Latest news with #DanPriest
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
PwC's chief AI officer: AI is moving quickly. Here's how leaders can avoid getting left behind.
CEOs need an AI strategy now to avoid falling behind competitors, PwC's Dan Priest said. Generative AI is reshaping industries, challenging leaders to adapt and innovate quickly. Priest emphasized investing in AI tools, reskilling employees, and maintaining human oversight. Many corporate leaders are embracing artificial intelligence in theory but falling short when it comes to execution, according to Dan Priest, who was named PricewaterhouseCoopers' first chief AI officer a year ago. With generative AI radically reshaping how everything from accounting and human resources to sales and marketing gets done, CEOs' leadership skills are being put to the test. How they go about their AI strategy today, warned Priest, will likely mean the difference between achieving greater cost savings and faster growth in the next few years versus falling behind the curve. "It is a disruptive journey that needs to be managed," he told Business Insider. Consider, for example, a PwC survey of approximately 4,700 CEOs last year found that four out of 10 expect their business models to no longer be viable in the next decade if AI continues to develop at its current rate. Priest said this suggests companies will need to come up with new — and likely AI-powered ways — of generating revenue, which can be difficult. Given how fast generative AI has been evolving, Priest stressed the importance of CEOs investing in AI tools and strategic planning around them now, if they haven't already, to set their businesses up for success. But he conceded that the task is challenging. For one, leaders need to find ways to distinguish their companies from others using AI if they want to stand out from competitors, said Priest. Most use cases today are merely setting a new standard for table stakes. "If AI is ubiquitous and everybody's got it, it can't be your differentiator alone," he said. Leaders also need to figure out which job functions will be aided by AI and to what extent, and which ones will become obsolete, said Priest. Further, they should determine where new skills are needed, invest in helping employees develop them, and assess where talent may need to shift to other areas of the business. "If you believe that people are an important part of your success in the future, you should invest in their reskilling," he said. Workers aren't all using AI tools in the same way, added Priest. "Early-career-stage team members are more likely to turn over the thinking too much to AI," he said. "Late-stage-career team members are probably too reticent to use it consistently." One tip Priest has for anyone using AI to write memos or other text is to only rely on the technology for a second draft. People should produce a first and last version on their own, he said. "You want the thinking to be yours. That's why the first draft is so important," Priest said. "You want the benefit of the edit and you want the final draft to be in your voice." This is also an example of why he believes humans should be at the center of companies' AI-related initiatives. "The shiny new object is AI, but I don't know a single AI agent that is changing a business," he said. "It's the humans combined with those AI agents that change the business." Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Insider
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
PwC's chief AI officer: AI is moving quickly. Here's how leaders can avoid getting left behind.
Many corporate leaders are embracing artificial intelligence in theory but falling short when it comes to execution, according to Dan Priest, who was named PricewaterhouseCoopers' first chief AI officer a year ago. With generative AI radically reshaping how everything from accounting and human resources to sales and marketing gets done, CEOs' leadership skills are being put to the test. How they go about their AI strategy today, warned Priest, will likely mean the difference between achieving greater cost savings and faster growth in the next few years versus falling behind the curve. "It is a disruptive journey that needs to be managed," he told Business Insider. Consider, for example, a PwC survey of approximately 4,700 CEOs last year found that four out of 10 expect their business models to no longer be viable in the next decade if AI continues to develop at its current rate. Priest said this suggests companies will need to come up with new — and likely AI-powered ways — of generating revenue, which can be difficult. Given how fast generative AI has been evolving, Priest stressed the importance of CEOs investing in AI tools and strategic planning around them now, if they haven't already, to set their businesses up for success. But he conceded that the task is challenging. For one, leaders need to find ways to distinguish their companies from others using AI if they want to stand out from competitors, said Priest. Most use cases today are merely setting a new standard for table stakes. "If AI is ubiquitous and everybody's got it, it can't be your differentiator alone," he said. Leaders also need to figure out which job functions will be aided by AI and to what extent, and which ones will become obsolete, said Priest. Further, they should determine where new skills are needed, invest in helping employees develop them, and assess where talent may need to shift to other areas of the business. "If you believe that people are an important part of your success in the future, you should invest in their reskilling," he said. Workers aren't all using AI tools in the same way, added Priest. "Early-career-stage team members are more likely to turn over the thinking too much to AI," he said. "Late-stage-career team members are probably too reticent to use it consistently." One tip Priest has for anyone using AI to write memos or other text is to only rely on the technology for a second draft. People should produce a first and last version on their own, he said. "You want the thinking to be yours. That's why the first draft is so important," Priest said. "You want the benefit of the edit and you want the final draft to be in your voice." This is also an example of why he believes humans should be at the center of companies' AI-related initiatives. "The shiny new object is AI, but I don't know a single AI agent that is changing a business," he said. "It's the humans combined with those AI agents that change the business."
