The New News in AI in Business: 6/28/24
A curated set of the new news in AI for Business this week
I’m trying something new these next few weeks, offering a curated set of news articles on how AI is being used in business. If you think this is worthwhile, let me know.
A.I. Is Getting Better Fast. Can You Tell What’s Real Now?
(MRM – take the quiz! I got 8 out of 10 right. It’s tricky)
Artificial intelligence tools can create lifelike faces and realistic photographs — and they are getting better all the time. The phony images now appear regularly on social media, with many users seeming to believe that the images are real. But there are still some telltale signs that an image was made by A.I.
Can you tell the difference? Take the quiz.
The Stock Market Depends on AI, which Depends on Cheap Energy
MRM - If you want to keep your stock market gains, AI needs energy. Per economist Kyla Scanlon, "The top five holdings in the S&P 500 are make up 27% of the the S&P".
Those are all tech stocks. Tech stocks are being driven a lot by excitement about AI. AI needs energy for the data centers on which these firms' stock growth is predicated. No energy, no stock market growth. Ergo, we need to start expanding capacity asap. This Instagram video by Kyla Scanlon illustrates the problem. AI is driving the stock market.
ChatGPT could be smarter than your professor in the next 2 years | Tom's Guide
“If you look at the trajectory of improvement, GPT-3 was maybe toddler level intelligence, systems like GPT-4 are smart high schooler intelligence and in the next couple of years we're looking at PhD level intelligence for specific tasks,” she said during a talk at Dartmouth.”
(MRM – this prompted many jokes on Twitter, including this one).
Using AI at Work Makes Us Lonelier and Less Healthy
Imagine this: Jia, a marketing analyst, arrives at work, logs into her computer, and is greeted by an AI assistant that has already sorted through her emails, prioritized her tasks for the day, and generated first drafts of reports that used to take hours to write. Jia (like everyone who has spent time working with these tools) marvels at how much time she can save by using AI. Inspired by the efficiency-enhancing effects of AI, Jia feels that she can be so much more productive than before. As a result, she gets focused on completing as many tasks as possible in conjunction with her AI assistant.
As the day goes on and Jia’s productivity and efficiency continues to rise, she also feels increasingly isolated from her colleagues down the hall. She used to make small talk with her coworkers while troubleshooting work-related issues, but now her AI assistant handles the troubleshooting (with more accuracy and efficiency than her coworkers). She wonders if her coworkers feel the same, and if they’ve noticed how little they talk anymore. Sometimes this desire for connection leads her to find ways to socialize with her coworkers by helping them out. But she has also noticed that she’s been having trouble sleeping recently and that she’s started drinking more after work.
While this may sound like a warning from the near future, we found in a series of studies that Jia’s story is becoming all too common.
Goldman Sachs Deploys Its First Generative AI Tool Across the Firm
Goldman Sachs will finish rolling out its first generative artificial intelligence tool—for code generation—to thousands of developers across the company by the end of the month.
Chief Information Officer Marco Argenti said the company’s approach to generative AI involved centralizing all proprietary uses of the technology on an internal platform, and restricting them elsewhere. “It might have slowed us down initially, but then we definitely gained a lot of velocity afterwards,” Argenti said.
“Taking this centralized approach obviously has pros and cons,” he added. Argenti said he had to push back against those who wanted to move faster and contend with some frustration over the bank’s decision to ban the use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT within its walls, a step taken by other firms.
CIOs across industries, facing pressure from chief executives and corporate boards to leverage generative AI, are stuck between moving fast enough to achieve competitive gains, but not so fast they leave themselves vulnerable to dangerous hiccups. A number of efforts remain in the pilot or proof of concept phase, although ideation is gradually moving to more implementation this year, said Chirag Dekate, a vice president analyst at research firm Gartner.
