Last week I led off my newsletter by asking readers what questions or concerns they had about AI. I got some great responses, and those have helped our team to better understand what people are looking for AI to do for them. 

Along those same lines, I have a ‘proud dad’ moment; our son texted yesterday morning saying that he’d been worried about AI and how it might effect his job in equity research.  He decided to create a couple of different AI agents to learn about their capabilities, and then created an agent for his boss.  This new tool mines their existing CRM and provides insight as to which clients would see the greatest impact when reporting on a certain company.  What started as a solution for one person made its way around his team, then through the department, and he’s now working with the bank’s European-based IT team to roll this out across the US.  My point being, AI can do lots of things, but you need to understand your data and what you want it to do for you, before you can put it to good use.  And you also need to know how to use AI in your role, to make yourself more efficient and more marketable.

Internally, we’re using lots of AI to make our engineers more efficient, with the primary outcome being that they can spend more time focused on customer service and client engagement.  And we’re seeing huge benefits from these efforts. 

All of which leads to the piece I got from State Farm’s CEO about their increased use of AI through a partnership with OpenAI.  If you read the piece, you’ll see things like “streamline intake, triage, and documentation”, “more time on growing (client) relationships”, “reducing time spent on searching systems”, and “more informed, personal conversations with customers”.   Good to see a big company like State Farm following Ashton’s lead in how they’re using AI, and reminding people how we can implement AI for our client base.