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Citi sees 50% of finance jobs going away, Accenture sees strong AI demand, and to fries go with those 260 McNuggets?

AI for Pros: Navigating the Ever-Evolving Landscape of Artificial Intelligence in Business and Employment

Author

Malcolm Frank, CEO
June 24, 2024

A Note From Malcolm

Innovation is hard. Cutting costs is relatively easy. Particularly for big companies.  

This is why GenAI adoption - inside the Fortune 500 - is following the classic two-step: 1.) make the known more efficient and then 2.) create the unknown. 

For veterans of past tech waves, this pattern is well-established. Early on, a "poster child" captures the public imagination – Dell in the client-server era, Cisco with the internet, Apple with mobile, AWS with cloud computing, and now NVIDIA with GenAI.  

These examples distract us from the bigger picture (and spend) going on inside established companies with important charters, such as delivering better healthcare or building safer cars. Such companies, due myriad constraints (e.g., regulations, labor, process focus, and culture), aren’t built for rapid innovation.  

However, they’re great at ripping out costs. That’s now very clear with GenAI, with a growing focus on areas such as customer service, legacy IT, R&D and marketing.  

Will we someday get healthcare with AI-driven hyper-personalization and self-driving flying cars designed by bots?  Maybe. But in the next couple of years the majority of spend will be on the “boring” stuff: making existing processes better, faster, cheaper with AI. And that may mean more jobs are shed before new ones are created.

With that lens, here are some highlights from the past week at the intersection of enterprise AI and work:

AI is replacing human tasks faster than you think

More than half (61%) of large US firms plan to use AI within the next year to automate tasks previously done by employees, according to a survey of finance chiefs.

260 McNuggets? McDonald’s ends AI drive-through tests amid errors

Ordering mistakes frustrated customers during nearly three years of tests. But competitors like White Castle and Wendy’s say their AI ordering systems have been highly accurate.

LLM wars: Anthropic claims its latest model is best in class

Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperforms OpenAI and Google in the enterprise AI race…for now.

Citi predicts AI will replace more than 50% of finance jobs

Detailed report argues “AI may be adopted faster by digitally native, cloud-based firms, such as FinTechs and BigTechs, with agile incumbent banks following fast. Many incumbents, weighed down by tech and culture debt, could lag in AI adoption, losing market share.”

Accenture says strong AI demand to power 2024 revenue growth

The services giant forecast annual revenue growth above expectations on Thursday, bolstered by surging demand for its service that helps businesses integrate artificial intelligence tools in their operations.

Are IT firms facing GenAI PoC fatigue and revenue challenges?

Many IT firms struggle with AI revenue and deployment. GSIs underperform, clients face “POC fatigue.

AI doesn’t kill jobs? Tell that to freelancers.

Corporations always cut contractors first. Is the freelance community the AI jobs canary in the coal mine?

Tool of the Week:  PeerAI

A comprehensive suite of AI tools designed to enhance the development process including Migration Copilot, which facilitates seamless migration of legacy applications to modern, cloud-native technology stacks

Perplexed by Perplexity? The controversy surrounding the hot AI search platform.

Wired calls Perplexity AI “a BS machine” full of plagiarism and lies. Are the accusations legit, or is this a case of the search empire striking back?

AI could be 10,000 times smarter than humans in 10 years

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son predicts artificial super intelligence (ASI) is not far away. 

Business leaders still struggling to put AI hype to practice

More than eight-in-10 executives say they have deployed artificial intelligence in their firms to enhance revenue. However, the paper from Tata Consultancy Services also found that even among industry pacesetters, only a third of firms have actually completed an AI project.

The growing dystopian AI influencer economy

Who thought online influencers would lose their jobs to AI? It’s happening.

A peek inside San Francisco’s AI boom

Entrepreneurs from around the world have flocked to SF to be part of the AI revolution. They bunk together, work non-stop, and throw hackathons for fun. A look inside:

AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle solution.

As power needs of AI push emissions up and put big tech in a bind, companies put their faith in elusive — some say improbable — technologies.

And one more thing…

AI blood test could detect Parkinson's disease up to 7 years before symptoms: “Particularly promising”

Health care AI expert says test represents a paradigm shift in treatment of neurodegenerative diseases

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