Bloomberg
27-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
PwC's AI Chief Says Firm Has Cut Prices as Tech Saves Staff Time
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, one of the world's largest professional advisory firms, has cut prices for some services as clients raised the fact that the consultancy is using artificial intelligence to complete its work quicker. 'Clients would hear us talking about using AI and and say, 'We want our fair share of those efficiencies,'' PwC Chief AI Officer Dan Priest said in an interview with Bloomberg News. 'We certainly, as appropriate, give our clients the pricing benefit of the efficiencies we're achieving.'
Forbes
24-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why Would Amazon Employees Help Build AI That Replaces Them?
An enterprise AI strategy that leaves people out isn't just risky for jobs — it risks failing ... More altogether. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy just shared with employees his ambitious enterprise AI vision. A sweeping plan to deploy AI across products, services, and backend operations — promising faster invention, billions of AI agents, and dramatic efficiency gains. And buried in that vision is a warning. As CEO Andy Jassy put it, as Amazon rolls out more Generative AI and agents, At the very moment Amazon urges employees to embrace AI, learn fast, and help redesign work—it's telling them jobs will disappear. No map. No shared plan. Just responsibility pushed onto employees: Get curious. Train yourself. Find where you fit. It's a masterclass in how to undermine an enterprise AI transformation before it begins. Enterprise AI Starts With People, Not Tech Enterprise AI isn't about replacing people. It's about designing what only people can do. And here's the paradox: Only people can redesign the work. But they won't do it—unless they see how they fit in the future. Without trust, without a clear value proposition, without a shared vision of what work looks like in the AI-powered future, enterprise AI efforts will stall. And the numbers show why. The PwC 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer finds that industries best positioned to adopt AI have seen productivity surge, with revenue per employee growing three times faster than in industries slower to embrace AI. What's driving these gains isn't just isolated use cases or incremental automation. PwC's analysis makes clear: the real performance leap comes when AI is treated as a catalyst for enterprise-wide transformation—rethinking how value is created, not just how tasks are executed. In other words, if the goal is structural change that rethinks entire business functions, AI can't be treated as an add-on. As Dan Priest, Chief AI Officer at PwC US, put it on The Future of Less Work podcast: Enterprise AI requires clean-sheet thinking. Leaders must resist the temptation of incrementalism and instead ask: If we were designing this work from scratch, with AI at the core, what would it look like? But leadership can't answer that question alone. People Won't Build The Future If They're Not in It It's easy to think technology is the main challenge. It isn't. The real challenge is human. The people who know the work—those who interact with customers, manage operations, and deliver services—are the ones best placed to redesign it. They see where the friction is, where AI can enhance, and where human judgment remains essential. But here's the paradox: to get them to help reinvent work, they have to believe they have a place in what comes next. Otherwise, why would they help design themselves out of a job? If employees fear AI is a cost-cutting tool aimed at replacing them, they will resist or quietly undermine the transformation. As Priest warns: When AI is introduced purely as a cost-saving or headcount-reducing measure, it erodes the trust that is essential for success. The PwC report shows that the greatest benefits of AI come not from automation alone, but from empowering workers to create new value. This isn't a story of workers being sidelined; it's a story of workers being amplified by technology. The Trust and Skills That Power Enterprise AI Organizations that see AI only as a way to cut costs, reduce headcount, or drive productivity gains without regard for their people will undermine their own ambitions. When AI is treated only as a tool for cost-cutting, it limits its potential to what PwC calls thinking small—using AI to do old jobs faster or cheaper. The real power comes from thinking big: using AI to create entirely new capabilities, new business models, and new ways of delivering value. To do that, companies must bring their people along, not leave them behind. That starts with trust. People need to trust that they have a future in the AI-powered organization. That trust is earned when leaders clearly define how AI augments human value rather than diminishes it—and when workers see themselves in the vision of the future. Without it, transformation efforts will stall, no matter how powerful the technology. As Priest put it, And it continues with skills. People need the tools to work alongside AI—not just use it, but amplify their impact through it. Skills requirements in AI-exposed roles are evolving at a rate more than twice as fast as just a year ago. The jobs aren't disappearing. They're changing. And without intentional upskilling, workers won't be able to keep pace, and companies won't unlock AI's full potential. Simply telling employees, as Amazon's CEO did, to be curious and re-skill themselves isn't enough. Organizations must share ownership of this transformation—actively equipping people for the roles AI makes possible. The future of enterprise AI isn't a choice between technology or people. It's technology through people. If enterprise AI is going to deliver on its promise, leaders can't just deploy systems—they must design the conditions where AI and people thrive together. That means creating a clear, shared map of where people fit in the future of work—and building that future with them, not leaving them to figure it out alone.
