Latest news with #VintCerf
Time of India
12-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
The AI inflection point: Why every CXO must act now
In 1999, internet pioneer Vint Cerf equated a single year in the digital world to seven in the real one. Today, artificial intelligence has made even that dizzying pace look AI isn't just another buzzword—it's a potent mix of data, computing muscle, rapid investment, and relentless user growth, accelerating far beyond previous technological leaps. If it feels like change has never come faster, that's because it hasn't. And the numbers back that up. Here are some insights from Mary Meeker's whopping 340 page 'AI Trends Report': Rapid Adoption: The New NormalRemember Tom Cruise's iconic "need for speed" from Top Gun? Consider this: ChatGPT took just 17 months to hit 800 million weekly users, compared to the internet's 23 years to reach similar global ecosystems are booming too. Google's Gemini platform alone saw a staggering five-fold growth in its developer base in a single year. But this surge isn't mere consumer fascination. Enterprises and governments are scaling AI in critical areas—operations, customer engagement, R&D, and even regulatory frameworks. Case in point: The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is pushing for complete AI integration across all departments by mid-2025. CXO Takeaway: Rapid adoption means CXOs must proactively integrate AI into core business strategies—not just dabble on the sidelines. Quick experiments and swift deployments are no longer optional, they're survival imperatives. Spending Surges, Monetization Lags Last year, the Big Six tech giants (Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet, AWS, and Meta) spent a whopping $212 billion on infrastructure—up 63% YoY—mostly directed at AI. Yet, the financial returns aren't matching the investment fervor. OpenAI illustrates this vividly: it generated $3.7 billion last year but spent $5 billion just maintaining operations. Such economics are common in early tech cycles—expensive to build, unclear monetization paths, yet bursting with potential. However, the rapidly declining cost of deploying AI models hints at an imminent inflection. True value might soon shift from the models themselves to the innovative products and business models built atop them. CXO Takeaway: Investment is necessary, but monetization and strategic patience are crucial. CXOs should carefully balance short-term financial realities against the long-term transformative potential of AI-driven initiatives. The New Global Battleground Competition is heating up—and fast. Open-source AI, especially from China, is rapidly closing gaps, with Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Max surpassing GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 on certain performance benchmarks. This race is no longer merely commercial; it's geopolitical. As Mary Meeker's report warns, "AI leadership could beget geopolitical leadership—and not vice versa." CXO Takeaway: CXOs must consider AI not just as a competitive advantage, but as a strategic imperative influencing geopolitical positioning, partnerships, and risk management. Real-World Impact: AI Moves Off Screens AI is swiftly transitioning from digital experimentation to tangible, physical impact. Autonomous taxis now constitute 34% of San Francisco's ride bookings. Kaiser Permanente's doctors have already leveraged AI scribes over 2.5 million times, dramatically reducing paperwork. Yum! Brands, the parent company behind KFC and Pizza Hut, has deployed AI across 25,000 outlets to rethink operations fundamentally. CXO Takeaway: CXOs must now envision AI beyond traditional digitization—rethinking workflows, physical operations, and customer interactions from the ground up. Your People Strategy Is Your AI Strategy AI-related job postings surged by 448%, while non-AI roles fell 9%. This dramatic shift isn't just about hiring—it's a critical leadership imperative for retraining, reorienting, and realigning workforce capabilities. Despite heavy AI spending, adoption remains uneven. A Morgan Stanley survey from 2024, cited in the Meeker report, reveals that although 75% of CMOs are exploring AI, most implementations remain incremental, not transformative. Further underscoring the strategic gap, only half of the S&P 500 companies mention AI during earnings calls—suggesting a significant disconnect at the board level. Even when companies adopt AI, the tendency to limit usage to superficial applications persists. The highest returns come only when businesses fundamentally redesign workflows, reshape teams, and recenter strategies around AI. CXO Takeaway: CXOs must spearhead a deeper cultural and operational shift toward AI-centric thinking. This means investing heavily in training, restructuring teams for AI readiness, and embedding AI into board-level strategy discussions—not treating it as a technology afterthought. In a Nutshell: AI is redefining the rules of speed, strategy, and global competition. For CXOs, this isn't a future scenario—it's happening now. Those who embrace these insights and act decisively will shape their industries; those who delay risk becoming case studies in disruption.
