In fact, according to IDC, global spending on A.I. solutions will continue to see significant corporate investment, achieving revenues of more than $46bn by 2020. Although machine intelligence offers enormous opportunities for businesses, many struggle to find ways to tap into the technology due to lack of knowledge, limited access to required skill sets, insufficient data, and — to be frank — confusion about where to even begin.

In order to better understand how to both learn with intelligent machines and prepare the next generation to work alongside them, I recently met with top leaders — from Harvard University, Nike Innovation Kitchen, BMW Group, and more — at Autodesk’s Ideas Driving Change summit in San Francisco. The key takeaway was clear: the new relationship between humans and machines is already having far-reaching effects on our societies and economies — and these effects will only become more pervasive as time goes on. We concluded that there has to be a shift from thinking of tools as “things,” to thinking of them as collaborators: active participants in creation—co-creative agents. We are entering an era of tools that teach—and learn. In order to help industry and academia respond to this shift, we identified five ways to better prepare individuals to thrive in the age of intelligent machines.

1. Find ways to build trust between human and machine teammates

As we begin to look at machines more as teammates than objects, they will inevitably become more embedded in our lives — a fact that admittedly not everyone is ready to embrace. Trust is a key component of any good collaboration, but in order to build trust between humans and machines, companies will have to create policies and invest in systems that encourage co-creation and co-learning. If tools, products, spaces, and experiences have machine intelligence embedded in them, we should look for ways to build virtuous and ethical cycles of learning between the company, the things it produces, and the people who use them. Learning reciprocity between machines and humans, supported by maximum transparency about how the system works, becomes a key component of success.

2. Education changes in the world of machine intelligence

By harnessing machine intelligence, we can help employees and students learn what they need to know, when they need to know it, in the ways that are best suited for them. AI offers the extraordinary promise of helping each of us co-create custom learning pathways in school and beyond.

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