131 | The most significant product ever created", per Elon Musk, Enterprise AI implementation is accelerating, and bad players are using AI in ways you need to know, and other AI news for the week ending on October 11, 2024

0:00Hello and welcome to a weekend news episode of the Leveraging AI podcast, the podcast that shares practical ethical ways to leverage AI to improve efficiency, grow your business, grow your business, and advance your career. This is Isar Maitis, your host, and we've got a packed episode for you today with a lot of exciting news. Some of them are coming from the robotics world and the self-driving world with some very exciting news. A lot of news on video generation, some big partnerships between some of the giants, some of the biggest companies in the world, as well as a really scary, sophisticated AI-based phishing attempt, which we're going to get to in the end, and I promise you, you want to wait to the end to learn about this so you can keep yourself safe.

0:46So let's get started with this week's AI news.

0:57Last night on October 10th of 2024, Tesla held their WeRobot announcement event. That was a very interesting event in which they announced several different things. The first thing they announced was the Cyber Cab, which is a fully autonomous, basically taxi, that can take people from one place to the other. That has been the core feature of the event, and I think that everybody was expecting to see. The car itself looks like a mix between a Model 3 and a Cybertruck with a really futuristic look. It has Gawing, Lambo-style doors that open upwards. It has no controls whatsoever, meaning there's no steering wheels, there's no pedals, so there's no way for a human to control these cars.

1:43They're built to be completely autonomous, and Elon Musk is claiming that full self-driving capabilities of Teslas are going to start being available for Model 3 and Model Y to be able to drive completely autonomously in Texas and California as early as next year. But these cyber cabs will start production in 2026. They're also shared a new robo van, which is a really spacious, full-size van for 20 people that also has no controls that is supposed to be for mass transportation and can take people around. They're claiming that this will be able to take people at a cost of five to 10 cents per mile, which is really cheap.

2:28It looks very futuristic. It has no windshield in the front or back because there's no driver in it that needs to see through the windshield. And as I mentioned, it has no steering wheel, no pedals and so on. This is currently just a concept. They haven't shared even if that's even planned for production yet. But as I mentioned, the CyberCab is supposed to start production in 2026. That needs to be taken with a grain of salt because Elon Musk has promised many things in the past on timelines that they couldn't even get close to. If you remember 2019, Elon said that by 2020, we're going to get this robotaxi that now is called CyberCab.

3:08That being said, a lot happened since. And Tesla has full self-driving capabilities on its cars that are driving tens of millions of miles every single day more than any other company in the world. So they definitely have the data and the experience to build something like this right now. So maybe now the timeline is more realistic and maybe we'll start seeing cybercabs driving around in 2026 or maybe 2027 because production is supposed to start in 2026. Now, as you probably know, Waymo, a Google company, already has self-driving taxis in several different cities in the US. I got to drive one two weeks ago as I was speaking at AI Realize in San Francisco and it was an amazing experience.

3:54But these are traditional cars, Jaguars with steering wheels and pedals and so on, just without a driver to operate them versus the Tesla ones that are supposed to be built to be these cyber taxis. And in addition, they're supposed to be significantly cheaper than the Waymo cars. that way more cars cost over$200 ,000 per car, and these cars are supposed to be in the tens of thousands of dollars to manufacture, and hence, significantly cheaper to buy, operate, and maintain over time. Now, what does that have to do with AI? Well, obviously, AI operates this entire car and the fleet and everything else in order to make this possible.

4:35But in addition, they have shown significant improvement on their Optimus robots. So these are humanoid robots, This is their newest generation of that robot. And per Elon Musk, and I'm quoting, they can do anything that you can think of. So he mentioned things like walking dogs, babysitting, mowing lawns, and serving drinks in a party. They actually had these robots at the event, serving drinks and engaging with people. So they didn't put them behind a fence for people to watch. They were actually walking around serving drinks and having conversations. So this is coming. Current prototype can actually engage with people right now.