Business Wire
02-06-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
New ThoughtWaves Documentary Explores the Untold Story of the Brilliant Minds, Breakthroughs, and Politics of Human Connection
NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today at Fiber Connect 2025, the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) announced an exclusive first look of a new documentary, ThoughtWaves. The film interviews the most pivotal figures who created and shaped the modern, digital economy. It explores a story that began over fifty years ago, highlighting the stories of the brilliant minds, visionaries, and thought leaders across the areas of broadband policy, innovation, and adoption. Most importantly, it underscores the original intent of these founders and creators as we, today, work to connect every community to reliable broadband and grant everyone access to unlimited possibilities and opportunities. " ThoughtWaves is the story of how we connect everyone to a better future, in a world where access to the digital economy is synonymous with opportunity. To secure our nation's success, it is necessary to invest in robust broadband infrastructure. Fiber is the only technology that can support the capacity needed today and the future of connectivity,' said Gary Bolton, President and CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association. 'This is the story of the impact we are having on the communities and people we serve, a story that is just now being told, and we are excited to see how it continues to evolve as everyone is afforded the same access to opportunity and hope.' The documentary traces the journey from the inception of the internet and the development of fiber optics to the current efforts aimed at bridging the digital divide. It showcases the conversations, conflicts, challenges, and brilliant minds that made closing the digital divide possible. It frames the critical role in ensuring equitable access to education, healthcare, economic opportunities, and technological advancements means to everyone, everywhere. Viewers will enjoy insights from industry pioneers, policymakers, and technologists, including: Vint Cerf, 'Father of the Internet' and VP and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google Laura Breeden, early internet activist, Founding Director of the Federation of American Research Networks (FARnet), Founding Director of the NTIA's Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program, and Co-Founder of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) Jean Armour Polly, 'Mother of the Internet,' early internet evangelist, known for her contributions welcoming nontechnical users to the internet and the first library to connect her library to the internet to provide community access Ajit Pai, former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Andy Berke, former Mayor of Chattanooga, the first Gig City Larry Irving, former head the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications Infrastructure Administration, key architect of internet policy including the 1996 Telecommunications Act to connect schools, first African American in the Internet Hall of Fame Dr. Karen Rheuban, Co-founder and Director of the UVA Center for Telehealth Teddy Bekele, Chief Technology Officer, Land-o-Lakes Blair Levin, former Chief of Staff for FCC Chairman Reed Hunt, Author of the National Broadband Plan The Honorable Juandieago Wade, Mayor of Charlottesville Dr. Tamarah Holmes, Director, Office of Broadband, Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development Kathryn de Wit, Project Director, Broadband Access Initiative, The Pew Charitable Trusts Joseph Wender, former Director of the Capital Projects Fund at the U.S. Treasury Department Shane Seibel, Executive Director of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe Growth Fund Kirk Lougheed, Cisco Fellow Dr. Christopher Ali, Pioneers Chair, Professor of Telecommunications, Penn State University, Author of Farm Fresh Broadband The documentary will have a private screening at Fiber Connect 2025 on June 2nd, providing attendees with a unique opportunity to engage with the film's themes and contributors. ThoughtWaves was developed in partnership with Cisco, Corning, Nokia, Bonfire, EPB, and GFiber. For more information about ThoughtWaves and to view trailers, visit About the Fiber Broadband Association The Fiber Broadband Association is the largest and only trade association that represents the complete fiber ecosystem of service providers, manufacturers, industry experts, and deployment specialists dedicated to the advancement of fiber broadband deployment and the pursuit of a world where communications are limitless, advancing quality of life and digital equity anywhere and everywhere. The Fiber Broadband Association helps providers, communities, and policymakers make informed decisions about how, where, and why to build better fiber broadband networks. Since 2001, these companies, organizations, and members have worked with communities and consumers in mind to build the critical infrastructure that provides the economic and societal benefits that only fiber can deliver. The Fiber Broadband Association is part of the Fibre Council Global Alliance, which is a platform of six global FTTH Councils in North America, LATAM, Europe, MEA, APAC, and South Africa. Learn more at
CNN
02-04-2025
- Science
- CNN
Tech industry experts warn AI will make us worse humans
