Hari Nair

STATE OF AI REPORT (October 2025) by Air Street Capital. Key takeaways from 312 charts attached! 1. Reasoning Took Center Stage: 2025 was marked by major progress in AI reasoning — models can now plan, verify, self-correct, and reflect across long tasks, signaling a shift from pattern recognition to structured thought. 2. OpenAI Leads, But China Closes In: While OpenAI still holds a narrow lead, China’s DeepSeek, Qwen, and Kimi have rapidly closed the gap in reasoning and coding, overtaking Meta and establishing China as the global #2 in AI capability. 3. AI as a Scientific Collaborator: AI systems like DeepMind’s Co-Scientist and Stanford’s Virtual Lab are autonomously generating and validating scientific hypotheses. In biology, ProGen3 extended scaling laws to protein generation. 4. Embodied AI Starts Acting Intelligently: AI systems began showing step-by-step reasoning before acting, through innovations like Chain-of-Action planning in Google’s Gemini Robotics 1.5 and AI2’s Molmo-Act. 5. Commercial Adoption Exploded: 44% of U.S. businesses now pay for AI tools (up from 5% in 2023). Average contract value: $530,000. AI-first startups are growing 1.5× faster than peers 6. AI Use is Ubiquitous in Daily Life: From a survey of 1,200 practitioners: 95% use AI at work or home. 76% pay out-of-pocket. Most report sustained productivity gains 7. Industrial Era of AI Begins: With multi-gigawatt data centers like Stargate, the industry is now driven by power, land, and geopolitics, not just GPUs. Compute is national infrastructure. 8. AI Geopolitics Intensify: The U.S. adopted an “America-first AI” strategy, China advanced its open-weight ecosystem, and Europe’s AI Act faced implementation challenges. 9. Safety Focus Shifts to Practical Risks: The focus of AI safety research has shifted to monitorability, deceptive reasoning, and control. Labs are debating transparency vs. raw capability as alignment becomes harder to verify. 10. Existential Risk Debate Cools: Concern about existential AI threats has faded, replaced by practical worries like cybersecurity, robustness, and long-term governance of autonomous systems.

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Today’s Corporate Strategy and Innovation session at AGMP with Professor Amit Karna was exceptional. Key highlights included: Exploring strategic disruption and the innovator’s dilemma through the Kodak and Blockbuster cases Understanding cognitive inertia (difficulty in rethinking mental models) and action inertia (delayed or hesitant responses) Learning practical frameworks to identify and overcome these inertias Emphasizing continuous market sensing, organizational agility, and a culture of experimentation Solutions for balancing core business with disruptive innovation and encouraging bold strategic pivots Grateful to Professor Karna for such insightful lessons and actionable tools to navigate disruption and drive sustainable innovation. #StrategicDisruption #InnovatorsDilemma #CognitiveInertia #ActionInertia #CorporateStrategy #Innovation #OrganizationalAgility #AGMP #IIMA

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“I now regret my work.” These are the words of Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Prize laureate and often called the Godfather of AI. When someone of his stature speaks with such urgency — not about a distant future, but about what’s unfolding right now — we should pause. AI is no longer just innovation. It’s a test of our ethics. It’s not about what AI can do, but what we allow it to do — and why. As leaders and builders, we face real choices: ➤ Will we build power or trust? ➤ Wisdom or just speed? ➤ Human impact — or scale at any cost? Hinton’s words are not just a warning. They’re a call to consciousness. His words hit me hard. As a parent, I keep thinking: What kind of world will our children inherit if we don’t act with integrity today? This is bigger than business or tech — it’s about values. 🎥 Watch the most powerful 2-minute clip from his Nobel Banquet speech: https://lnkd.in/gtqAmayG — #AIethics #Leadership #ResponsibleAI #GeoffreyHinton #ArtificialIntelligence #TechForGood #FutureOfWork #EthicalLeadership #AIResponsibility #NobelPrize2024 #InnovationWithPurpose #HumanCenteredAI #DigitalLeadership #ParentPerspective

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AI isn't merely "Artificial"; it embodies Acquired Intelligence. Inspired by Priyank Kapadia's insights in "The Future of Human Ingenuity: Reimagining Creativity, Skills, and Organizations in AI Era," I contemplate how AI shapes our work dynamics. The essence lies in embracing the 3I paradigm: 1. Information: AI streamlines data collection at a vast scale 2. Insights: AI reveals patterns, while humans contribute meaning and judgment 3. Impact: Collaboratively, we revolutionize work processes and drive value The forthcoming era doesn't entail AI displacing us; rather, it entails AI enhancing our capabilities. Leaders should advocate for augmentation over automation, fostering collaborative AI integration to unlock greater impact. Acquired Intelligence stands as the true competitive advantage. How about adopting the 3I mindset within your organization? Arvind Koul , Gaurav Gulati Gaurav Darbari, Prity Hazra, Sanjiv Kumar Jain , Abhishek Jain #ArtificialIntelligence #AcquiredIntelligence #FutureOfWork #DigitalTransformation #AILeadership #HumanIngenuity #AugmentedIntelligence #3IFramework #AIandHumans #ImpactfulAI

