How Executives at Walmart, IBM, Cisco, and More Use AI at Work

Your boss in the corner office may be telling you to use AI — but are they using it the same way you do?

Business Insider spoke to seven executives about how they use AI in their professional lives. While some said they use it to polish their communication, others said they find it helpful for improving their public speaking or navigating challenging conversations.

Read on to learn more about how top leaders, like Box’s CEO and Walmart’s EVP of Global Tech platforms, are using AI on the job:

Box CEO Aaron Levie

Box CEO Aaron Levie told Business Insider he uses various AI tools for different purposes. He said he uses Box AI to ask questions about data that he interacts with, like when prepping for an earnings call, reading a long report, or asking about sales information.

“So somebody sends me a document or I need to prepare for something, I’ll use Box AI to kind of work through that information very quickly,” Levie said.

The CEO added that he uses Cursor, an AI coding tool, to generate prototypes of new features or an idea for a website, and ChatGPT or Perplexity for research tasks. For example, he said if he’s working on a pricing strategy, he uses AI as a research assistant to help learn the best practices in the space.

Walmart chief people officer Donna Morris

Walmart’s chief people officer, Donna Morris, uses AI in many aspects of her personal life. In her work, though, she said she has used it to identify candidates to fill specific positions.

Morris, who oversees the largest private workforce in the US, often interviews candidates for leadership positions. She said when “kicking off” an important search, she’s used AI tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT to ask specific queries about who might have the right background for a particular role. While she said she’s a “big LinkedIn fan,” there’s an “ease and speed” to using AI tools.

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“You’ll be surprised at how close the actual sources that they come up with align with people who we’ve actually considered,” Morris said.

Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel

Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel leads a portfolio of travel brands, including Booking.com and KAYAK. He said he uses AI in some less obvious forms, such as when taking a Waymo ride. When it comes to LLMs, though, Fogel said he’s used AI to improve his public speaking. The CEO said he’s uploaded videos of his keynotes into chatbots and asked for feedback.

“I put it through an LLM to say, ‘could you please come back to me, tell me, what do you think I could have improved upon?'” Fogel said.

The LLM has responded with specific time stamps and suggestions, like flagging an awkward hand movement that Fogel never noticed but that may have distracted the audience, he said.

Aon chief administrative officer Lisa Stevens

As Aon’s chief administrative officer, Lisa Stevens is responsible for the employee benefit consultancy’s global brand, marketing, and communications strategies. She said she uses AI to conduct research before she meets with company representatives.

“When I’m going in to meet with a company, I’ll use it to find out things quickly,” Stevens told Business Insider.

She also said she uses it to help craft executive summaries. Stevens added that the more she uses AI, the better it gets, because it constantly gets more data to use in its responses. That said, Stevens said she still has to check the information it provides.

IBM executive Corinne Sklar

IBM’s Corinne Sklar said she didn’t see AI’s full productivity benefits until she started using AskHR, IBM’s internal human resources agent. She said she found it particularly useful in managing employee transfers, a process that was previously bogged down by bureaucratic steps.

“All of that is done now through an agent,” the VP and managing director of Salesforce at IBM said. “I’m not even logging in to our core systems anymore.”

Sklar said AI handles 94% of IBM’s HR tasks, and success in that single use case helped trigger adoption in other areas, such as customer support. An IBM spokesperson told Business Insider that the company has deployed over 50 AI use cases across departments like HR, IT, finance, and marketing, and it’s on track to deliver $4.5 billion in productivity gains by the end of the year.

Cisco chief people, policy, and purpose officer Francine Katsoudas

Cisco’s Francine Katsoudas said she uses AI for communication purposes, including reviewing or tweaking language. But one of the more surprising use cases she’s experimented with has been for coaching.

Katsoudas said she’ll say things like “I’m going into a really tricky conversation. Here are some of the elements. What would you recommend?”

She said it can be challenging to find the time to pause and think deeply about conversations. The ability to have a quick exchange with AI beforehand has been helpful with getting in the right mindset, she said.

Walmart EVP of Global Tech platforms Sravana Karnati

Walmart’s executive vice president of Global Tech platforms, Sravana Karnati, told Business Insider that he uses AI to look up unfamiliar terminology or review emails.

“Every email that I send, especially if it’s really important, it’s going through ChatGPT,” Karnati said.

As someone who works closely with developers, Karnati said he’s also used AI to help create code or figure out errors. While the tech exec said he and his team are passionate about AI, he added that there are instances when he’s actually spent additional time correcting an AI-generated response.

“I think we’re at a point where we still need to understand the technology, and we need to be thoughtful about how we are guiding these agents to do the work,” Karnati said.