Walmart is putting generative AI in the hands of roughly 50,000 non-store U.S. employees who will have access to My Assistant, an LLM trained on information. From speeding the drafting process to serving as a creative partner and summarizing documents, “My Assistant has the potential to change how our associates work and solve problems,” Walmart said, emphasizing the launch goes beyond productivity gains. “We believe the key to unlocking transformation lies in the creativity and innovation of our associates. Ideally, this technology will free them from monotonous, repetitive tasks, allowing more time and focus for improving the customer/member experience.”  Continue reading Walmart Is ‘Empowering’ 50,000 U.S. Associates with GenAI

Brick-and-mortar real estate has cratered during the COVID-19 pandemic. The single exception is real estate linked to the significant growth in cloud computing: the buildings that house the servers that enable it. Goldman Sachs is investing up to $500 million in data center infrastructure. Private equity companies Blackstone and KKR also plan to invest in data centers, while, according to JLL, real estate investment trusts (REITs) focused on data centers had returns of 19 percent in the first half of 2020. Continue reading Cloud Computing Leads to Growth in Data Center Real Estate

Tech sector job openings are now one signifier of a well-run corporation. That’s true for the Drucker Institute, which relies on tech guru Peter Drucker’s management principles to rank the Management Top 250 companies. In addition to other factors, the Institute now also looks at each company’s listings for high-level tech jobs, via Burning Glass Technologies, a labor-analytics firm that provides data on jobs in such innovative areas as blockchain, robotics and artificial intelligence. Increasingly, companies across numerous industries are hiring employees with specific technology skills. Continue reading Silicon Valley Competes with Corporate America for Workers