News/Business
ServiceNow Study: Companies Investing in AI See Returns But Face Scaling Challenges
A new ServiceNow study reveals that companies investing heavily in generative AI are starting to see positive returns, but most are still in the early stages of adoption and face challenges in scaling the technology across their organizations. Key findings from the AI Maturity Index: ServiceNow surveyed nearly 4,500 respondents from 21 countries to assess companies' progress in adopting generative AI: The average AI maturity score was 44 out of 100, with the highest score being just 71, indicating that most companies are still in the early stages of AI adoption. On average, companies are spending about 9% of revenue...
read Jul 22, 2024How to Achieve Product-Market Fit with Your AI Strategy
The AI boom appears to be faltering as organizations struggle to turn AI investments into reliable revenue streams, enterprises find generative AI harder to deploy than anticipated, AI startups are overvalued, and consumer interest wanes. Refocusing on product-market fit: Before rushing to rebuild their organizations around AI, leaders should ensure they are using the right tools to meet the actual demands they are trying to address: The rush to apply AI to every conceivable problem leads to many products that are only marginally useful or even destructive, as seen with examples like government chatbots giving incorrect advice and tax preparation...
read Jul 20, 2024How Marketers Can Optimize Ads Using Generative AI and Predictive Modeling
Promising experiments show that using AI evolutionary algorithms and multimodal regression to iteratively generate and test digital ads can improve click-through rates. By combining generative AI, ad testing, and predictive modeling, marketers can create a powerful feedback loop to identify high-performing ad creative and targeting. Key components of the AI-driven ad optimization framework: The proposed system involves four main elements working together in a cyclical process: Evolutionary AI generates ad variations by "mating" and mutating seed ads, introducing randomness to explore the creative space Ad testing in real-world digital channels provides performance data to train the predictive model and identify...
read Jul 20, 2024How AI and Humans Must Collaborate for a More Productive, Innovative Future Workforce
The rise of AI is reshaping the workforce, with humans and AI working together to drive productivity, innovation, and growth. AI augmenting human capabilities: The future of work lies in leveraging the strengths of both AI and humans, with AI enhancing human skills and enabling increased efficiency and decision-making capabilities: Hybrid intelligence, the combination of human and AI abilities, maximizes productivity by automating routine tasks and allowing humans to focus on complex problem-solving and creative endeavors. AI can guide human exploration and push the boundaries of creativity, leading to breakthroughs in products, services, and processes. AI's data analysis capabilities enhance...
read Jul 19, 2024OpenAI Boosts ChatGPT Enterprise with Compliance, Security, and User Management Upgrades
OpenAI has released new enterprise control features for ChatGPT Enterprise, aimed at enhancing compliance, data security, and user management capabilities for its enterprise customers. Compliance and data security enhancements: OpenAI's new Enterprise Compliance API provides customers with a detailed record of interactions, including conversations, uploaded files, metadata, ChatGPT memory, and workspace users, enabling enterprises to audit the data they share on the platform: OpenAI has partnered with several third-party compliance providers, such as Forcepoint, Global Relay, Microsoft Purview, Netskope, Palo Alto Networks, Relativity, Smarsh, and zScaler, to support various compliance-related activities, including archiving, audit trails, data redaction and retention, and...
read Jul 19, 2024California AI Bill Sparks Debate and Industry Pushback
California's landmark AI safety bill sparks debate and industry pushback Key points and reactions: The introduction of California's SB 1047 bill, which requires safety testing and shutdown capabilities for large AI models, has generated strong reactions and debates: The bill passed the state senate with bipartisan support (32-1) and has 77% public approval in California according to polls, but has faced fierce opposition from the tech industry, particularly in Silicon Valley. Tech heavyweights like Andreessen-Horowitz and Y Combinator have publicly condemned the bill, arguing it will stifle innovation and push companies out of California. However, the bill's author Sen. Scott...
