How should businesses kick off their AI initiatives? Time for the AI advice column - your doctors are in

Once upon a time, from an office not so far away, Brian Sommer and Jon Reed received a letter like this (pictured right - full size version at end of piece).

"Get on with your transformation!" Go "AI first!" Well, it's not that simple.

When something is so new, evolving rapidly and has the potential to do both great and/or harmful things, the smart play is to approach the matter with one’s eyes wide open while also possessing great research, a rollout plan, a great risk assessment, and, a contingency plan.

Right now, the AI world is long on exhortation - but short on guidance.

Here’s our guidance on how firms should approach AI today:

So, what should companies do?

AI can impact different firms in very different ways. Interestingly, size matters a lot right now as smaller firms generally lack the highly skilled personnel (e.g., data ...