“The lesson here is that business leaders need to be AI-aware,” says Jeff Olson, Head of Applied AI & Analytics for ANZ. “To do this, they must embrace data as the source of wisdom and value for their business. They need to ask better questions and expect more ― don’t ask for another report or spreadsheet, ask ‘Why?’ until you understand the root causes.”

To “beat the robots,” we shall need to join them. Robotic personal assistants will help buy back at least that 15 percent capacity (or more) needed for the skills of tomorrow. And that is nothing to be afraid of.

“With greater visibility of technology-driven initiatives, CIOs have to be better politicians than ever,” says Pring.

Earlier this year the potential for widescale disruption of the electric grid was highlighted, following a nationwide powercut. This vulnerability was caused by the combined complexity of integrating more renewable energy and distributed energy resources (DERs). We need to treat this as a serious wake-up call.

“We have reskilled our employees at scale through every disruptive technology shift to date, be it Mainframe, distributed computing or Internet. While those shifts were driven by single technologies followed by long periods of stability, digital is significantly different. In digital, we see the coming together of multiple technologies such as automation, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, blockchain, additive manufacturing and 3D printing, and we are less likely to see long periods of stability,” says Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, CMD.