An interdisciplinary task force comprised of faculty and staff from throughout the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies collaborated with Dave Sjoquist to draft the Digital Landscape Report. This report established the baseline from which the school would approach technological innovations and provided key background on emergent trends. Below is an excerpt from the introduction to the report

Over the past 50 years, society has witnessed major advances in computer capacity, speed, and analytical techniques. The most recent major advance in technology has been machine learning, which has given rise to artificial intelligence (AI), robots, and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) (West 2018; Ford 2015).

This new technology has resulted in significant changes and is expected to have even greater effects in the future, similar to what occurred during previous technological revolutions. The “New, New Economy,” the “Second Machine Age,” and the “4^th Industrial Revolution” are titles that have been used to describe the current era of technology advance.

As new technologies advance deeper into everyday use, they raise the question—how will they transform society and the economy (West 2018; Lee 2018)? This transformed world gives rise to questions about the role of governments, nonprofits, and the private sector in securing the welfare of citizens around the globe. These questions are pertinent to every unit within the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies (AYS).