read Jul 18, 2024AI Chip Shortage to Persist Until 2025-2026 Despite Doubling Production, Says TSMC
The global shortage of AI chips is expected to persist until 2025 or 2026 due to surging demand, according to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Despite doubling production, TSMC is struggling to keep pace with the high-performance computing chips now accounting for over half its business. Unprecedented demand for AI chips: TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, has seen an explosion in orders for advanced processors used in AI applications: Much of the demand is driven by Nvidia, whose AI-focused GPUs are in high demand from companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Tesla for powering next-generation AI systems. TSMC originally hoped...
read Jul 18, 2024AI Predicts Tipping Points, Offers Hope for Preventing Catastrophes
Researchers have developed an AI system that can predict tipping points in complex systems before they occur, a breakthrough that could have wide-ranging applications from economics to epidemiology. Key Takeaways: Tipping points, also known as critical transitions, are mathematical cliff-edges that influence the behavior of various systems, from financial markets to the spread of disease. Predicting tipping points before they happen has been a major challenge, but a new AI system has shown promising results in identifying early warning signs. How the AI System Works: The researchers trained the AI model on data from systems that have undergone critical transitions...
read Jul 18, 2024How Overcoming Paralysis When Adopting AI Begins with Good Data Practices
The global AI revolution is charging ahead, but many organizations feel overwhelmed and paralyzed about how to best capitalize on the technology's potential. Addressing data challenges is critical: Every AI conversation inevitably leads to a discussion about data readiness, as AI relies on high-quality, accessible data to deliver value: Organizations must first assess where their required data lives, which is often siloed across various on-premises, cloud, edge, and individual devices. Establishing strong data governance and quality practices is essential before embarking on the data discovery process to ensure data is clean and usable. Focusing on a specific data set in...
read Jul 18, 2024AI Can Enhance Meetings, But Challenges Remain in Implementation and Reliability
AI has the potential to transform work meetings by making them more productive and reducing frustrations, but challenges remain in ensuring the technology is reliable and doesn't introduce new sources of tension between colleagues. Key takeaways: Jaime Teevan, chief scientist at Microsoft, believes AI is on the verge of transforming work meetings in significant ways: AI can help generate ideas, reflect on discussions, and make meetings more efficient by assisting with tasks like transcription and summarization. Major video meeting providers like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet are already incorporating AI-powered assistants with rapidly expanding capabilities. The promise of AI...
read Jul 17, 2024How Overcoming Bad Data and Digital Divides In Organizations Will Increase AI Adoption
The vast majority of AI proof-of-concept projects fail to reach production due to digital boundaries, digital employees, and bad data, according to Capgemini research. Addressing these challenges requires a fundamental rethinking of how businesses approach AI adoption. Data quality is a major obstacle: Many organizations have become accustomed to working with subpar data, which poses significant risks as AI increasingly drives business decisions: By 2030, AI is expected to make 50% of business decisions, particularly in autonomous supply chain applications, making poor data quality unacceptable from a risk perspective. Digital employees cannot wait for cleaned-up data to make operational decisions,...
read Jul 17, 2024How SAP Is Using Gen AI To Transform Business Across Its Portfolio
SAP Labs is harnessing the power of generative AI to enhance business processes across industries, from e-sports to guitar manufacturing, with the hopes of driving unprecedented innovation and efficiency. Scaling AI across the enterprise: SAP Labs is focused on quickly integrating generative AI across its broad software portfolio, with insights from one customer's AI adoption being directly transferable to others: Over 24,000 SAP customers are currently using the company's AI solutions, with AI integrated into more than 10,000 published and 5,000 scenario-based interfaces and messages. SAP's AI in Concur Invoice Management automated the processing of 40 million invoices in 2022,...
