Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of the former Sun Microsystems and a longtime technology entrepreneur, venture capitalist and IT sage, makes billions of dollars betting on new technologies. Khosla shared some of his technology and investment thoughts at a recent tech conference about the future of AI in business, AI chip design and quantum computing -- and even gave some advice to AI developers and companies about how they can successfully navigate the tumultuous times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Khosla gave his remarks at an "Ask Me Anything" Industry Luminary Keynote at the virtual AI Hardware Summit earlier in October. The Q&A was hosted by Rene Haas, the president of Arm's IP products group, and a former executive with AI chipmaker Nvidia. Khosla, who is ranked #353 on the Forbes 400 2020 list, has a net worth today of $2.6 billion, largely earned through his investment successes in the tech field. He founded his VC firm, Khosla Ventures, in 2004. Rene Haas: What has been the most significant technological advancement in AI in the last year or two?

Once upon a time, Japan was widely expected to eclipse the United States as the technological leader of the world. In 1988, the New York Times reporter David Sanger described a group of U.S. computer science experts, meeting to discuss Japan's technological progress. When the group assessed the new generation of computers coming out of Japan, Sanger wrote, "any illusions that America had maintained its wide lead evaporated." Replace "computers" with "artificial intelligence," and "Japan" with "China," and the article could have been written today. In AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, which unsurprisingly became an instant bestseller, former Google China President Kai-Fu Lee argues that China's unparalleled trove of data, culture of copying, and strong government commitment to artificial intelligence give it a major leg up against the United States.

If you went to bed last night as an industrial company, you're going to wake up this morning as a software and analytics company.

How Does Radical Innovation Come About? Last year, in researching my upcoming book, THE NEW SCIENCE OF RADICAL INNOVATION, I interviewed several executives from successful tech companies and discovered that they share a signature pattern in how they manage their organizations. I told one of those I interviewed, in watching the historic Go match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, I had been struck by how the artificial intelligence (AI) seemed to use the same principles many of these successful Silicon Valley tech giants were using to induce innovation--self-organization, simple rules, a generalist approach, diversity of input, speed of execution, and profuse experimentation (I gave a TEDx talk on this topic and wrote an article about it). I asked him if his company implemented these principles by design or coincidence. His reply was that it was not by design. However, "we very much preach focusing on data, and we try to make sure that people don't have inherent biases in their decision-making.

About half of jobs in the U.S. are at risk of being automated (paywall), even including coveted Wall Street jobs that pay over $200,000 a year. This rise is mainly a result of two mega trends: artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, and the rising emphasis on participatory leadership, flat organizational structure, and empowerment of those who are closest to the action. Even if your job is not directly replaceable by AI, it is inevitable that an increasing proportion of the workforce will become "knowledge workers," who focus on non-routine problem solving and creative thinking. Your value-add (and your ability to keep your job) as a leader will be determined by how much your organization contributes to the creative, new output. So how will you prepare for the upcoming era of the knowledge economy?