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Google's Agentic Calling and Checkout: Why the AI is the New Transaction Gatekeeper

Google's Agentic Calling and Checkout: Why the AI is the New Transaction Gatekeeper By Shashi Bellamkonda | Agentic AI Strategy Analysis The 10-Minute Hold and the Cart Abandonment that Just Vanished We all know the friction points of shopping: the wasted time checking if a local store has stock, and the frustration of waiting for a sale only to have the item sell out. Google is eliminating this by introducing Agentic Calling and Agentic Checkout. The customer no longer has to call to check availability or manually track prices and hit the buy button. The non-obvious business consequence is that the AI is now inserting itself at the beginning (research) and the end (purchase) of the transaction, effectively commoditizing the two most valuable steps that a local business previously controlled: the direct phone inquiry and the final checkout moment. The AI Takes the Busy Work, Local and Online The verified fact is that Google ...
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The Small AI Economy: Why LLMs are Overkill for 80% of Your Business Tasks

The Small AI Economy: Why LLMs are Overkill for 80% of Your Business Tasks By Shashi Bellamkonda| Enterprise AI Strategy Analysis Stop Paying for General Intelligence When You Need a Specialist For the last two years, the default answer to every business problem was "Use the biggest LLM available." But we've reached an inflection point where that strategy is now just lazy and expensive. Running massive, generalized AI models for routine tasks, like processing a form or booking travel is total overkill. You're paying for a quantum computer when you only need a calculator. The non-obvious business consequence is that you don't need LLMs for most tasks; specialized, compact models will do the work faster, cheaper, and more privately. Microsoft's Fara-7B, a Small Language MThe Small AI Economy: Why LLMs are Overkill for 80% of Your Business Tasksodel (SLM), validates the shift to this "Small AI" economy. ...

What You See Is Not What You Get (WYSIWYG) in AI

  Why WYSIWYG Is Not True for AI If you’ve been around technology for a while, you’ve probably heard the term WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get . It came from visual editors where the screen showed you exactly what would be printed or published. With AI, especially tools like ChatGPT, that idea is dangerously misleading. With AI, what you see is not what you get. The FOMO Trap: “ChatGPT Will Do Everything for Me” We’re in a moment of massive FOMO around AI. You see headlines, demos, Twitter/X threads, LinkedIn posts – and it’s easy to think: “If I just use ChatGPT (or any popular chatbot), it’ll handle everything I ever wanted to do.” That is wrong . For most people and organizations, blindly relying on a general-purpose chatbot is like hiring a very confident intern who: Has read a lot, Talks smoothly, But is not accountable for mistakes …and you rarely know when they’re wrong. If you’re using a free or cheap LLM plan and treating its answers as “tru...

The Green Thumb of Creative Leadership: Stop Being a Traffic Cop and Start Pruning

I recently attended a fantastic session on cultivating creativity at the really awesome MarketingProfs   #mpb2b conference , and my main takeaway was simple but profound:  don't be a traffic cop to creativity. Speaker Melanie Deziel used a brilliant metaphor, suggesting we treat our creative process—and our teams—like a garden. Our job isn't to control every movement (the traffic cop), but to act as a skilled gardener, directing the growth so that people and ideas can truly thrive. It’s about knowing exactly  when to trim the bushes (pruning) and when to let the plant grow (planting). his model breaks creativity down into an intentional, two-part system that ensures you get both breakthrough ideas  and  feasible results. The Two Essential Phases of Creative Growth Forget the idea that creativity is a single brainstorm. It’s actually the combination of two distinct types of thinking that must be separated and encouraged in a specific order: Divergent Thinking (T...

Sovereign AI: Why Owning the Algorithms is the New National Security

By Shashi Bellamkonda| Geopolitical Tech Analysis The Geopolitical Risk That Spans the Supply Chain We spent a decade arguing about data residency: making sure our sensitive customer files were physically stored in our country. Honestly, that fight is over.  The new, much more complex geopolitical challenge is this: if your country’s defense systems, critical infrastructure, and economic planning rely on an AI model trained and controlled by a foreign power, you have a massive national security vulnerability. The non-obvious strategic consequence is that the AI model itself - the algorithm and the chips it runs on - is the new critical national infrastructure. This realization is why countries like South Korea are driving the movement toward Sovereign AI . Sovereign AI is the Full Stack Sovereign AI is not just a buzzword; it’s a national project that seeks to own and control the entire technology stack under domestic jurisdiction. This is a massive, three-layered investment plan: ...

Claude Opus 4.5: First Model to Break 80% on SWE-Bench

On November 24, 2025, Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.5, becoming the first language model to exceed 80% accuracy on SWE-Bench Verified—a respected benchmark measuring real-world software engineering capabilities. The model achieved 80.9% accuracy, setting a new standard for AI coding performance. The release comes days after Google's Gemini 3 (November 18) and OpenAI's GPT-5.1 (November 12), marking an intense period of competition among frontier AI models. Anthropic also significantly reduced pricing from the previous Opus model, making it more accessible for production use. Source: Anthropic announcement, TechCrunch, CNBC, November 24, 2025 What Changed Claude Opus 4.5 is Anthropic's flagship model, completing the 4.5 series that includes Sonnet 4.5 (September) and Haiku 4.5 (October). According to Anthropic, the model demonstrates improvements across multiple areas: Coding Performance: First model to achieve over...

Icertis Buys Dioptra: AI Contracts Get Smarter

Icertis acquired Dioptra, an AI company focused on playbook-driven, pre-signature contract review and accuracy. Icertis positions this as a step toward more autonomous contract review using its contract intelligence platform and data. Background of the companies Icertis    - Founded in 2009.   - Provides Contract Lifecycle Management and what it calls Contract Intelligence software.   - Positions its platform as centralizing contracts, integrating with systems like CRM and ERP, and applying AI over unified contract data. Dioptra    - Focuses on AI for legal and contract workflows.   - Builds tools for automated redlining based on customer playbooks and for tracking and improving AI accuracy for legal teams. Who buys their product - Large and upper mid-market enterprises.   - Main buyer and influencer groups:   - General counsel, legal, and legal operations.     - Procurement and sourcing leadership. ...