Autonomous Transformation

CHAPTER 3Our Inheritance

Humankind is facing some of the greatest existential and social challenges in history.

As science and technology have progressed, problems, or networks of problems, have become increasingly complex. The systems that make up our society have been scaffolded on top of other systems and are bending under the pressures of war, the climate crisis, child labor, racism, social divide, and the societal push to continuously build and stack more and more systems. In 2020, the word “systemic” leapt from the academic world to the international vernacular almost overnight, and no word better describes the interlocking nature of these challenges.

What does that have to do with artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, digital twins/simulations, robotics, and mixed reality?

There has traditionally been an artificial divide between social systems and organizational systems. In the context of that divide, the development and application of these technologies within organizations would have nothing to do with social problems.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, this divide has been shattered by the Information Age. People want to know where their food comes from, how their clothing is made, how energy is delivered to their homes, if their bank has bias in its loan application programs, and so on—and if they do not like the answer, they push for change through purchasing decisions, boycotts, strikes, and seeking policy change.

This means ...