read Jul 17, 2024Salesforce Debuts AI-Powered Einstein Service Agent
Salesforce introduces Einstein Service Agent, a generative AI-powered self-service platform that empowers customers to resolve issues through conversational AI, marking a significant step forward in customer service automation. Key features of Einstein Service Agent: The new AI agent leverages Salesforce's extensive customer data and approved workflows to provide personalized, multi-step interactions for end-customers: Enables customers to ask questions, get resolutions, and take actions such as product returns or refunds through a conversational AI interface Seamlessly integrates with Salesforce's existing customer data and workflows, ensuring secure and trusted interactions grounded in the company's established systems Initially focused on customer service scenarios,...
read Jul 16, 2024Intuit Is Using GenAI to Offer Personalization Across Its Products, And Drive Revenue
Intuit is leveraging generative AI to offer personalization across its suite of financial products, driving strong revenue growth and enhancing customer experiences. Intuit's gen AI strategy: Intuit is heavily relying on generative AI to personalize customer experiences, automate routine tasks, and provide actionable insights to help users achieve their financial goals: The company has over 100 million customers worldwide using its TurboTax, Mint, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp products. Intuit's AI-driven platform strategy has resulted in double-digit growth in total revenue and operating income, with Q3 fiscal 2024 total revenue surging 12% year-over-year to $6.7 billion. Transforming personalization with gen...
read Jul 15, 2024Generative AI Enables Hyperpersonalization At Unprecedented Scale
The rise of generative AI is enabling businesses and individuals to deliver highly personalized experiences at an unprecedented scale. This article explores the concept of hyperpersonalization and how generative AI is transforming interactions between businesses and customers, as well as enhancing various aspects of daily life for individuals. Understanding Hyperpersonalization: Hyperpersonalization goes beyond traditional personalization methods by leveraging AI-powered pattern recognition to create unique profiles for each individual, which adapt over time: It involves displaying personalized content, recommending relevant products, providing personalized guidance, and offering one-to-one insights tailored to individual preferences and behaviors. The benefits for businesses include higher engagement...
read Jul 13, 2024Samsung Galaxy AI vs Apple Intelligence: A Comparison
Samsung has announced Galaxy AI, a suite of AI features for its new devices, while Apple has unveiled Apple Intelligence for iOS 18, setting the stage for an AI showdown between the two tech giants. Image generation and manipulation: Galaxy AI's Sketch to Image impresses, but Apple Intelligence's Genmoji and Image Playground offer more variety Samsung's Sketch to Image allows users to turn sketches into AI-generated images in various styles like watercolor and pop art, with generally accurate results. Apple's Genmoji creates custom emojis based on prompts and can use photos of real people, while Image Playground is a full-fledged...
read Jul 13, 2024Embracing AI: Navigating the Journey to AI Maturity in Your Organization
Debasis Dutta from Skillsoft outlines four key phases of AI maturity and emphasizes the need for change management and skilling to ensure success. The four phases of AI maturity: Dutta describes the AI journey as consisting of exploration, experimentation, innovation, and realization, stressing that it doesn't matter which stage an organization is in, as long as they are making progress: Exploration involves identifying use cases, scenarios, and real-life examples, as well as outlining the challenges AI is intended to solve. During the experimentation phase, organizations begin using AI tools and establishing guidelines and governance models to ensure proper usage. Innovation...
read Jul 13, 2024Goldman Sachs Questions Economic Viability and Transformative Potential of Generative AI
Goldman Sachs, one of the world's largest investment banks, has published a research paper questioning the economic viability and transformative potential of generative AI, despite the current hype and huge investments in the technology. Key takeaways from the Goldman Sachs report: The paper, titled "Gen AI: too much spend, too little benefit?" is based on interviews with Goldman Sachs economists, researchers, MIT professor Daron Acemoglu, and infrastructure experts. It questions whether the massive spending on generative AI infrastructure will ever pay off in terms of benefits and returns, noting that there is currently "little to show for" these investments. The...
