Amex Experiments with Generative AI

Mornin’ miners⛏️,

Happy Thursday!

Digger Insights provides you with an advantage by filtering the most recent digital news specifically for business owners and professionals across different industries.

Let’s get to it!

Today’s Highlights:

• Alex Blania and Sam Altman’s Worldcoin Thrives, Raising $115M 🪙

• American Express Dabbles in Generative AI 🏦

• BMW Designing Cars with AI 🚗

Crypto-Focused Project Worldcoin Raises $115 Million

Worldcoin, a crypto project co-founded by the CEO, Alex Blania, and CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman, was built with the help of tech company Tools for Humanity.

Just recently, Worldcoin has raised $115 million, led by Blockchain Capital. This makes Worldcoin one of the few crypto companies that are still receiving a big sum of capital from investors, including a16z, Bain Capital Crypto, and Distributed Global.

Security and Accessibility

Blania and Altman built Worldcoin with the hopes that they could create a global currency with an app that enables payments, purchases, and transfers using its token. It seems that they are slowly reaching that goal, but some people are worried about the privacy Worldcoin can offer due to their biometrics.

Worldcoin requires scanning users’ eyeballs with a sphere called “The Orb” in order for them to receive their tokens, and this factor has been a cause for worry.

However, Spencer Bogart, a general partner from Blockchain Capital, has said that users need not worry. Bogart explained that “The Orb” scans users’ eyes to make a unique ‘iris code’ and will immediately destroy the original biometric after the process is done.

Unified Digital Economy

CEO Alex Blania explained in 2021 that the whole point of Worldcoin is to create a unified global economy driven by the digital economy. 

Worldcoin’s success in 2023 could prove to be an advantage for businesses or startup professionals that are interested in delving into decentralized finance (DeFi).

In a world that is continually going through digital transformation, it may be a good idea to look into the digital economy, which you can learn more about here.

Worldcoin will be using the money they have raised for bot detection, research and development, and expanding the Worldcoin project as well as its app. Beta testing has started for two million Worldcoin users.

Striving for Better Customer Experience, American Express Dabbles in Generative AI

Do any miners here remember Mezi, the AI-based personal shopping chatbot and virtual travel assistant founded in 2015? A few years later, American Express acquired Mezi and used its technology to power its program, AskAmEx. AskEmEx is a concierge app American Express designed to help users book their dining, travel, and entertainment needs. American Express had taken advantage of AI before it was even trending.

Experimenting with Generative AI

With the rise of generative AI, seen from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Anthropic’s Claude, it’s no doubt that American Express would want to swim around in this wave. Executive vice president of American Express Digital Labs, Luke Gebb, has said that AmEx will be experimenting with a large language model (LLM) not as a standalone product (at least, not yet) but more as a tool to improve their direct-to-consumer or small-business services.

American Express Digital Labs is a division of AmEx created in 2017 that acts as a sort of startup inside AmEx. AmEx Digital Labs evaluates and tests new technologies and finds a way to incorporate them into AmEx’s products and services. AmEx Digital Labs was the one responsible for the acquisition of Mezi and the creation of AskAmEx. This year, they will be working with generative AI.

Customer is King (and Queen)

AmEx Digital Labs is exploring ways to help AmEx better understand customer patterns and behaviors, and they will be using generative AI to enhance their predictive analytics. AmEx will also use generative AI for customer sentiment analysis and customer interactions. This way, AmEx can predict customer performance and thus help with their financial planning and decision-making.

AmEx is focusing on customer experience and wants to use LLMs to also analyze customer feedback and inquiries through AmEx’s customer service portals. When it comes to reviewing outputs, AmEx feels that generative AI could do much quicker and more accurate work than humans. Despite this, though, AmEx will still approach the use of generative AI cautiously and securely, since their work affects customers’ bank accounts and credit lines.

AmEx’s development may be beneficial to financial services sectors that are open to the use of generative AI if AmEx’s experimentation ends up being successful. Improved customer service could also benefit businesses that are looking to invest or take up loans for startups.

BMW Working with Artificial Intelligence to Design Cars

The team behind BMW, the Munich-based car company created in 1917, has plans to incorporate artificial intelligence in their design process. Going out of its comfort zone, BMW acknowledges that AI is a technology improving with time, and thus has started experimenting with automotive designs using artificial intelligence.

AI Designers

According to BMW’s head of design Adrian van Hooydonk, BMW has mainly used AI for specific parts. With the wheel design, for example, they set certain parameters, giving the AI information on rims and spokes, and the computer then starts generating its ideas.

Hooydonk revealed that the company also tried using AI for complete car designs, but it didn’t go so well. The design team saw the AI-generated sketch results, and while they did look attractive at first, those were designs they had already seen before. The computer combines images of car parts that already exist online and puts them all together, which is a process opposite to BMW’s design philosophy.

According to Hooydonk, BMW’s car designers simply take inspiration from many different things, like a lamp, a painting, an old and a new car, which they then combine into their car designs. They do not just copy and paste what already exists.

Humans are (Still) Key

This contrast in philosophy is the reason why BMW will still require a human being as the art director. Instead of letting artificial intelligence take control, art directors will still guide the process. They simply want to use AI as a tool that can combine various parameters quicker than a human being.

BMW team’s plans show that they are not intimidated by AI, but instead want to take advantage of its existence by using AI’s abilities to simplify and hasten the design process. This change can be a great opportunity for AI developers whose products can help smoothen BMW’s design process. Suppliers that are open to AI development can also be of good use to BMW’s needs.

Meme & AI-Generated Picture

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