LIVE FROM MWC25 BARCELONA: Multiverse CEO and founder Evan Blair (pictured, right) highlighted operator executives often have limited insight on which to make effective decisions despite their businesses being inundated with data.
In a fireside chat with Brendan Gaffey, global co-leader for TMT at McKinsey & Company, Blair noted chief data officers often complain their teams are burdened by requests for more dashboards for running basic data analysis, keeping them from “all the really sexy stuff like building their own small language models on top of large language models to do stuff better”.
He argued a company cannot begin to think about AI meaningfully until it gets the data literacy piece right.
Multiverse is a technology start-up focused on training people on the job to do things better and faster, increase access to economic opportunity and help their organisations perform better, he explained.
Blair said corporate training had evolved from an employee benefit to a business benefit, with boards, CEOs, CTOs and CIOs often taking responsibility.
He insisted companies must invest in their people, explaining this could reframe a lack of desire in major economies to support immigration, and a general backlash against some elements of globalisation and outsourcing.
In education, the CEO pointed to a problem where students with personalised tutoring perform two standard deviations above those with no tutoring.
Blair explained AI helped to overcome the problem because it can provide everyone access to a personalised tutor which can understand the unique context of their role, so allowing more people to be reached.
Turning to efficiency gains, Blair noted the world has not seen a material impact on productivity “despite the relentless march” of software tools.