AI news and live updates

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published in June, Forum AI Founder and CEO Campbell Brown argued that as the world becomes more reliant on AI, there needs to be a more critical lens applied to AI’s output.

“Already it is so good its mistakes don’t look like mistakes,” Brown wrote.

Speaking with CNBC’s Scott Wapner at the CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit in New York City on Wednesday, Brown said the issue remains that “when you read an answer generated by AI, it’s presented with such confidence and clarity that it is hard to question it and identify where the mistakes may be.”

“I think that’s what’s particularly dangerous,” she said.

Brown, the former head of global media partnerships at Meta, said this issue is increasingly worrying as people turn to AI for political or election information, and that speaks to how the information is not only presented but where it is sourced.

“There’s a real critical piece to this that has been somewhat frustrating for me: the labs are not engaging as much as I think they should be with real subject matter expertise,” she said. “Human expertise in domains is essential to getting this right.”

— Ian Thomas

Yesterday, CNBC’s Workforce Executive Council held its annual Summit, and the discussion of how human resources professionals help workers adapt to this new AI age was at the top of the agenda.

Walmart, the biggest private employer in the world, asked its 2.1 million associates in June that exact question for the first time, trying to get a sense of how one of the most diverse workforces is experiencing AI.

What it found, based on more than 1.7 million survey responses, is that while workers have different levels of familiarity and comfort with AI, training and experience with the technology matters.

Seventy-seven percent of Walmart’s office-based associates said are excited about AI’s potential to improve their work, Walmart Chief People Officer for Associate Experience and Digital Maren Waggoner told CNBC’s Leslie Picker at the WEC Summit.

And as for Walmart’s U.S. frontline associates, 84% said they are confident using digital tools, a reflection of the AI-powered tools that many of them are now using in their roles, she said.

“We’ve given them certificates, we’ve given them training programs and tools, and so they’re using it in their day-to-day,” Waggoner said.

Jill Bruning, chief technology officer of Amentum and a member of the CNBC Technology Executive Council, said at the WEC Summit that strategy should be evolved to be humans in the lead.

“There’s an AI curve, and we see it. It’s going up and it’s going fast and has a lot of attributes to it; it’s quicker than anything we’ve seen before,” Bruning told CNBC’s Susan Caminiti. “So when you think about people on that curve … that gap is getting bigger every day.”

Bruning said she doesn’t know if leadership is adapting fast enough to the technology, and that is creating additional challenges with upskilling as well as what tasks are being delegated to AI.

“So your delegation skills are different, and then how do we tell the agents what to do? How do we define that role? She said. “That’s human over the loop, not in the loop. We’re still in charge.”

For more from the CNBC WEC Summit, you can see the full live blog here.

— Ian Thomas

Here are some of the top tech-focused headlines from CNBC this morning:

• Google alters its cloud playbook, enlisting partners to sell more AI chips. Google started working on in-house silicon in 2013, but didn’t begin selling its tensor processing units (TPUs) to outside customers until the second quarter of this year. Now the company is tapping Oracle’s cloud as another avenue for selling TPUs as it tries to bolster competition with Nvidia in the AI chip market.
• Anthropic’s cash pile towers over nearly every U.S. company. Anthropic had $112.4 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $19.3 billion in short-term investments as of June 30. That exceeded every non-bank U.S. company in CNBC and S&P Capital IQ data except Berkshire Hathaway and Alphabet.
• Amazon’s anti-tokenmaxxing memo says engineers should be pickier about using AI. Amazon discouraged teams from relying solely on token usage or code generation as measurements of AI adoption, calling them “deeply flawed” metrics in an internal memo. The memo revises how the company defines the role of software development engineers and managers in the age of AI.

— Ian Thomas

This year’s TEC Summit is focusing on what is coming next in AI, whether that’s how companies are adapting their strategies based on the advancement in the technology to how they’re controlling the costs related to that build out.

Discussions will also center on AI regulation, agents, how workers are using the technology and where this acceleration of AI is taking society.

Speakers include:

• Campbell Brown, Forum AI Founder & CEO: Brown will be discussing AI regulation, independent evaluation, what that looks like and how companies can use AI that can be trusted.
• Nigel Vaz, Publicis Sapient CEO: Vaz is at the center of how companies are rethinking their business models amid the AI age, and why that’s harder than learning how to use the technology itself.
• Calix CEO Michael Weening and CPO Shane Eleniak: Members of the team at Calix will pull back the curtain on how strategic AI decisions are made and implemented across the organization.
• Keia Cole, Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment Chief Digital Officer: Technology is also transforming the sports industry, and Cole will discuss how AI is being used at the Barclays Center and within the Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty teams to make sports fans more connected and in touch.
• Jason Gowans, Levi Strauss Chief Digital & Technology Officer: Organizations are aiming to empower workers and customers with AI tools. Gowans will be sharing his approach to embedding AI into the everyday shopping experience.
• Jeetu Patel, Cisco President & Chief Product Officer: Rogue AI agents show no signs of slowing down, but Patel said companies need to think about them like they are teenagers. He’ll discuss ways companies can safely harness the power of agents and what it means to parent them.  

— Ian Thomas