MIT Sloan Management Review and BCG have assembled an international panel of AI experts that includes academics and practitioners to help us gain insights into how responsible artificial intelligence (RAI) is being implemented in organizations worldwide. This month's question for our panelists: Should RAI be a top management agenda item at organizations across industries and geographies?1 Eighty-six percent of them (18 out of 21) agree or strongly agree that it should be. In aggregate, their replies offer a compelling rationale for top management to oversee RAI efforts. We distill and explain this rationale below. We also conducted a global survey of more than 1,000 executives that generated similar findings: Eighty-two percent of managers in companies with at least $100 million in annual revenues agree or strongly agree that RAI should be part of their company's top management agenda.

By now, the story is well told on how artificial intelligence is changing businesses, all the way down to impacting core business models. In 2017, Amazon bought Whole Foods then later opened their Amazon Go automated store. Since then, they've been using AI to understand and improve the physical retail shopping experience. In 2018, Keller Williams announced a pivot towards becoming an artificial intelligence-driven technology company to compete with the tech-centric entrants into the market like Zillow and Redfin. These companies are not alone.

What is culture eating today, let's find out if it is going to be AI self-driving cars. As many headlines will ostensibly tell you, culture is apparently quite hungry and always eating someone's breakfast, lunch, or dinner. That's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek commentary, but the expression that culture is eating something comes up quite a bit. The general emphasis is that culture will tend to intercede in whatever the matter consists of. Furthermore, culture will rule the day when it comes to whether the matter of focus will succeed or falter. I'd dare say that this is a kind of viral saying that rolls off the tongue and enchants the imagination. We are dutifully fascinated when told that one thing can overtake another.

Artificial Intelligence is necessitating changing organizational structures and the creation of new roles, just as the internet did post-Netscape. The first International Conference on the World Wide Web at CERN outside Geneva Switzerland in May 1994 is commonly recognized as the birthplace of the commercial internet. How business is conducted and who conducts business was forever changed. The internet spawned new businesses, new business models, new ways of doing business and so much more. All of which, over time, required companies to reorganize existing departments, create new internal organizations, invent new roles with people with new skill sets.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning offer new ways to boost productivity, develop talent, and drive organizational change by enhancing managers' ability to make the right calls in complex situations. Augmented intelligence tools have already made an impact for many companies, but the next revolution will happen when every aspect of a business, from top to bottom, is designed with AI in mind. Call this new construct the intelligent enterprise. Like other major revolutions in management, it's poised to transform industries and organizations for decades to come. To prepare for this next phase, leaders will need to harness machine intelligence for decision-making across the business, assemble the right talent, and recognize the benefits and limitations of AI to shape organizational strategy.

In the wake of this generation's digital transformation, machine learning and the greater promise of artificial intelligence creates wonder in people's minds and effervescence within organizations. And the attraction to the field is justified: troves of process improvements are announced every day, every new tech startup has an AI play, and even governments are announcing their unique strategies to keep up. The promise of fortunes to come is enough to give vertigo to the most grounded leaders. The break-neck speeds of innovation in AI means that new software ideas can be committed, checked out, trialed, inspected, verified and deployed within a few days. New features go step-by-step with continuous development cycles; new ideas with sudden business opportunities.

What is an AI strategist? It's an interesting question, particularly in the context of how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the business world and revolutionizing how companies sell products and services. Here's some of what we've heard "on the street" from tech experts and industry professionals close to AI design. In some ways, an AI strategist is a lot like other roles that follow a particular process from beginning to end, from cradle to grave, or more accurately -- from prototype to reality. But that comparison is only skin deep.

After several decades of progress, AI technology is now poised to become a significant source of value for a wide range of businesses. In the 2019 MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Artificial Intelligence Global Executive Study and Research Report, 9 out of 10 respondents agree that AI represents a business opportunity for their company. In addition, a growing number of leaders view AI as not just an opportunity but also a strategic risk: "What if competitors, particularly unencumbered new entrants, figure out AI before we do?" In 2019, 45% perceived some risk from AI, up from an already substantial 37% in 2017. This shift suggests an increasing awareness of and concern with competitors' use of AI.

The average corporate strategy team allocates 26% of its time and $220,000 of the annual budget to investigate emerging trends. But with so many competing sources, strategy teams struggle to keep up and much of that time and money is wasted. Gartner's artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities scanned 100 publications respected by strategy leaders to identify the most frequently mentioned emerging trends. Our report helps strategy leaders make sense of the hype surrounding these technology trends and jump-start their market research and trend-sensing initiatives.

AI can be very strategic. Automation, from robotic process automation to artificial intelligence, is transforming every function of every business in every industry. In fact, according to research from PWC, AI's impact on business will be greater than the internet. The potential applications are limitless, from individualized customer marketing, to employee screening and selection, to smarter products that collect data, to automated customer support. AI has begun to change organizational processes on a scale that the re-engineering movement of thirty years ago could only imagine.