This Week in AI: The Future of Work and Home

Generative artificial intelligence (AI), like most programming languages, uses Epoch Time to standardize its operations.

Epoch Time is the number of seconds that have elapsed since Jan. 1, 1970; but as the technology continues its onward march, putting more silicon into more business solutions, a new unit of measurement capable of addressing the rapid advances we are witnessing may just be needed.

While many eyes were on the drumbeat of AI announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week, Microsoft’s AI investments helped it (briefly) surpass long-time rival Apple as the world’s most valuable company.

Robots, AI, and Efficiencies Oh My!

This year’s 2024 CES show was more than an occasion to introduce new gadgets, robots and AI-driven product development; it also served to highlight how marketers are increasingly leaning into AI-driven customer insights.

Of course, product and solution development did literally take center stage.

Walmart used CES to promote how the retail giant has been investing in eCommerce and digital capabilities to compete with Amazon in the online space, announcing Tuesday (Jan. 9) that it has integrated generative AI across its digital shopping platform, allowing customers to search for specific themes or occasions and receive curated results across multiple categories.

Among the new tools are My Assistant, a generative AI-powered tool for Walmart associates that is being expanded to enable staff in 11 countries to interact with the tool in their native language. Launched in the United States in August, the tool helps associates with tasks like summarizing large documents.

Not to be outdone, Amazon has been leveraging AI models available in Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to provide a more personalized shopping experience. Amazon’s latest tool, announced Tuesday, lets viewers cast content to its devices from Apple and Google-powered streaming apps.

Victoria’s Secret announced Thursday (Jan. 11) that it hopes to soon let its customers turn to AI for product recommendations.

As consumer packaged goods brands look to manage cost inflation, IBM is separately seizing on the opportunity to drive sales with smarter supply chain solutions, announcing on Thursday a partnership with software company SAP.

AI for Enterprise Gets a Monetization Push

This week was a big one on the enterprise AI front.

IBM teamed with Casper Labs to help companies gain more insight into their AI systems. As PYMNTS has written, AI is one of the first technologies that can violate nearly all of a company’s internal policies in one fell swoop.

At the same time, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise has reportedly gained traction in the corporate world, with 260 businesses signing up for the service within four months of its launch.

Meanwhile, Mastercard is developing Mastercard Small Business AI, a tool for small business owners, announced Thursday.

Also on Thursday, PYMNTS examined the potential of OpenAI’s new ChatGPT store as a monetization strategy.

As PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster has written, for an app store to take off, it needs the same thing Apple and Google needed with their app stores 16 years ago: a critical mass of developers and users.

Notably, OpenAI partner Microsoft’s own AI Copilot app trails ChatGPT downloads substantially, despite offering the same tech for free.

AI for the Automotive Industry

On Tuesday (Jan. 9) researchers from Microsoft and scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Washington state announced that they successfully used AI to design an industrial material that can be used to build a working battery requiring up to 70% less lithium than many competing designs.

After all, AI is increasingly being integrated into every element of the connected car experience, so why not battery development, too?

Most recently, Volkswagen on Tuesday announced that it had integrated OpenAI’s AI chatbot, ChatGPT, into its IDA voice assistant, providing customers with access to an ever-expanding AI database and allowing them to have researched content read out to them while driving.

AI’s Double-Edged Sword

A bipartisan congressional working group is being created to explore the impact of AI on the financial services and housing industries. The formation of the Working Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) was announced by House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) Chairman Patrick McHenry and Ranking Member Maxine Waters on Thursday (Jan. 11).

Of course they will have to move fast — as PYMNTS reported, quantum powered AI could already be around the corner.

Meanwhile, the battle lines between open-source and closed-source AI are increasingly being drawn as proponents of each look to lobby and influence AI regulation.

And one key element of regulation will be reigning in the growing risks and attack vectors that AI brings.

The AI-granted ability to generate human-like text in an instant, virtually clone people’s voices based on just snippets of audio, and scale behavioral-driven attacks with the click of a button has increased access to cybercrimes that were previously only the realm of the most sophisticated bad actors.

Underscoring the urgency of synthetic information’s threat, the World Economic Forum (WEF) labeled misinformation and disinformation as the top risk facing the world in the next two years in its newly published Global Risks Report 2024.

Fortunately, the marketplace is responding. On Tuesday, ID R&D introduced a voice clone detection tool to combat AI-driven fraud.

AI and Work

As AI gets integrated across more and more avenues of daily life, its impact on work is increasingly coming into focus.

As PYMNTS unpacked on Tuesday, the future of AI is steadily becoming indistinguishable from the future of work. The Japanese government has called on its domestic tech companies to be human-centric when developing or using generative AI.

Duolingo has cut about 10% of its contractors due to its use of generative AI to create content.

Google is also reportedly laying off hundreds of workers in its ongoing cost-cutting campaign. The tech giant plans to cut positions in its voice assistant business, as well as hundreds more jobs among the hardware team behind its Pixel, Nest and Fitbit products, as it looks to focus on AI.

“In 2024, we’re going to shift from a world where it was a risk to try using generative AI to become more efficient, into a world where there is actually a bigger risk of being left behind if you don’t try it,” James Clough, chief technology officer and co-founder of Robin AI, told PYMNTS during a conversation for the “AI Effect” series. “That’s why it’s called a co-pilot, right? Because a co-pilot implies the existence of a pilot, and it’s still the pilot who’s in control. It’s the pilot who’s setting the direction. It’s best thought of as a person and machine partnership rather than a replacement.”

Elsewhere in legal news, OpenAI said on Monday (Jan. 8) that The New York Times lawsuit against it is without merit.