AIProgress at CES 2025: Advancing from Walking toRunning in Artificial Intelligence Developments
At this year's CES 2025, artificial intelligence (AI) is making waves! The AI Transformation: Skating on Thin Ice or Sailing on a Tide of Opportunity panel moderated by Carryn Quibell, CEO, Americas, DEPT, featured three powerhouses – Anushka Salinas, CEO at Nanit, Jinal Shah, CMO at Zip, and Milo Speranzo, NA CMO at Lenovo – diving into the frenetic pace at which AI is galloping and the rocky road it entails. They discussed the steps needed to keep up, or risk getting left behind.
The trio, hailing from diverse sectors – Nanit offering solutions to simplify parenting, Zip providing financial services for budgeting, and Lenovo being a tech juggernaut– all agreed on one thing: taking it slow is the key to moving fast.
*[How Lenovo Embraced AI: A Tale of War and Peace]***
Speranzo highlighted Lenovo's approach, forming an AI council to establish an organizational framework for AI development in their products and marketing. This devoted group helps mitigate AI-related risks by having knowledgeable individuals in the right places, empowering them to move quickly when the time is right.
Shah echoed the sentiment, emphasizing the need to take things slow, particularly in the sensitive realm of personal finances. First, determine your risk appetite and find the right AI tool for your needs. Embracing AI requires literacy throughout the organization, ensuring ethical and nondiscriminatory use. Zip's cautionary steps set them up to charge ahead now.
Contrasting the majority of companies scrambling to integrate AI into their infrastructure in 2025, Nanit was designed with AI at its core from day one. Born nearly a decade ago, Nanit initially focused on helping parents tackle sleepless nights. Today, their core focus is AI, but it's no longer just about peace and quiet. As the demand for parenting solutions expands, Salinas advised sticking to the basics: crawl, walk, then run for new products. This progression entails developing a proof of concept, inviting beta users (a.k.a. the company's super users), and confirming the algorithm's accuracy and security before broad deployment. Nanit keeps a watchful eye and ear on children, so security remains a top priority.
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*[Zip and the Art of AI Warfare]***
The panel continued by sharing war stories of AI successes and failures, whether in product development or marketing messages. As AI matures and evolves, they cautioned, be prepared for failures. "If you're not failing, you're not taking risks," Speranzo commented. Most failures, he noted, stem from moving too swiftly without proper preparation, leading to misuse of tools unready for the marketing world.
One of the challenges in staying ahead of the ever-evolving AI is ensuring the company's mission aligns with AI tools. For Salinas at Nanit, building tools to simplify and bring joy to parenting is the primary focus, ensuring success. Keeping the mission inclusive, clear, and rooted in AI helps maintain innovation and welcomes new team members.
Shah pointed out that training AI is like onboarding a new employee – it takes time and patience to get things right. But does AI spell doom for jobs? Speranzo feels that jobs are safe from AI, but positions may become vulnerable to AI-savvy competitors. "It's definitely not mature enough to take jobs," he insisted, "and I don't think it will ever get there." AI, he emphasized, should be an enabling tool – one that empowers and fuels creativity rather than replacing human ingenuity.
In the realm of technology, Lenovo has strategically formed an AI council to ensure efficient integration of AI in their products and marketing, mitigating risks related to AI development.
On the other hand, Zip recognizes the importance of caution when embracing AI, especially in the sensitive realm of personal finances. They advocate for organizational literacy, ethical use, and a careful approach to finding the right AI tools suitable for individual needs.
