It’s about time to connect a few concepts that until recently been somewhat disconnected: automation and machine learning. The power of connecting these two concepts is vast and represents huge areas of growth for people and businesses alike.

Automation isn’t new. In fact, the concept of using automated tools, robotics, and more recently software to make routine tasks easily reproducible (think assembly line manufacturing or compiling code for application development) has been around for decades. Automation has led to great progress in the efficiency in which companies can build cars, apps and other tools that we use on a daily basis.

Now comes the promise of connecting automation with machine learning—systems capable of learning without the need to be constantly programmed—and it’s fascinating. In a post by The Guardian this week, author Alex Hern noted that the world is “quietly being reshaped by machine learning.”

Companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM along with countless others are hard at work to apply machine learning to cognitive tasks like image recognition in healthcare, or the design of websites based on the content you add to them.

Of course, the central component to the future is data, but I’m guessing you knew that already. These are just a few examples of the amazing things that Automation + AI promise to deliver. How this powerful combination will impact the way you manage and deliver your projects in the future is something we’re eager to think about. Read on for more!

• Automation and Anxiety – The Economist
• Can Automation Enable the ‘Flexible Economy’? – Information-age.com
• Why Even the C-Suite Might Not Be Safe From Automation – Fastcompany.com
• The Automation of Design – Techcrunch.com
• Google Says Machine Learning Is the Future. So I Tried It Myself – The Guardian

Bonus Story! The most-read blog post of the week:

• Why Does Probabilistic Estimation Reduce Uncertainty?

Like what you read? Have suggestions? Let us know in the comments.