Goldman’s generative AI platform, known as the GS AI Platform, grew out of an existing machine-learning platform and is the single point of entry for all generative AI use at the company. Goldman’s approach also included tapping partnerships with OpenAI-backer Microsoft to use GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 models and Google for its Gemini model. The platform also uses open source models including Meta Platforms’ Llama. The ability to switch between models for different use cases is a key benefit of the approach, Argenti said.
AI Work Assistants Need a Lot of Handholding - WSJ
Artificial intelligence work assistants were designed to provide businesses a relatively easy avenue into the cutting edge technology. It isn’t quite turning out that way, with chief information officers saying it requires a heavy internal lift to get full value from the pricey tools. “It has been more work than anticipated,” said Sharon Mandell, chief information officer of network tech company Juniper Networks, who is testing tools from several vendors but doesn’t feel ready to put any into production.
Tools like Copilot for Microsoft 365 or Gemini for Google Workspace aim to put the full power of generative AI capabilities into the hands of corporate workforces—promising safe, prepackaged ways for enterprises to use the technology. Working in tandem with the Microsoft or Google enterprise suites and large bodies of enterprise data—including emails, documents and spreadsheets—the promise is that the tools can deliver reliable answers to questions such as “what are our latest sales figures?”
But that isn’t always the case—in part because the enterprise data they are accessing isn’t always up-to-date or accurate and in part because the tools themselves are still maturing.
Corporate IT spending isn't reflecting the AI boom: Morning Brief
What about the AI spending boom? What about Nvidia’s parabolic sales increases as companies build up their data center firepower to build their large language models and prepare for the AI age?
That hasn’t made its way to software, DiFucci argues. That’s partly because of cost, and it seems partly because companies haven’t yet figured out what AI is useful for. (As I wrote recently, that’s the case with consumers as well).
Corporations may end up spending on GenAI eventually, just not yet. “Most of the spending on AI is being done by AI companies and Public Cloud companies preparing to run AI workloads for AI companies,” DiFucci wrote. “That doesn’t mean that we won’t see that shift at some point, when corporations begin to purchase Copilots and other forms of AI en masse, or start to build their own LLMs as the cost to build and train them continues to decline. But that doesn’t seem to be the case right now.”
Toys ‘R’ Us made an ad almost entirely AI. It’s a sign of how far the tech has come — and where it could go | CNN Business
Toys “R” Us is proving artificial intelligence could have a future in film.
The retail toy brand premiered a short promo film at the 2024 Cannes Lions Festival in France this week that was created almost entirely by using OpenAI’s new text-to-video tool.
The company’s entertainment studio partnered with creative agency Native Foreign, which had early access to Sora. Toys “R” Us said it believes it is the first brand to debut a film using the technology. The tool is not yet publicly available.
The 66-second promo follows a young Toys “R” Us founder, Charles Lazarus, who had a vision to transform toy stores with the help of the brand’s mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe, who came to him in a dream. Reactions to the clip were mixed on social media, with some calling it a compelling, fascinating look into the future of film; others called it “creepy.”
Toys “R” Us said that in addition to Sora, it used some corrective visual effects and an original music score.
Toys ‘R’ Us AI-Generated Ad Controversy, Explained
The AI-generated Toys “R” Us ad depicts the company’s founder, Charles Lazarus, being inspired to create the brand after experiencing a vivid dream. AI enthusiasts were excited to see AI being used for commercial purposes, but critics found the footage to be repulsive. The ad highlights the capacities of AI-generated video, along with the weaknesses inherent to the technology. For example, AI struggles to generate consistent character models; young Charles shapeshifts throughout the video; one commentator compared the boy to a figure from a “weird dream.”
