Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

After 28 years spent literally or figuratively in Silicon Valley, Ive grown increasingly concerned about AIs potential to cause widespread, permanent unemployment. So I clambered out of the valley and into the Ivory Tower to share my fears with Israels leading economists. Turns out, the view from the Tower is wildly different from the Valley. Not a good thing.

The view from the Valley is that AI will achieve human-level intelligence within a few years, leading to rising unemployment.

Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former superintelligence researcher at OpenAI, says: We are building machines that can think and reason. By 2025/26, these machines will outpace many college graduates. By the end of the decade, they will be smarter than you or I; we will have superintelligence, in the true sense of the word... That doesnt require believing in sci-fi; it just requires believing in straight lines on a graph.

Avital Balwit, chief of staff at Anthropic, says: I am 25. These next three years might be the last few years that I work. I stand at the edge of a technological development that seems likely, should it arrive, to end employment as I know it.

Consequently, tech rivals like Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk agree on the need to prepare for permanent mass unemployment with universal basic income.

Whos right? I hope its the economists, but Id wager on the technologists for three reasons:

The Great Crash of 1929 saw 90% of the stock markets value vanish. A few days prior, the prominent economist, Irving Fisher, pronounced that stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. Economists have missed every crash since, prompting the IMF to conclude that economists are notoriously poor at spotting a crisis coming, and that there is little evidence that forecasts at horizons of two to five years contain much predictive content.

Add technology to the mix, and the economists record goes from notoriously poor to comical. McKinsey, for example, pronounced that mobile phones will never be a mass market, while Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman predicted the Internets impact would be no greater than the fax machines. In retrospect, Krugman conceded that most macroeconomics of the last 30 years was spectacularly useless at best and positively harmful at worst.

In contrast, technologists have an impressive record in predicting key milestones decades in advance. Writing in the 80s and 90s, computer scientist Ray Kurzweil accurately forecasted to within a couple of years the arrival of the Internet, smartphones, voice recognition, self-driving cars, and virtual reality. In 1990, he predicted that human-level AI would arrive in 2029, a prognostication that has since catapulted from preposterous to prescient.

The difference? The economy is governed by the butterfly effect, while technology is governed by Moores Law, which posits that computational power doubles every two years.

Kurzweil calculated roughly how much compute is needed for each milestone he envisaged, and predicted their realization at the point where these needs intersect with the exponential progression of Moores Law. His track record isnt perfect, but no economist can hold a candle to it.

The second reason is that I find the economists arguments unconvincing. One explanation they offer for their equanimity is that, despite the rise of AI, unemployment has not risen at all. Yet nobody expected generative AI to move the macroeconomic needle so quickly; and in smaller, bellwether sectors, the needle is buried in the red. Freelance job boards, for example, have seen massive drops in demand for writers, web developers, graphic designers, and engineers.

More importantly, when a macroeconomic signal does emerge, I expect it to show that AI augments people rather than making them dispensable right up to the point where it dispenses with them. By way of analogy, consider the story of Bob, a mediocre manager. In Act 1, Bob hires Sam, a wunderkind, who boosts the quality and quantity of Bobs deliverables. The big boss is happy. In Act 2, Sam has learned the ropes and is able to fly solo. Bob looks expensive and incompetent by comparison. In Act 3, Bob gets canned. The End.

The second explanation offered for their poise is that weve seen this movie before and it has a happy ending. Theres full employment today even though 99% of the pre-industrial jobs have vanished. Stay calm and carry on.

But, unlike the industrial revolution, where machines replaced our brawn and we found jobs using our brains, todays machines are set to outperform our brains. What part of our being will we use to earn a living once that happens?!

Oh, and the industrial revolution triggered a century of catastrophic hardship, including mass displacement of skilled workers, and a rush for raw materials that fueled colonialism and wars that claimed tens of millions of lives. Not a movie we want to take our kids to.

