Two stories from the past few weeks capture something essential about where we are with AI.The first concerns Salesforce, the enterprise software giant that aggressively embraced AI for customer service. CEO Marc Benioff proudly announced that AI deployment had allowed the company to cut support staff from 9,000 to roughly 5,000. Then reality intervened. Reports from late 2025 indicate that the company is now withdrawing from AI due to widespread failure. The AI agents confidently gave wrong answers, dropped instructions when given more than eight steps, and lost focus when users asked unexpected questions. Customers complained that AI support took longer than the simple old search function. Salesforce is now retreating to rigid, rule-based scripting–essentially admitting they were, in their own words, “more confident” than the technology warranted.The second story is a zeitgeist shift. Over the past couple of months, the conversation around AI and coding has transformed completely. People who were skeptical six months ago–senior developers who actually write code for a living–are now saying the age of human beings writing code is ending. Not in some distant future, but imminently. Entire features are being shipped by AI with minimal human intervention. The productivity gains are no longer incremental; they’re structural.How can both be true? How can AI fail comprehensively in customer service–seemingly straightforward–while revolutionising software development, which appears far more complex?The answer is that we’ve been thinking about AI wrong. We treat it as a single phenomenon that will sweep through the economy at roughly the same pace. However, AI in business is not a single story. It’s many parallel stories, moving at wildly different speeds. And the distinction has almost nothing to do with how intelligent the AI is.I’ve written about this tension before. A year ago, I argued that “the fact that a revolution is real doesn’t mean that every business claiming to be part of it will succeed.” More recently, I observed that “the gap between what AI demos well in controlled environments and what it actually delivers when confronting the messy real world remains enormous.” I now think there’s a more precise way to understand this gap. It’s not random. It’s structural.Consider what makes coding fertile ground for AI. Code is formally structured and machine-verifiable–it runs and passes tests, or it doesn’t. The feedback loop is immediate. When AI makes a mistake, a developer (or another AI agent) notices, fixes it, and moves on. Errors are private and reversible. Now consider customer service. Customers don’t speak in data schemas. Emotion, sarcasm, and cultural context matter enormously. One wrong answer can escalate to social media outrage or regulatory complaints. The failures are public and often irreversible.The difference isn’t intelligence. It’s what I’d call error economics. AI thrives where mistakes are cheap, private, and correctable. It struggles where mistakes are expensive, public, and permanent.We received a clear illustration of executive disconnect just a few days ago. During Bajaj Finance’s Q3 call, CEO Rajeev Jain announced that AI had listened to 2 crore calls and generated 100,000 new customer offers. “We’ll be able to listen to 100 million calls next year,” he said proudly. The response on social media was predictable hilarity. As the entire country, except apparently Mr Jain knows, Bajaj Finance’s incessant spam calls are the butt of countless jokes. Here was a CEO using sophisticated technology to optimize something customers actively despise. Machine learning works perfectly; the learning about customers is absent.For investors, the implications are significant. When you hear “AI” attached to a business function, ask: what happens when it’s wrong? If the answer involves customers, regulators, or reputations, progress will be slower than vendor PPTs claim. If the answer is “someone notices and fixes it,” that’s a different world entirely.The story of AI in business is not one of universal acceleration. It’s one of the selective escape velocities. Coding has left the atmosphere and gone into orbit. Customer service is still fighting gravity. Most other functions lie somewhere in between–mistakenly assumed to be closer to the rocket than they really are. The many worlds of AI are not converging. They’re diverging. And that divergence will determine which investments succeed and which disappoint.(Dhirendra Kumar is Founder and CEO of Value Research)

BBC Washington correspondent Daniel Bush on who may skip the speech, why the president is fuming at the Supreme Court, and what policies could, or couldn’t, be in for a shake‑up.

8 hrs ago

Most of the UK’s biggest businesses have hit targets for gender representation in their boardroom, but fall short when it comes to women leaders who face greater scrutiny and unconscious bias, according to Government-backed report.

Data from the FTSE Women Leaders Review shows that women held 43% of board positions on FTSE 350 companies in 2025.

It marks a significant leap towards gender balance in the boardrooms of the UK’s biggest listed companies, from the 9.5% recorded when the review began 15 years ago.

Nevertheless, the proportion is more or less the same than it was in 2024.

Vivienne Artz, chief executive of the FTSE Women Leaders Review, said the “pace of change is naturally beginning to level as parity approaches”, adding: “Boards are still making progress, which is great, but there’s not as much progress to make.”

The review, which is supported by the Government, tracks the progress of the FTSE 350 and 50 of the UK’s largest private companies towards voluntary gender representation targets.

The latest report revealed that the proportion of women in leadership positions on the FTSE 350 has edged up to 36%, from 35% the previous year, as of the end of October 2025.

Within that, the proportion of women in chief executive roles was 8%, up from 7%.

There were nine women chief executives at FTSE 100 companies.

There has been a recent flurry of female bosses quitting from top listed companies and being replaced by men, such as Dame Emma Walmsley from drug firm GSK, Liv Garfield from water supplier Severn Trent, and Diageo’s Debra Crew.

On the other hand, energy giant BP appointed its first ever female chief executive, who is due to step into the role in April.

Ms Artz said firms were making slow progress when it comes to gender balance for the CEO, chair and finance director roles.

“It’s because they are incredibly demanding and difficult roles to fill,” she told the Press Association.

“I think that too often we rely on the safe option which is, ‘we’re going to have have someone who’s done it before’.

“And if you’re always going back to fishing in the same pond then you’re not finding new talent… you’re not looking at skills and expertise, as opposed to a CV that you feel comfortable with and you’re seen before,” she said.

Furthermore, Ms Artz said women can face barriers to leadership positions due to prevailing attitudes which have “not been easy to dismantle”.

“I think we can say that female CEOs get a lot more scrutiny and they get judged on different things that male CEOs do,” she said.

She said that talking points such as whether the person is married or has children can be “distracting, and in many ways it diminishes the credibility of the leader”.

“We do know that there is absolutely still unconscious bias and that there’s attitudes that need to change,” she said.

Ms Artz also argued that the cost of childcare means that families are led to making decisions that can “derail” or “sideline” a woman’s career.

Responding to the report, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the data “shows how far we’ve come”, adding: “But there is still a long way to go as women remain under‑represented in key executive roles.

“As Chancellor, I’m clear there should be no ceiling on a woman’s ambition.

“When they can participate fully at every level, organisations make better decisions, innovate more and perform more strongly, boosting our whole economy.”

Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle said: “It’s essential that our top talent can reach the highest levels of leadership, which is why I’m so pleased the UK continues to lead the charge for gender equality in boardrooms.

“However, be in no doubt that despite this progress, there is still much more work to do.”

Looking at individual companies, drinks giant Diageo and supermarket and services chain The Co-operative Group have the highest representation of women in their boardrooms, at 77.8% and 72.7% respectively.

Marks & Spencer, HSBC, and water firms Severn Trent and Pennon Group are among those to record representation greater than 60%.

At the other end of the scale, parcel giant Evri and yoghurt maker Muller had no women on their boards, while the likes of pub groups Mitchells & Butlers and Wetherspoons were towards the bottom of the list with representation of 22%.