DeAngelisReview

When critics raise the specter of artificial intelligence (AI) systems annihilating humankind, they are referring to artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems (i.e., sentient computers with a will of their own). No such system currently exists (although generative AI systems can sometimes appear spookily self-aware). The truth is that AI systems can be extremely beneficial to businesses, even if they seem boring compared to AGI.

At the height of the pandemic, there were numerous calls for decoupling from China to protect national interests. As supply chain challenges eased and cooler heads prevailed, calls for decoupling decreased, but admonitions to de-risk supply chains increased. De-risking supply chains often means creating shorter ones.

Countless decisions are made every day in every business. It turns out that it matters where those decisions are made. Some decisions should be made on the front lines, while others should be made in decision centers or war rooms.

In a world that is moving towards autonomous vehicles, aircraft, and robots, many pundits predict autonomous digital enterprises are not far behind. According to analysts from Pegasystems, “The autonomous enterprise is an organization which comprehensively applies AI and automation to engagement, servicing, and operations across the organization to operationalize agility and create a business that can become self-optimizing.”

Good decisions begin with good questions. Three of the most important questions businesses should ask require finding causation before reliable answers can be determined. Those question types are: Associational questions (If I see X, what is the probability that I will see Y?); Interventional questions (If I do X, what is the probability that I will see Y?); and Counterfactual questions (What would Y have been, had I done X?) As a result, causal AI, which looks for causation rather than correlation, is essential for growing businesses.

Leaders need to understand what decisions are important, how quickly they must be made, and what the consequences of certain decisions could be. Nevertheless, it’s easy for leaders to be overwhelmed by decision overload. One way to overcome decision overload is to let intelligent systems make routine decisions using the embedded expertise of the company’s best experts.

Although many experts insist that companies must be data-driven, they also point out that collecting data is of little value until it is analyzed for insights. The problem with most data is that it assumes the future will look like the past. That is not always true. The best analysis looks forward as well as backward. It takes current trends into account as well as past performance.

Quantum computers rely on quantum bits (or qubits), which are notoriously fragile. This fragility means that quantum computers are also subject to errors. Fortunately, researchers are working furiously to overcome these challenges. Every breakthrough step brings the goal of a universal, programmable quantum computer a little closer.