The disparity between digital transformation leaders and laggards stems from a complex web of overlapping factors -- which often speak more to organizational issues than technical difficulties. Considerations in play include corporate history, IT philosophy, the ability to deliver on customer experience and a product vs. project mindset. A particularly important element separating a successful digital business from its competitors is a knack for translating small successes into enterprise-wide benefits. Indeed, overcoming digital transformation challenges at scale is crucial for realizing the promise of technology-infused business models, according to CIOs and industry analysts. Companies playing catch-up in the digital race must first focus on the essentials, such as customer experience, before moving on to more innovative pursuits.

There are a lot of great books being published these days on the subject of artificial intelligence, as human authors attempt to tackle the technical, philosophical, and societal challenges posed by our growing reliance on smart machines. One I have recently enjoyed and also found highly thought-provoking is Radically Human: How New Technology is Transforming Business and Reshaping our Future, by Paul Daugherty. Regular readers of my posts will know that Daugherty is CTO at Accenture, and in fact I recently enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation with him on the topic of the Metaverse Continuum – Accenture's top four tech trend predictions for 2022. While we were together (virtually), I also took the opportunity to talk to him about this latest book. It aims to explain many of the cutting-edge technologies that are revolutionizing business today – from AI to blockchain and the metaverse – but crucially to do it in a way that highlights the roles that humans will have to play if organizations hope to use them to their full potential.

Imagine if doctors, nurses, and health care researchers had the ability to interrogate both the healthy and diseased states of a patient's biology and then use that data to uncover a network of causal relationships between historical, molecular, and other data types to approach treatment or develop the right type of drugs. BERG Health is using this information with a platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to examine disparate sets of data from patient biology and electronic medical records. "Artificial intelligence has the potential to disrupt many industries, but perhaps most importantly is its impact on health care, where the unsolved challenge is getting the right treatments to the right patients by utilizing tremendous amounts of experimental and observational data," says Niven Narain, co-founder, president and CEO of BERG Health. "By comparing individual patient health data to the greater population health data, we can develop prescriptive analytics that can determine what treatments will work best for that patient, while also warning patients of potential side effects." AI is a set of complex algorithms and technologies that enables machines, systems and software to make human-like decisions.

If artificial intelligence takes bias out of the hiring process, will that finally make the hiring process fair for minorities? Not necessarily, said Paul Daugherty, Accenture's chief technology and innovation officer, at Yahoo Finance's All Markets Summit. AI hiring tools connects companies with more diverse, better quality candidates, said Robert Falzon, vice chairman of Prudential Financial, Inc. "Just from a recruiting standpoint, using artificial intelligence to do the screening of individuals instead of that first interview, what we find, frankly, is we get better quality candidates with more diversity when we take the human out of that first equation," Falzon said. While there are potential flaws, AI improves the overall hiring experience, said Falzon. "It's a way in which you can use technology to, frankly, improve the experience for the individuals that are interviewing for the position, and improve the experience of our HR and hiring areas that are stretched in terms of their ability to… spend time on… cultivating the right pipeline of talent," said Falzon.

The workplace is changing, thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence. "AI isn't replacing all the jobs, which is sometimes in the perception that people have," he said at Yahoo Finance's All Markets Summit Thursday in New York City. "What it's doing is creating the opportunity for us to rethink what jobs are." With that, Daugherty highlights several skills that are necessary to stay competitive. "People need to focus on the human skills… like complex problem solving, creativity, social-emotional response, communication," he said.

The workplace is changing, thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence. "AI isn't replacing all the jobs, which is sometimes in the perception that people have," he said at Yahoo Finance's All Markets Summit Thursday in New York City. "What it's doing is creating the opportunity for us to rethink what jobs are." With that, Daugherty highlights several skills that are necessary to stay competitive. "People need to focus on the human skills… like complex problem solving, creativity, social-emotional response, communication," he said.

Clockwise, from top left: Ford Transit, Navya Autonom Shuttle, May Mobility, Navya Autonom Cab, Jaguar iPace, Mercedes Urbanetic, Chevy Cruise AV, Ford Fusion Dominos AV Research, Waymo Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, Volvo 360c. On a recent Friday morning, before fine-tuning the slides he planned to use during a speaking trip to London, Larry Burns took his family's two dogs to the vet. One is a 14-pound Maltipom, the other a larger mixed-breed rescue. Like a lot of people, Burns, who lives in Franklin, didn't know dogs get the flu -- but because of an outbreak in Oakland County, he needed proof of vaccination just for grooming. Although Burns, the former head of General Motors' R&D efforts, admits he was preoccupied with squeezing in the trip to the vet, he was still able to plan how he intended to promote his new memoir, Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car -- And How It Will Reshape Our World, co-written with Christopher Shulgan. Autonomy shares with the reader a personal account of the development of robot vehicles, starting with the GM Autonomy concept car that, in 2002, offered a "skateboard-like platform similar to what underlies today's Tesla models." Batteries or a hydrogen fuel cell filled the platform's inner cavity to provide power for electric drive. In turn, the lightweight body could be easily swapped; any number of variants could be created. Before leaving GM in 2009, Burns worked on another concept vehicle, the "autonomous, shareable, and electric" EN-V.

There isn't much, if any, dispute that artificial intelligence will eliminate certain types of jobs done by humans, but experts here at the Techonomy conference at the Ritz Carlton Nov. 12 said the threat and solutions aren't well understood. "We see AI changing 90 percent of the work people do, and we think most companies are behind in preparing for that," said Paul Daugherty, chief technology and innovation officer at Accenture. Daugherty, who wrote the book, "Human Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI," is far more positive on the benefits of AI than others who say the technology could threaten our very existence. "In the aggregate, about 15 percent of jobs will be completely replaced, but the majority of jobs will be improved," Daugherty said. "We think about AI as collaborative intelligence and the right approach is to take the best of human skills and combine that with technology. But dialog on that has been absent."

Businesses that combine the capabilities of machines and humans together spur innovation, creating job openings such as artificial intelligence (AI) interaction designer, AI innovation strategist, AI personality trainer, and AI safety engineer. These jobs belong to the "missing middle," opportunities for organizations to bring people and machines together, said Paul Daugherty, Accenture's chief technology and innovation officer, during a talk at the Evanston campus's Kellogg Global Hub on October 30. More than 300 students, faculty, and staff listened to the author of the new book, Human Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI. "We're at a point where it's really important to rethink our organizations and rethink the way we do business," Daugherty said. "We have the potential to really be entering an era of increased humanity and increased human potential, and that's why this is an especially important thing to get right as we think about it." Currently, businesses utilizing AI often evaluate how humans can help machines or how machines can help humans work, but Daugherty encourages organizations to think about how to embrace collaboration between humans and machines, rather than viewing them in opposition.

If there's one big thing that might thwart companies' headlong rush to adopt artificial intelligence for their businesses, it's data. AI generally requires lots of data. But it needs to be the right kind of data, in very particular kinds of formats. And it often needs it to be "clean," including only the kind of information it needs and none of what it doesn't. "The biggest challenge most organizations face when they start thinking about AI is their data," said Paul Daugherty, the chief technology and innovation officer of consulting firm Accenture, in an interview earlier this month.