Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements.

It’s easy to get caught up in the newspaper headlines and online media negativity around the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) displacing human jobs across all industries. After all, the potential impact, particularly on repetitive processes and manual tasks, is all too real.

Imagine for a second that there's a really important decision to be made based on heaps of data. Who do you trust will do a better job of dissecting that data and making a decision: humans or artificial intelligence (AI)?

Artificial intelligence is transforming all sectors of the economy, but there’s no reason to fear that robots will replace all human employees. In fact, companies that automate their operations mainly to cut their workforces will see only short-term productivity gains, say the authors. Their research, involving 1,500 firms in a range of industries, shows that the biggest performance improvements come when humans and smart machines work together, enhancing each other’s strengths.

Cognitive technologies are increasingly being used to solve business problems; indeed, many executives believe that AI will substantially transform their companies within three years. But many of the most ambitious AI projects encounter setbacks or fail.

Today markets are being reshaped by a new kind of firm—one in which artificial intelligence runs the show. This cohort includes giants like Google, Facebook, and Alibaba, and growing businesses such as Wayfair and Ocado. Every time we use their services, the same thing happens: Rather than relying on processes run by employees, the value we get is delivered by algorithms. Software is at the core of the enterprise, and humans are moved off to the side.

Artificial intelligence has disrupted every area of our lives — from the curated shopping experiences we’ve come to expect from companies like Amazon and Alibaba to the personalized recommendations that channels like YouTube and Netflix use to market their latest content. But, when it comes to the workplace, in many ways, AI is still in its infancy.

The past decade has brought tremendous advances in an exciting dimension of artificial intelligence—machine learning. This technique for taking data inputs and turning them into predictions has enabled tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to dramatically improve their products. It has also spurred start-ups to launch new products and platforms, sometimes even in competition with Big Tech.