read Jul 12, 2024Zendesk CTO: AI Will Revolutionize Customer Experience, But Human Touch Remains Crucial
Zendesk CTO Adrian McDermott believes AI will fundamentally transform customer experience (CX) within the next few years, with 100% of all customer interactions involving AI in some way for every Zendesk customer. Key findings from Zendesk's Future of AI-powered CX report: The report surveyed over 1,300 senior CX leaders, revealing strong interest and optimism about AI's impact on CX: 81% of CX leaders believe AI will change CX for the better. 86% believe CX will be utterly transformed over the next three years due to AI. 77% think traditional CX will give way to radically different industry dynamics under AI's...
read Jul 12, 2024Consumers Wary of AI Customer Service, Majority Consider Switching Companies: Gartner Survey
A recent Gartner survey finds that most consumers are wary of AI-powered customer service, with many preferring to switch companies rather than deal with AI assistants. Key survey findings: The survey, conducted in December 2023 with 5,728 respondents, reveals significant consumer concerns regarding AI in customer service: 64% of customers would prefer that companies not use AI for customer service at all. 53% indicated they would consider switching to a competitor if a company was using AI for customer service. The top concern, cited by 60% of respondents, is that AI will make it more difficult to reach a human...
read Jul 12, 2024Breaking Silos: Experts Reveal Secret to Building User-Centric AI Products
Cross-functional collaboration is essential for building user-centric AI products that truly meet customer needs, according to experts from Capital One, Pinterest, and Slack at VB Transform 2024. AI innovation and its challenges: The rise of generative AI has led to a non-deterministic paradigm in product development, requiring teams to navigate numerous variables while focusing on quality, safety, and performance: The rapid pace of AI innovation and the evolution of AI foundations have made it challenging for developers to keep up with the latest advancements. With AI and large language models (LLMs), predicting the outcomes of user experiences has become difficult,...
read Jul 12, 2024SoftBank’s $600M Graphcore Deal Is a Bold Challenge to Nvidia’s Dominance
SoftBank's acquisition of UK AI chip startup Graphcore marks a significant push into the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. The deal, reportedly valued at over $600 million, positions SoftBank to become a key player in the AI chip industry, despite the dominance of American giant Nvidia. Strategic move to capitalize on AI growth: SoftBank's owner, Masayoshi Son, sees the acquisition as a crucial step in making his company a major force in the development of AI technology: The deal comes at a time when AI is becoming increasingly pivotal across various industries, with the potential to revolutionize computing and...
read Jul 12, 2024Tesla’s AI-Driven Rally Unravels Amid Robotaxi Delays, Bubble Concerns
The AI hype surrounding Tesla stock appears to have gone too far, prompting a sell-off and downgrades from analysts concerned about inflated valuations and delayed robotaxi plans: UBS downgrade reflects concerns over AI-driven rally: UBS analysts downgraded Tesla from neutral to sell, warning that the stock price has risen "too much, too soon" on a wave of AI optimism rather than the strength of its core auto business: The analysts believe Tesla's stock has been caught up in the AI "trade/phenomenon" and is vulnerable if market enthusiasm for AI diminishes. While Tesla has grand plans for utilizing AI in autonomous...
read Jul 12, 2024VentureBeat AI Innovation Awards: OpenAI, Microsoft Lead Winners Transforming Industries with Generative AI
VentureBeat announced the winners of its sixth annual AI Innovation Awards, recognizing achievements in generative AI across five categories. Key winners and highlights: The awards showcased enterprise implementation, innovation, startup promise, and initiatives in diversity and open source contributions: OpenAI won the Generative AI Innovator of the Year award for its rapid advancements and viral successes like ChatGPT and GPT-4, steering the narrative of AI's future. Microsoft was awarded Best Enterprise Implementation of Generative AI for incorporating the technology into its Dynamics, Power, and Microsoft 365 platforms, enabling enterprise applications with generative AI capabilities. Patronus AI won Best Enterprise Implementation...
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