5:19The interesting parameter here is that he's claiming, again, take this with whatever filters you want based on Elon's previous promises. But he's saying that the price tag of these robots, once they get to full production, is going to be between$20 ,000 and$30 ,000 a unit. that's extremely low for a highly capable humanoid robot that can either work in a factory, replace employees across multiple industries from cleaning our streets to working in hospitality, but all the way to a home usage. If you can have a robot for$20 ,000 to$30 ,000 doing the dishes, walking the dog, mowing your lawn, taking care of your pool, which I'm not sure is a good idea, And he actually didn't mention that.

6:06I'm just wondering if they're water resistant. And a lot of other things, this may be a fair comparison to having multiple people, somebody to clean your house, somebody to take care of your pool, somebody to mow your lawn, somebody to take care of other stuff in your house. if you're hiring these people right now, and a lot of people in the US and around the world do that right now, that's a comparable cost that in this case you have to spend once, and then you can use it every single day to do all these things. He is claiming that basically, and I'm quoting again, everyone in the 8 billion people on earth will want an Optimus buddy.

6:45I'm not 100 % sure of that. There's a lot of people in the 8 billion people on earth that don't have electricity yet or fresh drinking water. But I do agree with him that$20 ,000 to$30 ,000 for a device, a robot that can do many aspects of helping us in our day-to-day life is an attractive price point that if they can get to, it will sell more than they're selling Teslas right now. Elon says, and I'm quoting again, the most significant product ever created. So that's Elon being Elon, I'm sure there's a few things in history that we can think of that might be more exciting than a robot that can do everything, but it's definitely high on the list.

7:27And if the price point will be reasonable, I definitely see that as a huge potential success. There's obviously other companies who manufacture these kind of robots right now, and there's going to be fierce competition. So even if 8 billion people do want these kind of robots, not all of them are going to be manufactured by Tesla. There's a lot of other companies who are in that race. Tesla is definitely one of the front runners. The interesting thing from my perspective is despite the fact that this promises to be a new product and a huge new market for Tesla, that did not excite investors in Tesla.

8:01And the stock fell down 8 % today. The interesting thing is at the same time, Uber and Lyft stocks went up 8%. Now, I wonder if that's because people are really disappointed with what Tesla was showing or because Uber and Lyft investors see a future where Uber and Lyft as companies will use cars like the Cyber Cab and maybe even the van from Tesla so they won't have to pay drivers. They will be a lot more efficient. They can run 24-7 and they will make a lot more money for Uber and Lyft. So I'm not sure what investors are thinking, obviously, but I just found this fact to be really interesting.

8:39By the way, in my personal opinion, I think Tesla will have an amazing product with their robot. And I do think over time, it will generate a lot of value to Tesla as a company and to the people who are going to buy these robots. I'm obviously not making any stock buying or selling recommendations. I'm just sharing with you my personal opinion. Another interesting piece of news from Elon Musk this week that has to do with AI, XAI, which is another Elon Musk company, has held a recruiting company at OpenAI's former headquarters in San Francisco, which they recently moved into. So OpenAI left a different location.

9:17Musk bought the building and has run a recruiting party during OpenAI's Dev Day event on the other side of town. So that's Elon being Elon. We know he has a lot of beef with Sam Altman and OpenAI as a whole. In that event, Musk has made some interesting predictions or statements, which with Musk, there are more statements than predictions. But the first one is that XAI will achieve AGI within a couple of years. The second one is that they are aspiring for XAI to be as dominant in the AI space as SpaceX is in rockets. Now, SpaceX is the world leader by a huge spread in rockets. I don't think it's realistic for them to take the same position in AI, especially that they're coming from behind.

10:04But that being said, they just last week, finally, they just last week had all of their 100 ,000 GPUs in their mega computer online for the first time. So they've built it at record speed. In about four months, they got it to start working. They were running into it 60 ,000 GPUs initially. And last week, they finally achieved the whole 100 ,000 running at the same time. So they have right now the most capable AI training computer on the planet by a big spread. And Elon being Elon, and especially when he has the drive of his beef with OpenAI, I wouldn't underestimate them in their capability to develop extremely capable models.

