Why Most Executives Believe Their Companies Aren't Ready for AI

There isn’t much if any dispute that artificial intelligence will eliminate certain types of jobs done by humans, but experts here at the Techonomy conference Nov. 12 said the threat and solutions aren’t well-understood. “We see AI changing 90 percent of the work people do, and we think most companies are behind in preparing for that,” said Paul Daugherty, chief technology and innovation officer at Accenture. “That’s the big challenge ahead of us.” Daugherty, who wrote the book, Human + Machine, Reimagining Work in the Age of AI, is far more positive on the benefits of AI than others who say the technology could threaten our very existence. “In the aggregate, about 15 percent of jobs will be completely replaced, but the majority of jobs will be improved,” said Daugherty. “We think about AI as collaborative intelligence and the right approach is to take the best of human skills and combine that with technology. But dialogue on that has been absent.”