Smart Company AI Policy

Hello,

This is Simon with the latest edition of The Weekly. In these updates, I share key AI related stories from this week's news, list upcoming events, and share any longer form articles posted on the website.

A few weeks ago, I started a new job and got a first-hand look at a smart approach to workplace AI. While all staff are encouraged to use AI, our corporate policy limits us to one major LLM provider and a specialised tool called Glean.

Glean has been a game-changer. It integrates with all our internal systems such as Google Docs, Slack, Confluence, and acts as a central brain for company knowledge. As a newcomer, instead of bothering teammates with basic questions, I can simply ask Glean and receive answers based on our own documents and conversations. It’s a fast and efficient way to get up to speed.

This method of connecting an AI to internal documents is called ‘grounding’. An LLM like ChatGPT is trained on vast public data, so it knows nothing about your company’s new hire onboarding process, for example. Grounding an LLM with your own data reduces the risk of hallucinations and massively increases the accuracy of its answers. The responses become tailored to your needs, which is essential in a professional setting.

In other news, Perplexity just launched a new assistant capable of automatically drafting email responses and finding meeting times in your calendar. These are huge time-savers for most office workers and a welcome development.

However, several companies, including Fyxer, Superhuman, and Motion, already offer these services, and I’ve questioned whether their feature set is broad enough for long-term success. With a major player like Perplexity entering the market, you have to worry for them.

You would also think, it's only a matter of time before Google and Microsoft build similar services directly into their email platforms making me believe tools like these will quickly become a basic commodity. Any business offering them as a core product today needs to develop a far broader strategy, and fast.

And talking of Perplexity, I’m still using their Comet browser as my default, and if you want to try it out, you can download it here.

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In this section, I highlight a real-world example of AI. This week I talk about how Airbnb is using Machine Learning to prevent unwanted parties.

According to a new report, UK firms plan to boost AI investment by around 40% over the next two years, but many don’t yet have a long-term strategy or people focus in place.

Why it matters: This signals that AI is becoming more mainstream in UK business. Whilst the opportunity is there, simply investing in AI won’t guarantee success without alignment.

Research from IBM shows that around two-thirds of UK enterprises have reported significant productivity improvements from using AI. However, many are facing barriers in scaling and adoption.

Why it matters: AI is already delivering value for many businesses with more finally seeing the “proof-point”. But the journey to scale and show full value is still tough.

Microsoft and OpenAI have signed a new definitive agreement to deepen their collaboration on AI, expand innovation, and ensure responsible AI.

Why it matters: This news highlights that the major platforms and ecosystems behind AI are consolidating.

Thanks for reading, and see you next Friday.

Simon,

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