will be for the practitioners of note today -- those accountants and bookkeepers who are responsible for the millions and millions of small- and mid-sized businesses' and their accounts.

Several companies are already incorporating robotic processes. For instance, Telefónica's O2 business has automated 15 core business processes such as credit checks and order processing using "software robots" developed by Blue Prism, a U.K.-based automation firm. The robots perform the equivalent workload of nearly 100 full-time employees, according to Blue Prism. Kinson believes that automation may be key to improving economic productivity, which is a measure of output per unit of labor. For instance, the U.K. has struggled to improved productivity in recent years.