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Werk Week News Update - PwC AI Agents, ChatGPT Memories & the Future of Wharton Business

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We explore three major AI developments reshaping business and technology: PWC's new Agent OS platform, ChatGPT's memory feature, and Wharton School of Business's new AI major.

• PWC launches AgentOS, a $1 billion platform helping businesses deploy enterprise-level AI agents
• ChatGPT's new memory feature allows it to recall user preferences and past interactions
• Wharton School of Business announces a new major in artificial intelligence and business starting fall 2024

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back, architects. This is your work week news update. Today is April the 9th and we will be discussing PWC's new Agent OS and what that means for AI in the enterprise space, chatgpt's memory update and maybe some of its implications for your personal AI use, and, finally, how the Wharton School of Business is completely kind of reshaping its business education with a new AI major. So let's get started. So, first up, pwc, which is a major consulting firm, has launched AgentOS this week, which is a platform to help businesses deploy and manage enterprise-level agents. So AgentOS is going to be built really to integrate AI agents directly into these corporate enterprise systems. So think finance HR, really making them more autonomous and responsive overall, overall. And so PwC claims that this Agent OS will allow companies to create more AI agents that can execute multi-step processes, basically, and even collaborate across different departments. So think AI agents an AI agent that's in finance that is coordinating and talking to another AI agent that is in the supply chain department. So you can just imagine these AI agents working together across an entire company or enterprise. And this is part of PwC's broader $1 billion investment into AI technologies in partnership with OpenAI that owns ChatGPT and Microsoft. So this is a huge investment into this space and early use cases really kind of include like automating auditing procedures or providing real-time compliance checks, and some of these pilots are already underway in actual client and company operations. Already underway in actual client and company operations, I think.

Speaker 1:

As a matter of fact, one of my first contracting offers when I went solo was with PWC. Clearly they are in the business of hiring talented consultants in a variety of different areas and spaces. Clearly I was in kind of the tech space but hiring these consultants to go off to these companies do jobs sometimes that are, you know, year, two years long. They pay very, very well for that. I know folks that have made a living being PwC and Deloitte employees and sometimes they get paid even for quote, unquote, sitting on the bench. So this is in between contracts where you might be working for PwC but they put you at a contract in Idaho somewhere and then you did that for a year and then for three months you were kind of on the bench, you wasn't necessarily doing work at any particular client and now you are off to maybe DC to do some more work. So this consulting contracting thing is their business. So a billion dollar investment into this agent OS system is a shift. It's definitely a shift and it could signal a future where that kind of traditional back office role staffing, where that was supported, could actually be replaced by these intelligent agents that are working 24-7. So you know more to come on that from PwC and some of these other larger consulting agencies.

Speaker 1:

Next up, openai slash ChatGPT has added a memory feature to the ChatGPT system that is now available for pro users pro users, but it'll be rolling out to all users very, very soon and this memory kind of allows ChatGPT to recall user preferences, names, work context, past interactions, almost anything that was said or typed into ChatGPT, to quote, enable a more personalized experience and more personalized conversation. So that would mean that this conversation that you are having at any point in time with ChatGPT can be saved for use later on, so that it can reference it later on, so users can review, delete or even turn off this memory. That is what I am doing, at least initially, but when you think about it, yeah, this pretty much gives greater control over what the AI remembers. I am of the camp I always push for usability, you know, not to just be crazy with it, but you know, in order for Siri to work, even from a tech perspective. I know folks that say, oh, I turned my Siri off so that it doesn't. It doesn't listen to me, right? It's still listening. So, you know, you might as well go ahead and use it to help make your life a little bit easier if it is going to do that.

Speaker 1:

So I'm not anti-memory when it comes to ChatGPT. I'm just going to, you know, take it a little slow, but I probably will turn this on because it says, you know, it's going to hopefully improve over time and it does start to, you know, become a tool that knows what I'm working on, understands the context of who I am, what I'm trying to do, and so when I'm asking questions and trying to get to certain solutions, you know, let's skip all the other stuff. You know who I am, let's really get to why I'm here and using ChatGPT in the first place. And so, again, I think it's gonna improve over time. It's gonna adapt to users' communication style and the users' needs, and this shift kind of moves ChatGPT from basically like a static assistant to more of a personal AI companion. My LLM is my BFF type of deal right A step closer to the long-term vision of a truly helpful AI assistant all the time. So, of course, this is going to raise a lot of questions around data privacy, trust, right, the future of these hyper personalized AI systems, but we will be surrounded. Whether it's your email, your phone, your texts, your voice calls, everything. We will be surrounded by these AI tools constantly, and so personalizing your experience will just become part of the norm, and I think those that can leverage those things and understand how to protect themselves at the same time will be the ones that will be able to take the most advantage out of the new technologies.

Speaker 1:

And last but not least, the Wharton School Business announced a new major and undergraduate concentration in artificial intelligence and business that will be starting fall of this year. So the curriculum will include machine learning, ai ethics, business application of AI and data analytics, ai ethics, business application of AI and data analytics. So all of this is kind of going to be offered in collaboration with Penn's engineering school. And the reason again that we're even talking about this not so much that it is a major all within itself, in my opinion, it's a major, an undergraduate major in the business college, right, the College of Business. So I think that's kind of what's different here, and this kind of again reflects a growing demand for these skills.

Speaker 1:

According to PWC, 72% of business leaders believe AI will be the most significant business advantage in the next five years. Right now, if you are in business and you do not have a website, you are really not in business. Or if you don't have a mobile app, for that matter, you're kind of well behind the times. Over the next five years, if you are a business, you are not AI first, you will be at a significant disadvantage. So this is why I believe they are putting some of these new majors in place, and Wharton is the first kind of top tier business school to embed AI so deeply into its core undergrad offering.

Speaker 1:

So faculty say that the program is designed to equip students not just to use AI tools but to lead AI strategy at the executive level, and this move definitely signals a major shift in business education towards kind of future-proofing leadership for an AI-centric economy. That is where we are going and for those that are in the business of education the business of educating others, the business of training the next generation or, for that matter, re-skilling the next generation or, for that matter, re-skilling, retraining the current working generation. You have got to think about understanding AI and preparing people to be proficient in all the different ways that AI is going to impact, and particularly in the business sector. So we'd love to see more universities adopt this new strategy and implement more AI into their curriculum. And that is it for this week's Workweek News Update. Please don't forget to follow and like us on Spotify, apple or wherever you listen to your podcasts, and until next time, keep up the scratch work, keep building, bye.