AI is approaching human-level performance across the spectrum of intellectual endeavors. At its current rate of progress, AI will soon project onto your screen a talking-head that will shape-shift to be your lawyer, graphic designer, doctor, software engineer you name it. As a rule of thumb, therefore, we should assume that any job that can be done over Zoom today can be done by an AI tomorrow. Ive encountered no credible counterargument to this.

Which leads to my second rule of thumb: employers will replace humans with AI whenever theres a buck to be made. That is the true lesson from the industrial revolution. Ive heard no credible counterargument to this either.

Silicon Valley has tunnel vision. Taken together, you see why, on balance, Id wager on Silicon Valleys predictions for what AI will soon do. But Id never trust the Valley to tell society how to adapt or prepare. When it comes to the societal implications of its technologies, Silicon Valley is spectacularly useless at best and positively harmful at worst. Indeed, recent years have seen devastating unintended consequences of the Valleys innovations, from skyrocketing teen suicides to the radicalization of our society.

Tech titans casually toss out slogans like universal basic income as though UBI is a panacea for the coming age. I favor UBI, but they seem oblivious to the monumental challenges it entails, including staggering costs, elusive sources, and complex second-order effects. Moreover, the societal problems born of mass unemployment wont end with any universal income, let alone a basic one. We need the full engagement by the Ivory Tower, leveraging the expertise of economists, political scientists, and sociologists to navigate these intricate issues.

In the coming years, AI is likely to achieve superhuman intelligence and drive rising unemployment. To my knowledge, no one has articulated a convincing case for how such AI can coexist with full employment, and so we must prepare accordingly. Yet those who see the gathering storm are ill-equipped to prepare for it, while those who know how to prepare dont see it coming.

Aesops Fable tells of two men, one blind, the other lame. Alone they cant survive, so the lame man climbs onto the blind mans back, and united they can navigate safely.

The moral is clear: we cant rely solely on economists predictions or Silicon Valleys optimism. We need technologists who understand AIs potential, economists who can model its impacts, and policymakers who can implement solutions.

The clock is ticking. Our choices today will shape whether AI becomes humanitys greatest achievement or, like the golem of Jewish lore, a force that turns on its master.

The writer is CEO and co-founder of Lemonade (NYSE: LMND), and chairman of the MOSAIC Policy Institute, whose mission it is to ensure that Artificial Intelligence benefits all of Israels society.

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Are Elon Musk's concerns of AI-surged unemployment a real concern? - The Jerusalem Post

Todays increasingly digitized business-to-business (B2B) tech stack has transformed the way companies do business. At the same time, it is also transforming the way companies get business.

Thats because, with the news last week (June 27) that accounts payable (AP) management firmMedius has introduced a pair of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered offerings, B2B firms are beginning to explore where else AI can be applied across their operations.

And companies across sectors are finding that from lead generation and automated sales, to personalized outreach and forecasting AI can create more effective and efficient outbound strategies, driving higher conversion rates and better customer relationships while saving on resource and labor costs.

AI offers powerful tools for analyzing data, predicting trends and automating tasks, streamlining operations and providing deeper insights into customer behavior and preferences. This allows for the development of more sophisticated and personalized marketing strategies.

Within the confines of an uncertain macro backdrop, staying ahead of the competition for B2B businesses requires embracing technology, and with a generational shift in B2B with younger buyers and Generation Z decision-makers, providing the frictionless and personalized digital experiences theyve come to expect is crucial.

But that doesnt mean that an automated B2B marketing program will be as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Read more: AIs Essential Use Cases Across B2B Operations

To capture the benefits of AI, businesses must integrate AI seamlessly into their existing processes. This includes determining what the company wants to achieve with its AI-driven marketing, whether its improving lead generation, increasing conversion rates, enhancing customer personalization, or optimizing campaign performance.

Recent PYMNTS Intelligence in the June report SMBs Race to Critical Mass on AI Usage found that 96% of small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that have tried AI tools see it as an effective method to streamline tasks.

