Jerry Levine is Chief Evangelist & General Counsel at ContractPodAi. He helps guide global client success and shape overall product vision. It was 25 years ago when IBM's artificial intelligence system, Deep Blue, defeated Garry Kasparov in a six-game rematch of chess. But this competition did not reveal AI to be smarter than its human opponent, who was at the time the reigning world champion; Deep Blue's success demonstrated that we, humans, could program AI to perform functions we cannot do quickly on our own--analyzing vast amounts of data and processing any number of natural languages, just to name a couple of functions. Today, AI continues to attract more attention and interest than most other innovations, including when it comes to nonfungible tokens (NFTS).

Last year, 2020 was heralded as the exciting start of the century's third decade. Today, its conclusion can't come fast enough for most entrepreneurs. In fact, they've altered life for the foreseeable future, and that's not all bad for businesses. Case in point: Teleconferencing -- predicted long ago by Bill Gates -- has risen as an acceptable alternative to professional meetings and casual hangouts. And who could deny that many employees and companies are now seeing remote work with fresh eyes?

Rather than posing any sort of "threat", the digital transformation brings immense opportunities for boosting transparency, organisational efficiency and implementing rigorous monitoring processes. Technology is revolutionising businesses, and the FMCG sector is no exception. The rise of artificial intelligence, data analytics, the Internet of Things and blockchain all have huge implications for supply chain management, business-to-business transactions and even marketing programmes. There can be a tendency to fear technological change; media headlines tend to be dominated by fears over robots taking all the jobs. However, the digital transformation should be considered an opportunity, especially when it comes to the consumer goods sector and food safety.

Amazon's Alexa just got a new job. In addition to her other 15,000 skills like playing music and telling knock-knock jokes, she can now also answer economic questions for clients of the Swiss global financial services company, UBS Group AG. According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a new partnership between UBS Wealth Management and Amazon allows some of UBS's European wealth-management clients to ask Alexa certain financial and economic questions. Alexa will then answer their queries with the information provided by UBS's chief investment office without even having to pick up the phone or visit a website. And this is likely just Alexa's first step into offering business services.

BlackRock Inc., the $5 trillion money manager, announced last month that it would be overhauling its actively managed equities business, increasingly betting on computers rather than humans to make investment decisions. This move sent shudders through the financial services industry that has long relied on people to help others with their asset allocation decisions. For all industry observers, it is the next nail in the coffin of actively managed accounts, as technology disrupts the age old financial services business model. The question that corporate consultants must now ask is: "Are we next? What we value and how we value our businesses have remained relatively constant for hundreds of years.