I recently had the opportunity to speak at the Leadership Dialogue Series, hosted by RSI on April 29th at the EY offices in Toronto Canada, where three speaker keynotes were delivered. I spoke on ‘The AI Imperative for CEO leadership,’ and I was joined by EY GlobaI Leader of the Advisory AI Trusted Practice, Cathy Cobey, based in Toronto, Canada.

Cathy spoke on how to sustain and shape to fog that enables Trusted AI. We were also joined by Troy Wright, Chief Executive Officer, and Founder of Lendified where he spoke about his personal experiences using AI at the Bank of Nova Scotia and what his firm has learned about these transformative approaches to modernize business.

The forum had about 100 attendees and a rich dialogue ensued, and a high impact report was created of the evening’s discussions. This report is packed with provocative insights from both speakers and attendees as Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most disruptive advances in technology in our lifetime.

However, understanding the ethical issues associated with AI is posing major educational know-how gaps with CEOs.

C-level leaders must learn how to navigate the ethics of artificial intelligence and ensure their organizations develop ethical machine learning systems versus delegating to IT professionals to handle. The upside benefits of AI are very significant. At the same time, if C – Suite leaders lack a sound, ethical approach to artificial intelligence, the implications could be devastating.

Artificial intelligence is now in the Gartner advanced acceleration hype curve, and AI is finding ways into our everyday lives. It’s fueling our digital ads, enabling smarter health apps and even painting and writing music and news articles.

It’s changing how we interact with each other and impacting every industry and line of business. Anything that has structured and unstructured data will fuel the AI brain(s) as they further advance into our everyday everything.

AI’s ability to enable new ways of competing – including transforming business models, together with understanding possible risks and ethical issues – mean that embracing this new technology must be a part of every future-facing CEO’s and senior leadership’s foundational skill.

I predict all future CEO leaders will have advanced degrees in Digital Convergence, and AI expertise. Power of data and knowing how to unlock the intelligence within is fast emerging as the new power play.

What is clear is if you are not immersing to learn rapidly, you and your organization will be left behind. This is the road to the biggest change in the history of mankind where everything will be challenged with AI and quantum computing power.

Read the Trusted AI Report 2019 Here.

About and how to contact the Author: Dr. Cindy Gordon, CEO of SalesChoice – an award winning, AI SaaS and Data Sciences company specializing in cognitive sciences, predictive and prescriptive analytics advancing sales and marketing functional capabilities in AI Guided Selling – can be contacted at marketing@saleschoice.com or drop her a note on her LinkedIn to connect – and, follow SalesChoice Inc at @SalesChoiceinc. Dr. Cindy Gordon is a Board Director of RSI, an organization committed to sustainability and the environment, and helped co-produce and sponsor the Trusted AI Report 2019.