7 business leaders reveal how their companies are embracing AI in 2024

AI and machine learning aren't new to Ancestry but generative AI has "thrown open the possibilities," Sriram Thiagarajan, chief technology officer, told BI. "These algorithms can interpret and understand the semantics of human language, and there are things you can do more effectively leveraging large-language models."

Thiagarajan said the genealogical site is experimenting with features and launches something — often a minor feature — every month to see how customers react. Many features involve letting users better extract information from records the company gets from around the world.

"We are using computer vision to automate visualization of those records. We can read human language, human handwriting, in a couple of different languages, already. We can extract names, places, relationships between people and locations, using advanced machine learning. We're leveraging the LLM to help with those efforts," he said, referring to a large-language model.

Ancestry is concerned with hate, abuse, historical facts being misrepresented, and AI hallucination, Thiagarajan said. Right now, there are human reviews of the AI results, even though the company's goal is to automate as much as it can, he said.

One challenge is that "LLMs themselves are evolving every week or every two weeks so you have to be constantly curious and can't assume you learned one thing or know how something works," he said.

Many of the AI tools that companies have been building might not have that long of a shelf life.

That shouldn't be a big worry, Vladimir Lukic, global leader, tech and digital advantage, told BI. What matters more, he said, is that companies are experimenting and developing critical processes.

By going through the steps to build AI, companies face questions about the responsible use of the tech and the potential downsides. They're also addressing concerns about finding — and cleaning up — the right data.

"It was a super helpful exercise to do because they build a muscle," Lukic said.

Muscle memory will be a welcome benefit because some AI tools that perhaps only months ago were novel, will soon be defaults, he said. "Probably 80% of the stuff that was built in the last six months will be obsolete because it will be a feature in software packages coming at us," Lukic said.

That doesn't mean there won't be hiccups, he said. Some setbacks with AI could cause some firms to slow their adoption. In other cases, companies that see AI kicking out errors or not working as intended might make tweaks to what they've deployed. "There's going to be a wave of how do we fine-tune not the models but the deployment of it," Lukic said.

Commercial real estate is "centered at delivering insights," so adoption of AI is necessary, Salumeh "Sal" Companieh, chief digital and information officer, told BI.

The commercial real estate giant, Companieh said, ensures both real-estate investors and tenants can use an "aggregation of the best market data," including foot traffic, drive time, and weather, to find the best space for their needs. And AI is at the center of that, Companieh said.

The tech can help Cushman employees use their time to best serve clients, she said, adding that it's exciting to introduce transformative technology in a field where change is so often gradual.

Companieh said clients, including landlords and tenant companies, were rightfully asking for transparency on Cushman's AI use. She said they asked, "Where is it? Where is it incorporated? Where will it be incorporated? How do we ensure their data safety? How do we ensure sound integration of datasets?"

The current state of AI and AI adoption is the result of things many companies — including Cushman & Wakefield — have been doing already, Companieh said. This includes creating partnerships, reviewing commercial terms, beefing up cybersecurity teams, and hiring and training talent.

"AI is very personal to every single organization. The journey you go on is very individualized to your organization. And we're doing right by ours by being authentic to who we are," she said.

In 2022, LinkedIn made the decision to rewrite its roadmap to incorporate AI across a range of capabilities, Dan Shapero, chief technology officer, told BI. "We were lucky enough to see some of the next-gen AI models by being part of Microsoft in the middle of 2022," he said.

The networking platform knew this would be a "time of massive experimentation to see where AI made the biggest difference" for both recruiters and job seekers. He said the company will use AI to help people write their profiles because people can find it awkward to describe themselves professionally. "It's not always comfortable for people to write things about themselves," he said.

The biggest request from users, Shapero said, is help finding a job. LinkedIn is seeing more questions about how people can use AI in the job hunt, how to describe themselves, and for advice on interviewing.

This led to LinkedIn's AI-powered coaching chatbot and personalized writing suggestions for users. There are also new tools for recruiters, such as AI-assisted messages and AI-assisted job descriptions. Company figures show that when recruiters personalize messages via LinkedIn, they see up to a 40% increase in acceptance rates.

Shapero thinks AI will lead to ideas that might have once seemed impossible but will also require caution: "We need to embrace these capabilities responsibly and ethically and with equity in mind," he said.

SAP wants to give AI LLMs "means to access the know-how," Juergen Mueller, the chief technology officer, told BI. "We develop a method that you can combine the strength of a large language model with all the real-time, company-specific information that you need," he said.

The German company — which focuses on cloud-based subscription services for its financial-reporting, inventory-tracking, and human-resources applications — looks at the processes of companies, including financials, procurements, HR, customer relations, or the supply chain.

SAP has worked within the machine-learning AI space for almost nine years. The company has been trying to answer questions around how to work with data; how to protect data; how to use data ethically; what tools data scientists need; "and how can we rethink and upgrade to generative AI."

In 2023, the R&D SAP invested in business AI paid off, Mueller said. "Over 25,000 SAP Cloud customers using at least one of our 130 AI scenarios."

Yet there are still concerns. "I think the risk is not that there's new technology. The risk is that we don't lean in and don't invest the extra time, extra hours. Because it needs a little bit of time; it is a little complex," he said. "Everyone needs to lean in, learn. That, I think, is the largest risk. Then you have divergence in society."

ServiceNow wants to become an "AI-first" company, Chris Bedi, chief digital information officer, told BI. "We know we're early innings, especially with gen AI, but we are pushing on it hard."

ServiceNow, which provides a cloud-based platform for automating IT workflows, uses generative AI search for employees and customers. Generative AI also enables work to get done faster, like reading and interpreting information. "Literally you run a process in a couple of hours. It's additive," he said.

Of course, part of understanding and integrating AI is training the company's 22,000 employees. ServiceNow recently held an AI learning day that included panels to help demystify the technology, Bedi said.

Teams involved in information technology, human resources, and customer support don't feel threatened by gen AI, he said. About 64% believe it's helping boost productivity, according to Bedi.

ServiceNow also considers what happens when AI takes on a bigger part of someone's job. "How do we fill in the gaps of time to do more meaningful work than you were previously able to do?" he said.

For Bedi, the value of gen AI "jumps off the page," he said. "The analogy of asking employees to work right now without gen AI is like asking them to use a typewriter when there's a word processor available."

Sowmyanarayan Sampath took over as Verizon Consumer Group's CEO in March, and the job has made it clear how essential the internet has become.

"If a kid doesn't have connectivity earlier, he can't play video games, do homework. If there is no connectivity, a mom cannot log into a Zoom call from home," Sampath told BI. "Connectivity is the bridge to everything."

Internet access is so important that people are willing to pay a bit more for good service, he said.

To Sampath, that means using AI at a scale that allows workers to reduce all the information they have to keep in their heads — a challenge Sampath observed while taking calls during a night shift in the Philippines. "Over the years we made our systems pretty complex, so we've made a very sharp turn to simplify," he said.

This means implementing AI broadly. AI will allow Verizon to understand "the sentiment of the customer, pick up cues, and then serve up what is best," he said.

Sampath's 2024 goal is to be "the world's best AI-applied company" and use it every day, within internal workflows, and then customer interactions. "I'm not that excited by doing these pilots and trials," he said, adding that responsible AI use is a priority. "I don't want the algo doing things I wouldn't do myself."