Leaders must understand the impact of the algorithms they build and deploy

THIS isn't a new story - a novel technology disrupts society, bringing with it many benefits but also major risks and costs.

We saw it during the Industrial Revolution, which vastly improved the average living standard, but also led to poor labour conditions and environmental degradation - over a timeline that was difficult to foresee. And here we are, at the dawn of the AI revolution, where the advent of cloud computing and computer processing power, cheap storage, new algorithms, as well as new product and service innovations realises the benefits of a technology - from driverless cars and virtual reality to medical diagnostics and predictive machine maintenance.

In tandem, however, we also see some negative, often unintended consequences of these technologies. They go from the rise of fake news and algorithms that favour the incendiary and divisive over the factual, to major privacy breaches and AI models that discriminate against minority groups or even cost human lives.