The CEO Who Says Cheaper AI Could Actually Mean More Jobs
Feb 11, 2025
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Aaron Levie, CEO of Box and cloud storage innovator for Fortune 500 companies, discusses the transformative potential of AI in business. He highlights how cheaper AI can sift through vast amounts of previously messy data, improving tasks from invoice processing to marketing campaigns. Levie argues that this technological advancement could actually create more jobs, stimulating demand and growth. He emphasizes Box's commitment to remain 'model agnostic,' working with leading AI technologies to enhance their services and drive productivity.
AI's ability to efficiently manage and analyze unstructured data can streamline workflows, enhancing decision-making for businesses.
Despite advancements in AI automating routine tasks, human oversight remains crucial for complex decisions to prevent potential errors.
Deep dives
The Role of Box in Data Management
Box specializes in managing unstructured data, which constitutes about 90% of enterprise information. This data includes crucial documents like contracts, financial files, and marketing assets that previously had to be stored in traditional filing systems. The platform enables companies to store, organize, and secure these documents in the cloud, allowing for efficient workflows and collaboration. With over 100,000 customers, including nearly 70% of Fortune 500 companies, Box is pivotal in helping organizations maximize the utility of their data through innovative management solutions.
AI's Impact on Unstructured Data Handling
The integration of AI in Box's services revolutionizes how enterprises handle unstructured data, enabling customers to query and synthesize previously inaccessible information. With AI, users can extract key structured data points from documents such as contracts, vastly increasing their utility in decision-making processes. For example, AI can automatically identify contract renewal dates and important clauses, facilitating better management and oversight. This advancement empowers businesses to automate complex workflows that were once labor-intensive and error-prone, thereby streamlining operations.
AI: A Dual-Edged Sword in Business
While AI presents immense potential for enhancing productivity, concerns about its limitations and the importance of human oversight remain significant. Levy emphasizes that while AI can outperform humans in many routine tasks, critical use cases still require human judgment to mitigate errors, known as 'hallucinations' in AI outputs. The degree of human involvement varies depending on the task's complexity, with simpler tasks often being fully automated. As AI technology continues to evolve, the necessity for human oversight will likely diminish, but its role remains essential in sensitive applications.
Cloud storage used to be a sleepy part of the computing world but, with artificial intelligence becoming cheaper than ever, the companies collecting and protecting that data are now a hot investment. That includes cloud storage company Box, which has seen its stock climb nearly 40% this year. Its customers include most of the Fortune 500, including movie studios, automakers, consumer electronics giants, marketing firms and the Pentagon. Box CEO Aaron Levie says AI is getting better at piecing through 90% of companies’ data that previously was an intractable mess, and is doing some tasks better than humans – from processing invoices and parsing contracts to building marketing campaigns. So why does he think that could actually lead to more jobs for humans? Plus, why his company plans to stay “model agnostic” and continue to work with all the major artificial intelligence models, including OpenAI ’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. He speaks to WSJ’s Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins in episode four of our interview series Bold Names.
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