Tag: Google Gemini

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TWIET 49 – Feb. 12, 2025

This Week in Enterprise Technology, Episode 49, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech news for the CIO Office:

  1. Good News:  Ransomware Down 35%!
  2. AWS S3 Bucket Registrations: A Sneaky Backdoor Threat
  3. Zoho Day and the Race to Agentic AI
  4. Fei Fei Li: “It Takes 50 Dollars to Distill A Reasoning Model”
  5. Will Semiconductor Tariffs Force CIOs to Close the Deal?
  6. Is the CIO a Policy Strategist or Rubber Stamp?
  7. Will the Windows 10 Sunset Force AI PCs into the Workplace?
  8. CIOs Bullish on AI, IT Employees Not So Much
  9. Where Salesforce AI’s Super Bowl Ad Missed the Mark

Good News: Ransomware Down 35%!

Some good news from 2024: Ransomware payments were down 35% last year, as no new large cartels got into the business and law enforcement was better at tracing down threats. Are we safe now, or is this the calm before the storm? Charles and Hyoun put on their strategy hats and explore the future of Ransomware. 

Chainalysis: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-crime-ransomware-victim-extortion-2025/ 

AWS S3 Bucket Registrations: a Sneaky Backdoor Threat

Watchtowr Labs found a lot of examples of software update and binary requests associated with abandoned S3 buckets that could have been replaced with malware or backdoor access. Hyoun and Charles discuss how challenging it has become to manage cloud infrastructure.  

Watchtowr: https://labs.watchtowr.com/8-million-requests-later-we-made-the-solarwinds-supply-chain-attack-look-amateur/ 

Zoho Day and the Race to Agentic AI

Zoho has introduced Zia AI Agents to automate tasks across its products, while Sridhar Vembu has stepped down as CEO. As long-time observers, Hyoun and Charles discuss what this makes for Zoho’s 900,000 global customers. 


CX Today: https://www.cxtoday.com/crm/zoho-previews-ai-agents-commits-to-low-pricing-shares-more-on-its-ceo-transition/ 

Fei-Fei Li: “It Takes 50 Dollars to Distill A Reasoning Model”

Researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington developed an AI reasoning model for under $50, training the s1 model with Gemini and Alibaba Qwen 2.5. Charles and Hyoun raise questions about the future of AI innovation, as smaller teams can cheaply replicate advanced models. 

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/05/researchers-created-an-open-rival-to-openais-o1-reasoning-model-for-under-50/ 

Will Semiconductor Tariffs Force CIOs to Close the Deal?

Tariffs are now a strategic concern for the CIO. Get your timing wrong and your data center costs could spike unexpectedly. With potential tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductor chips on the horizon, Charles and Hyoun debate the strategy and timing for purchasing new compute or just outsourcing to the cloud.

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/04/nvidia_trump_tariffs/ 

Is the CIO a Policy Strategist or a Rubber Stamp?

The Trump administration wants to change the CIO position from a “career-reserved” or merit-based position to a political appointment with the logic that the CIO ends up defining how policy is deployed. Charles and Hyoun consider how important the CIO should be considered as a strategic executive for deploying policy, or if the CIO should be considered a rubber stamp for the CEO’s work.

CHCOC.gov: https://tinyurl.com/OPMCIOMemo  

Will the Windows 10 Sunset Force AI PCs into the Workplace?

Now that Microsoft has announced a sunset date for Windows 10, CIOs need to figure out their next PC refresh. Of course Microsoft will push for AI-ready Windows 11 devices, with room for small or distilled models in the OS. Charles and Hyoun discuss the Microsoft AI PC strategy for the enterprise.

Paula Rooney on CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3812887/will-the-end-of-windows-10-accelerate-cio-interest-in-ai-pcs.html 

CIOs Bullish on AI, IT Employees Not So Much

IT employees are not excited about AI, but CIOs and CTOs believe they will soon be essential in businesses. However, many IT professionals are skeptical due to concerns about deployment challenges and past AI project failures. Charles and Hyoun debate the real time frames for realistic AI success. 

