Narrative Highlight: What Are Business Leaders Actually Saying About AI?
Narrative Highlight:
What Are Business Leaders Saying About AI?
To gain deeper insights into the business perspectives regarding AI, examining AI-related discussions from Fortune 500 earnings calls is beneficial.
Business Integration:
Companies often cite AI and machine learning(ML) use cases regarding business integration to reassure business audiences of safer business practices, growing opportunities, streamlining processes, and capability expansion.
“We spent $100 million building certain risk and fraud systems so that when we process payments on the consumer side, losses are down $100 million to $200 million. Volume is way up. That’s a huge benefit.”
– Jamie Dimon, CEO, JP Morgan Chase & Co. (Q2 2022)
“Especially in the last year or so, the field of robotics itself has actually changed because with AI and ML coming to the picture, there’s significant developments in the robotics field. So we think it’s a huge opportunity for us.”
– Raj Subramaniam, CEO, FedEx (Q3 2022)
“We spent a ton of money on Cloud. We spend a ton of money on adding capabilities. And over time, as you do it on one platform, it all becomes more efficient. So, I think it’s a lot of little things, but it adds up with our base of people and fixed cost, it adds up significantly over time. We’ve been able to maintain our headcount at a level we feel good about, and we think we can grow massively on top of that without having to add lots of bodies to be able to do it.”
– Peter Kern, CEO,Expedia Group (Q4 2022)
Process automation:
Business leaders emphasize the ability of AI tools to accelerate productivity gains and to deliver a better customer experience.
“We continue to drive the use of automation and artificial intelligence to drive productivity gains to help offset inflationary pressures.”
– Jim Davis, CEO, Quest Diagnostics (Q4 2022)
“We have improved the experience for customers by applying artificial intelligence to match them with an expert who is right for their specific situation and to deliver insights to experts so they can provide excellent service.”
– Sasan Goodarzi, CEO, Intuit (Q2 2022)
“In September, we opened a nextgen fulfillment center in Illinois. This 1.1 million square foot facility features robotics, machine learning, and automated storage, resulting in increased productivity and a better service for our customers at faster delivery times.”
– John David, CFO, Walmart (Q3 2022)
Surrounding Pricing and Inventory Management:
The conversation surrounding pricing and inventory management saw companies reassuring business audiences on how their use of AI would improve their operational strength, especially in environments of high inflation and supply chain challenges.
“We are … continuing to refine and invest in machine learning tools that will allow for more sophisticated competitive pricing and greater automation at scale.”
– Adrian Mitchell, CFO, Macy’s (Q3 2022)
“Our teams are utilizing technology, innovative data analytics and AI to forecast supply chain lead times and changes in market demand to ensure optimal levels. These actions along with our pricing initiatives positively impacted our gross margin in the second quarter.”
– Bert Nappier, CFO, Genuine Parts Company (Q3 2022)
Healthcare and Medical Practices
There is also a vibrant discussion about the ways in which AI can change healthcare and medical practices, more specifically to reduce costs, improve the patient experience, and better serve clinicians.
“[Using] machine learning and robotics, we can now resolve a wide range of prescription drug claims which previously required the attention of our pharmacists, freeing them up to spend time with patients. This advanced approach reduces overall cost and improves the patient experience.”
– Karen Lynch, CEO, CVS Health (Q2 2022)
“I’d like to highlight productivity efforts in our preauthorization process where we’re leveraging an in-house artificial intelligence solution to automatically match incoming faxes to the correct authorization requests. This solution creates administrative efficiencies across millions of inbound images. We are also scaling this solution to multiple business units such as pharmacy and are also expanding the application of this type of AI to provide decision support to clinicians, which will result in improvements to authorization turnaround times, reduction in friction for providers and creating a better member experience.”
– Bruce Broussard, CEO, Humana (Q3 2022)
“We continue to see opportunities across [the software and analytics] segment as payers, providers, and partners take advantage of our high ROI solutions and realize the benefits of our data, AI models, and workflow capabilities.”
– Neil de Crescenzo, CEO, UnitedHealth Group (Q2 2022)
Reference:
Maslej, N., Fattorini, L., Brynjolfsson, E., Etchemendy, J., Ligett, K., Lyons, T., ... & Perrault, R. (2023). Artificial intelligence index report 2023. arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.03715.