Figure AI & GenZ Trends

As we wrap up April, summer time is coming up and AI is on everyone’s minds. 

Buckle up, because the AI train is picking up steam, and businesses that fail to hop aboard risk getting left behind.

1/ Figure AI is making huge progress

The company was featured on 60 minutes and knocked it out of the park

When a reporter prompted a figure robot to hand them a healthy snack from a basket that had fruits and a packaged snack, it gave him the fruit in a swift motion.

Figure is powered in part by OpenAI technology, so it’s brilliant to witness prompting in action to a humanoid.

2/ AI in higher-ed

CCA, or the community college of Aurora, conducted a study on AI in the classroom- what they found was quite interesting.

They used AI in academic advising to students and found that enrollment increased 11%, teachers who used AI in the classroom had deeper levels of engagement, and greater success in the classroom.

Go figure.

3/ Gen AI Economic Report

According to the Generative AI economic report study, nearly 80% of the jobs in the US economy could see 10% of their tasks done twice as quickly via using generative AI.

We’ve been seeing this- but viewing the stats around the transition puts things in perspective. This is not an insignificant amount, and illustrates the shift happening in the world.

4/ Trend: GenZ taking up the trades?

With AI taking over many white collar jobs, some reports have come out showing that GenZ is increasingly looking to the trades.

Be it hospitals, transportation, Amazon- enrollment in vocational community colleges is up 16% since 2018 according to the National Student Clearinghouse Report.

This is an interesting trend to keep in mind.

5/ Github announces Copilot workspace

To dive in here- Github copilot has been a game changer for many developers, an AI-assistance tool that helps improve productivity across the board.

Now, with copilot workspace- Github’s goal is to help you go from pure idea to production ready code using just prompts and natural language.

Wild developments.