The explosion of transformative technology in recent years is hard to ignore. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is the latest craze, of course, but the metaverse, hyper-personalisation and cloud technologies were making headlines long before that.
While some businesses might be inclined to exercise caution here, rapid deployment and expenditure – $3.4tn (£2.7tn) across all digital transformation technologies by 2026 – will ultimately pile on the pressure, requiring the more hesitant players to dive in as these new technologies increasingly give early adopters a competitive edge.
The problem is that digital transformation has a habit of raising difficult ethical questions. This may yet be addressed through regulation – data privacy issues, for example, have been well served by the GDPR and the yardstick it provides for non-EU jurisdictions – but lawmakers have generally been slow to catch up with the latest innovations. And key trends and their harms, such as employee surveillance and algorithmic biases, aren’t well covered.