Welcome to Lead with AI, the only executive AI brief for busy leaders. Every edition, I deliver the latest AI updates through real-world insights and discussions from our community of 150+ forward-thinking executives.
o3: OpenAI’s Bold Move to Combine Smarter Reasoning with Safer AI
Merry Christmas, everyone! 🎄
Here’s a special treat from our community member Antti—a fully AI-created video to spread some holiday cheer. (You’ll find his recipe at the bottom!)
This is also the final Lead with AI newsletter of 2024.
It’s been a wild, inspiring year of exploring together how AI can reshape the way we work, lead, and grow. The insights, discussions, and shared experiences from this community have been incredible and shaped every step of this journey. And thank you for being part of it all!
As we close out 2024, I’d love to hear from you—what’s been your favorite AI tip, tool, or moment from this year? Let me know in the reply, and I’ll include some highlights in our first issue of 2025.
That said, let’s dive into this week’s issue with news and inspirations for you to apply AI in your work, team, and organization:
- “Your AI Team” Updates: ChatGPT with Notes and Notion, Gemini’s Fast Reasoning Model, Midjourney’s Moodboard
- AI Implementation Case Study: Citigroup's Productivity Boosts
- The Executive AI Brief: o3 is Betting Big on a New Method for AI Safety
- Weekly Quick Hits: ChatGPT’s phone number, Perplexity’s Latest Acquisition, Agentforce 2.0, EU’s €1.5 billion AI Factories, and more.
And other interesting sharings from the Lead with AI PRO community.
Practical Tips for the AI-Driven Workplace
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“Your AI Team” Platform Updates
Essential updates from our core AI platforms can mean big changes in your and your team's productivity. Here's what's new from the essential AI tools that most Lead with AI leaders are using:
ChatGPT
On Day 11 of Shipmas, OpenAI rolled out updates to its desktop apps, paving the way for a 'more agentic' ChatGPT.
The app can now also read Apple Notes, Notion, and Quip with Advanced Voice Mode and Search features, which is really powerful for those using such tools to organize and produce content.
You can use the Option+Shift+1 shortcut to instantly pair ChatGPT with supported apps and the Option+Space shortcut to trigger instant access.
Gemini
Google debuts Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Mode, a new advanced reasoning-focused model to rival OpenAI’s o1. The model stands out with its speed and integrates a 'chain-of-thought' reasoning technique to address complex coding, math, and physics problems. (Watch a demo here and try it on Google AI Studio)
Midjourney
MidJourney's new Pinterest-like moodboards let users upload image collections to inspire personalized AI styles. Plus, you can now easily organize the work and set up multiple profiles for different projects. (Read details here)
This is What the 1% of Leaders Do Differently
Elite leaders have at least 12 AI assistants.
Imagine how much more you’d achieve if an army of AI employees worked alongside you 24/7.
Ready to transform your leadership in 2025?
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Our program uniquely covers every aspect of AI leadership, ensuring you're fully prepared to drive AI transformation in your organization.
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With 15 on-demand daily lessons, an online peer study group, three live sessions, a certificate, lifetime access to all materials, and 12 months of access to the 120 executives in our Lead with AI PRO community (a $348 value) – there was never more value.
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How Companies Implement AI
Citigroup's Productivity Boosts
Citigroup rolled out two AI tools, Citi Assist and Citi Stylus, to enhance productivity for 140,000 employees across eight countries, including the US, Canada, India, and the UK.
- Citi Assist: Described as "a super-smart coworker," this tool helps employees navigate internal policies and procedures to quickly find answers to HR, compliance, risk, and finance questions.
- Citi Stylus: An AI-powered document assistant accelerating decision-making by summarizing, comparing, and searching multiple documents at once so employees don’t waste time on manual, repetitive parts.
The bank plans to expand these tools to more countries after reviewing employee interactions and collecting feedback for potential new use cases.
>> Read more details here.
The AI Executive Brief
OpenAI’s o3 sets new standards in reasoning and AI safety.
OpenAI wrapped up its Shipmas with a big announcement: o3 and o3-mini, the next frontier in reasoning models. (Fun fact: o2 was skipped due to a trademark conflict!)
The o3 family outperforms o1 in coding, graduate-level science, and math benchmarks and features adjustable reasoning time (low, medium, high compute) to balance speed and accuracy for diverse tasks. It also scored highly on the ARC-AGI benchmark, though AGI is still far off.
Another big focus is safety—o3 introduces “deliberative alignment,” embedding safety reasoning directly into the system to align AI with human values, reduce misuse, and cut reliance on costly human labeling.
>> Read Lance B. Eliot’s deep dive on deliberate alignment and its implications.
Quick Hits
- OpenAI releases o1 to API, but only for top-tier developers ($1K+ monthly spend, 30+ days of account history.)
- You can now dial 1-800-CHATGPT (1-800-242-8478) to talk to ChatGPT for 15 minutes/month for free in the US or message it on WhatsApp worldwide at the same number.
- Perplexity AI tripled its valuation to $9 billion with a $500M funding round and acquired Carbon to enable its AI to connect user data sources, like Google Docs and Slack, for more personalized and enterprise-focused search capabilities. (Conor Grennan’s takes on why this acquisition matters)
- Salesforce introduces Agentforce 2.0 with the Atlas Reasoning Engine, which enables AI agents to handle complex, multi-step tasks autonomously.
- The EU is investing €1.5 billion in seven AI factories by 2025 to enhance supercomputing, support AI research, and boost AI skills in key industries.
- Grammarly just acquired Coda to ‘redefine the AI-native productivity space.’
From The Lead with AI Community
Every day, Lead with AI members discuss practical ways to benefit from AI in their work and organizations.
This week's highlights include:
- I found two business examples using AI video tools: animating product shots with Sora and creating ads from product shot photos with Capcut Commerce Pro.
- Wendy shared Ruben Hassid’s demo comparing Veo 2 and Sora outputs.
- Antii made a Christmas video using ChatGPT for story and keyframe prompts, Leonardo AI for visuals, Runway for motion, Udio for music, and ElevenLabs for SFX.
- The $30 billion Omnicom-Interpublic merger marks the end of the "Mad Men" era as AI, data, and automation redefine advertising in the age of "Math Men and Women." I found a Forbes article on this industry shift.
- Inference AI will outscale training by a billion times, driven by real-time applications like RAG models, Agentic AI, and Co-Pilots, redefining productivity and personalized intelligence. Henrik shared Jon Nordmark's insights on how "Always On AI" will deliver decisions, insights, and support at an unprecedented scale.
If you made it this far, reply and tell me what you'd love AI to take over in your daily workflow.
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If you have any other questions or feedback, just reply or inbox me.
See you next week,
Practical Tips for the AI-Driven Workplace
Get real strategies AND implementation guides from business leaders delivered to your inbox every Tuesday.