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It’s confessional time.
Yours truly and Julie Hyman spoke to the who’s who of global business at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. I encourage you to catch up on coverage here.
It’s a truly unique annual event, one where you could be eating a giant Swiss-made hot dog on the street while Bill Gates walks by minus security (you can watch our full chat with Mr. Gates from WEF 2024, absent hot dog eating).
The theme of the conference was none other than AI, from what’s next tech-wise to the downside risks of the large language models (LLMs) now permeating the world’s infrastructure.
Salesforce (CRM) co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff told me on Yahoo Finance Live he sees a world of “digital people” taking shape.
Yeah, it got that deep in my chat with Marc.
Bottom line, I (and I won’t speak for Julie here!) barely knew what most of the AI super experts were talking about. This stuff is just next level — one has to be entrenched in generative AI to truly get it, I think.
What my simpleton self does know is this: 2024 will be the year of AI embedding itself into the very fabric of workplaces and the internet. In turn, this will be the year where many companies in the AI space swing from 2023 losses to profits.
It will be the year where big and powerful players such as Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), and Amazon (AMZN) will get more powerful and profitable due to AI advances. These companies are attracting the best AI talent because they can afford to do so. This will widen their lead in the race to introduce game-changing AI products and services.
Having said all of this, maybe you understand AI better than me. I can appreciate that.
Here are some of the sights and sounds on the AI front from WEF 2024, as Yahoo Finance Live was told.
Workday co-CEO Carl Eschenbach
“I think you’ll start to see co-pilots. We’ll have generative AI co-pilots that will help you navigate through things. I think it will start to push recommendations around where you need to be skilled or re-skilled and recommend to you what’s next in your journey to advance your career. We can start to look at recruiting as a way to leverage AI. And then we have this thing called a career insight hub that will help both managers and employees navigate their careers and give those recommendations on where you should go and get new skills to advance your career. And it will help them with internal mobility of your people.”
HP CEO Enrique Lores
“The AI PC is coming this year. And it’s going be probably one of the biggest changes in the PC industry since the PC was invented more than 20 years ago. It’ll allow customers to run AI applications locally. So what today you need to do in the cloud with a large language model, you will be able to do that in the PC. And from a cost, security, and speed perspective, it brings a lot of advantages.”
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon
“One big conversation right now is how we can help industries and what are the different use cases. And there’s an incredible amount of interest in getting [AI] on the device. Just think about automotive as an example. Natural language communication is perfect when you are behind the wheel, and the car is now a new computing space. So how can we add those capabilities to some of the models, some that are in development with the existing hardware that we have.”
Tech investor & Black Eyed Peas star will.i.am
“One project that I just launched with Mercedes is called Sound Drive that utilizes AI and transforms how we listen to music while we commute. Taking the sensors from the electric car, it creates music just by driving. The suspension is altering the music, the steering wheel, the acceleration, the accelerometers, the GPS, and you’re just creating as you commute.”
Read the latest from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland:
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on Twitter/X @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn. Tips on deals, mergers, activist situations, or anything else? Email [email protected].
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