Too big to fail (banks) and too rusty to survive (chartered accountants) 3

“Everything invented in the past 150 years will be reinvented using AI within the next 15 years”

Mr Dean should know: by harnessing AI’s potency his San Francisco-based company has disrupted markets, including healthcare, retail, food and financial trading. “Because of AI we are beginning to see seismic advances in health, transport, banking and many other domains,” he says. “Soon AI will be able to predict a heart attack hours, or even days, before you feel it.

“In addition, we are developing a joint venture which we believe is the world’s first AI hedge fund. It uses evolving algorithms created by humans and optimised by machines for trading. Using historical market data, we train our AI to find signals which would take humans 10,000 years to spot.”

“Artificial intelligence (AI) and a world in which machines threaten humanity’s status quo has been the preserve of science fiction for decades. In the Eighties, Terminator was set in a post-apocalyptic world in which cyborgs rule, RoboCop’s protagonist was part-man, part-machine and Short Circuit toyed with the idea of robots developing human-like minds, with rather more endearing results.

The reality is the bot has bolted. AI is walking and talking among us. In 2016, we use voice-recognition systems, driverless cars are being trialled and robotic hotel receptionist’s work in Japan. The advent of certain technologies – inexpensive high-speed internet, secure cloud storage, mobility solutions and low-cost devices – has allowed the fantastical possibilities of the past to become reality.”

In conclusion, I hope we can all appreciate that there is a clear intersection between the critical issues, which are of profound concern to the International Chamber of Commerce not only in Nigeria but globally i.e. to place sustainability at the heart of operations from staff recruitment to product innovation and environmental management, versus the avalanche of stunning achievements of breakthrough science as well as revolutionary technology.

Almost as a matter of routine, what had hitherto been considered impossible has been rendered possible and demonstrably/incontrovertibly so. “The New Machine Age” (or”The Second Machine Age”) offers no apologies for turning dream into reality.

I am particularly enamoured of the CNN programme on Science and Technology with its memorable (and challenging) slogan: Make; Create and Innovate. I suspect that the pathway to salvation lies beyond merely watching television or listening to lectures. Rather, we must be inspired and galvanised into ACTION.

The worst calamity that can befall business leaders and corporate organisations that are ambushed by indolence, complacency, subversive inertia or lack of vision is to invest in skills, services or products that have been proscribed by regulations or rendered obsolete by science, technology or artificial intelligence. The analogue has been supplanted by the digital economy.