Reken

My newest column for Inc. Magazine's Spring issue, available now, is about how any company can get the most value from AI: https://lnkd.in/gKmAXs7A Three of the key points: 1. Companies must learn what generative AI is—and isn’t—good for, to leverage it properly. AI use cases are wide-ranging and powerful, but many people—especially non-technical executives—mistake LLMs for artificial general intelligence (AGI) and think they can do things that they can't. 2. Avoid the cliché of adopting AI and declaring your company to be "AI-first", which many do just to signal how savvy they are. These days, it signals the opposite. Instead, underpromise and overdeliver on how you use AI to improve your business. For products, avoid jumping on the bandwagon of grafting "AI-enhanced" features onto products if they don't add real value. 3. Be thoughtful about your AI organizational structure for the short and long term. Some companies can benefit from appointing a head of AI, sometimes as a transitional step, but others may be better served by distributing AI across many teams from the beginning. The article also discusses two of the most significant business-related AI studies of the past year, which I recommend to all leaders managing AI efforts: 1. Thomas Malone and team's work at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence showing that humans augmented with AI outperformed humans alone, especially in creative tasks: https://lnkd.in/gB8a2aXD 2. Erik Brynjolfsson and team's work at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab showing that AI greatly improved the performance of customer support agents: https://lnkd.in/gyzvU6tQ Read the full article on Inc.com below, or on Apple News+ here: https://lnkd.in/gyNtvCfe

Video of a great session from SXSW on the future of work post-pandemic, with Reken co-founder Shuman Ghosemajumder, OLIPOP PBC co-founder Ben Goodwin, and Dagne Dover co-founder Melissa Mash. As part of Inc. Magazine Founders House, the CEOs of these companies—in three very different industries—discussed how they have built strong cultures over their careers, with Inc. Editor-in-Chief Mike Hofman moderating. Some key points: 1. Culture starts at the top. If leaders show up authentically and genuinely care about people—not just performance—it sets the tone. Hiring folks who share your values (not just a shiny resume) goes a long way. 2. Mission matters a lot. People want to feel like their work means something. Whether you’re making luxury handbags, fighting deepfake cybercrime, or creating prebiotic soda, when folks connect to the bigger picture, they show up differently. 3. Create high performance while avoiding burnout. A “strength-based” culture—where you push hard and treat each other like full humans, scales. People are happiest when they’re growing, being challenged, and doing meaningful work. 4. Work hard to minimize politics. Culture is defined by the worst behavior you tolerate. Build systems (and a strong team immune system) that sniff out toxic behavior early. 5. Remote work needs human connection. Remote gives access to incredible talent—but real-life moments still matter. Offsites, events, and shared experiences help people bond and feel part of something bigger. Full video:

What are the greatest cybersecurity threats related to AI? At the HumanX AI conference in Las Vegas last week, Reken CEO Shuman Ghosemajumder spoke on a panel about how AI is changing cybersecurity, with Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO of Pindrop and Galina Antova, co-founder of Claroty. John Furrier of SiliconANGLE & theCUBE moderated. One question he asked was: what areas has AI exposed to cybercriminals? In the answer here, they discuss how adversarial and other model-focused attacks are issues for compliance, but cybercriminals continue to focus on using AI to more directly attack employees, to create fraud and steal money, as that is their primary incentive. This is why enterprises protecting themselves against fraud and social engineering, which is getting turbocharged by AI, is by far the most critical area for defense. Congratulations to the HumanX team for successfully running one of the most significant AI events of the year!

Reken CEO Shuman Ghosemajumder and Ken Nickerson, partner at Maverix Private Equity, joined the RBC Disruptors podcast last week, hosted by John Stackhouse, SVP at RBC and Sonia Sennik, CEO of Creative Destruction Lab. Some of the key points from the discussion: 1. Generative AI enables criminals to automate fraud, accelerating and scaling scams that previously needed human fraudsters, such as phone calls and email social engineering. Unlike enterprises that struggle with AI hallucinations, fraudsters embrace them — because deception is the goal. 2. Traditional digital verification methods are failing. The information security?industry has learned from the anti-fraud industry and adopted the concept of "zero trust", where trust is never assumed and continuously validated. 3. Despite the risks, AI itself is also the key to the solution, as new technologies are being built to keep the world safe. Listen to the podcast at: https://lnkd.in/gBFk5vZi