As Andre Machicao, senior vice president atVisa Acceptance Solutions, andJosh Scheer, president and owner ofWhite Lotus Travel Design, explained to PYMNTS in a discussion posted June 28, SMBs can use AI to create marketing plans and product descriptions in minutes without a big marketing team to do it.

And by using automated AI solutions, B2B firms are able to personalize outreach efforts at scale. AI technology is able to optimize the content of the emails and manage the timing and frequency of outreach, maximizing the potential for successful connections.

Read more:The Power of Precision: Driving Revenue From B2B Customer Data

Automation is another area where AI is making an impact, streamlining various sales processes and freeing up valuable time for sales teams. AI tools can uncover trends, patterns and correlations within massive datasets that might be missed by human analysts.

Plus, while traditionally lead generation is labor intensive, reliant on manual research and broad outreach, AI is revolutionizing this domain by leveraging advanced algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data and identify potential leads with a high probability of conversion.

These insights enable companies to refine their targeting and messaging strategies, ensuring that their outreach efforts are based on solid data rather than intuition.

The moment you slice the world through the lens ofhistorical transactional behavior, you can then leverage a predictive GenAI framework and say something about the likelihood of those future transactions,Pecan CEO and Co-Founder Zohar Bronfman told PYMNTS. Its evolutionary in terms of how businesses can operate.

Still, it is crucial for firms to ensure that the AI tools they select can scale with their business and integrate seamlessly with existing customer relationship management platforms, marketing automation platforms, and data management systems.

AI has the potential to really move the needle for so much of the industry in terms of the ability to be more proactive with their buyers or suppliers, Nick Izquierdo, executive vice president of payments atBilltrust, told PYMNTS. And alongside that, the productivity AI brings is really driving more success satisfaction out of both sides of the equation.

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AI's Impact on B2B Marketing Spotlights Value of Automation - PYMNTS.com

As tech giants worldwide scramble to dominate the artificial intelligence (AI) chip market, South Koreas SK Hynix is making a $74.6 billion wager that could redefine the semiconductor industry and perhaps the future of computing itself.

The company reportedly said it will spend the money through 2028 to strengthen its chips business, with a focus on AI.

But SK Hynix isnt alone in this high-stakes gamble. Across the globe, tech giants and upstarts are pouring unprecedented sums into AI chip development, sparking what some industry insiders call a modern-day gold rush.

The rise of AI-specific chips is poised to revolutionize commerce across sectors. These specialized processors, optimized for machine learning tasks, promise to dramatically accelerate AI applications in everything from autonomous vehicles to personalized marketing. As businesses increasingly rely on AI to drive decision-making and enhance customer experiences, the demand for powerful, efficient AI chips is expected to surge, potentially reshaping supply chains and creating new economic powerhouses.

The AI boom has sparked an unexpected consequence: a global scramble for specialized chips. Nvidia, long known for gaming hardware, has become the unlikely kingmaker of AI development. Its advanced GPUs now power the most sophisticated AI models, propelling the company to a multitrillion-dollar valuation. But demand sometimes outstrips supply.

This scarcity is reshaping the tech landscape. Giants like Microsoft, Meta and Google are now developing proprietary AI processors, seeking to reduce their reliance on Nvidia. Meanwhile, chipmakers AMD and Intel are pouring resources into competing products.

As AI applications proliferate across industries, from healthcare to finance, control of this critical hardware has become a strategic imperative. With billions in investments and potential market dominance at stake, the AI chip race is rapidly becoming the next frontier in computing.

The numbers are eye-popping. In the U.S., Nvidias market cap has skyrocketed past $3 trillion on the strength of its AI-focused GPUs. Apple has reportedly been working on developing chips designed to run AI software in data centers.

Meta recently launched a new version of its custom AI chips, which perform better than the previous generation and help power ads on Facebook and Instagram, the company said. Even cloud computing behemoths like Google and Amazon are designing their own custom AI chips to gain an edge in the race for faster, more efficient machine learning.