While the top minds in artificial intelligence are racing to make the technology think more like humans, researchers at Elon University have asked the opposite question: How will AI change the way humans think? The answer comes with a grim warning: Many tech experts worry that AI will make people worse at skills core to being human, such as empathy and deep thinking. 'I fear — for the time being — that while there will be a growing minority benefitting ever more significantly with these tools, most people will continue to give up agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills to these still-primitive AIs,' futurist John Smart wrote in an essay submitted for the university's nearly 300-page report, titled 'The Future of Being Human,' which was provided exclusively to CNN ahead of its publication Wednesday. The concerns come amid an ongoing race to accelerate AI development and adoption that has attracted billions of dollars in investment, along with both skepticism and support from governments around the world. Tech giants are staking their businesses on the belief that AI will change how we do everything — working, communicating, searching for information — and companies like Google, Microsoft and Meta are racing to build 'AI agents' that can perform tasks on a person's behalf. But experts warn in the report that such advancements could make people too reliant on AI in the future. Already, the proliferation of AI has raised big questions about how humans will adapt to this latest technology wave, including whether it could lead to job losses or generate dangerous misinformation. The Elon University report further calls into question promises from tech giants that the value of AI will be in automating rote, menial tasks so that humans can spend more time on complex, creative pursuits. Wednesday's report also follows research published this year by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University that suggested using generative AI tools could negatively impact critical thinking skills. Elon University researchers surveyed 301 tech leaders, analysts and academics, including Vint Cerf, one of the 'fathers of the internet' and now a Google vice president; Jonathan Grudin, University of Washington Information School professor and former longtime Microsoft researcher and project manager; former Aspen Institute executive vice president Charlie Firestone; and tech futurist and Futuremade CEO Tracey Follows. Nearly 200 of the respondents wrote full-length essay responses for the report. More than 60% of the respondents said they expect AI will change human capabilities in a 'deep and meaningful' or 'fundamental, revolutionary' way over the next 10 years. Half said they expect AI will create changes to humanity for the better and the worse in equal measure, while 23% said the changes will be mostly for the worse. Just 16% said changes will be mostly for the better (the remainder said they didn't know or expected little change overall). The respondents also predicted that AI will cause 'mostly negative' changes to 12 human traits by 2035, including social and emotional intelligence, capacity and willingness to think deeply, empathy, and application of moral judgment and mental well-being. Human capacity in those areas could worsen if people increasingly turn to AI for help with tasks such as research and relationship-building for convenience's sake, the report claims. And a decline in those and other key skills could have troubling implications for human society, such as 'widening polarization, broadening inequities and diminishing human agency,' the researchers wrote. The report's contributors expect just three areas to experience mostly positive change: curiosity and capacity to learn, decision-making, and problem-solving and innovative thinking and creativity. Even in tools available today, programs that can generate artwork and solve coding problems are among the most popular. And many experts believe that while AI could replace some human jobs, it could also create new categories of work that don't yet exist. Many of the concerns detailed in the report relate to how tech leaders predict people will incorporate AI into their daily lives by 2035. Cerf said he expects humans will soon rely on AI agents, which are digital helpers that could independently do everything from taking notes during a meeting to making dinner reservations, negotiating complex business contracts or writing code. Tech companies are already rolling out early AI agent offerings — Amazon says its revamped Alexa voice assistant can order your groceries, and Meta is letting businesses create AI customer service agents to answer questions on its social media platforms. Such tools could save people time and energy in everyday tasks while aiding with fields like medical research. But Cerf also worries about humans becoming 'increasingly technologically dependent' on systems that can fail or get things wrong. ...Apple Podcasts Spotify Pandora TuneIn iHeart Radio Amazon RSS 'You can also anticipate some fragility in all of this. For example, none of this stuff works without electricity, right?' Cerf said in an interview with CNN. 