10:47and they're already proven that they can progress and make significantly better models in a relatively short amount of time between the different versions of Grok so far. Where does that actually put us? I'm not 100 % sure, but it definitely seems that XAI is going to be one of the front runners, together with the other companies that Musk himself has identified as their biggest competitors, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, that he assumes, together with X, are going to be the biggest players in the future of AI. Now from X to another giant that is partnering with a third giant, Accenture and NVIDIA has announced a partnership for enterprise AI adoption.

11:32So you heard me say that many times in the show before, that successful AI implementation is not just about technology, it's about having the right strategy, having the right training, having the right infrastructure in place, having a plan on how to deploy AI. One of the best companies in the world to build enterprise level planning and execution is Accenture. They've been doing it for decades across multiple enterprises around the world, and they definitely have the experience in doing that. And so they've now announced a partnership with NVIDIA to create a new business group within Accenture that will launch Accenture AI refinery platform using the full NVIDIA AI stack.

12:13And when I say the AI stack, it's software and hardware. And their goal is to build this network of refinery engineering hubs around the world. Each one will support enterprises in its region. Now, as you can expect from two companies at that scale, Now, Accenture has identified 30 ,000 professionals will be a part of this team that will put this process and this project together. And the focus is obviously helping clients build AI systems, the more specifically agentic AI systems, so the next generation of AI agents and implementing them successfully and effectively and safely within businesses.

12:56Another interesting reference point that came out of this article and out of this release is that Accenture already has$3 billion in bookings for AI assistance this year, meaning they're going to finish the year of probably close to$4 billion in revenue just through AI development and implementation channels. And this partnership with NVIDIA is most likely going to accelerate that. That's showing you just how much need there is right now at the enterprise level for AI solutions. Now, they're going to use, as I mentioned, all of NVIDIA's platforms. That includes AI Foundry, NVIDIA's AI for Enterprise, and NVIDIA Omniverse.

13:38And it's going to be using both public and private cloud platforms and integrating both of them together to achieve the best result tailored for the needs of each company. In the press release, they share they already have existing hubs in Mountain View, California, and in Bangalore, India. And then the next hub they're planning are in Singapore, Tokyo, Malaga, and London. So global presence from two global companies that will most likely make serious waves and help a lot of enterprises adopt AI in an efficient way. Taking that to my little universe, I definitely see that companies, even the ones that seem to have a better grasp on AI, and I'm not working with the same scale of companies that Accenture does, but I work with small and medium businesses a lot on AI implementation and training.

14:29And I see that having a plan combined with having a leadership that is bought into the idea of AI implementation generates amazing results very quickly for multiple organizations that I'm working with compared with companies that are trying to figure out themselves, not knowing exactly how to do this because they're trying it for the first time. I definitely see this approach as the right way forward, especially building these centers of excellence that will develop best practices, as well as training for employees, which plays a very big role in their plan and in the way that I do things with my clients.

15:04And I see this kind of training as one of the most significant aspects that can predict future AI implementation success. We have been talking a lot on this podcast on the importance of AI education and literacy for people in businesses. It is literally the number one factor of success versus failure when implementing AI in the business. It's actually not the tech. It's the ability to train people and get them to the level of knowledge they need in order to use AI in specific use cases successfully, hence generating positive ROI. The biggest question is how do you train yourself if you're the business person or people in your team, in your company, in the most effective way?

15:48I have two pieces of very exciting news for you. Number one is that I have been teaching the AI Business Transformation course since April of last year. I have been teaching it two times a month, every month since the beginning of the year, and once a month all of last year. hundreds of business people and businesses are transforming their way they're doing business because based on the information they've learned in this course. I mostly teach this course privately, meaning organizations and companies hire me to teach just their people. And about once a quarter, we do a publicly available course.

