AI buzzes Davos, but CEOs wrestle with how to make it pay

BRIGHT banners tout the promise of artificial intelligence along the main promenade of Davos, but executives at the World Economic Forum (WEF) say they are grappling with how to turn early demos into money-makers.

The arrival of OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT triggered a frenzy of venture investment and an abrupt change of course inside the world’s biggest technology companies since late 2022.

This year, several CEOs at the WEF meeting in Davos told Reuters that the latest generative AI still has a lot to prove.

Cloud and internet security company Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Reuters that the months ahead may even feel like an “AI letdown”.

“Everyone’s like, yeah, I can build these cool demos, but where’s the real value?” he said, echoing a theme among business leaders attending the WEF meeting.

ChatGPT’s rapid rise is in some ways an outlier.

In the first two months since its November 2022 launch, the chatbot reached an estimated 100 million users, making it one of the fastest growing applications in history.

The program brought so-called generative AI to consumers’ fingertips, letting people write a short prompt and generate a poem, school essay or gather information as if with a search engine. It also proved a good collaborator for developing ideas in “low stakes, not business-critical use cases,” said Victor Riparbelli, CEO of AI video generation startup Synthesia.

But “the enterprise is definitely not really ready” for this chat-based AI, he said in an interview.

One problem Riparbelli cited is there is no clear path to end so-called “hallucinations,” or false content generated by AI. While computer scientists have developed methods for constraining places from which chatbots can draw responses, business leaders may not want the risk.

Other concerns, said IBM’s Europe, Middle East & Africa Chair Ana Paula Assis, are stopping chatbot AI from reproducing human biases, and regulation.

“Clients are still very worried about how they bring those solutions within the boundaries of regulations and compliance,” she said.

Premier Li Qiang of China said in Davos that AI has to serve the common good but must be appropriately governed, because it “poses risks to security and to our ethics.” And China’s President Xi Jinping wants the United Nations to play a central role in AI discussions, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, some 90 percent of 1,400 C-suite executives said they were waiting for generative AI to take a step beyond recent hype or were doing only limited experimentation and pilots, survey results published by consultancy BCG showed.

Big tech companies including Microsoft, Alphabet’s, Google and Amazon.com have pressed ahead, courting thousands of busi- nesses to give the latest AI a try.

Some have marketed message-drafting, meeting-summarizing AI as a way to save employees time. Google, which has long used AI in its products, is experimenting with a chatbot-like collaborator it calls Bard.

And Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at a company event in Davos Wednesday that AI is poised to grow productivity and potentially accelerate science itself.

Yet businesses’ revenue and profit from recent efforts remain unclear.

While one Davos sign exhorted passers-by, “Let’s get real about AI,” efforts to find a market for it have led developers to consider diverse places.

Cohere, a high-profile AI startup that is focused on enterprises, views helping salespeople as one revenue path.

“It’s going to be on the sales side and making sales teams more productive,” Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez told Reuters.

“The hope would be “helping them do more outreach, more follow-ups, and auto- mating a lot of that process.” — Reuters.

Bridgefort Capital Limited Class B

British American Tobacco Zimbabwe Limited

ZW0009011025

ZW0009012403

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ZW000301DR35 64.0000

ZW0009011041 47.0000 ZW0009012395 17.0000

33.6500

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Cafca Limited

CBZ Holdings Limited

Ecocash Holdings Zimbabwe Limited

Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Limited

Edgars Stores Limited

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Fidelity Life Assurance Limited

