Airbnb CEO Says AI Helped Solve a Problem Many CEOs Face: Not Knowing ‘What the Hell’s Going On’ Inside Their Companies

Airbnb Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB) CEO Brian Chesky said he has turned to artificial intelligence to better understand what is happening across the company while reducing the number of meetings needed to stay informed. Chesky Builds AI ‘Brain‘ On Wednesday, speaking virtually at the Skift Global Forum, Chesky said CEOs of large companies often struggle to keep track of their organizations, reported Business Insider. "Most of us CEOs of big companies don’t really know what the hell’s going on in our companies," the Airbnb CEO said, describing meetings as a way "to figure out what’s going on." He said his personal goal was to use AI to reduce that dependence. "My whole job was, ‘how can I not need meetings to know what’s going on inside the company?’" Chesky said. The Airbnb co-founder said he developed an AI-powered "brain," or "intelligence corpus," drawing 18,000 Keynote slides, 50,000 Google documents and other company information. "This intelligence layer means I now have total information," Chesky said, adding, "I’ve cut my meetings in half." He said Airbnb is "pretty much" an AI-native company, with its executive team having embraced the technology. He said he wanted to become as familiar with AI as someone who had grown up with it. Airbnb Expands AI Use Chesky said AI has helped Airbnb ship more than 600 features this year, nearly twice last year’s number. Nearly 45% of customer-service issues that begin with Airbnb’s AI assistant are now resolved without human intervention, the company said during its second-quarter results. He also said Airbnb plans to launch an AI agent next year with an interface "much richer than a chatbot." Read Also: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky Urges Silicon Valley to Build Consumer AI That Improves Lives AI Disruption and Startup Advantage On Tuesday, McKinsey & Company warned that companies’ AI spending could rise as AI agents became more widely adopted. The study found that task costs could vary by as much as 30 times depending on the AI agent used, while 60% of surveyed organizations planned to increase AI spending. Last month, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham warned that AI could significantly disrupt businesses but said startups were "better off than anyone else." He said, "If the world is going to get turned upside down, the safest place to be is in a small, fast-moving company that can easily change direction." Read Also: AMD CEO Lisa Su Says Wall Street Is Underestimating Its AI Business— Now She Sees a $2 Trillion Opportunity Photo courtesy: Shutterstock