This frenzy of investment comes as nations jockey for position in what many see as a critical technology for the future. Feeling pressure from rivals like Taiwan and the United States, South Korea recently unveiled a 26 trillion won ($19 billion) support package for its domestic chip industry.

For SK Group, the parent company of SK Hynix, the AI push is part of a broader strategy to revitalize its fortunes after a bruising period in the memory chip market. The conglomerate is streamlining its sprawling empire of over 175 subsidiaries while focusing on what it calls the AI value chain from high-bandwidth memory chips to AI data centers and services.

While chip fabrication plants rise from former farmland and R&D budgets swell to historic highs, one thing is clear: AI is reshaping the silicon landscape. Whether this bet pays off in the long run remains to be seen, but for now, the industry mantra seems to be AI or bust.

The impact of AI chips on commerce will likely be profound and far-reaching. As these specialized processors become more powerful and energy-efficient, they will enable new AI applications that were previously impractical or impossible. As AI-powered solutions become increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous, this could lead to significant disruptions in industries ranging from healthcare to finance.

However, the AI chip boom raises important questions about market concentration and technological dependence. As a handful of companies emerge as leaders in AI chip design and manufacturing, concerns about the potential for monopolistic practices and the vulnerability of global supply chains arise. Policymakers and business leaders must grapple with these challenges as they navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of AI chip technology and its impact on the global economy.

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How Many Chips Could You Buy With $74 Billion? - PYMNTS.com

Artificial intelligence seems to have become, as Michael Lewis labeled a previous chapter in the recent history of technology, the new new thing. But human anxieties about it are, if not an old old thing, then at least part of a tradition longer than we may expect. For vivid evidence, look no further than Fritz LangsMetropolis, which brought the very first cinematic depiction of artificial intelligence to theaters in 1927. It imagines a future cleaved in two, where the affluent from lofty skyscrapers rule over a subterranean caste of laborers, writes Synapse Analytics Omar Abo Mosallam. The class tension is so palpable that the invention of a Maschinenmensch (a robot capable of work) upends the social order.

The sheer tirelessness of the Maschinenmensch sows havoc in the city; later, after it takes on the form of a young woman called Maria a transformation you can watch in the clip above it incites workers to rise up and destroy the machines that keep the city functioning. Here, there is a suggestion to associate this new invention with an unraveling of the social order. This robot, whichGuardianfilm critic Peter Bradshaw describes as a brilliant eroticization and fetishization of modern technology, has long beenMetropolis signature figure, more iconic than HAL, Data, and WALLE put together.

Still, those characters all rate mentions of their own in the articles reviewing the history of AI in the movies recently published by the BFI, RT, Pictory, and other outlets besides. The Day the Earth Stood Still, Alien, Blade Runner (and even more so its sequel Blade Runner 2049), Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, and Ex Machina. Not all of these pictures present their artificially intelligent characters primarily as existential threats to the existing order; the BFIs Georgina Guthrie highlights video essayist-turned-auteur Kogonadas After Yang as an example that treats the role of AI could assume in society as a much more complex indeed, much more human matter.

FromMetropolis toAfter Yang, as RTs Alan Smeaton points out, AI is usually portrayed in movies in a robotic or humanoid-like fashion, presumably because we can easily relate to humanoid and robotic forms. But as the public has come to understand over the past few years, we can perceive a technology as potentially or actually intelligent even it doesnt resemble a human being. Perhaps the age of the fearsome mechanical Art Deco gynoid will never come to pass, but we now feel more keenly than ever both the seductiveness and the threat of Metropolis Maschinenmensch or, as it was named in the original on which the film was based, Futura.

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Based in Seoul,ColinMarshallwrites and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletterBooks on Cities,the bookThe Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angelesand the video seriesThe City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at@colinmarshallor onFacebook.