16:28Well, this once a quarter is happening again. So So on October 28th of this month, we are opening another course to the public where anyone can join the courses, four sessions online, two hours each. So four weeks, two hours every single week with me live as an instructor with one hour a week in addition for you to come and ask questions in between based on the homework or things you learn or things you didn't understand. It's a very detailed, comprehensive course that will take you from wherever you are in your journey right now to a level where you understand what this technology can do for your business across multiple aspects and departments, including a detailed blueprint of how to move forward and implement this from a company-wide perspective.

17:16So if you are looking to dramatically impact the way you are using AI or your company or your department is using AI, this is an amazing opportunity for you to accelerate your knowledge and start implementing AI in everything you're doing in your business. You can find the link in the show notes. So if you just open your phone right now, find the link to the course, click on it, and you can sign up right now. And now back to the episode. And speaking of enterprise and the impact of AI on enterprises, Forbes shared a very interesting article this past week that is showing the status of AI in enterprise companies.

17:59So the first and not surprising parameter is that 96 % of boardrooms have generative AI on their agenda for the decisions that they're making for Q4 and for next year. Speaking of that, by the way, we are holding an AI planning for 2025 webinar on October 17th at noon Eastern. If you haven't started planning or if you're planning and looking how to complete your plan for 2025 and AI implementation in your company, in your business or for your personal career, come join us. There's a link on the show notes. You can open them right now so you don't forget and sign up for our webinar. But I'm continuing.

18:40As I mentioned, 96 % of boardrooms have that on their agenda. Adoption in large company has increased this year from 6 % to 24%. So it's still very low. You're not very far behind if you haven't started. There's less than a quarter of companies that actually started implementing AI even this year. Current ROI in large enterprises is currently still very low, between 4 % and 7%, but most companies are going to continue investing in that, and they see that as an early stage process with a huge potential in the long run. I'm claiming, going back to what I said before, that most companies do not see huge ROIs because they don't have the right plan in place, they don't have the right training in place, they We do not introduce specific use cases to specific employees in order to really rip the benefits off that.

19:33So the main challenges that this article sees are platform enablement. So choosing the right technology and building it around the ecosystem of the tech stack a company already has. Governance, meaning managing the different models, security, ethics, and alignment with company culture. Identifying appropriate use cases. As I mentioned, that's a huge deal. You've got to get the benefits if you start by identifying the use cases and not by buying the technology first and then looking for use cases. That's the wrong way to do this. And there's the right way to also identify and prioritize the use cases.

20:09Training and skill development of the workforce. I mentioned that before. That's a huge issue right now where companies are investing millions and sometimes tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in licenses without proper training for the workforce. and the solution should be exactly the other way around. Train the right people on the right tools as a first step and then grow from there the amount of licenses after these people figure out the use cases and figure out the right implementation and you will see significantly bigger benefits much faster. And then the last aspect is responsible use and cost management of AI.

20:43So these are the limitations. The future trends that are identified is diversification of AI models. So a mix of closed source, open source, large models and small models across multiple tasks within the organization. That's the direction everybody is going. I've seen that firsthand as I was speaking last week at AI Realize, a conference in San Francisco with multiple Fortune 2000 leaders, as well as multiple leaders in the AI implementation industry that share that. So that's definitely the direction it is going. hybrid AI ecosystem, so different types of AI technologies, and the rise of agents, so instead of a chatbot or different kinds of bots, to a self-thinking, decision-making, action-taking products that are AI-based, and that's what agents basically mean.

21:34Now, the key applications companies are implementing right now, one is everyday AI, so enhancing existing applications and existing processes. The other is integrating AI into their products and services as part of their offering to their clients. And the third is AI in their innovation journey, so trying to use AI to change the trajectory of the company and of the strategy of the overall company, which will take them to a different path that is AI-enabled, which will put them ahead of their competitors who are not doing the same thing. Through the interviews they've done with leaders of these enterprises, two things are very clear.

