NEW YORK - Businesses approaching artificial intelligence (AI) at any level should look outside the walls of their own organizations if they have any expectations of moving forward in a significant way.

The current reality is that the complexity and speed of AI’s evolution can no longer be managed by any one company alone, no matter its industry or resources.

Thus, when IBM was developing its advanced Watson Orchestrate enterprise-level digital assistant, it tapped AI industry leaders in the private community of VisionAIres for feedback and advice. Despite IBM’s size and massive resources, AI leaders there were savvy enough to seek outside viewpoints on their approach, and when global retailer H&M took a company-wide approach to deploying AI, it too brought in outside help.

“We worked with different consultant partners, we had third party consultants, independent contractors and then we had our internal H&M advanced analytics landscape data team,” said Errol Koolmeister, who headed the AI Foundation at H&M and led the AI and tech architecture for the global retailer. “What we did very cleverly was that we consciously picked an external consultancy firm as a strategic partner to help us. While we were building the internal organization, we also worked heavily with strategic partners in building up the technical capabilities.”

In healthcare, collaborations of all sorts are taking shape, often with more than one partnership. AI-powered drug discovery startup Exscientia, e.g., which raised US$160 million in private funding before going public, partnered with Bristol Myers Squibb as one of its