When AI platforms are not busy beating us at Go or showing us how to drive cars properly, they are also changing the way that companies spend and track money. Talking with Manish Singh, an EVP at Oversight Systems, I learned how machine learning is both automating financial operations, and transforming the way we mitigate risk. Although Manish and I had fun talking about some of my favorite geeky AI topics (probabilistic thinking and the influence of Thomas Bayes), what you may find really interesting, is our discussion on how clerical jobs in the company of the future will not be simply automated, but elevated into something altogether new with very different skills and outcomes.

Steve Cronan started out as the digital asset manager on the Matrix movies in the early 2000s. The experience inspired him to start a company that helped Hollywood Studios and global brands manage vast amounts of content and digital assets across processes, workflows and global markets. If you watched the latest Avengers movie, you would have seen Cronan’s company, 5thKind in the credits. Catching up in LA, we spoke about the lessons that studios like Marvel can teach other organizations about digital transformation, and how we are just at the beginning of a new renaissance in AI-powered creativity.

For big organizations, the biggest roadblock to transformation is not technology but culture. How do you design an environment conducive to rapid, constant and often disruptive change? Katz Kiely has spend her career working on such questions. She built the world’s first open innovation platform for HP, re-architected the way a UN agency did business and delivered a ground-breaking project with Intel that connected mobiles, big screens and data to change behaviour. We caught up in London to discuss how leaders and companies can adapt to the new algorithmic era.

One of the most interesting and controversial topics today is the potential impact of AI on employment, economics and politics. Calum Chace has written a number of bestselling books on these topics including ‘Surviving AI’ and ‘The Economic Singularity’. We met up in London to talk about the broader social consequences of superintelligence, the merits of a Universal Basic Income, and how the concept of work and employment might radically change in the future.

The platforms and devices provided by Big Tech pervade every aspect of our private and public lives. They promise a more efficient, social and entertaining world, but how far should we trust this new algorithmic oligarchy with our future? Author and futurist Lucie Greene has spent the last few years studying this question for her book, ‘Silicon States’. I caught up with her in New York to discuss what drives these organizations, and what might happen when they move beyond social media and search, to reinventing other sectors like space travel, education, finance or the housing market.