Table of Contents

• This Week In AI

• Business Use Cases

• Things to Pay Attention to

This Week In AI

Why is this important

• Anthropic has completed a $13 billion Series F fundraising led by ICONIQ, valuing the company at $183 billion post-money.

• The investment round was co-led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from other significant investors.

• The funding will be used to expand Anthropic's capacity to meet growing enterprise demand, deepen its safety research, and support international expansion.

Bottom Line Up Front

• Anthropic, an AI company, has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by a group of authors.

• The lawsuit alleged that Anthropic used pirated copies of the authors' books to train large-language models, with the authors seeking compensation for roughly 500,000 published works.

• The proposed settlement is considered the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, with Anthropic committed to making payments to resolve the authors' remaining legacy claims.

Business Use Cases

Why is this important

• Synechron, an AI consulting firm, has reached $1 billion in annual revenue and is celebrating by making every employee a part owner with a $1,000 universal equity grant.

• The grant is equal for all 16,000 employees worldwide, regardless of location or role, and is meant to reflect the company's values of transparency and inclusivity.

• Synechron's CEO, Faisal Husain, says the company is focused on growth and innovation, and while an IPO is possible in the future, there are no current plans.

Why is this important

• The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has raised concerns among Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) about its potential impact on the accounting profession.

• A survey by Thomson Reuters found that 51% of accounting professionals believe AI should be applied to tax, accounting, or audit work, and 1 in 10 accounting and tax professionals are currently using or planning to use ChatGPT/generative AI.

• According to Ariana LoBianco, Kevin Jialin Sun, and Xin Zhao, AI will transform accounting work, replacing tedious and repetitive tasks, and creating opportunities for accountants to focus on higher-value activities that require critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Bottom Line Up Front

• 89% of economists believe governments need to increase investment in AI infrastructure to drive growth amidst global fragmentation pressures on trade.

• Businesses that invest in AI infrastructure now will be best positioned to thrive long-term, as AI enables predictive modelling, real-time adaptability, and strategic control over trade operations.

• Effective AI adoption in trade requires leadership commitment, vision, and strategic intent, including reframing trade as a strategic function, enabling cross-functional alignment, and establishing AI governance.

Bottom Line Up Front

• Perplexity AI, an AI-powered search engine, is piloting its tools in federal agencies and launching "Perplexity for Government", a product suite with enhanced security features for federal workers.

• The company is in discussions with the General Services Administration to formalize its product offerings in the federal market and is working to get its product on the GSA's Multiple Award Schedule.

• Perplexity for Government will provide enterprise-level security and top Perplexity models to federal workers logged into a government network or using a federal email domain, with plans to become FedRAMP compliant.

Bottom Line Up Front

• 53% of consumers don't trust AI-powered search and summary results, according to a Gartner survey.

• 3 in 5 consumers want the option to turn off AI summaries, and 2 in 5 find them more frustrating than traditional search.

• Gartner recommends that brands publish in-depth, accurate content and optimize for both AI-powered overviews and traditional SEO to strengthen their reputation as trusted sources, as suggested by Noam Dorros, director analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice.

Things to Pay Attention to

Bottom Line Up Front

• AI models are being used to perform sophisticated cyberattacks, making companies and individuals more vulnerable to digital attacks.

• The rapid adoption of AI by businesses with weak security settings and the use of "shadow AI" tools not sanctioned by the company are increasing the risk of data breaches.

• Investing in AI for security and implementing new policies, such as oversight of shadow AI and regular security training, can help mitigate the risk and detect breaches faster, according to companies like Anthropic and IBM.

Bottom Line Up Front

• The greatest obstacle to AI progress is not technology, but human nature, with corporate bureaucracies and middle managers often resisting adoption due to concerns about liability, data privacy, and job security.

• Middle managers have the power to influence or sabotage AI initiatives, as they oversee workflows and operational details, and may see AI as a threat to their relevance and careers.

• Companies that successfully adopt AI understand it as a change management challenge, invest in retraining programs, and create new roles that leverage human creativity alongside AI efficiency, with clear guidance from senior leadership being crucial to overcoming resistance.

Bottom Line Up Front

• Jennifer Meyer, an assistant professor, is studying how AI bots can be used to improve student writing, but she is cautious about its ability to make us better writers.

• Meyer believes that AI can be most helpful after a student has written a first draft, providing immediate feedback targeted to each student's needs, such as sentence structure or outlining. A smaller MIT study published earlier this year found that students who wrote an essay without any online tools had stronger brain connectivity and activity than students who used AI, but the study also found that using ChatGPT to help improve an essay after it was written boosted brain activity.

• Using AI feedback can be effective, but it requires cognitive effort and critical thinking from the student, and it's unclear how many rounds of AI feedback are needed to boost a student's writing skills permanently.