A little more conversation: Company executives can't stop talking about AI

A little more conversation

‍Interestingly, executives at top companies seem to be doing the exact opposite — they can’t stop talking about AI, perhaps hoping that if they position their companies as “AI forward” they may be more attractive to investors (see Nvidia becoming the latest company to join the $1 trillion club).

Data collated by Goldman Sachs reveals that artificial intelligence has been cropping up more and more in the quarterly earnings calls of Russell 3000 companies, as businesses like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta line up to explain to investors how AI will play a pivotal role in the wider world and within their organizations… in the future at least.

‍Tried and tested

‍That’s a lot of corporate chatter, but how much are companies actually using AI? The answer depends somewhat on your perspective.

‍McKinsey’s latest report into AI, published in early August, reveals that 79% of people surveyed have had at least some exposure to the tools, although only 22% of respondents say that they personally are regularly using it in their own work. For tools that (mostly) haven’t even celebrated a first birthday yet, that feels like quite a lot.

The people using it most are your pals in marketing and sales, with 14% of respondents reporting that their organizations were regularly using generative AI in that function, more than any other.

The most common uses cited in the survey were for creating first drafts of text, personalizing marketing materials, identifying trends or communicating with customers with chatbots. AI isn't quite doing iRobot stuff yet, but taking the sting out of some of the more "boring" corporate tasks will always have its place.

‍We aren’t in Kansas anymore

‍Clearly, the answer to the question “have we had peak AI?” is a resounding, definitive “no”. The buzz around ChatGPT specifically may have slightly diminished, but that’s only because its mind boggling initial success has birthed — literally — thousands of competitors.

One website, accurately called theresanaiforthat.com, currently tracks more than 6,900 different tools. There’s AI to summarize your emails, edit your videos, build your website, design your house, write your dating profile, plan your vacation, edit your code, test new hairstyles on you, create personalized stories for children, be your personal assistant… or even just be your friend who is “always on your side”. There’s even one that creates a chatbot so you can "talk" to a PDF document(?), and there's quite a few to make charts and analyze data. Luckily for us, they aren’t very good... yet.