Research in the field of machine learning and AI, now a key technology in practically every industry and company, is far too voluminous for anyone to read it all. This column aims to collect some of the most relevant recent discoveries and papers -- particularly in, but not limited to, artificial intelligence -- and explain why they matter. This week in AI, scientists conducted a fascinating experiment to predict how "market-driven" platforms like food delivery and ride-hailing businesses affect the overall economy when they're optimized for different objectives, like maximizing revenue. Elsewhere, demonstrating the versatility of AI, a team hailing from ETH Zurich developed a system that can read tree heights from satellite images, while a separate group of researchers tested a system to predict a startup's success from public web data. The market-driven platform work builds on Salesforce's AI Economist, an open source research environment for understanding how AI could improve economic policy.

Finland is the first country having released its AI strategy in Europe already in March 2017. According to a study committed by Accenture and Frontier Economics, Finland ranked second that year, after the US, among the 11 developed countries in which economic growth potential is made possible by AI. According to Finland, this is because of the country's business structure (technologically intensive) and the public sector degree of digitalisation (see Finland, 2017, p. 12). The national strategy has been commissioned by the Government of Juha Sipilä to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, which in turn has nominated a steering group on AI to work on the national strategy. The AI Working Group has released the first draft of the strategy in 2017, though the work on the optimum public policies to be implemented is actually an on-going process, which has already been updated in 2019.

The promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a concept taken from science fiction. Businesses around the world are taking advantage of AI and automation, moving the enterprise right at the center of digital business transformation. Similarly, Government AI is not just a trend but a response from governments around the globe to the current state of Artificial Intelligence evolution, societal implications, enterprise disruption, and industry adoption. National Artificial Intelligence strategies are a response to the need that urges governments to remain in sync with strategic technology trends that have been emerging in recent years, technology trends that are shaping the way we live, socialize, work, and educate the future generations. Despite being a small nation of 5.5 million inhabitants, geographically located far up in the Nordics, bordering with the Polar Arctic Circle, Finland's citizens are internationally renowned for being early adopters of new technologies.

Reforming the digital economy so that it serves collective ends is the defining economic challenge of our time. The use and abuse of data by Facebook and other tech companies are finally garnering the official attention they deserve. With personal data becoming the world's most valuable commodity, will users be the platform economy's masters or its slaves? Prospects for democratising the platform economy remain dim. Algorithms are developing in ways that allow companies to profit from our past, present and future behaviour--or what Shoshana Zuboff of Harvard Business School describes as our'behavioural surplus'.

In 2011, when Marc Andreessen wrote "Software is eating the world", it was a pretty provocative statement. Now, most people accept it as truth. Indeed, beyond Silicon Valley, and in sectors ranging from automotive to healthcare to financial services, companies are evolving their businesses to mirror the digital age. The latest wave of innovation, however, is challenging businesses to not just consider who they are but also what they do and how they operate. I'm talking about the platform economy – an era defined by fundamental changes to existing business models.

I and the team at Platform Design Toolkit are pleasured to work often with amazing customers involved first hand in digital transformation, helping them to make sense of the major opportunities of the platform age. We've tried to help answer the question: "where does the opportunity lie in the platform economy? What's the work that needs to be done?". In this short post give you a possible interpretation of the changes and the work required to properly cope with the new opportunities that arise in this context. Are you working as a system integrator?

When discussing ways of ensuring European competitiveness in the age of artificial intelligence, we often talk about encouraging and incentivizing existing European companies to start utilizing artificial intelligence. This is very important challenge to tackle for Europe to remain competitive and an issue that has spurred a variety of activities in Finland as well. AI can be a significant competitive advantage for companies that adopt it early, take AI to the core of their business and commit to it. While AI can deliver great results in terms of e.g. In many sectors, small businesses can challenge large traditional companies using new types of artificial intelligence solutions. These solutions not only improve the quality of services and reduce costs but also create completely new industries and services.

Last summer I wrote about Forum for the Future's report "Future of Health and Wellbeing in the Workplace." The topic of the Future of Work is getting a lot of coverage. My interest lies in how the Future of Work applies to sustainability. In March, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business' Center for Responsible Business will hold a "Future of Work" conference lead by Faris Natour, principal and co-founder of Article One Advisors and leader of the Center's Human Rights and Business Initiative. I spoke with him about how sustainability practitioners can create strategies and partnerships that minimize the risks and maximize the positive impacts of these changes.

John Zysman (Zysman.john@gmail.com) is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, cofounder of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, and convener of the Berkeley Project Work in an Era of Intelligent Tools and Systems. Martin Kenney (mfkenney@ucdavis.edu) is Distinguished Professor of Human and Community Development at the University of California, Davis, and Senior Project Director at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy; he is also an Affiliated Faculty at Instituto di Management at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy.

System integrator Avanade is embracing artificial intelligence (AI) in 2017, and it believes that you should be too. In its Technology Vision 2017, Avanade took a look at an increasingly over-saturated mobile market and turned its gaze towards the next big thing: AI. Over the next three years, the company believes that we are just beginning to see the digital disruption that will be powered by an increase in AI and automation technology. CDN met with Avanade Canada's general manager, Jeff Gilchrist, and technology innovation adviser, Bruno Capuano, to talk more about vision for 2017. The two made sure to emphasize that Avanade is getting ready for what they've penned as the AI-first world.