Death, Taxes, and AI: How Generative AI Will Change Accounting
As Ben Franklin famously said, there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. We would argue AI should be added to that list. As LLMs continue to advance, AI is working its way into everything, from marketing to voice agents to professional services at large. Whether it’s PWC announcing a $1 billion investment into AI solutions, or Reuters setting aside $8 billion for AI dealmaking and development, firms are eager to establish themselves as market leaders in implementing this new technology — especially those that serve the accounting market.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Bookkeeping, accounting, tax preparation and auditing are fields full of largely formulaic and repetitive exercises that would immensely benefit from generative AI’s gift of efficiency and time savings. And there are real, quantitative tailwinds that make this a particularly critical moment for accounting firms to lean into AI and machine learning. For starters, 75% of CPAs could retire in the next 10 years. Simultaneously, the profession is attracting fewer job entrants, with the number of U.S. students who complete accounting degrees falling. This means in the coming years, far fewer professionals will be available to handle existing client demand — and firms are already struggling to keep up.
Luckily, genAI has hit the scene, and corporate finance and accounting workflows should benefit greatly from its capabilities. It is, however, important to be prescriptive about where specifically this new wave of LLM-based AI can help. At their core, LLMs are best at working with natural language. They are adept at summarizing research, answering questions, and delivering information that gets their prompter ~70% of the way to a definitive result. What they lack (for now!) is the ability to do complex calculations and quantitative analyses — two skills crucial to the accounting profession.
How Can AI In Manufacturing Boost Supply Chain Efficiency?
According to a global 2024 IDC InfoBrief, ‘‘The importance of AI in Supply Chain and Operations”, 63% of supply chain executives and 52% of operations executives have an AI strategy linked to business objectives. Business AI, such as SAP's Joule, is an example of a generative AI copilot that integrates into various business processes, from HR, and finances to the supply chain and other operations. Cutting edge tools like Joule have the capability to help boost business performance by rapidly and efficiently enhancing new product ideas using natural language queries.
On a factory floor, Business AI can help:
· Optimize Asset Maintenance to reduce maintenance costs and extend the life of key equipment pieces.
· Enable Agile Production Planning, by integrating AI for enhanced scheduling and forecasting to boost operational efficiency
· Improve Visual inspection processes to improve the quality of products and thus improve customer satisfaction.
AI will replace some creative jobs that shouldn’t have been there in the first place: OpenAI CTO
Some creative jobs may go away because of AI, but maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place, OpenAI’s CTO Mira Murati said, according to a Business Today article.
Murati's remark touched upon a deeply sensitive area in an era of rapid technological advancement, with the prospect of AI automating tasks traditionally performed by humans, particularly within creative fields, which has raised concerns about job security and the future of work, the article read.
Murati highlighted the collaborative nature of AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, suggesting that these technologies, rather than replacing human creativity, actually serve to enhance and expand it, providing new avenues for artistic expression and problem-solving, according to the article. "It's a tool, right?" she said. “I expect that we will actually collaborate with it and it's going to make our creativity expand.”
She also emphasized the potential for AI to democratise creativity, making it more accessible to individuals who might not have had the resources or training to pursue their creative aspirations in the past. “Whether it's creating new designs, whether it's coding, or writing an essay or concepts in topology,” she explained, “You can just learn about these things and interact with them in a much more intuitive way, and that expands your learning.”
Volkswagen integrates ChatGPT AI in infotainment system
Volkswagen has announced that its new-generation infotainment system now includes ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI). Volkswagen's advanced AI tool is available in all new vehicles within the all-electric ID. family, as well as the new Golf, Tiguan, and Passat models. This integration, accessible through the IDA voice assistant, introduces a range of new features that significantly enhance previous voice control capabilities. Customers can now have search results read aloud and interact with the car using natural language.
Kai Grünitz, Member of the Brand Board of Management responsible for Development, said: “Volkswagen has a long tradition of democratising technologies. As a volume manufacturer, we make these technologies accessible to large numbers of people. By seamlessly integrating ChatGPT into the backend of our voice assistant, we are now offering drivers the opportunity to use this artificial intelligence on a daily basis, thus underlining how innovative our products are.”
Bonus Meme