# How the Role of Artificial Intelligence is Changing During the Pandemic

By Howard Holton · Published 2020-12-07 · Updated 2026-07-23 · Industrial IoT on MarketScale
Canonical: https://www.marketscale.com/industries/industrial-iot/how-the-role-of-artificial-intelligence-is-changing

> Seasoned technology executives host a weekly discussion to highlight how IT teams and leaders can prepare to be agile and scalabale in an ever changing world.   To say 2020 has been a year of change is a monumental understatement. Everything from the way we socialize, to how we receive health care, to how we…

## Key points

- The pandemic has pushed businesses toward remote work, revealing many jobs can be done from home.
- Michael Davidson of Microsoft highlights the challenge of accepting and adapting to new work conditions is a major hurdle for leadership.
- Flexible work changes may become permanent as companies realize the benefits of remote operations.

*Seasoned technology executives host a weekly discussion to highlight how IT teams and leaders can prepare to be agile and scalabale in an ever changing world.*

To say 2020 has been a year of change is a monumental understatement. Everything from the way we socialize, to how we receive health care, to how we work, has changed massively. The hosts of [The Suite Spot](https://marketscale.com/industries/original-series/the-suite-spot/) — [Carlos Vargas](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosevargasvip/), [Howard Holton](https://marketscale.com/industries/contributors/howard-holton/) and [Paul Lewis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/paullewiscto/) — spoke with [Michael Davidson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwdavidson/), Senior Data Scientist, Microsoft about some of the changes that businesses had no choice but to make.

Davidson feels that these challenges provided learning opportunities for businesses. He presented companies shifting to remote work as an example, “The hardest gap to overcome is the one you mentioned and that’s accepting that it’s even possible. And once you’ve done it a few times, it doesn’t become rote. I mean every project has its own challenges, but just the belief that you can do it, I think is probably the biggest hurdle for most leadership teams to overcome,” Davidson said.

He feels that once companies have seen the positive outcomes of change, it becomes easier to enact more change. Especially when you have to react to some sort of catastrophic change in the operating environment. Davidson suspects that a lot of the workplace changes we’ve seen may remain, even once social distancing guidelines are a thing of the past.

“As much Covid is obviously a tragedy of proportions we haven’t seen, but at the same time like anything in life, hopefully we can learn from it,” Davidson noted. He finds it hard to believe that workers will be eager to resume long, inconvenient, and expensive commutes, when working remotely has suited them just fine — especially in the tech industry. “It’s nonsensical, right?

We’re showing most, many of these jobs can be done at home. And for those that can’t Fair enough, but certainly in most of our lines of work, it’s probably 95% of what it was,” Davidson stated.

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Tags: Carlos Vargas, Howard Holton, Michael Davidson, microsoft, Paul Lewis, The Suite Spot

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