Age of Invisible Machines

CHAPTER 1Hyperautomation Is Already Here

I don't want to scare you, but this book comes with an ominous warning: the status quo is a death sentence. Most modern organizations are run using systems and strategies that will seem almost comically outdated a few short years from now. That's because the strategic orchestration of technologies described in this book—deep learning, blockchain and code-free development tools—will do a lot more than disrupt the ways we're accustomed to dealing with technology; that strategic orchestration will obliterate existing models.

We're living in an era when technology moves in exponential leaps and bounds, every day growing more powerful, more pervasive, and more sophisticated. It's no coincidence that 90% of all the data in existence was created over the past two years[1], but in many ways this wealth of information represents a failure. To say it's being poorly leveraged is a bit of an understatement, but all of this is about to change.

The technologies surrounding conversational AI are heading toward a point of convergence that will fundamentally alter our relationship with machines. Already, the experiences customers and employees have with businesses are being reshaped by the hallmarks of this convergence—putting those massive stores of data into action in ways that have upended entire industries. This might sound hyperbolic—especially given the substandard chatbot experiences endemic to much of the automation happening in the world at ...