TIME IS NOW

A view of the current and future roles of AI in the workplace.

In his nonfiction debut, Verma reminds readers that we are now squarely launched into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in which an increasing number of companies are driven by artificial intelligence—or are on the cusp of becoming fodder for AI themselves. (He cites the example of the bookselling chain Borders essentially selling its electronic soul to Amazon.) In this data-driven new reality, Verma maintains, the key to understanding the past and grappling with the future is what he calls “the discovery of Now,” which rests on three pillars: Information, Context, and Choice. “In the rush of life, it’s easy to forget the impact a single moment can make. It’s easy to neglect the power of Now,” he warns. “Until Now comes rushing toward you to change everything.” Drawing on stories he shares from his own globetrotting professional experience (including many years at the software startup TIBCO), Verma passes along some of the lessons he’s learned, such as “Your potential is limited only by how much you’re willing to learn and whom you are willing to learn from.” The book is structured so that these lessons loop back to the author’s focus on how businesses should view the challenges of AI. (“You can outexecute a poor application,” he writes. “But in infrastructure? Not a chance.”) He writes with genuine zeal, although many of his rubrics are painfully self-evident, such as “No one gets to avoid trials in life” or “Life is inherently filled with risk.” His core insight into demystifying AI seems both reductive and astute: He reminds readers that for all its impressive sophistication, AI is just another human tool. “The essence of our quest for artificial intelligence is a mirror in many ways,” he writes. “It reflects back our own cognitive processes, our own intelligence.”

A forceful, if occasionally predictable, rethinking of the usual approaches to working with AI.