Today technology is inextricably entwined with just about every activity that humans undertake. Techonomy embraces that fact, and seeks as a company to help the world take advantage of it. We cast our lens broadly across business and society in order to highlight and explore the manifold ways in which tech's impact is felt. Techonomy Media hosts conferences and dinners and publishes editorial content, including video journalism. We make our programs accessible to a wide audience because it is impossible to know where leaders will emerge, and because the world increasingly recognizes that, for better or worse, we are all in this together.

From Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg, the titans of tech today have more notoriety than movie stars of yore and, often, the egos to match. But at what point does idolatry--within the culture of tech and beyond it--and internal self-regard get in the way of progress rather than bolster it? This was the subject of Techonomy founder David Kirkpatrick's conversation with Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost at Techonomy 22, which took place November 13-15 at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa. Within moments of welcoming Anagnost to the stage, Kirkpatrick dove right in. "Do you think tech has an ego problem?" "I do," replied Anagnost, who used the phrase "celebrity technologist" to characterize leaders known as much for their personalities as innovations--and who may prioritize image over achievements.

We've reached a point "where AI and machine learning are converging" and it's helping drive operational efficiencies and customer experience (CX) innovation for a wide range of businesses. That's how author and veteran IT expert Tom Davenport began a wide-ranging discussion about the state of AI and automation in the financial services sector at a recent virtual salon with senior industry executives. Another speaker, Rob Krugman, Chief Digital Officer at financial services firm Broadridge, said his firm is "increasingly using AI models to define and select the attributes and information that is important to their customers". The session was hosted by Bill Wright, Head of AI Machine Learning and Edge Innovation for Red Hat. It was moderated by CDX.

In the near future artificial intelligence is going to be as fundamental for business success as cloud is becoming to running a company's information technology. And AI is where cloud was five years ago. People are realizing there's value here, and business leaders see that AI can help them fundamentally change how their company works, how they get work done, and how they serve customers. In a recent survey of 1200 companies, Cognizant and ESI ThoughtLab found that 64% of executives believe AI will be important to the future of their business. For the largest organizations, the figure was a stunning 85 percent!

The European Union has introduced a proposal to regulate the development of AI, with the goal of protecting the rights and well-being of its citizens. The Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) is designed to address certain potentially risky, high-stakes use cases of AI, including biometric surveillance, bank lending, test scoring, criminal justice, and behavior manipulation techniques, among others. The goal of the AIA is to regulate the development of these applications of AI in a way that will foster increased trust in its adoption. Similar to the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the AIA law will apply to anyone selling or providing relevant services to EU citizens. GDPR spearheaded data privacy regulations across the United States and around the world.

If the pandemic has taught the world anything, it's that we are capable of moving much, much faster to make change. By one measure, 42 percent of the workforce in America alone was working from home in June. Now, as we seek to combat COVID-19, 155 vaccines are in development, including 10 vaccines undergoing phase 3 trials; many of these teams are already achieving encouraging results in remarkably short order. Several 1,000-bed hospitals were built in China in just over a week. Doctors are seeing 50 to 175 times the number of patients via telemedicine as they did pre-COVID.

"This is a human problem," said Vivienne Ming, a longtime computer scientist and entrepreneur who calls herself a "professional mad scientist." She was talking about the problem of keeping artificial intelligence ethical. Software that learns or evolves over time while doing tasks–a rough definition of this complex category of technology–is poised to play a greater and greater role in modern society. Techonomy recently brought together a trio of leaders and technologists who are excited by its potential but committed to doing so carefully for a Tech session. These experts all agree that thus far, AI hasn't fulfilled its promise, because it hasn't been designed with sufficient ethical intention. In addition to Ming, we heard from leaders of two major companies that take AI ethics seriously–software giant Salesforce, represented by Paula Goldman, chief ethical and human use officer, and global technology services firm Wipro.

The Tally robot, from Simbe Robotics, helps out in stores so people can be freed from the monotonous task of checking shelves for inventory. Wouldn't it be nice if robots could clean our office, greet clients or put away the groceries at home? But even though we want and often embrace advances that make our lives simpler, the vision of robot as dutiful helper hasn't come to fruition. Robotics has made a big difference in manufacturing, but has failed to make it into our homes and businesses in a meaningful way. It turns out the challenges are plentiful.

One of the problems of the Second Artificial Intelligence (AI) Winter (1987-1993) was that there was not enough data to go around. We did not yet understand the value of "Big Data," and academia was working on models fueled by "Small Data." However, now we have entered the era of "Bigger Data Than We Ever Imagined." We are producing data on the order of exabytes. It is predicted that by 2020 we will use zettabytes.

In the legend, John Henry beat the machine, but died in the process. Humans have been struggling against machines since they were invented. American folk hero John Henry trying valiantly to dig faster than a steam drill really is not that different from the story of cabdrivers striking against Uber. What all of us need to realize, however, is that the winning play in a digital economy is not fighting against robots and artificial intelligence, but using our new tools to improve productivity. In our book, What To Do When Machines Do Everything, we call it "enhancement."