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Fritz Lang First Depicted Artificial Intelligence on Film in Metropolis (1927), and It Frightened People Even Then - Open Culture

The dynamics of wars are changing rapidly with the development of new technologies and emergence of Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is the key driver in revolutionizing the warfare as it contributed significantly to the introduction of efficient, proficient, and command-oriented devices and programs that have the potential to assist Human controlled processes. The dynamic nature of warfare and the quest for innovation and advancement has led to the introduction of the artificial intelligence in the wars where human aspect of war is being replaced by the artificial intelligence-based developments. Traditionally, wars required a large human force to be fought and the challenging aspect about these wars imposed serious damages to both sides. Even the stronger side or the powerful side had to suffer the damages. There were massive causalities on both sides. The Impact of Industrial Revolution can also be traced the same way as the modern equipment required human power to be an impediment for its working and this accounted for even more damaging aspects in a reciprocal manner.

These patterns began to transform in the twentieth century with the modern data thefts commonly known as cyber-crimes that are becoming more and more important where the data and privacy of a state is breached by the use of different methods and increasing acceptance of Artificial Intelligence based devices such as unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) or what we commonly refer to as drones. This led to the introduction of drone warfare as an essential component of modern-day wars. The drones are mainly used under the umbrella of dropping munition over the enemy forces or they can be used in their suicide versions. The suicide versions drones reach the target and then they get explode to fulfill the objective under which they were sent. A significant example in this case is of Russia-Ukraine War in which the drone warfare is becoming extremely important where Russia reported its first use of Shahed-136 drone in September 2022 which was aimed at targeting the military targets in the Kharkiv Region in east of country. In addition to this, Russia is also using Orlan-10 drones to counter the Ukraine who is using Bayraktar Tb-2 drones which are modern drones with increased capacity. The NATO alliances are providing Ukraine with these TB-2 missile and in addition to this, they are also providing Ukraine with SYPAQ and kamikaze drones. The drone warfare is quite effective in this warfare as it had replaced Humans combating the wars with the multiplicity of damages. Not only this, but another use of this drone warfare was also seen in Armenia-Azerbaijan war.

We cannot simply restrict the artificial intelligence to the use of drone warfare. This is because many other attempts are being made to change the dynamics of warfare. A significant advancement in this form is the introduction of robots in the wars. Recently, the military robots began shaping the RUSSIA-UKRAINE war. The Uncrewed Ground Vehicles (UGVs) which are military robots operated by remote control are being used by Russia against Ukraine. An important example in this regard is the use of AGS-17 grenade launchers against Ukraine in the Avdiivka. In order to counter the Russian robots, Ukraine has installed the ChaBla robotic turret which is a remote-based machine gun system, to its front line. Ukrainian officials-as reported in the defense news- termed the use of ground robots as game changer in the war

The transition in warfare has been observed in the form of increasing reliance and use of artificial intelligence. In the current times, the role of artificial intelligence is becoming more and more relevant thus replacing the human role in wars as the direct conflicts involving humans fighting against each other, are being replaced by the type of conflicts where use of AI based devices is increasing to combat the humans on the other side. This can be called the dehumanization of wars, as wars are being fought through the remote controlled or software-oriented devices unlike, with human powers which had dominated the wars in the form of large military troops. So, from the use of Dynamic Analysis and Replanning Tool (DART) to schedule the transportation of supplies and personnel and to solve other logistical problems in 1991 to the use of drones and robots in the on-going Russia-Ukraine war and the assumptions of development of advanced weapons, equipments, navigation systems, and surveillance mechanisms operated by AI etc. will be a step towards changing the character of war by minimizing the Human role in wars.

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Dehumanizing the Wars: Introduction of Artificial Intelligence in the Warfare - Modern Diplomacy

Metaschief AI scientist thinks large language models will never reach human intelligence.

Yann LeCunasserts that artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have alimited grasp on logic, the Financial Times (FT) reported Wednesday (May 21).

These models, LeCun told the FT, do not understand the physical world, do not have persistent memory, cannot reason in any reasonable definition of the term and cannot plan...hierarchically.

He argued against depending on LLMs to reach human-level intelligence, as these models need the right training data to answer prompts correctly, thus making them intrinsically unsafe.

