Navigating AI: This Week's Business Highlights #3

April 11, 2024

Welcome to the AI Trailblazers Newsletter. Our approach diverges from standard newsletters. Instead of just summarizing AI news, we delve into its takeaways for your business, career, and society, while also sharing specific AI Trailblazer highlights.

We’re happy to share that we’ll be hosting a virtual dialogue on the theme, “What should I do with AI right now” on May 1st at 12:00pm EST. Register to join.

Companies approach AI cautiously

There’s apparently a large gap between companies that intend to use Generative AI and those that are actually using it today. The Wall Street Journal has the story and it implies that companies are moving much slower than all the headlines may imply.

  • Cautious Exploration: Many businesses, including Reynolds American, are cautiously exploring generative AI for tasks like data analysis while avoiding its use in high-risk areas, reflecting a broader hesitation in the corporate world towards fully embracing the technology.

  • Limited Adoption: Despite the transformative potential of generative AI, highlighted by tools such as Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and its proven capability to significantly reduce the need for human labor in customer service at companies like Klarna, widespread adoption remains limited, with only an estimated 5.4% of U.S. businesses using AI in any form to produce goods or services according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau survey.

  • Implementation Gap: The gap between the intention to adopt generative AI and actual implementation is notable, with sectors like life sciences, oil and gas, and communication services showing the most interest, yet overall, businesses are cautious, largely due to uncertainties regarding the technology's practical value and concerns over its cost-effectiveness.

  • Measured Approach: Instances of generative AI's limitations and the risks associated with premature or inappropriate applications, such as "hallucinations" (providing confident but inaccurate information) and the potential for generating unwelcome customer experiences, reinforce the need for a measured approach to its adoption, balancing the allure of competitive advantages against operational and reputational risks.

AI Trailblazer Takeaways: Adopting a "wait-and-see" stance towards Generative AI might, in practice, translate to a "wait-and-lose" scenario. The advantages of deploying AI compound over time even if it comes with risks. Delaying the integration of AI into your business operations can increasingly put you at a disadvantage relative to competitors who maybe integrating the technologies more aggressively.

Google Cloud Next and Autonomous Agents

Google Cloud Next was this week in Las Vegas NV. Not surprisingly, it included a flurry of AI related announcements that served to push up the Alphabet stock price. One notable announcement was about autonomous agents.

  • Vertex AI Agent Builder: Google Cloud launched Vertex AI Agent Builder at Google Cloud Next, aiming to facilitate the creation of advanced AI agents capable of taking automated actions and interacting with transactional systems beyond simple Q&A.

  • No-Code, Advanced AI Technology: Built on Google's latest Gemini large language models, the no-code platform utilizes RAG APIs and vector search to enhance the accuracy of responses and minimize errors, known as "hallucinations."

  • Grounding for Reliability: Vertex AI Agent Builder employs a grounding process, utilizing Google Search and enterprise data as reliable sources to improve the quality and relevance of the AI agents' responses.

  • Competing in Creative AI: Demonstrating its flexibility, Google showcased the tool's ability to analyze and generate brand-consistent content, positioning itself as a competitor to Adobe’s creative tools. The platform supports multiple languages and has API endpoints in the U.S. and EU.

AI Trailblazer Takeaways: The recent announcements at Google Cloud Next highlight the swift evolution of the AI sector. Autonomous agents are poised to become a pivotal component of any company’s tech stack, and Vertex AI Agent Builder is streamlining the creation process for basic AI agents. Google Cloud Next also demonstrated that Google has a huge AI infrastructure advantage.

Making AI part of Daily Work in Marketing

In this Harvard Business Review guest piece, Mailchimp CMO, Michelle Taite, discusses how AI tools, when combined with human creativity, enable marketers to quickly optimize and personalize campaigns in today's always-on environment. Discover how her team's daily experimentation with AI supported their creatives, leading to their most successful campaign yet.

  • Recognizing the Need for AI in Marketing: A Forrester survey reveals that nearly 90% of marketers believe increasing AI use is crucial for competitiveness, yet only half feel they have effectively adopted AI, highlighting a gap between recognition and implementation.

  • AI as a Tool, Not a Strategy: Marketers should view AI as a routine tool akin to using a search engine, focusing on experimentation to discover new uses that enhance efficiency, improve quality, or simplify tasks, thereby integrating AI into daily operations.

  • AI's Role in Creativity and Precision: Through practical applications like the Mailchimp "clustomer" campaign, AI has proven to augment the creative process by enabling rapid ideation and precise optimization, showcasing its potential to assist in developing highly targeted and resonant marketing strategies.

  • The Balance of Human Ingenuity and AI: Successful marketing requires a blend of human creativity and AI's analytical capabilities, underscoring the importance of personalization with authenticity and leveraging AI for operational efficiency, suggesting that ongoing experimentation and curiosity are key to harnessing AI's full potential.

AI Trailblazer Takeaways: There’s no excuse for not experimenting with AI today. Marketing along with customer service has the most numerous of AI driven use cases. How it fits into your organization will be unique to how your business functions, how you organize your resources and what tools, processes and culture norms you have in place.

What is AI Trailblazers?

AI Trailblazers is a vibrant platform dedicated to uniting marketers, technologists, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI). We launched at CES in partnership with The New York Times and hosted our members for an evening of AI programming at SXSW. If you’d like to nominate someone to join the community, please invite them to fill in this form.

We’re happy to share that we’ll be hosting a virtual dialogue on the theme, “What should I do with AI right now” on May 1st at 12:00pm EST. Register to join.

Quote of the Week

My guess is that we’ll have AI that is smarter than any one human probably around the end of next year. Link.

- Elon Musk, CEO at Tesla Inc.