An invigorating, thought-provoking, and positive look at the rise of automation that explores how professionals across industries can find sustainable careers in the near future.

Nearly half of all working Americans could risk losing their jobs because of technology. It’s not only blue-collar jobs at stake. Millions of educated knowledge workers—writers, paralegals, assistants, medical technicians—are threatened by accelerating advances in artificial intelligence.

The industrial revolution shifted workers from farms to factories. In the first era of automation, machines relieved humans of manually exhausting work. Today, Era Two of automation continues to wash across the entire services-based economy that has replaced jobs in agriculture and manufacturing. Era Three, and the rise of AI, is dawning. Smart computers are demonstrating they are capable of making better decisions than humans. Brilliant technologies can now decide, learn, predict, and even comprehend much faster and more accurately than the human brain, and their progress is accelerating. Where will this leave lawyers, nurses, teachers, and editors?

In Only Humans Need Apply, Thomas Hayes Davenport and Julia Kirby reframe the conversation about automation, arguing that the future of increased productivity and business success isn’t either human or machine. It’s both. The key is augmentation, utilizing technology to help humans work better, smarter, and faster. Instead of viewing these machines as competitive interlopers, we can see them as partners and collaborators in creative problem solving as we move into the next era. The choice is ours.

A fascinating look at the trailblazing companies using artificial intelligence to create new competitive advantage, from the author of the business classic, Competing on Analytics, and the head of Deloitte's US AI practice.

Though most organizations are placing modest bets on artificial intelligence, there is a world-class group of companies that are going all-in on the technology and radically transforming their products, processes, strategies, customer relationships, and cultures.

Though these organizations represent less than 1 percent of large companies, they are all high performers in their industries. They have better business models, make better decisions, have better relationships with their customers, offer better products and services, and command higher prices.

Written by bestselling author Tom Davenport and Deloitte's Nitin Mittal, All-In on AI looks at artificial intelligence at its cutting edge from the viewpoint of established companies like Anthem, Ping An, Airbus, and Capital One.

Filled with insights, strategies, and best practices, All-In on AI also provides leaders and their teams with the information they need to help their own companies take AI to the next level.

If you're curious about the next phase in the implementation of artificial intelligence within companies, or if you're looking to adopt this powerful technology in a more robust way yourself, All-In on AI will give you a rare inside look at what the leading adopters are doing, while providing you with the tools to put AI at the core of everything you do.

In The AI Advantage, Thomas Davenport offers a guide to using artificial intelligence in business. He describes what technologies are available and how companies can use them for business benefits and competitive advantage. He cuts through the hype of the AI craze—remember when it seemed plausible that IBM's Watson could cure cancer?—to explain how businesses can put artificial intelligence to work now, in the real world. His key recommendation: don't go for the “moonshot” (curing cancer, or synthesizing all investment knowledge); look for the “low-hanging fruit” to make your company more efficient.

Davenport explains that the business value AI offers is solid rather than sexy or splashy. AI will improve products and processes and make decisions better informed—important but largely invisible tasks. AI technologies won't replace human workers but augment their capabilities, with smart machines to work alongside smart people. AI can automate structured and repetitive work; provide extensive analysis of data through machine learning (“analytics on steroids”), and engage with customers and employees via chatbots and intelligent agents. Companies should experiment with these technologies and develop their own expertise.

Davenport describes the major AI technologies and explains how they are being used, reports on the AI work done by large commercial enterprises like Amazon and Google, and outlines strategies and steps to becoming a cognitive corporation. This book provides an invaluable guide to the real-world future of business AI.

A book in the Management on the Cutting Edge series, published in cooperation with MIT Sloan Management Review.

The New Edition of a Business Classic

This landmark work, the first to introduce business leaders to analytics, reveals how analytics are rewriting the rules of competition.

Updated with fresh content, Competing on Analytics provides the road map for becoming an analytical competitor, showing readers how to create new strategies for their organizations based on sophisticated analytics. Introducing a five-stage model of analytical competition, Davenport and Harris describe the typical behaviors, capabilities, and challenges of each stage. They explain how to assess your company’s capabilities and guide it toward the highest level of competition. With equal emphasis on two key resources, human and technological, this book reveals how even the most highly analytical companies can up their game.

With an emphasis on predictive, prescriptive, and autonomous analytics for marketing, supply chain, finance, M&A, operations, R&D, and HR, the book contains numerous new examples from different industries and business functions, such as Disney’s vacation experience, Google’s HR, UPS’s logistics, the Chicago Cubs’ training methods, and Firewire Surfboards’ customization. Additional new topics and research include:

• Data scientists and what they do
• Big data and the changes it has wrought
• Hadoop and other open-source software for managing and analyzing data
• Data products—new products and services based on data and analytics
• Machine learning and other AI technologies
• The Internet of Things and its implications
• New computing architectures, including cloud computing
• Embedding analytics within operational systems
• Visual analytics

The business classic that turned a generation of leaders into analytical competitors, Competing on Analytics is the definitive guide for transforming your company’s fortunes in the age of analytics and big data.