Almost every company these days is AI-curious. Growing numbers are also AI-ready. But only a handful of CEOs have had the audacity—and perhaps the chronic LinkedIn habit—to publicly declare their companies “AI-first.”

Duolingo, Shopify, and Box are among the companies that made waves with memos in which their CEOs laid out a vision for an “AI-first” future. (Shopify didn’t use this exact term, but the sentiment’s there.) These documents detail how AI will transform operations, employee expectations, and overall strategy going forward.

In Shopify and Duolingo’s case, the declarations have grabbed the most attention for their somewhat mask-off quality. While most executives are careful to say that AI is supplementing rather than replacing their workers, Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke was up-front about only expanding headcount when AI won’t suffice. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn admitted his company will “gradually stop using contractors to do work that Al can handle.”

The why: Naturally, this led to some backlash, especially toward Duolingo. But Gartner distinguished VP analyst Arun Chandrasekaran told us the public at large isn’t necessarily the only audience for these moves. The execs might be more concerned with sending a message to investors—and employees—that they’re serious about this technology, he said.

“It’s a way to signal to the investors that we’re not going to be lagging behind. We want to be the disruptor, we don’t want to be the disrupted one,” Chandrasekaran said. “It’s also a signal to their own employees that this is going to come fast and furious, and you’ve got to be ready for this journey.”

Keep reading here.—PK

It may seem that Gen Z is ahead of the curve when it comes to GenAI savvy. But that know-how can vary by region in the US.

A new poll from Gallup, the Walton Family Foundation, and the nonprofit Heartland Forward found that only about a third of Gen Z employees in the 20 interior states defined as the American heartland feel at least somewhat prepared to use AI at work. Four in 10 heartland Gen Z students between fifth and 12th grade feel ready to integrate AI into eventual jobs.

There have been plenty of concerns lately about the role that GenAI should play in schoolwork and education. But it’s important that students have exposure to and training around AI to ready themselves for AI-dominated workplaces, according to Angie Cooper, COO and president of Heartland Forward, which aims to promote economic growth in the middle of the country.

“When we work with rural students and entrepreneurs across those 20 states, we know that AI is here. AI is going to be leading the future of work. It’s going to be bringing additional innovation to our heartland communities,” Cooper told Tech Brew. “We want to make sure that people in the heartland have the knowledge and skills on how to harness AI.”

Keep reading here.—PK

Two and half years after the release of ChatGPT, the pace of AI development hasn’t let up much. A constant stream of new enterprise AI tools promises to remake work as we know it across every industry. But how much is generative AI actually moving the needle for companies that use it?

A handful of new reports aims to quantify how much businesses are adopting AI—as well as what they’re getting out of the technology.

As agents are billed as the next big chapter in generative AI, these surveys show many companies are rushing to test them out. But the data on how much all this AI spending has yielded in terms of results is mixed.

Agent uptick: A PwC survey of more than 300 executives in April found that 52% have either broadly or fully adopted AI agents; 27% reported limited usage. The rest of the companies either hadn’t yet adopted agents or had no plans to do so.

The top use cases were customer service, sales and marketing, and IT and cybersecurity. Most companies surveyed said their budgets were increasing because of agentic AI.

But the report authors wrote that while agents provide “a meaningful boost in productivity, [the technology] stops short of transformation.”

Keep reading here.—PK