Some of the world’s most successful business leaders are voracious readers. Bill Gates told the New York Times in 2016 that he reads 50 books a year. Warren Buffett is said to spend as much as 80% of his working day reading and thinking. In 2000, when a Columbia Business School student asked him how to prepare for a career in investing, Buffett pointed to a stack of reports and told the class to read 500 pages like that every day, because knowledge “builds up, like compound interest.”
But a new wave of executives are letting AI do the reading for them, using it to summarize reports, draft emails, and, in some cases, speak on their behalf. More than two-thirds (68%) of leaders in the U.S. and U.K. turn to AI to summarize documents, and 58% use it to draft emails, according to a survey by General Assembly and coaching firm Ezra.