Grant Gross on CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3815935/cios-are-bullish-on-ai-agents-it-employees-not-so-much.html  

Where Salesforce AI’s Super Bowl Ad Missed the Mark

Salesforce’s ad featuring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson highlights the confusing role of AI in everyday life. Instead of solving real problems, the ad portrays a bizarre scenario where AI is needed for basic tasks like dining and making reservations. Hyoun and Charles ponder why AI ads are spending so much just to miss the mark. 

Defector: https://defector.com/salesforce-is-using-a-hallucination-to-sell-ai 

Salesforce AI Super Bowl Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4JNLL7U8H8

Google Gemini Super Bowl Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7e6g11BJc0

ServiceNow AI Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IqR735mAo4

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TWIET 46 – Jan. 21, 2025

This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech news for the CIO Office:

  1. DOGE is Not a Department. It’s a Service. 
  2. Can OpenAI Influence America’s AI Policy?
  3. Google Gemini Wants 500 Million Users
  4. Microsoft Restructures to Support Agents
  5. ServiceNow Acquires CueIn for Conversation Analysis
  6. ContextualAI Launches for Custom RAG

DOGE is Not a Department. It’s a Service. 

For months, we have heard about DOGE, an effort to reduce government spending. But the current version of DOGE is a rebranding of the United States Digital Service, an existing organization focused on data audit and software modernization. Is this an effort to get closer to the data or a gentle offloading of Elon Musk from the campaign?

The White House: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/establishing-and-implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency/ 

OpenAI Influence America’s AI Policy?

OpenAI is seeking to influence U.S. A.I. policy with an “AI in America” blueprint to encourage investment and minimize regulations. CEO Sam Altman recently donated to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund to gain favor with the new administration. Can OpenAI push the US to accept more Middle Eastern investments for A.I. technology?

New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/technology/openai-economic-blueprint.html

Google Gemini Wants 500 Million Users

Google CEO Sundar Pichai wants 500 million users on Gemini before the end of the year. Remember the good old days when it was remarkable to have 100 million users? Hyoun and Charles discuss if the race to gain users is coming at the expense of actually building products that people might want to use. 


Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/google-gemini-2025-chatgpt-openai-b6eb595d  

Microsoft Restructures to Emphasize Agents

Microsoft is restructuring to support its agentic approach. This may be a sign that CIOs may need to start potentially transforming the IT department to also take a more agentic approach. 

Microsoft also seeks to increase the uptake of Copilot. Microsoft has relaunched its free AI chat tool, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, to encourage businesses to adopt AI in the workplace. Microsoft hopes that by using Copilot Chat, businesses will see its value and be tempted to subscribe to the full Microsoft 365 Copilot service for $30 per month. But the value proposition still seems confusing as Charles and Hyoun discuss. 

Microsoft: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/01/13/introducing-core-ai-platform-and-tools/ 

The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/15/24344214/microsoft-365-copilot-chat-agents-pricing-availability 

ServiceNow Acquires CueIn for Conversation Analysis

ServiceNow accelerates its agentic AI roadmap with acquisition of conversation analysis platform Cuein. Charles and Hyoun are interested in seeing how this signals a bigger step for ServiceNow into customer-facing use cases and speculate how this is the start of a broader goal of developing a set of intelligent, integrated customer facing systems and expanding beyond the internal workflow. 

ServiceNow: https://www.servicenow.com/company/media/press-room/servicenow-to-acquire-cuein.html?ref=runtime.news 

ContextualAI Launches for Custom RAG 

Contextual AI launches its custom Retrieval Augmented Generation capabilities for general availability. This is interesting because it speaks to the evolution of agentic AI and the need for enterprises to support RAG at scale to manage true enterprise-grade agentic AI.

Contextual.ai: https://contextual.ai/blog/contextual-ai-platform-generally-available/