
Which technologies are the world’s business leaders talking about?
This is only the beginning for ChatGPT…
IoT Analytics’ most recent What CEOs talked about report outlines the main themes and topics that dominated high-level discussions at the start of this year.
Research from 56,000 American companies demonstrates the rapid rise of ChatGPT, with looming threats of layoffs and ongoing economic certainty.
IoT Analytics states that, by gaining a better understanding of what CEOs are talking about most, we can more accurately predict which areas will receive the most investment in the upcoming months.
What are the biggest topics amongst US CEOs?
The report identified three main themes that have risen in traction during this first quarter:
- AI and ChatGPT
- The labour market
- Industry 4.0
Interestingly, although (supply) shortages and the metaverse remain two key topics, their discussion has lost significant traction this quarter.
While discussions around shortages in general reduced by 21%, the use of the metaverse as a keyword also declined, by a marked 64%.
The largest overall cluster topic is economic uncertainty, which encompasses inflation, interest rates and recession.
In fact, the topic of economic uncertainty absolutely dominated CEO discussions, with a staggering 61% of all earnings calls discussing inflation during this quarter. Similarly, 38% discussed interest rates, and 23% discussed recession.

The next wave of digital solutions
Technological developments and digital solutions represented another of the biggest areas of discussion amongst CEOs.
According to the report, AI was discussed by 17% of CEOs, marking an impressive 41% rise from the last report.
Similarly, industry 4.0 was marked as a key upcoming theme, with industrial automation discussed in 0.6% of all earnings calls. Although this may not sound like a lot, it represents a 57% increase compared to the previous quarter’s figure.
The most significant increase in this group was achieved by predictive maintenance, which garnered a 136% surge in discussion.
However this trend, particularly the increase in AI-centred discussions, isn’t particularly surprising.
Industries across the world are actively evaluating how ChatGPT can enhance their operations, mentioned by 2.7% of companies in the report, compared to no mentions at all in the previous quarter.
“AI has become a big topic of conversation this year […] If I think about it, over the last decade, I think there were three moments you can talk about, […] One, when IBM won Jeopardy with Watson, […] Second, when deep mind from Google or Alphabet started winning competitions around, for example, GO […] and now with OpenAI and ChatGPT.” – Arvind Krishna, CEO, IBM
After ChatGPT’s release on 30 November 2022, the application achieved the status of the fastest-growing consumer application ever. In just two months, ChatGPT achieved 100 million active users.
And, fuelled by this widespread interest, the potential use cases of AI across the board are becoming far more widespread. In fact, within the report, 17% of all earnings calls mentioned AI, representing a 41% increase in this quarter.
Without a doubt, ChatGPT and AI technologies are set to have an incredibly transformative impact on the procurement sphere. We are excited to see how these conversations will drive new, innovative implementations of these futuristic solutions, especially in procurement.
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