Thomas H. Davenport Quotes

to frame the decision, asking questions about the data and the methodology, working to understand the results, and using them to improve outcomes for your organization.

UPS are replacing fixed daily routes with dynamic ones adjusted in real time for weather and traffic — again with machine learning. Only cognitive technologies can handle all the necessary data. And at some point supply chains may be powered by autonomously driven trucks, which will bring enormous changes to that domain.

The moment a realm of intellectual activity is codifiable, it ceases to be uniquely human.

Another AI-oriented company that has established several ecosystems — also in partnership with Palantir, in which it has made a substantial investment — is SOMPO Holdings, a large insurance and elder care company based in Japan. SOMPO

Attention is focused mental engagement on a particular item of business. Items come into our awareness, we attend to a particular item, and then we decide whether to act.

We believe that every large organization — and certainly those that are or aspire to be AI first — should designate smart people to follow AI technology trends, try out new technologies, and import them when they seem to fit the organization’s needs. These people don’t need to be fantastic data scientists or AI engineers, but they do need to understand the key technologies in AI and how they support use cases and business needs.

Similarly, one of the most popular HR tools at GE Digital — an early adopter of AI for manufacturing applications — shows workers which jobs in the company are natural next steps from the ones they have now.12 Employees can look privately at the tool to see possible paths they can follow, skills they may need to acquire, or even positions that are open. This helps employees feel that they have more opportunities and that they have more control over their positions in the company.

One large US bank, for example — an aggressive adopter of AI — has announced a $350 million investment in reskilling related to AI-related job changes, and the bank is being both predictive and granular about the initiative.10 It’s working with researchers from MIT and elsewhere to understand — based on a “suitability for machine learning” (SML) assessment — which skills and jobs are most likely to be replaced by AI.11 The SML analysis will help the bank plan for changes in those jobs and help workers gain the skills they need to succeed in their modified jobs or transition to new ones.

One other problem is that too many people — and vendors in particular — are already using big data to mean any use of analytics, or in extreme cases even reporting and conventional business intelligence.

That was one of the reasons why Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center decided to work with Watson — to make widely available the level of knowledge of the hospital’s best oncologists to the world at large.

Every decade or so, the business world invents another term for how it extracts managerial and decision-making value from computerized data. In the 1970s the favored term was “decision support systems,” accurately reflecting the importance of a decision-centered approach to data analysis. In the early 80s, “executive information systems” was the preferred nomenclature, which addressed the use of these systems by senior managers. Later in that decade, emphasis shifted to the more technical-sounding “online analytical processing,” or OLAP. The 90s saw the rise of “business intelligence” as a descriptor. In the middle of 2000’s first decade, “analytics” began to come into favor, at least for the more statistical and mathematical forms of data analysis.

In Europe, a consortium of microelectronics companies, the Euro Pact for Skills, is devoting €2 billion to train current and future employees on electronic components and systems.

We refer to these companies’ all-in approaches in multiple ways — “AI fueled,” “AI powered,” “AI enabled,” etc. The common thread is that they are at the far end of the scale in their spending, planning, strategizing, implementing, and changing with regard to AI technology.

Peter Drucker wasn’t exaggerating when he noted that the fate of advanced economies depends on making knowledge workers more productive. There is no business or economic issue that is more important to our long-term competitiveness and standard of living.

Since Rosenthal came up with the recommendation idea, Morgan Stanley has been working on a next-best-action (NBA) system to provide its advisors with financial insights to present to clients.