Reken CEO Shuman Ghosemajumder will be speaking at the HumanX AI conference next week in Las Vegas. He will be discussing how DeepSeek AI, Meta's Llama, and other open source AI models are being used to enhance cybercriminal capabilities, and what we can be done to protect companies and societies. Shuman will also speak on a panel about how generative AI is transforming cybersecurity and fraud, with Vijay Balasubramaniyan, co-founder & CEO at Pindrop, and Galina Antova, co-founder & board member at Claroty, moderated by John Furrier, co-founder & CEO at SiliconANGLE & theCUBE. Other featured speakers at the conference include Kamala Harris, 49th Vice President of the United States and former White House AI Czar; Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox; Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake; Marcie Vu, Partner at Greycroft; Wesley Chan, co-founder & Managing Partner of FPV Ventures; Pegah Ebrahimi, co-founder & Managing Partner of FPV Ventures; Ian Sigalow, co-founder & Managing Partner at Greycroft; Lawrence M. Chu, co-chair of Global M&A at Goodwin; Douwe Kiela, co-founder & CEO of Contextual AI; and Arthur Mensch, co-founder & CEO of Mistral AI.

At SXSW next week, Inc. Magazine is hosting Founders House, featuring actor and director Seth Rogen, actor Lili Reinhart, former World No. 1 tennis player Andy Roddick, SweetGreen co-founder Nic Jammet, designer Rebecca Minkoff, and other founders and leaders. Reken co-founder Shuman Ghosemajumder will be speaking on March 9 along with Ben Goodwin, co-founder of OLIPOP PBC, on the future of work.

Reken CEO Shuman Ghosemajumder spoke to The Globe and Mail about AI-generated scams, and how AI is "the ultimate fraud machine". Article summary: 1. Scammers are increasingly using AI-generated deepfakes to impersonate executives, employees, and family members. 2. Deepfake fraud grew by 3,000% between 2022 and 2023. 3. Realistic deepfake technology is now cheap and widely available. 4. As AI improves, scams will become even harder to detect. 5. Detection of AI content alone does not solve the problem. Read the full article by Joe Castaldo and Alexandra Posadzki below.

We are excited to share that Reken CEO Shuman Ghosemajumder has been named a Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto - Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. He joins an influential community of Fellows including former Prime Ministers and other prominent government, business, and policy leaders. At Reken, we are building a cybersecurity platform to defend against AI-powered threats. As we do this, we want to help educate organizations and societies to understand these issues and implement effective approaches. Reken’s ongoing work will add to the Munk School’s leadership in shaping policy for artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and entrepreneurship.

This week’s Economist cover story discusses scams and fraud, and how AI will make these problems much worse. From the article: “Online scamming compares in size and scope to the illegal drug industry [...] A global industry that steals over $500bn a year from victims all around the world" "In Singapore scams have become the most common felony. The UN says that in 2023 the industry employed just under 250,000 people in Cambodia and Myanmar; another estimate puts the number of workers worldwide at 1.5m.” “AI will turbocharge this.” The Internet and AI make scams and fraud more widespread than ever. We need new, advanced cybersecurity and AI to protect against this. This is why we founded Reken. If you’d like to join us on this critical mission, email us at [email protected].

Reken CEO Shuman Ghosemajumder spoke with Bloomberg News about DeepSeek AI and its implications for AI around the world. From the article: “Every country in the world could have that kind of a project going on, if they can acquire the talent and be able to work on it, of course. The rest of the industry is going to learn from this,” said Shuman Ghosemajumder, co-founder and CEO of Reken, a San Francisco-based AI startup. DeepSeek is helping the industry realize trends we both predicted and observed at Reken since before we started: 1. Models won’t be as expensive to build as people thought 2. Costs for companies leveraging AI will go down over time 3. Reliance on specific hardware stacks will decrease 4. AI will be available to anyone globally, including cybercriminals 5. Cybercriminals will leverage AI to exponentially scale fraud DeepSeek represents an inflection point that will accelerate each of these trends.