LeCun is instead working on a totally new cohort of AI systems that aim to power machines with human-level intelligence, though this could take 10 years to achieve.

The report notes that this is a potentially risky gamble, as many investors are hoping for quick returns on their AI investments. Meta recently saw its value shrink by almost $200 billion after CEO Mark Zuckerbergpledged to up spendingand turn the tech giant into the leading AI company in the world.

Meanwhile, other companies are moving forward with enhanced LLMs in hopes of creating artificial general intelligence (AGI), or machines whose cognition surpasses humans.

For example, this week saw AI firmScaleraise $1 billion in a Series F funding round that valued the startupat close to $14 billion, with founder Alexandr Wang discussing the companys AGI ambitions in the announcement.

Hours later, the French startup called H revealed it had raised $220 million, with CEO Charles Kantor telling Bloomberg News the company is working towardfull-AGI.

However, some experts question AIs ability to think like humans. Among them isAkli Adjaoute, who has spent 30 years in the AI field and recently authored the book Inside AI.

Rather than speculating about whether the technology willthink and reason, he views AIs role as an effective tool, stressing the importance of understanding AIs roots in data and its limitations in replicating human intelligence.

AI does not have theability to understandthe way that humans understand, Adjaoute told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster.

It follows patterns. As humans, we look for patterns. For example, when I recognize the number 8, I dont see two circles. I see one. I dont need any extra power or cognition. Thats what AI is based on. Its the recognition of algorithms and thats why theyre designed for specific tasks.

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Meta AI Head: ChatGPT Will Never Reach Human Intelligence - PYMNTS.com

The House Homeland Security Committee may host town hall meetings for lawmakers on artificial intelligence and could bring in tech experts to help lawmakers better understand rapidly evolving technology before writing rules to govern it.

During a Wednesday hearing focused on how AI can be used to secure and defend the U.S., lawmakers acknowledged a new format may help them get their arms around a deeply complex set of issues.

What I may do is have a town hall type thing, where were the town hall and theyre on the [dais] and were just asking questions, Rep. Mark Green, Homeland Security Committee chairman and Tennessee Republican, said during Wednesdays hearing. I think that would be more informative. And maybe some presentations, so to speak, on data poisoning for AI and all that kind of stuff.

The town hall format would be familiar to tech experts who frequently field requests from Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer convened AI insight forums starting last year. The New York Democrat also worked with a group of three other lawmakers to develop comprehensive AI legislation.

Mr. Schumers closed-door forums attracted top tech minds such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Metas Mark Zuckerberg and Googles Sundar Pichai, and theevents gave senators a chance to ask questions without the usual time constraints of formal Capitol Hill hearings.

But the forums also had their share of detractors.

SEE ALSO: Seoul AI summit aims to fill regulatory vacuum, but critics say voluntary pledges fall short

Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, criticized the forums as a giant cocktail party for Big Tech. At the same time, Democratic-led committees in the Senate did not appear thrilled about the potential for Mr. Schumers effort to encroach on legislation under their jurisdiction.

After the Senate events, Mr. Schumers group last week produced an AI roadmap. It didnot propose specific legislation, but did call for at least $32 billion more spending on tech research and development.

The House Homeland Security Committees purview is more narrow and fixated on threats involving cybersecurity, infrastructure, and Americas physical borders, among other things.

In the absence of congressional rules, President Biden is implementing an AI executive order that includes guidance for federal agencies.

Mr. Biden has also dispatched administration officials to meet with foreign governments on AI rules, including a first meeting with Chinas government in Geneva last week.

Europe is pressing ahead with new AI rules. In March, the European Parliament approved the EU AI Act, which bans various AI applications such as emotion recognition and scraping of facial images.

EU states gave additional agreement to the law this week, which the Council of the EU portrayed on Tuesday as the final green light on the new AI rules.

