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.
A GenAI Deployment Blueprint with Lessons Learned from Over 20 Pioneering Companies
ChatGPT just turned two last Saturday, and what a journey it’s been!
In just two years, this tool has "grown up" so much and has become a staple in my everyday tasks. If you’re still picturing ChatGPT as the 3.5 model with its knowledge cutoff and "robotic” answers, you’re really missing out.
It’s no longer clueless about current events, it “thinks” more carefully before answering, and it can even talk with you like a real human.
This shows just how quickly AI has advanced in the past couple of years, and it’s creating a bigger gap between those who jumped in early and kept growing with it versus those who are still holding back.
Over the past year teaching Lead with AI courses to more than 200 executives from big and small companies, I’ve heard all the doubts and hesitations about starting with AI (the right way). But once they take that first step, the “aha!” moments start rolling in.
I’ll leave you with tech thinker Ben Evans’ quote: “AI is whatever doesn’t work yet, and when it works, it’s just software.” His 2024 yearly presentation is a must-read, and a reminder: the future of AI isn’t coming, it’s already here.
That said, let’s dive into this week’s issue. I have news and inspirations for you to apply AI in your work, team, and organization:
- The Executive AI Brief: GenAI Workforce Deployment Blueprint (PwC x EWF)
- “Your AI Team” Updates: Custom Writing Style for Claude, AI Podcasting on Your Phone with ElevenLabs
- AI Implementation Case Study: AI Driving Results at Australian Commonwealth Bank
- Weekly Quick Hits: Chinese Reasoning Model Beats OpenAI’s o1, Breakthroughs in AI for Image and Sound, New AI Coding Assistant Threatens Programmer Roles, and more.
But first:
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:
Claude
Claude’s new style customization feature lets you set communication guidelines by picking preset styles or uploading sample content. My Comment: It’s handy to get Claude to respond the way you prefer for different task goals, but it still falls short when serving as your writing assistant.
ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs’ new tool, GenFM, turns PDFs, articles, eBooks, and more into podcasts—similar to NotebookLM's 'Audio Overview,' but with more voices and languages, and done right from your iOS phone. (Check it out)
SOLVE HR ISSUES WITH WINSLOW
HR teams spend up to 50% of their time answering repetitive employee questions.
Winslow gives HR teams instant answers to employee questions inside Gmail, Outlook, Slack, and Teams.
Key Features:
✅ Well connected: Winslow works with your HR documents no matter where they live in SharePoint to shared drives to your custom intranet site.
✅ HRIS integrated: Integrate your HRIS to dynamically serve employees the right answers based on their location, classification, or seniority.
✅ Answers everywhere: Your HR team never needs to leave their workflow with our integrations into Gmail, Outlook, Slack, and Teams.
✅ Employee self-service: Turn on employee self-service and enable Winslow 24x7 for your employees through Slack or Teams.
Winslow is giving HR teams superpowers in nearly every industry and is funded by leading Silicon Valley figures, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Reid Hoffman.
Thanks to Winslow for sponsoring this issue of Lead with AI. Want to get your offering in front of tens of thousands of people and AI-driven leaders? Partner with FlexOS.
How Companies Implement AI
AI Cuts Scam Losses, Speeds Up Home Loans at Top Australia Bank
The banking industry is notoriously tough for AI deployment, with big corporate structures and sensitive regulations creating friction.
But this week, I have a successful example of Commonwealth Bank using AI to drive efficiency, improve customer experience, and tackle financial crime.
They implemented:
- AI tools to analyze transaction patterns for fraud detection and scam prevention.
- An AI-powered messaging app to streamline customer service and reduce call center wait times.
- AI-driven document pre-population for loans and business reviews, cutting customer wait times and team workloads.
They planned to keep the momentum going as “uses develop from urgent problems to wider organizational profitability,” with over 50 more AI use cases already in development.
Read what CEO Matt Comyn shared here.
The AI Executive Brief
Generative AI for Job Augmentation and Workforce Productivity (PwC x World Economic Forum)
Our Lead with AI podcast alumna Marlene de Koning and her team at PwC partnered with the World Economic Forum to publish an insight report on Generative AI. In it, they proposed four scenarios and their implications for the near future of GenAI considering two key uncertainties: 1) trust in GenAI and 2) improvements in its applicability and quality.
It’s an essential read, as they also interviewed over 20 early-adopting organizations to gather real-world insights, lessons learned, and ROI expectations and suggested a blueprint for deploying GenAI effectively within the workforce.
Click here to read the full report.
Quick Hits
- More exciting (and scary) AI capabilities for the creative industry over the past week with Runway’s new model Frames for “unprecedented stylistic control,” Adobe’s MultiFoley for synchronized post-production sound effects from text prompts (see demo), and Nvidia’s new soundtrack generator Fugatto.
- Yes, that viral LinkedIn post you read was probably AI-generated (WIRED). But "if it’s a good read, people aren’t bothered."
- The $2 billion startup Cognition built an AI coding assistant, Devin, that can take over the work of junior programmers. But CEO Scott Wu insists that massive job losses are not imminent and the field has been “capped by supply.”
- Amazon developed its own AI model, Olympus, for video analysis, which is capable of searching specific scenes in vast video archives.
- President-elect Donald Trump is considering appointing an "AI czar" to centralize U.S. AI strategy, with Elon Musk expected to play a key advisory role.
- Police departments across the U.S. are testing AI tools to cut report-writing time by over 60%, sparking optimism among officers but also raising concerns about accuracy, bias, and legal challenges in courtrooms.
- A new Alibaba's reasoning AI model, QwQ-32B-Preview, beats OpenAI’s o1 on benchmarks like AIME, which uses AI to evaluate reasoning performance, and MATH, a collection of challenging word problems. (Test it here)
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:
- We ran our masterclass on Copilot for Microsoft 365 with Copilot Academy founder Casimir Morreau. The sessions were packed with practical use cases and best practices on AI adoption and workforce adaptation. Missed it? Request a ticket for tomorrow's session.
- Christel shared a speech by Silicon Valley VC investor Jeremiah Owyang on his five theses on the future with AI agents.
- Carlo shared Lior Sinclair’s quick review on Nvidia’s PDF extraction agent, which can extract insights from text, graphs, charts, and tables no matter the size.
- A NotebookLM tip from Evelyn when it doesn’t accept a YouTube link: Find its transcription and paste it as plain text to NotebookLM. (Transcription tools: youtubetranscript or Kome.)
- Phil shared Yair Titelboim’s experimenting AI stack for commercial real estate market analysis.
- Did you know that ChatGPT refuses to say the name David Mayar no matter how hard you try? Henrik even found out there are more “taboo” names:
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.