22:12One is that there's no magic formula. Each company has to find its path based on specific concepts, but there's no one size fits all as far as AI implementation. And the other is that generative AI should be one of the top priority for any company if they want to stay competitive in regardless what industry or size of business it is. And one of the top things all those leaders said is the importance of preparation. The first thing that they mentioned is that training employees on their AI technical skills is a critical aspect. If you're not doing this right now, if you don't know how to do this, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or visit our website or find the link in this post to learn about our education programs that we provide tailored to companies or open to the public.

23:03We have all of the above. We have free training resources as well on our website. So just find the links in the show notes and find them. This is going to dramatically impact how your company can compete in the future. The other two things that these CEOs and leaders said is developing strategies for cost and resource management is a big thing that will impact the success as well as establishing clear guidelines and oversight. And that's another thing that I'm working with my clients on very early on in order to make sure nothing bad happens from reckless AI implementation. OK, so we talked a lot about enterprises and big players.

23:40Another big player that we don't talk about a lot and that plays a huge role in the enterprise level is Zoom. So Zoom, the digital conferencing platform, held their Zoomtopia conference this past week. and they've made a lot of AI announcement, which is not surprising, but they are adding more and more AI models and more and more capabilities across their ecosystem. So a co-pilot that's going to be available for every Zoom meeting as a right panel that also has web access that can get access to real-time information to look up things and help you find information as you're holding the meeting in conjunction with summarizing the meeting and key things that are happening, following action items that were defined by different people in the meeting and summarizing those as well.

24:27And they're saying that this feature will be available at no additional cost to paying users of Zoom. That is expected to be available shortly. They're also adding a higher tier that's going to cost$12 a month per user in H1 of 2025. They will have what they call an AI Studio for customizations of AI capabilities and company-specific data sources that can be integrated into this new Zoom AI ecosystem, including integrations with known third-party ops like Atlassian and Workday and Zendesk and so on. And companies who pay this will be able to personalize coaching and custom avatars for Zoom meetings and interactions that will participate and be able to assist in specific types of Zoom meetings.

25:19They also announced AI-powered task detection, recommendation, and completion that we'll be able to track, again, things that people are talking about as far as what's happening in the real life and connect it back to the digital world. They're adding Zoom phone enhancement, so you'll be able to record and transcribe and summarize regular phone calls versus just Zoom meetings, and it's going to be connected to their entire ecosystem. and they're adding AI capabilities to their docs and data management platform that they've announced a while back. So they're not just going after conferencing. They're also trying to get market share from companies like Microsoft and Google when it comes to documentation and data management within the company.

26:00They're also adding something that I have been using Zoom for a while, but they're adding it as an easy way to do this, a way to track in-person meetings and use Zoom for those as well. So you can bring your AI companion to in-person meetings to summarize them and take notes and have it integrated with your entire office ecosystem. They're also planning to add AI virtual voice agents for self-service calls. So basically allowing your customers to talk to an agent through a Zoom interface that is tailored to your company's needs and quality management of those agents to track how well they're doing so they can improve over time.

26:41And they're also offering the ability to tailor solutions to specific industries such as healthcare, education, and so on. So big announcements coming from Zoom, going back to something that we talked about many times on this show. In order to be successful in the AI world, you need the technology, you need the data and you need the distribution. And Zoom has all three. They have calls data, especially recordings from millions of calls, probably every single day that they are saving and analyzing and so on for multiple companies. They have the distribution because so many people are using Zoom and they have the technology capabilities to develop these AI capabilities on top of their existing ecosystem.

27:27So I definitely see them moving in the right direction. That being said, I do not see them winning market share because of that from Microsoft or Google replacing docs and stuff like that. But I do see them going after new clients and providing them a lot more capabilities and charging them for that. That will allow them to provide more value and generate more money. So that's it from Zoom. And now let's talk a little bit about OpenAI. I know you're thinking to yourself, oh, my God, it's been so long since the beginning of this episode and we haven't spoken about OpenAI yet. So here we go. Let's talk a little bit about OpenAI.