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Artificial intelligence town halls? House committee weighs new approach before writing AI rules - Washington Times

Someday and it may be soon conversations withAmazonsautomated voice assistantAlexamay cost money. Amazon has been clear about its intentions to charge a subscription for a tiered Alexa service since last September.Butimprovements to voice technology driven by artificial intelligence (AI) may force the issue.

Asan Amazon spokesperson confirmed to PYMNTS Wednesday (May 22), that integrating generative AI into Alexa is in development,and was mentioned by CEO Andy Jassy in his most recentshareholder letterin which he referenced AI as part ofdozensof potential applicationsincludinganeven more intelligent and capable Alexa.Other company executives past and present have been on the record about the improvements AI can bring to the technology as well asthe costs it will add to production.

But before we would start charging customers for this and I believe we will it has to be remarkable,David Limp, the former Amazon executive in charge ofAlexa,toldBloombergin September 2023.It has to prove the utility thatyourecoming to expect from thesuperhumanassistant. I can paint a line from whereweregoing to be right now, whichwerenot going to charge for, to something that will have so much utility for everymember of the household. Wedonthave an idea of a price yet.Welltalk to customers and learn fromthem,what they believe the value is.

When will that happen? Morerecent reportsput the debut of Alexa Plus by the end of the year, but there is no more specific information. The only Alexa application currently under a subscription model isAlexa Together,whichwasdevelopedfor elderly care and connectivity among family caregivers. However, the company recently announced thatit will not be supportedafter June 25.

Using AI to power voice commerce and intelligent conversations was a development predicted by PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster as early as April 2023. In a column she wrote at that time, she predicted that technology would integrate voice and enable commerce from any connected device, positioning voiceto bea dominant means of interactions and transactions.Andshenoted,researchfrom PYMNTS Intelligencethat showed nearly 30% of U.S. consumers at that time would pay a monthly fee to access a voice assistant thatcanhandle complex commands and commerce.Not to mention her predictions about AI.

Artificial intelligencewill make voice interactions smart, personalized, adaptiveandengaging,she wrote.As in truly engaging conversational in every sense of the word. Not just reactive to a wake word and a series of prompts, but proactive and intuitive, anticipating actions based on history and context and anticipating what consumers might want to do next, just like an effective, smart, capable human assistant would do.

According to a September 2023 blogpost,the new Alexa might have been listening. It willbe basedon a new large language model (LLM)thatsbeen custom-built for voice interactions and aimed at getting real-time information, efficient smart home control, and maximizing home entertainment. The postsets outfive foundational capabilities: conversation, real-world utilities like smart home commands, personalization, personalityandtrust.

The emergence of AI, along with sophisticated chatbots and voice functionalities, is transforming the landscape of digital assistants at a time when consumers increasingly rely on technology to manage various daily tasks.

According toPYMNTS Intelligence, consumers devote 26% of their weekdaytimeand 28% of their weekend time to multitasking.While one might typically associate the integration of digital technology with activities like online shopping which accounts for only about a quarter of multitasking time the rest is spentmanaging work-related tasks, home upkeep, and staying in touch with family members, among others.

In the April 2023 study titled How Consumers Want to Live in the Voice Economy,PYMNTS Intelligence discovered that consumers are eager to streamline their daily routines usingsmart, simple and more interconnected solutions. Hands-free voice technologies are increasingly popular for tasks such asretrieving information, voice identification, or booking flights. On average, consumers engaged in six different tasks using voice technology over the past year.

The data also highlights a growing preference for voice-driven interfaces, with 54% of surveyed consumers indicating they would choose voice technology in the future for its speed over traditional typing or touch interactions.

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Waiting for Alexa: When Will Amazon Strike Up the AI Conversation? - PYMNTS.com

This report finds that AI is diffusing broadly across technologies, inventor-patentees, companies, and U.S. geography.

October 2020 Read IP Data Highlight 5 Supplementary material

Technology diffusion is the spread and adoption of a new technology by inventors, companies, and other innovators. Technologies that diffuse broadly have potentially large effects on innovation, productivity, and economic growth. For example, steam power, electricity, and information technology greatly enhanced the volume, as well as the variety, of goods produced within the economy.

