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IN FOCUS
- How Grab uses AI to stay competitive in SEA
- Which is better for you PC: a copilot or a butler?
- What AI and Christopher Columbus have in common
Hi there,
Back when I was a teenager, I worked in a video store – the kind that rented out VHS tapes. One year, I volunteered to work on Christmas Day.
There was a line to get to the counter. We had probably 100 customers in the store, all wanting copies of the movies Home Alone, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie, and The Little Mermaid. It was kinda fun, except for the phones ringing.
Back then, people would call the store to ask if we had certain titles in stock, and then try to convince us to hold them until they got there. Whenever we said in-store customers came first, they’d argue with us.
But that Christmas Day, the phones never stopped ringing, so we turned them off. These were old landline phones, so we literally left them “off the hook.”
It was the only way for us to focus on our core jobs. But let’s be honest – that’s no way to run a business.
I look at the numbers from today’s first Big Story, which features an interview with Grab president and COO Alex Hungate on the sidelines of the Asian Economic Summit held in Jakarta last month, and I can’t imagine how we would have handled the volume of messages platforms receive these days. My head would have exploded trying to deal with over 90,000 merchants and around 16,000 voice reports from drivers daily.
It’s easy to understand why AI applications like chatbots and navigation systems are such a dominant force in tech today.
For our second Big Story, my colleague Glenn takes a look at IrisGO, which was built with this question in mind: Which is better – Batman’s Alfred or Marvel’s Jarvis? This will make more sense when put in the context of whether having a copilot or a butler is better on your PC.
Finally, I’ll rant a little about the ongoing bubble in AI. But first, let’s get back to Grab and how genAI helps it handle customers, sellers, and drivers alike.
THE BIG STORIES
1️⃣ Grab’s AI leap began with a cold stop on engineering
Image credit: Timmy Loen
THE HOT TAKE
DEEP READS
As the world rushed into the future, they kept it grounded.
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