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In unprecedented challenging times, we must remember the lessons from the 'lost decade' to prevent ‘shrinking-to-glory’ and resist two main 'deadly temptations': - Getting wrong the cost take-out vs. top-line balance - Solving structural organic growth problems with mega-M&A deals A few thoughts here: 1) Top-line growth has been the number one total shareholder return driver in the FMCG industry over the last 15 years 2) The world's largest listed 50 FMCG companies have never on average (if we aggregate their performance) outperformed the FMCG market over the last 15 years, this is what we refer to as the 'growth gap'. If this growth gap narrowed during post-COVID, it is now back & Increasing 3) In the years where the top 50 expanded the most their bottom-line, their growth decelerated the most. The winning algo is maximizing top-line growth with a modest (ie. 25 to 75 bps) & steady bottom-line improvement 4) Large M&A (target EV as % of acquirer EV >30%) has been the key driver for shareholder destruction over the last 15 years 5) When a brand/ country couple loses market share, it has 70% of chance to continue losing market share in the following years & it often triggers a 'value destruction/ shrinking to glory trap' (cost-cutting, destabilization of brand growth models, more top-line decline, more cost-cutting to offset, etc...) More in the below article: Open letter to FMCG CEOs: 7 Thoughts To Outperform In 2025 & Beyond And 10 Predictions For 2025-30 https://lnkd.in/eCJUJWqv Exciting times 𝐓𝐨 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 30,000 𝐅𝐌𝐂𝐆 𝐞𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫, 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧-𝐮𝐩 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤: https://lnkd.in/ea4gy65y 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘂𝘀: FF&A solves the most complex strategic problems of the world largest FMCG companies across Corporate Strategy, Organic Growth, Digital RTM (Ecommerce, DTC and EB2B) and M&A. 14 out of the world 20 largest FMCG companies are repeat Clients #fmcg #cpg

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AI Is Rewiring Consulting Firms. The new HBR article makes a clear point: AI is not just another productivity tool — it is changing how consulting firms are structured and how value is created. AI is automating parts of analysis and insight generation, reshaping team structures and economics. Consulting is moving from a traditional pyramid to more agile, cross-functional models where human judgment and AI fluency work side by side. Three roles are emerging: • AI facilitators — early-career consultants trained in data pipelines and AI workflows. • Engagement architects — experienced consultants who turn AI outputs into strategy and action. • Client leaders — trusted advisors who help executives navigate change and disruption. Having worked both inside consulting firms and as a client partnering with them, I can see how real this shift is. The firms that blend AI technology, collaboration, and judgment best will set the new standard for advisory work.

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Maybe you’re often asked about AI— What are the most applicable tools for your industry? Should you have a corporate AI strategy? How do you budget and apply what’s publicly available? What are your vendors telling you about generative and agentic AI? How are you using it in your personal life? If you’re anything like me, AI isn’t your usual LinkedIn post topic—for obvious reasons! But maybe that’s the point. With so much already demanding a leadership team’s attention in building a business, a brand, and sometimes an entirely new category, I imagine it’s easy to keep pushing “further develop our AI strategy” to next week’s management meeting. When AI isn’t the core product, some companies may struggle to even allocate the right amount of time to AI exploration. So where to begin- especially as HR leaders? I found this recent WSJ article incredibly useful for small to midsize organizations without the resources to centralize AI or dedicate full-time teams to it. Two insights really stood out to me: 1) Business Unit Level Applications: “If you separate technology—and even worse, a particular kind of technology, like AI—from the business units, you will separate the people responsible for improving the company’s productivity and bottom line from the people responsible for implementing the technology.“ 2) Empowering Your People and Teams: “If you are the leadership team and you aren’t familiar with AI, how are you going to build a strategy for AI? You can’t. Given where most companies are starting from, the priority shouldn’t be about building a top-down overarching AI strategy. This can come later. It is about encouraging employees to use AI tools, to experiment… It is also important that there are guardrails to ensure that any tool is used properly, responsibly, and in a way that doesn’t put the organization at risk. The best ideas are most likely to come from the bottom-up, by those engaging in their day-to-day work and supporting customers. Technology doesn’t drive change, people do.” Rather than just feeling behind relative to companies that’ve put AI at the center of this year’s strategy, maybe start small: establish a flexible policy that protects the business, encourage experimentation, and create spaces for employees to share what they’re learning. Even something as simple as a quarterly internal ‘lunch-and-learn’ to share applications can be a spark that unlocks AI’s real potential for your business. I learned this from my friends, Stephan Jacob and Helen Lee Kupp— Women Defining AI , who’ve shared insights on fostering AI adoption within teams. I’d love to hear how your business- of any size- is approaching AI from the bottom-up, and any approaches that have truly motivated your people and teams. https://lnkd.in/eJfSUzyz

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It is striking how George Orwell’s 80-year-old observations resonate with today’s AI-driven world. 1. “Language becomes a weapon to control reality itself” 👉 LLMs are deciding what we believe. Whoever programs or trains the AI influences what information gets amplified. 2. “Mass conformity is engineered, not natural” 👉 algorithms are quietly shaping what we think. Conformity is not forced, it is carefully engineered through attention. 3. “Ignorance is manufactured to enable oppression” 👉 misinformation and selective information dissemination are spreading faster than truth. What you don’t know is being curated against you. 4. “Propaganda is more powerful than physical force” 👉 digital narratives are shifting minds without coercion. AI is shifting beliefs silently at a scale and speed no army could ever match. 5. “Historical memory can be erased and rewritten” 👉 deepfakes and curated feeds are rewriting the past in real time and redefining collective memory. So yeah, don’t worry. AI is just a tool. #technology #information #ai Follow me if you are looking for an honest, sarcastic and funny perspective on technology and workplace. Hit the 🔔 on my profile to get a notification for all my new posts.

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