Two significant and related stories breaking simultaneously — and they illuminate a genuine fault line in the AI industry


Two significant and related stories breaking simultaneously — and they illuminate a genuine fault line in the AI industry. source: Claude AI Anthropic vs. the Pentagon The lawsuit stems from the Trump administration’s decision to label Anthropic a “supply chain risk” — a designation normally reserved for companies associated with foreign adversaries. The trigger was Amodei’s refusal to grant the DoD unrestricted access to Claude. Anthropic’s two hard positions: it didn’t want Claude used for mass surveillance of Americans, and didn’t believe it was ready to power fully autonomous weapons with no human in the targeting and firing loop. Anthropic … Continue reading Two significant and related stories breaking simultaneously — and they illuminate a genuine fault line in the AI industry

War in the Middle East takes hold of the global economy


Venezuela, Greenland, tariffs, the Supreme Court, and now fresh instability in the Middle East. 2026 has been developing at warp speed so far, and it’s hard to keep up. Still, in this fast-moving environment, questions are – understandably – arising over what the economic implications of the US-Israeli war with Iran will be. The honest answer would be a typical economist’s response: it all depends. It all depends on how long the war will last, whether some semblance of political stability can emerge in Iran, and, most importantly, how long the Strait of Hormuz will be disrupted.  In our base … Continue reading War in the Middle East takes hold of the global economy

The State of Enterprise AI – OpenAI


Open AI have produced this report based on anonymized data from actual usage of ChatGPT. Full report at end of post. Foreword: 01 Enterprise usage is scaling, with deeper workflow integration. ChatGPT messagevolume grew 8x and API reasoning token consumption per organization increased320x year-over-year, demonstrating that more enterprises are using AI and theirintensity of usage has increased. 02 Enterprises that leverage AI are experiencing measurable produc tivity and business impact. Enterprise users report saving 40–60 minutes per day and being able to complete new technical tasks such as data analysis and coding. Case studies indicate AI is contributing to important … Continue reading The State of Enterprise AI – OpenAI

OpenAI Hires Ex-Goldman Staff to Help Cut Down Junior Bankers’ Grunt Work


In this Article By Omar El Chmouri October 21, 2025 at 6:06 AM EDT Takeaways by Bloomberg AI OpenAI has more than 100 ex-investment bankers helping train its artificial intelligence on how to build financial models as it looks to replace the hours of grunt work performed by junior bankers across the industry. The group, which includes former employees of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., is part of a secretive project inside the startup that’s code named Mercury, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. Participants are paid $150 per hour to write prompts and build financial models for a range … Continue reading OpenAI Hires Ex-Goldman Staff to Help Cut Down Junior Bankers’ Grunt Work

Bain – Many pilots, but not enough scaling with lack of clarity on objectives


Commentary from Greg @ Bain & Co. The theme is similar to what is becoming clear that business is deploying AI on employee desktops, but there is much less operational deployment targetted at productivity growth. ______________ Every other week we’ll provide updates on the latest value levers and trends operators are asking us about in Technology and Software. If there are things you want to hear more about – shoot us a note. Let’s start with the easy answer: Yes, AI is real and we have clients achieving 10-25% EBITDA improvement (top and bottom line). However, for every success story … Continue reading Bain – Many pilots, but not enough scaling with lack of clarity on objectives

MIT report ‘The GenAI Divide”; Business is missing the ‘transformation’ point of AI


State of AI in Business 2025 This post looks at the state of play for corporate AI deployment and bottom line impacts based on a recent MIT report. I would categorise the result as AI represents a net cost to most business with no consequential ROI nor improvement in Net Income or future cost reduction. Tools like ChatGPT and Copilot are widely adopted. Over 80 percent of organizations have explored or piloted them, and nearly 40 percent report deployment. But these toolsprimarily enhance individual productivity, not P&L performance. Meanwhile, enterprise grade systems, custom or vendor-sold, are being quietly rejected. Sixty … Continue reading MIT report ‘The GenAI Divide”; Business is missing the ‘transformation’ point of AI

OECD report on AI provides thoughtful and relevant context for current state


Intersting report from OECD. I focussed here in diffusion, i.e. the spread and systemic adoption of AI. With an eye on the eventual improvements in productivity effective diffusion is essential. The full report can be found at end of post.. For Bankers, consider this quote. This is the beginnings of the holly grail to address the elephant in the room of Banks data worries. Applications can transform customer relationships and marketing, by improving market segmentation and raising capacity to “Know Your Customer” (KYC), by automating basic customer services and enabling a 24/7 attendance, or by supporting content creation at lower … Continue reading OECD report on AI provides thoughtful and relevant context for current state

A comprehensive comparison between ‘compute’ and ‘inference’ in AI


An integrated analysis of technological, infrastructural, and operational factors including AI Factories, Data Centres, development practices, chips, and overall infrastructure. The following report—structured in APA format—presents a formal, detailed comparative overview, incorporating relevant business, academic, and technical sources.Source: Perplexity.ai Compute and Inference: Definitions and Context Compute generally refers to the computational resources required for both training and running AI models, whereas inference is the process by which a trained model makes predictions or decisions on new data. Compute is foundational for both the intensive process of AI model training and the comparatively lightweight process of model inference. AI inference utilizes … Continue reading A comprehensive comparison between ‘compute’ and ‘inference’ in AI

Technology Trends, Product Launches, and Innovations from the Past Week (August 5-11, 2025)


Source perplexity.ai with presentation from Sonnet 4 Based on the latest technology developments from the past week, here are the most significant trends, product launches, and innovations: Major Big Tech Developments OpenAI and AI Advancements OpenAI launched GPT-5, its latest and most advanced AI model, making it available to all ChatGPT users. The company also announced that Apple Intelligence’s ChatGPT integration will use GPT-5 starting with iOS 26, though users will need to wait for this integration.theverge+1 Microsoft’s AI Integration Expansion Microsoft quietly launched Copilot 3D as an experimental feature that converts 2D images into 3D models. The company is … Continue reading Technology Trends, Product Launches, and Innovations from the Past Week (August 5-11, 2025)

Making sense of the AI revolution


AUTHOR Iskander Rehman https://engelsbergideas.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9abbef4a5715ca7b3fef001ad&id=d1577c2abf&e=e1b990f871 Iskander Rehman is a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. In order to understand the profound transformations, and boundless potential, unleashed by artificial intelligence, we need to expand our own intellectual horizons into the realms.The sense of being overwhelmed and constantly listracted is nothing new. Historians anc policymakers should look to the 17th century for guidance on how to grapple with information.. ——————————————– In 1961, the Brookings Institution produced an advisory report for NASA, which pondered, among other things, the societal ramifications of the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The announcement of such a dramatic … Continue reading Making sense of the AI revolution