In a recent survey, “2021 Thriving in an AI World,” KPMG found that across every industry—manufacturing to technology to retail—the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is increasing year over year. Part of the reason is digital transformation is moving faster, which helps companies start to move exponentially faster. But, as Cliff Justice, US leader for enterprise innovation at KPMG posits, “Covid-19 has accelerated the pace of digital in many ways, across many types of technologies.” Justice continues, “This is where we are starting to experience such a rapid pace of exponential change that it’s very difficult for most people to understand the progress.” But understand it they must because “artificial intelligence is evolving at a very rapid pace.”

Justice challenges us to think about AI in a different way, “more like a relationship with technology, as opposed to a tool that we program,” because he says, “AI is something that evolves and learns and develops the more it gets exposed to humans.” If your business is a laggard in AI adoption, Justice has some cautious encouragement, “[the] AI-centric world is going to accelerate everything digital has to offer.”

Business Lab is hosted by Laurel Ruma, editorial director of Insights, the custom publishing division of MIT Technology Review. The show is a production of MIT Technology Review, with production help from Collective Next.

This podcast episode was produced in association with KPMG.

Show notes and links

“2021 Thriving in an AI World,” KPMG