What Can AI See That Your Company Can’t? – Newsweek

Published
Jul 24, 2026 at 05:20 PM EDT
AI Editor
This is AI Impact, Newsweek’s weekly newsletter where each week, we will explore how business leaders are unlocking real value through artificial intelligence.
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With the full panel now confirmed, I’m excited to invite you to Newsweek’s upcoming webinar presented by Cognizant, “Humanizing AI: Personalization, Engagement and the Customer Experience.”
On Thursday, July 30, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Gabriel Snyder, Newsweek’s executive editor, enterprise, will lead a live discussion about where AI can improve customer interactions, when a person should step in and what companies need to change behind the scenes to make automation work.
The panel will feature Nick Mehta, entrepreneur in residence at Bessemer Venture Partners and former CEO of Gainsight; Arun Chandra, chief operating officer at NiCE; Jon Hyman, co-founder and chief technology officer at Braze; and Adrian McDermott, chief technology officer at Zendesk.
I’m looking forward to hearing where their perspectives align, where they differ and what practical lessons emerge for leaders making these decisions now.
Registration is free, and I hope you’ll join us live.
Signals from the frontlines of AI adoption
Interos.ai CEO: AI Can Uncover Hidden Supplier Risk
An average S&P 500 company has about 1,700 direct suppliers. Follow the chain through the next two layers of vendors, and the network can expand to 1.5 million relationships across three tiers, according to interos.ai, a supply chain risk intelligence company.
Ted Krantz, the company’s CEO, told Newsweek that businesses often have a clear view of direct vendors, but “what it doesn’t capture is your supplier’s supplier and their subsequent suppliers.” A sanctioned company, financially unstable manufacturer or climate-exposed facility can sit several layers down and still interrupt production.
Climate forecasting has improved, Krantz said, while cyber threats continue to evolve. Geopolitical decisions can change tariffs, sanctions and trade restrictions faster than many companies can adjust.
“The risk companies are least prepared for is geopolitical,” Krantz said.
Krantz said interos.ai’s proprietary data identified 4,284 restricted or sanctioned companies among indirect suppliers in the second and third tiers of S&P 500 supply chains. A business may have no direct contract with one of those entities and still depend on it through another vendor.
Krantz sees AI’s value in connecting those hidden relationships with events outside the business. A tariff announcement, sanctions update, bankruptcy filing or cyber incident can be matched against internal supplier records and enterprise resource planning systems, the software companies use to track purchasing and operations.
Without that connection, executives may know a disruption occurred but struggle to determine which component, product line or facility is exposed.
Tariff policy puts the visibility problem on a deadline. A new tariff may raise the cost of a component supplied several tiers down the chain. Companies then have to decide whether to absorb the increase, find another supplier or change where they source the product.
“The first move has to be simulating the impact of that tariff across all tiers of your supplier hierarchy,” Krantz said.
AI can help trace the exposure and compare possible responses. Krantz said the technology can model how a policy change could affect costs and operations, identify alternative vendors and estimate the financial consequences of each option.
“Not all suppliers are created equal,” he said.
A delay involving one vendor may have little effect. The bankruptcy of a critical supplier can disrupt multiple companies across an industry when many depend on the same small group of vendors. Added tariff costs, government fines and the cost of an operational disruption can increase the exposure further.
Krantz said putting a dollar figure on those consequences gives executives a clearer way to determine which problems require attention first.
Replacing a supplier brings its own questions. The alternative may offer the correct product but operate in a politically unstable region, face financial pressure or rely on facilities exposed to climate hazards. Cybersecurity, regulatory and reputational concerns can also affect whether the replacement is viable.
“Skipping this resilience check in favor of a product match is how companies end up solving one disruption while unknowingly creating the conditions for the next one,” Krantz said.
AI can compare several responses and show the likely costs and operational consequences before a business commits to one.
Krantz expects AI to move closer to execution over the next four to five years. A system could identify a disruption, evaluate possible responses and carry out an approved action through the software used to manage purchasing or operations. Reaching that point will require a reliable record showing that its recommendations work.
“Human judgment remains a requirement for supply chain strategy decisions,” Krantz said. AI can surface options and their costs and benefits, he added, “but ultimately it must be a human decision.”
Is India on the Right Side of the AI Trade?
India’s role in the global technology economy has long been shaped by scale: a massive IT services sector, fast-growing capital markets, digital public infrastructure and a young workforce. AI could raise the stakes even further by changing where value is created, who captures it and how countries compete.
In an upcoming “AI Impact Forum” session, Dr. Ranjit Tinaikar speaks with Shri Ashishkumar Chauhan, CEO of the National Stock Exchange of India, about whether India is positioned to benefit from the AI revolution—and what the technology could mean for the country’s economy, financial markets, market infrastructure and next stage of growth.
Join the live discussion on Thursday, July 23, at 10 a.m. Eastern. Register for free.
What’s one recent insight you’ve learned about AI?
“My biggest ‘aha’ moment was realizing that AI-assisted research is not just a Gen Z or consumer trend. The survey data from Skyword shows a more urgent story for B2B and enterprise marketers. Among full-time employed Americans, 46 percent have already made a major purchase or important decision based primarily on AI-generated information.
