Enhanced customer experience has become a non-negotiable for businesses that want to attract and retain customers. As the world continues to move into the digital space, new communication channels and advanced data platforms have created opportunities for organisations to improve their customers' experience and adapt to new ways of doing business. With more people and businesses moving online, what will 2021 hold when it comes to digital communication? And what can companies do to prepare for what's coming? Businesses are starting to take notice of how easy it is to connect with customers through mobile platforms and apps.

The U.S. has started to catch up to China on the adoption of Artificial Intelligence technology, says AI expert Kai-Fu Lee. When Lee--the chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures--wrote his book AI Superpowers in 2018, he argued that China was faster in implementing and monetizing AI technology. But the U.S. has started to close the gap on adopting and using AI day-to-day Lee said at Wednesday's TIME100 Talks event. "China was way ahead in things like mobile payments, food delivery, robotics for delivery, things like that, but we also saw recently, in the U.S., very quickly peoples' habits were forming about ordering food from home, about use of robotics in various places, in using more mobile technologies, mobile payments," said Lee, who has been at the forefront of AI innovation for over three decades at Apple, Microsoft, Google and today as an investor in Chinese tech startups. The Chinese Communist Party has placed a huge focus in recent years on technological advancement to drive its economic growth.

E-commerce is experiencing continuous evolution and has revolutionized retail industry significantly. This evolution is a vital requirement to meet the changing needs of people and make online shopping easier for them. The industry has seen steady growth in the last couple of years and doesn't look like it is stopping anytime soon. Speaking of its growth in recent years, a study, revealed that global e-commerce sales worth a whopping $3.453 trillion were made in 2019, and projected to even grow to $4.135 trillion in 2020. In 2021, the industry is expected to grow even further to hit the $4.878 trillion mark. At the start of the e-commerce wave, it was fairly limited in its capabilities due to limiting technology.

Long an obsession of science fiction writers, "artificial intelligence" in the modern era of fast-paced technological innovation is a term that is as ubiquitous as it is nebulous. For the payments technology industry, however, the term describes advanced analytical technology that has an outsized potential to improve the payments ecosystem for banks, payments processors, merchants and consumers. In fact, financial services companies will spend US$11 billion on AI in 2020, according to an analysis by IDC -- more than any other industry cited. They'll stand to make a nice return on their investment as well, according to PwC estimates. In North America alone, AI is projected to increase the GDP of the financial and professional services industry as much as 10 percent by 2030, driven by increases in both productivity and consumption.

When 38-year-old Li Bencai, owner of a wool-processing factory in China's Hebei Province, traveled to the pastures of Xinjiang Autonomous Region this summer to buy wool, he borrowed money from online lender MyBank, an offshoot of Alibaba Group Holding. Li borrowed 250,000 yuan ($35,000) of the 1 million yuan he needed to buy 50 tons of wool at an annual interest rate of 12%. Though not cheap, Li says he can still make a profit after he receives payments from apparel and textile companies after shipping the wool this month. The mobile banking units of e-commerce giant Alibaba and internet conglomerate Tencent Holdings are changing the landscape of financial services in China, lending to more than 100 million people so far, including those in rural areas and microbusiness owners. Farmers and microbusinesses -- which employ no more than nine people -- that previously had trouble securing loans from conventional banks are reaching out to Alibaba and Tencent for help.

Artificial intelligence is no longer just in the realm of science fiction. While we have been long promised AI that will enhance our day-to-day lives, the fact is that it is already here and doing just that. Though AI capabilities like that depicted film, television, and video games is still quite a ways off, the AI that does exist improves the world around us nevertheless. AI has been a major driving force in business innovation over the last few years, and while the layman may never know it, AI has already affected their life in some way or another. One way that artificial intelligence and machine learning has an enormous impact on society is through the influence of the credit card industry.

They say that a society thrives only when older generations plant the seeds of trees whose shade they may never enjoy. Through university partnerships and outreach, 4,725 students from 108 nations had completed the program as of year-end 2018. In this post, I talk about why we run the Seeds for the Future program. The current acute shortage of tech talent, especially data scientists and AI experts, is exacerbated by the barriers that prevent many women from fully contributing to the global economy. Together, they are dual bottlenecks hindering ICT development.

Tencent is pushing ahead with efforts to sign up schools to use its all-in-one WeChat app as part of a broader shift by the company to go beyond consumers and serve more institutions. Since WeChat started partnering with public schools and private training centres in 2014, students have been to make purchases at canteens, check test scores and communicate in group chats with their peers, parents and teachers using the app's multiple functions. Tencent revamped its organisation structure on the eve of its 20th anniversary this year to align the company to compete for the industrial internet. In an open letter last month, chairman Pony Ma Huateng laid out the rationale for the restructuring, saying that digitisation of the economy meant the battle for the internet has moved on from consumers to industry. "WeChat Pay has been a tool to connect people, and is now increasingly connecting industries under the company's new direction to embrace the industrial internet."

When Enrico Fermi decided to leave Benito Mussolini's Italy and emigrate to the United States, he changed the global balance of power. After arriving in the US, Fermi led the world's first self-sustaining nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago and played an indispensable role in the Manhattan Project, which led to the end of World War II in the Pacific and laid the groundwork for a new world order and America's prominent role. So it is not surprising that some Americans think the same should be true with AI. Emigrant AI researchers like Geoff Hinton, Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, Andrew Ng, and Fei-Fei Li are the Enrico Fermis of AI and should secure an American (and Canadian) hegemony in AI. Indeed, the US and Canada have 100 percent of the top 10 AI researchers, and 68 percent of the world's best 1,000 or so researchers.

A Hong Kong artificial intelligence lab backed by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding and SenseTime, the world's most valuable AI start-up, has named seven companies that will receive funding under its accelerator programme. The Hong Kong AI and Data Laboratory announced in a ceremony on Thursday that it will provide US$100,000 in seed funding to each of the selected start-ups, who will also be given office space, access to AI resources from Alibaba and SenseTime, and a range of cloud computing services from Alibaba Cloud. "These start-ups not only have innovative technologies and business ideas, but they also offer valuable solutions for different industries and scenarios," Jeff Zhang, the chief technology officer of Alibaba, said at the ceremony. Zhang said it was important to work on the application of AI technologies in different industries. The lab was established in May by the Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund and SenseTime, which became the city's first unicorn – a start-up valued at more than US$1 billion – in July last year.