Businesses increasingly rely on artificial intelligence (AI) systems to make decisions that can significantly affect individual rights, human safety, and critical business operations. But how do these models derive their conclusions? What data do they use? And can we trust the results? Addressing these questions is the essence of "explainability," and getting it right is becoming essential.

CommentSold, the leading commercial live selling platform that has generated $1.65B in lifetime GMV and shipped 94M products by enabling thousands of retail businesses to unlock sales growth through live selling, announced the launch of Videeo: a best-in-class white-label, live video commerce technology for enterprises. Videeo gives enterprises the ability to deliver engaging, branded live video commerce experiences by easily integrating live selling into an online retailers' existing e-commerce stack. This bolt-on live commerce solution will play a critical role in increasing brand loyalty and customer engagement, while driving increased repeat purchase rate and revenue growth. "As consumer expectations and shopping behaviors continue to evolve, it's proven that retailers that leverage live video commerce continue to experience major success" Research shows at least 47% of consumers want more live video content from the brands they support, and 67% of live stream event viewers become repeat purchasers. It's clear that live selling is gaining momentum: live commerce initiated sales could reach between 10 to 20 percent of e-commerce sales by 2026.

With the hyper-accelerated growth of digitization that arrived in the wake of the pandemic, consumer expectations have also changed radically. Countless industries are now forced to rethink the way they present themselves and their products. The insurance industry is no exception. In the insurance sector, sales and customer success teams are feeling the pressure to deliver user experiences that are faster and more intuitive than ever. Even for processes as mundane as quoting, policymaking and activation, customers now expect transactions to be much simpler from end-to-end.

Artificial intelligence has made noticeable changes to technologies around the world. Perhaps AI's most notable potential, however, is its role in the supply chain industry. AI has changed the supply chain process from reactive to proactive, which creates a larger change in how data-driven processes will operate in the future. The true role of AI in the supply chain is to enhance and augment human intelligence and decision making. That is much different than what some people view as making human intelligence obsolete, according to experts at Supplyframe.

Debjani is the co-founder of ZineOne, which provides the #1 AI-powered personalization platform. She leads the execution of ZineOne's vision and is responsible for the overall company performance. Previously, she was the co-founder of EmPower which was sold to Genpact (NYSE G) and the Worldwide CSO at GCI, a WPP company. She has also worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, ONI systems, Mayan Networks, and AT&T Bell Labs. Ms. Deb has an MBA from MIT and an MS from Stanford University.

Technology has transformed our society. Most of us constantly have smartphones or other mobile devices in our hands – and if not in our hands, then they are never too far away. This obsession with technology, paired with an increased accessibility to it, has resulted in a consumer expectation for digital communications when interacting with any business. As consumer preferences for communication continue to shift toward digital, omnichannel engagement continues to move front and center. Omnichannel, as defined by Hubspot, is a multi-channel sales approach that provides the customer with an integrated customer experience.

Virtual assistants--like Alexa and Siri--have gained traction in the consumer environment and are likely to continue to spur an uptick in voice-activated search and other customer activities, from purchases to providing feedback to seeking service and support. In short, voice technology can aid consumers at many points along the customer journey. "Digital customer care is on a major upswing with the expectation that 85% of customer relationships with an enterprise will be managed without human contact by 2020, according to Gartner," says Chris Bergh, CEO of DataKitchen Inc., a DataOps consultancy and platform provider. "Conversational AI is critical and plays an integral role in improving customer service, reducing agent-assisted service costs, and cutting down on fraud." Unfortunately, consumer expectations may outpace technological reality at this point, challenging both brands and tech vendors to meet those expectations.

It's no secret that I'm incredibly bullish about the current trajectory of the healthcare sector when it comes to all things AI and digital. The ROBO Global Healthcare Technology & Innovation Index (HTEC) was launched in April 2019 to give investors a way to target their exposure directly toward this inevitable growth, and since that time, the strength of the sector has proven to be nothing less than spectacular. Last week, CB Insights delivered its 3Q19 VC funding report, and my bullishness is now officially on fire. If that sounds overly dramatic, just look at the 3Q19 numbers, all according to CB Insights, which demonstrate the huge impact of AI and digital technologies on the healthcare sector. These numbers tell two stories.

Rising consumer expectations on delivery standards have compelled supply chains to react faster and push for digitalization, to ensure transparency across stakeholders and visibility into operations. Though it makes obvious sense to say visibility increases efficiency, the push towards greater operational visibility has remained a difficult task. One of the primary problems that face supply chains is the siloed approach within logistics verticals, which has traditionally reduced fluidity between operations and hampered efficiency. This leads to fragmented visibility, which was cited as the biggest challenge to operations by 84% of chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) in a survey conducted by IBM. However, global supply chains are not easily malleable to technology disruptions.

With consumer expectations constantly being re-shaped by new developments in the market, brand marketers today face the formidable challenge of trying to hit a moving target. How well they are accomplishing that is the subject of a new report, "The Great Divide: Connecting brands to the real needs of today's consumer," based on research from Alliance Data's Analytics & Insights Institute. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research across more than 2,000 consumers and 40 brands, the research identified 31 consumer needs, measured how brands and consumers prioritize those needs, and asked consumers to rate how well those needs are being met. One of the issues the research identified is the difficulty brand marketers face in prioritizing consumer needs. Marketers gave the 31 needs studied an average importance score of 92 percent--everything is equally important.