Artificial intelligence (AI): multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research and practice

As far back as the industrial revolution, great leaps in technical innovation succeeded in transforming numerous manual tasks and processes that had been in existence for decades where humans had reached the limits of physical capacity. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers this same transformative potential for the augmentation and potential replacement of human tasks and activities within a wide range of industrial, intellectual and social applications. The pace of change for this new AI technological age is staggering, with new breakthroughs in algorithmic machine learning and autonomous decision making engendering new opportunities for continued innovation. The impact of AI is significant, with industries ranging from: finance, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, supply chain and logistics all set to be disrupted by the onset of AI technologies. The study brings together the collective insight from a number of leading expert contributors to highlight the significant opportunities, challenges and potential research agenda posed by the rapid emergence of AI within a number of domains: technological, business and management, science and technology, government and public sector. The research offers significant and timely insight to AI technology and its impact on the future of industry and society in general

Cracks in the US empire: unilateralism, the “war on terror” and the developing world

In this article the author analyses the rise of the unilateralist imperial project of the George W. Bush administration in the United States and its implications for the developing world. He explains the motivation behind the 'war on terror' and the invasion of Iraq. Contrary to prevailing views, the author suggests that US hegemony rests on a fragile economic base. The expanded European Union now represents an economy of the size of that of the US and it enjoys a healthy position in international trade, while the developing Asian region is also gaining ground. The US has been able to engage in deep deficit spending to finance its 'war on terror' due to the US dollar's position as the international currency of deposit. However the Euro is now challenging the pre-eminence of the dollar. These factors combine to form the objective basis for a challenge to US unilateralism, but Asia's development gap and political division in Europe mean that the only possible challenge in the short-term to the prevailing imperialist posture of the US must come from inside the superpower. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.