'These heavy dependencies are wonderful when they work, and when they don't work, they can be potentially quite hazardous.' Cerf stressed the importance of tools that help differentiate humans versus AI bots online, and transparency around the effectiveness of highly autonomous AI tools. He urged companies that build AI models to keep 'audit trails' that would let them interrogate when and why their tools get things wrong. Futuremade's Follows told CNN that she expects humans' interactions with AI to move beyond the screens where people generally talk to AI chatbots today. Instead, AI technology will be integrated into various devices, such as wearables, as well as buildings and homes where humans can just ask questions out loud. But with that ease of access, humans may begin outsourcing empathy to AI agents. 'AI may take over acts of kindness, emotional support, caregiving and charity fundraising,' Follows wrote in her essay. She added that 'humans may form emotional attachments to AI personas and influencers,' raising 'concerns about whether authentic, reciprocal relationships will be sidelined in favor of more predictable, controllable digital connection.' Humans have already begun to form relationships with AI chatbots, to mixed effect. Some people have, for example, created AI replicas of deceased loved ones to seek closure, but parents of young people have also taken legal action after they say their children were harmed by relationships with AI chatbots. Still, experts say people have time to curb some of the worst potential outcomes of AI through regulation, digital literacy training and simply prioritizing human relationships. Richard Reisman, nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, said in the report that the next decade marks a tipping point in whether AI 'augments humanity or de-augments it.' 'We are now being driven in the wrong direction by the dominating power of the 'tech-industrial complex,' but we still have a chance to right that,' Reisman wrote.
CNN
02-04-2025
- Science
- CNN
Tech industry experts warn AI will make us worse humans
While the top minds in artificial intelligence are racing to make the technology think more like humans, researchers at Elon University have asked the opposite question: How will AI change the way humans think? The answer comes with a grim warning: Many tech experts worry that AI will make people worse at skills core to being human, such as empathy and deep thinking. 'I fear — for the time being — that while there will be a growing minority benefitting ever more significantly with these tools, most people will continue to give up agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills to these still-primitive AIs,' futurist John Smart wrote in an essay submitted for the university's nearly 300-page report, titled 'The Future of Being Human,' which was provided exclusively to CNN ahead of its publication Wednesday. The concerns come amid an ongoing race to accelerate AI development and adoption that has attracted billions of dollars in investment, along with both skepticism and support from governments around the world. Tech giants are staking their businesses on the belief that AI will change how we do everything — working, communicating, searching for information — and companies like Google, Microsoft and Meta are racing to build 'AI agents' that can perform tasks on a person's behalf. But experts warn in the report that such advancements could make people too reliant on AI in the future. Already, the proliferation of AI has raised big questions about how humans will adapt to this latest technology wave, including whether it could lead to job losses or generate dangerous misinformation. The Elon University report further calls into question promises from tech giants that the value of AI will be in automating rote, menial tasks so that humans can spend more time on complex, creative pursuits. Wednesday's report also follows research published this year by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University that suggested using generative AI tools could negatively impact critical thinking skills. Elon University researchers surveyed 301 tech leaders, analysts and academics, including Vint Cerf, one of the 'fathers of the internet' and now a Google vice president; Jonathan Grudin, University of Washington Information School professor and former longtime Microsoft researcher and project manager; former Aspen Institute executive vice president Charlie Firestone; and tech futurist and Futuremade CEO Tracey Follows. Nearly 200 of the respondents wrote full-length essay responses for the report. More than 60% of the respondents said they expect AI will change human capabilities in a 'deep and meaningful' or 'fundamental, revolutionary' way over the next 10 years. Half said they expect AI will create changes to humanity for the better and the worse in equal measure, while 23% said the changes will be mostly for the worse. Just 16% said changes will be mostly for the better (the remainder said they didn't know or expected little change overall). The respondents also predicted that AI will cause 'mostly negative' changes to 12 human traits by 2035, including social and emotional intelligence, capacity and willingness to think deeply, empathy, and application of moral judgment and mental well-being. Human capacity in those areas could worsen if people increasingly turn to AI for help with tasks such as research and relationship-building for convenience's sake, the report claims. And a decline in those and other key skills could have troubling implications for human society, such as 'widening polarization, broadening inequities