Digital Collaboration and the 21st C.

Technology has emerged as the primary disruptor and value creator across all sectors.

A deepfake was used to create the fake author of the dubious Hunter Biden report. Martin Aspen, allegedly a Swiss security analyst who authored a report about the business activities of Joe Biden's son in China, is a completely fictional persona, disinformation researchers have concluded, according to a report by NBC News. The researchers say the report was part of an elaborate attempt to smear Biden. Among many other indications that Aspen is a fiction, the experts concluded that photos of Aspen that appear on various social media pages were created using deepfake technology, the A.I.-based method that can create fictional faces or graph one person's head onto another's body.

The hype about artificial intelligence is unavoidable. From Beijing to Seattle, companies are investing vast sums into these data-hungry systems in the belief that they will profoundly transform the business landscape. The stories in this special report will deepen your understanding of a technology that may reshape our world.

Companies benefit from optimizing collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence. Five principles can help them do so: Reimagine business processes; embrace experimentation/employee involvement; actively direct AI strategy; responsibly collect data; and redesign work to incorporate AI and cultivate related employee skills. A survey of 1,075 companies in 12 industries found that the more of these principles companies adopted, the better their AI initiatives performed in terms of speed, cost savings, revenues, or other operational measures.

Algorithms using artificial intelligence are discovering unexpected tricks to solve problems that astonish their developers. But it is also raising concerns about our ability to control them.

Which technology trends are most likely to impact your business in the coming years? Trends are waypoints to help anticipate future states in a world where uncertainty looms. The Future Today Institute's annual Tech Trends Report asks you to examine your assumptions, cherished beliefs and expectations for the future using a bolder, more holistic perspective. In the 13th edition of our Tech Trends Report, we forecast the key technology trends that will redefine businesses in the coming years. More importantly, we offer strategic analysis and guidance on those trends and further explore them in future scenarios to help you understand their implications on your organization and industry.

2019 has been a banner year for beauty tech. See what tech-backed cosmetics brands will continue to transform and disrupt the sector in 2020 and beyond.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technology advances commensurate with those of the first, second and third industrial revolutions. These advances are merging the physical, digital and biological worlds in ways that create both huge promise and potential peril. The speed, breadth and depth of this revolution is forcing us to rethink how countries develop, how organisations create value and even what it means to be human. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is about more than just technology-driven change; it is an opportunity to help everyone, including leaders, policy-makers and people from all income groups and nations, to harness converging technologies in order to create an inclusive, human-centred future. The real opportunity is to look beyond technology, and find ways to give the greatest number of people the ability to positively impact their families, organisations and communities.