First Mutual Holdings Limited

First Mutual Properties Limited

General Beltings Holdings Limited

Hippo Valley Estates Limited

Mashonaland Holdings Limited

Masimba Holdings Limited

Meikles Limited

Nampak Zimbabwe Ltd

National Tyre Services Limited

NMBZ Holdings Limited

OK Zimbabwe Limited

Proplastics Limited

Rainbow Tourism Group Limited

RioZim Limited

Seed Co Limited

Starafricacorporation Limited

Tanganda Tea Company Limited

Truworths Limited

TSL Limited

Turnall Holdings Limited

Unifreight Africa Limited

Willdale Limited

ZB Financial Holdings Limited

Zeco Holdings Limited

Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980) Limited

Zimre Holdings Limited

ZW0009012437 256.0000

ZW0009012122

ZW0009011231 174.0000 ZW0009011926 1,050.0000

ZW0009011876

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ZW0009012312

ZW0009012049

ZW0009011272 1,574.7000

356.0000 1,300.0000 380.0000 36.0000 2,550.0000

ZW0009011348 160.1000

ZW0009012171 1,400.0000 ZW0009012114 2,645.0500 ZW0009012213 379.0000

ZW0009011397 70.0000

ZW0009011389 848.7500 ZW0009011785 278.8500 ZW0009012247 850.3500

ZW0009011470 200.0000

ZW0009011959 900.0000 ZW0009011504 1,600.0500

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ZW0009012411 1,306.2500

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ZW0009012007 1,035.0000

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47.0000 17.0000

30.0000

3,846.0000 3,250.7576 2,185.0000 561.9000 3,700.0000

202.6000 855.0000

90.0000 906.1000

270.0000 900.0000 322.0500 24.0000 2,100.0000 141.5000

810.0000 1,400.0000 290.0000

49.4000

680.0000 215.0000 608.0000

160.0000

800.0000 990.0000

9.0000 957.0000

39.0000 1,100.0000 36.0500 250.0000 40.0000

900.0000 0.0400 34.0000 173.8000

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3,438.5000 64.0000

47.0000 17.0000

30.0000

4,422.5000 5,114.2911 2,266.9375 705.0980 6,293.4976

215.6283 1,369.3125

174.0000 920.0500

310.0000 900.0000 339.0999 36.0000 2,251.9596 158.2115

1,220.0000 2,645.0000 379.0000

70.0000

738.0620 242.5000 739.4500

187.6966

900.0000 1,509.6903

9.4266 1,135.9000

42.0000 1,100.0000 36.0500 250.0000 46.0000

1,035.0000 0.0400 34.0000 173.7994

3,438.5000 64.0000

47.0000 17.0000

30.0000 14,982.5000 17,229.9000 17,229.8500 2,247.3500

4,422.5000 5,114.2911 2,266.9375 705.0980 6,293.4976

215.6283 1,369.3125

174.0000 920.0500

310.0000 900.0000 339.0999 36.0000 2,251.9596 158.2115

1,220.0000 2,645.0000 379.0000

70.0000

738.0620 242.5000 739.4500

187.6966

900.0000 1,509.6903

9.4266 1,135.9000

42.0000 1,100.0000 36.0500 250.0000 46.0000

1,035.0000 0.0400 34.0000 173.7994

“Last Trans. Price” 47.0000 5,100.0000

800.0000 6,500.0000

220.0000 1,574.0000

160.0000 980.0500

356.0000 1,000.0000 380.0000 2,500.0500 1,400.0000 2,645.0000 379.0000

848.7500 278.0000 800.0000

190.0000 1,600.0500 9.2900 1,306.2500

1,100.0000 36.0500 250.0000 46.0000 173.8000

“Closing Price”

3,438.5000 64.0000

46.9630 17.0000

30.0000

4,422.5000 5,100.0000 2,266.9375 800.0000 6,387.8799

220.0010 1,574.3358

160.0000 986.0802

356.0000 1,000.0000 380.0000 36.0000 2,500.9637 158.2115

1,374.2857 2,645.0354 379.0000

70.0000

848.7500 246.2268 838.2486

190.0000

900.0000 1,600.0326

9.0687 1,276.3350

42.0000 1,100.0000 36.0500 250.0000 46.0000

1,035.0000 0.0400 34.0000 173.8000

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0.0000 0.0000

-0.0370 0.0000

0.0000

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4.3727 205.0233

-14.0000 66.0302

46.0000 100.0000 40.9001 0.0000 249.0041 0.0000

154.2857 0.0354 0.0000

0.0000

110.6880 3.7268 98.7986

2.3034

0.0000 90.3423

-0.3579 140.4350

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0.00

-0.08 0.00

0.00 15.00

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-8.05 7.18

14.84 11.11 12.06 0.00 11.06 0.00

12.65 0.00 0.00

0.00

15.00 1.54 13.36

1.23

0.00 5.98

-3.80 12.36

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

0.00 0.00 0.00

0.00 Sub Total Grand Total

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0

7 0

0 6

0 1 0 1 42

22 35

1 3

1 2 1 0 3 0

5 8 1

0

1 11 8

1

0 5

11 8

0 1 2 3 5

0 0 0 4

“Total Traded Volume” 0

0

21,600 0

0 3,000

0 100

0 400 193,000

4,673,900 430,900

500 5,800

3,600 1,100,800 100 0 10,600 0

700 82,600 600

0

100 38,100 28,300

7,000

0 6,900

54,900 20,600

0 100 10,000 15,100 4,600

0 0 0

8,400 6,722,300

6,722,300

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