and diminishing human agency,' the researchers wrote. The report's contributors expect just three areas to experience mostly positive change: curiosity and capacity to learn, decision-making, and problem-solving and innovative thinking and creativity. Even in tools available today, programs that can generate artwork and solve coding problems are among the most popular. And many experts believe that while AI could replace some human jobs, it could also create new categories of work that don't yet exist. Many of the concerns detailed in the report relate to how tech leaders predict people will incorporate AI into their daily lives by 2035. Cerf said he expects humans will soon rely on AI agents, which are digital helpers that could independently do everything from taking notes during a meeting to making dinner reservations, negotiating complex business contracts or writing code. Tech companies are already rolling out early AI agent offerings — Amazon says its revamped Alexa voice assistant can order your groceries, and Meta is letting businesses create AI customer service agents to answer questions on its social media platforms. Such tools could save people time and energy in everyday tasks while aiding with fields like medical research. But Cerf also worries about humans becoming 'increasingly technologically dependent' on systems that can fail or get things wrong. ...Apple Podcasts Spotify Pandora TuneIn iHeart Radio Amazon RSS 'You can also anticipate some fragility in all of this. For example, none of this stuff works without electricity, right?' Cerf said in an interview with CNN. 'These heavy dependencies are wonderful when they work, and when they don't work, they can be potentially quite hazardous.' Cerf stressed the importance of tools that help differentiate humans versus AI bots online, and transparency around the effectiveness of highly autonomous AI tools. He urged companies that build AI models to keep 'audit trails' that would let them interrogate when and why their tools get things wrong. Futuremade's Follows told CNN that she expects humans' interactions with AI to move beyond the screens where people generally talk to AI chatbots today. Instead, AI technology will be integrated into various devices, such as wearables, as well as buildings and homes where humans can just ask questions out loud. But with that ease of access, humans may begin outsourcing empathy to AI agents. 'AI may take over acts of kindness, emotional support, caregiving and charity fundraising,' Follows wrote in her essay. She added that 'humans may form emotional attachments to AI personas and influencers,' raising 'concerns about whether authentic, reciprocal relationships will be sidelined in favor of more predictable, controllable digital connection.' Humans have already begun to form relationships with AI chatbots, to mixed effect. Some people have, for example, created AI replicas of deceased loved ones to seek closure, but parents of young people have also taken legal action after they say their children were harmed by relationships with AI chatbots. Still, experts say people have time to curb some of the worst potential outcomes of AI through regulation, digital literacy training and simply prioritizing human relationships. Richard Reisman, nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, said in the report that the next decade marks a tipping point in whether AI 'augments humanity or de-augments it.' 'We are now being driven in the wrong direction by the dominating power of the 'tech-industrial complex,' but we still have a chance to right that,' Reisman wrote.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The ‘father of the internet' and hundreds of tech experts worry we'll rely on AI too much
While the top minds in artificial intelligence are racing to make the technology think more like humans, researchers at Elon University have asked the opposite question: How will AI change the way humans think? The answer comes with a grim warning: Many tech experts worry that AI will make people worse at skills core to being human, such as empathy and deep thinking. 'I fear — for the time being — that while there will be a growing minority benefitting ever more significantly with these tools, most people will continue to give up agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills to these still-primitive AIs,' futurist John Smart wrote in an essay submitted for the university's nearly 300-page report, titled 'The Future of Being Human,' which was provided exclusively to CNN ahead of its publication Wednesday. The concerns come amid an ongoing race to accelerate AI development and adoption that has attracted billions of dollars in investment, along with both skepticism and support from governments around the world. Tech giants are staking their businesses on the belief that AI will change how we do everything — working, communicating, searching for information — and companies like Google, Microsoft and Meta are racing to build 'AI agents' that can perform tasks on a person's behalf. But experts warn in the report that such advancements could make people too reliant on AI in the future. Already, the proliferation of AI has raised big questions about how humans will adapt to this latest technology wave, including whether it could lead to job losses or generate dangerous misinformation. The Elon University report further calls into question promises from tech