It also signals that AI is becoming part of the early validation layer in how people research and pressure-test decisions. These findings suggest AI-assisted research is becoming relevant among audiences enterprise marketers prioritize, and reflects how decisions are already being shaped in practice.
Realizing that buyers rely so heavily on AI highlights a significant authority gap where trust starts to break down. When AI-generated information conflicts with a brand’s own messaging, only 29 percent of consumers trust the brand outright. Just 12 percent trust the AI answer, while 54 percent look for external validation instead.
Even as platforms continue improving safeguards, AI tools still depend on information already available online. That means authority is increasingly shaped through competing signals rather than any single source of truth.
For brands, this shifts attention to how they appear across different contexts and whether the information that surfaces is clear, accurate and consistent across touchpoints where buyers form impressions.
Instead of any one channel carrying authority, credibility is distributed across AI outputs, owned content, earned media, and third-party coverage. The challenge is less about controlling every mention and more about ensuring accurate, credible signals outweigh isolated inaccuracies over time.”
Have your own lesson to share? Email us at: a.mills@newsweek.com
AI use case of the week
Alibaba.com Builds an AI Team for Entrepreneurs
A product idea is only the first job an entrepreneur takes on. Market research, supplier vetting, product listings, storefront setup, marketing and customer service arrive right behind it, often before a founder has the money or staff to divide the work.
Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com, a global business-to-business e-commerce platform, said that workload can keep people with viable ideas from getting far enough to test them. Alibaba.com built Accio Work — its name draws from the Latin verb meaning “to summon” and nods to the summoning charm in “Harry Potter —an AI tool can carry out connected business tasks from plain-language prompts, to handle more of the work required to launch and run a company.
An entrepreneur can ask Accio Work to research a market, identify suppliers, generate marketing materials, launch an online storefront and help manage operations. The tool can carry the work across multiple steps, allowing a founder to move from research into sourcing and sales without first building a specialized team for each function.
Alibaba.com has encountered founders whose ideas grew from problems they understood personally. A mother designed a self-sanitizing changing table after struggling while traveling with her baby. A veterinarian created a pet health monitoring brand after losing his dog. A caregiver developed adaptive cutlery for older adults with disabilities.
“They started with a responsibility, a wound or a refusal to accept the status quo,” Zhang said.
The motivations were personal, but each founder still faced the same practical question: Could the idea become a product that customers would buy? Zhang said AI is lowering the capital, staff and specialized expertise needed to answer that question.
Founders bring the problem, customer knowledge and judgment. Accio Work handles more of the steps between the idea and its first test in the market.
Have an interesting AI use case to share with us? Email us at: a.mills@newsweek.com
■ Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf warned that AI-driven cyberattacks could become common after OpenAI models exploited vulnerabilities during a sandboxed evaluation and gained unauthorized access to part of Hugging Face’s infrastructure. [BBC]
■ Experts in a study of 272 AI specialists ranked dangerous capabilities, competitive dynamics, weapons and cyberattacks, concentrated power and false information as the risks with the highest expected severity through 2030, with information, national security and finance seen as the most vulnerable sectors. [MIT Sloan]
■ The White House announced more than $5 billion in federal commitments to expand the Genesis Mission, with more than 15 agencies contributing research awards, funding opportunities, datasets and facilities for AI-driven science across health care, energy, infrastructure and manufacturing. [AL.com]
■ Google’s ATLAS analysis of 15 million de-identified AI interactions found that use of its AI tools at work spans 68 percent of occupations but touches only about 21 percent of tasks in a typical job, with fewer than 10 percent of workplace interactions fully automating tasks. [Google]
■ Among public-company respondents, 47 percent said their companies do not expressly support AI use in board and committee work and 51 percent reported no board-specific AI policies, while 71 percent were unsure whether board or committee members had used AI for meeting-related activities. [Deloitte]
Tracking executive moves across the AI landscape
Andrew Jackson, previously chief AI officer at G42, has been appointed general partner and chief AI officer at B Capital, where he will lead global AI strategy across investment, portfolio management and operations while supporting AI-driven businesses incubated by the firm.
Andrew Baker, previously at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where he worked on data science and emerging technology for more than five years, has joined Entegrata as chief AI and data strategy officer, taking responsibility for its AI roadmap across engineering, product and customer experience.
Lee Sarkin, previously regional chief analytics officer at Munich Re Life & Health, will become vice president of data and AI for Sun Life Asia on Sept. 1, leading regional AI initiatives and overseeing the data platforms and governance needed for responsible adoption.
Dan Hinckley, co-founder and former chief product and AI officer at Go Fish Digital, has been named head of AI at Herringbone, where he will lead AI strategy and develop technology and capabilities across the digital marketing platform.
Preston Bradham, previously a senior manager at EY, has joined VeraBank as senior vice president and head of AI, leading strategy and adoption across the bank to strengthen internal operations and improve customer experience.
Know someone on the move in AI? Send job change info to a.mills@newsweek.com
What’s the most fun or unexpected way you’ve used AI lately?
“I used a combination of Claude and Codex agents to build a family office management app that controls all of our accounting, regulatory filings, investment analysis, sector allocation, investment thesis and ideas, fund management, new investment vetting and tax planning in one place. It’s a multi-agent platform with human in the loop (me) approving the important stuff.”
Experience some AI magic? Tell us about it at a.mills@newsweek.com
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