The figure below shows that the percentage of U.S. organizations (green line) and inventors (dashed blue line) that patent in AI increased from under 5% in 1980, to just over 20% in 2018. This is remarkable growth and shows that AI is increasingly important to U.S. invention.

Image

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Inventing AI: Tracing the diffusion of artificial intelligence with U.S. patents - United States Patent and Trademark Office

With this latest agreement, BBVA is once again ahead of the curve when it comes to embracing disruptive technologies that will impact the financial industry. Notably, it is the first European bank to forge an alliance with OpenAI, which will share its knowledge and unlock the full potential of the new tool at the bank.

In the past two years, BBVA added 7,187 professionals in the data and technology field to its workforce - a figure it plans to increase in 2024 with 2,700 new hires. Of this amount, 1,225 will take place in Spain for the banks headquarters in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona. Technology talent has become a key aspect of the Groups digital strategy.

BBVA has already begun deploying 3,000 ChatGPT Enterprise licenses among Group employees in a bid to increase productivity and process efficiency, while stimulating innovation across the Group. The enterprise version of ChatGPT delivers the utmost security and privacy, combined with its unique ability to generate content or answer complex business questions, among numerous other features.

OpenAI has also agreed to deliver training and provide the latest updates for its large language models (LLMs), the technology on which ChatGPT is built. By working in close partnership with OpenAI, BBVA will drive forward the most successful use cases for the banks business and processes.

Data and technology are the key levers of transformation at BBVA, which for over a decade has been running specific development centers for advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, now known as AI Factories, in Spain, Mexico and Trkiye. In addition to these teams, there are also analysts and data specialists working across all the business areas, giving a total of more than 5,000 employees, of whom 1,000 or so are data scientists. The entire team works to unlock the value of data and AI with a view to improving business decision-making and helping create various kinds of products, such as solutions to improve the financial health of customers or aid them in their climate transition.

The recent agreement with OpenAI is a further example of BBVAs ongoing commitment to generative AI as a key differentiating aspect in the value proposition it offers its customers. New artificial intelligence tools are going to have a disruptive impact on society as a whole and on the financial industry in particular. At BBVA, we want to further promote our role as pioneers when it comes to innovating in financial services and we are therefore firmly committed to exploring the potential of this technology. We believe that generative AI, when used safely and responsibly, is a game-changer in how we support our customers in their decisions and offer personalized services. It also happens to stimulate creativity among our employees, explains Ricardo Martn Manjn, Global Head of Data at BBVA.

OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap added: "Were excited to partner with BBVA, one of Europe's top banks, to deliver the capabilities of ChatGPT Enterprise at scale. AI streamlines mundane tasks, boosting creativity, efficiency, and productivity.

The bank is already handing out licenses at its central services in Spain, and this process will continue in the Groups other main countries. Compulsory training will be delivered for each account set up. The aim is for all areas and departments to have access to ChatGPT, so that licensed employees can collaborate with their colleagues in undertaking various projects. In tandem, BBVA will be collecting feedback and suggestions from these users through a multi-country community, with the aim of flagging the most outstanding use cases and sharing best practices.

We see this first foray into the use of ChatGPT Enterprise as an opportunity to validate the extent to which these tools can genuinely boost our productivity, thus transforming the way we all work within the bank, explains Elena Alfaro, the new Head of AI Adoption at BBVA, whose role is to mainstream this technology across the Group. We are aiming to enhance the capabilities of our employees, not to replace them, she says.

Alfaro also remarks that while ChatGPT Enterprise is certainly a major strategic commitment, it will not be the only solution to be used within the organization. BBVA is continuing to evaluate other tools that may prove viable for the more than 100 use cases to be rolled out over the course of 2024.

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BBVA steps up its plans in artificial intelligence by signing an agreement with OpenAI - BBVA