giants that the value of AI will be in automating rote, menial tasks so that humans can spend more time on complex, creative pursuits. Wednesday's report also follows research published this year by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University that suggested using generative AI tools could negatively impact critical thinking skills. Elon University researchers surveyed 301 tech leaders, analysts and academics, including Vint Cerf, one of the 'fathers of the internet' and now a Google vice president; Jonathan Grudin, University of Washington Information School professor and former longtime Microsoft researcher and project manager; former Aspen Institute executive vice president Charlie Firestone; and tech futurist and Futuremade CEO Tracey Follows. Nearly 200 of the respondents wrote full-length essay responses for the report. More than 60% of the respondents said they expect AI will change human capabilities in a 'deep and meaningful' or 'fundamental, revolutionary' way over the next 10 years. Half said they expect AI will create changes to humanity for the better and the worse in equal measure, while 23% said the changes will be mostly for the worse. Just 16% said changes will be mostly for the better (the remainder said they didn't know or expected little change overall). The respondents also predicted that AI will cause 'mostly negative' changes to 12 human traits by 2035, including social and emotional intelligence, capacity and willingness to think deeply, empathy, and application of moral judgment and mental well-being. Human capacity in those areas could worsen if people increasingly turn to AI for help with tasks such as research and relationship-building for convenience's sake, the report claims. And a decline in those and other key skills could have troubling implications for human society, such as 'widening polarization, broadening inequities and diminishing human agency,' the researchers wrote. The report's contributors expect just three areas to experience mostly positive change: curiosity and capacity to learn, decision-making, and problem-solving and innovative thinking and creativity. Even in tools available today, programs that can generate artwork and solve coding problems are among the most popular. And many experts believe that while AI could replace some human jobs, it could also create new categories of work that don't yet exist. Many of the concerns detailed in the report relate to how tech leaders predict people will incorporate AI into their daily lives by 2035. Cerf said he expects humans will soon rely on AI agents, which are digital helpers that could independently do everything from taking notes during a meeting to making dinner reservations, negotiating complex business contracts or writing code. Tech companies are already rolling out early AI agent offerings — Amazon says its revamped Alexa voice assistant can order your groceries, and Meta is letting businesses create AI customer service agents to answer questions on its social media platforms. Such tools could save people time and energy in everyday tasks while aiding with fields like medical research. But Cerf also worries about humans becoming 'increasingly technologically dependent' on systems that can fail or get things wrong. 'You can also anticipate some fragility in all of this. For example, none of this stuff works without electricity, right?' Cerf said in an interview with CNN. 'These heavy dependencies are wonderful when they work, and when they don't work, they can be potentially quite hazardous.' Cerf stressed the importance of tools that help differentiate humans versus AI bots online, and transparency around the effectiveness of highly autonomous AI tools. He urged companies that build AI models to keep 'audit trails' that would let them interrogate when and why their tools get things wrong. Futuremade's Follows told CNN that she expects humans' interactions with AI to move beyond the screens where people generally talk to AI chatbots today. Instead, AI technology will be integrated into various devices, such as wearables, as well as buildings and homes where humans can just ask questions out loud. But with that ease of access, humans may begin outsourcing empathy to AI agents. 'AI may take over acts of kindness, emotional support, caregiving and charity fundraising,' Follows wrote in her essay. She added that 'humans may form emotional attachments to AI personas and influencers,' raising 'concerns about whether authentic, reciprocal relationships will be sidelined in favor of more predictable, controllable digital connection.' Humans have already begun to form relationships with AI chatbots, to mixed effect. Some people have, for example, created AI replicas of deceased loved ones to seek closure, but parents of young people have also taken legal action after they say their children were harmed by relationships with AI chatbots. Still, experts say people have time to curb some of the worst potential outcomes of AI through regulation, digital literacy training and simply prioritizing human relationships. Richard Reisman, nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, said in the report that the next decade marks a tipping point in whether AI 'augments humanity or de-augments it.' 'We are now being driven in the wrong direction by the dominating power of the 'tech-industrial complex,' but we still have a chance to right that,' Reisman wrote.
