Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Messages from the archive of Rutherford Hall, critical communications strategistWhatsApp to Stephen: Do we need an AI product? I’ve been thinking for a while that we ought to offer clients something AI-ish. Everyone seems to be doing it and bigging up their AI offer. Is there something outward facing we could do with AI? Should we be hiring someone to lead our AI team?WhatsApp to Stephen: Yes, anyone really good in this field will be hideously expensive but there must be people out there who would be interested in building up both their and our capability.WhatsApp to Stephen: No I don’t exactly know the product we might offer either, but that doesn’t matter. We just hire one or two people and get them to do some AI. Set up a skunkworks, sandbox some ideas. Get some machine learning. Or maybe just ask GPT-4 for some suggestions.WhatsApp to Stephen: How good does it really have to be? Look at McKinsey’s website. Lots of it reads like AI guff: “Harmonise humans and artificial intelligence: We harness the power of technology and people to create growth that benefits organisations while supporting a thriving, sustainable, and inclusive society”. Are you any the wiser? They also offer “hybrid intelligence”. Dunno what that is but my wife drives a hybrid car and says it’s great. WhatsApp to Stephen: Yes of course McKinsey can leverage its size to apparently offer sector-specific AI tools but there must be something that clients might think offers extra value. Something generative with large language models and Bayesian probability.WhatsApp to Stephen: No idea, but all the good AI stuff seems to have Bayesian models so we should have it too. I’ll talk to some recruiters.From: [email protected]: [email protected], It was great to meet you yesterday. I am thrilled to be able to offer you the position of lead developer, Monkwell AI solutions at the terms and salary discussed. Your role will be to build our capability from scratch, developing AI solutions that will serve our clients and enrich our critical communications service. Our goal is to harmonise technology and humans to benefit organisations, society and the planet.I look forward to having you on the team.Best Rutherford.Find me on Strava, KoM Sydenham Hill, PR Al Jubailah/Bawdah Loop — 42 minsWhatsApp to Stephen: Yes we went with Richard Winters. I wasn’t blown away. At times I barely understood him — but that’s probably a good thing, right? And he was the best at our price point.WhatsApp to RichardWinters: Hey Richard, great to have you here. Now you’ve familiarised yourself with our work, what’s your first project?WhatsApp to Richard Winters: Streamlining purchase orders is great but I’m really after something client-facing.WhatsApp to RichardWinters: TBH I was hoping you could tell me. We want something that optimises efficiency, takes a holistic view of processes, and accelerates sustainable growth.WhatsApp to RichardWinters: Oh I thought you’d know what that meant. WhatsApp to RichardWinters: A chatbot? That doesn’t sound very AI. WhatsApp to RichardWinters: Oh I see. A generative AI chatbot. Sounds amazing.WhatsApp to Stephen: I think Richard will work out although he did just ask me what it was we actually do here.WhatsApp to Richard: OK, it offered some valuable learnings but let’s park the chatbot. What about something that looks at (or crawls) all of a company’s internal announcements and uses some kind of AI learning to flag up potential risks.WhatsApp to Richard: Yes by all means let’s test it on ourselves first, although we don’t have a lot of announcements. And no I don’t mind if we call it Winterfell. But can we get some Bayesian into it? Once we’ve done this perhaps we can offer a proof of concept partnership with a favoured client.From: [email protected]: [email protected], Hope all’s good with you. Just a quick line to alert you to something. We’ve just created a new division — Monkwell AI solutions — under a brilliant young guy, Richard Winters. He’s developing a new tool, which uses 360 degree generative machine learning and Bayesian AI to identify future comms crises before they happen. As a particularly valued client we wondered if Volpone might be interested in being the first to pilot this tool when it’s ready.Best RutherfordFind me at . . . WhatsApp to Stephen: We tested Winterfell on Monkwell’s internal announcements and WhatsApp messages and it came back with loads of problems: hopelessness on embracing new tech, staff weakness in several sectors, not enough Labour contacts and sluggish cycling times. It’s clearly nowhere near ready for wider release.WhatsApp to SusanCB: Hold that thought Susan. We’re not yet confident of its accuracy levels. It’s always like this with cutting edge tech!Messages recovered by Robert Shrimsley
