Feb. 3 Business Watch: Catalysis start-ups raise money; Lilly strikes deals with 2 biotech firms

Dow’s announcement last week that it will eliminate 4, 500 positions as it embraces artificial intelligence raised the specter that the chemical industry will start to engage in “AI-washing. ” This practice, as a recent New York Times article explains, involves blaming AI for layoffs that are actually the result of more prosaic things—like bad business decisions or the desire for short-term financial gains. To be clear, Dow doesn’t attribute the layoffs directly to productivity gains made with AI. Rather, amid a downturn in the chemical business, the firm says it wants to save 2 billion annually in part by using AI and automation to increase growth and productivity. And a chunk of that savings will come through layoffs. As to how Dow will use AI, CEO Jim Fitterling says this in call with stock analysts, according to a transcript posted on Dow’s website: “We're seeing progress in many functions right now. Many different functions are using AI in ways that are speeding things up or reducing the cost to do things. We see it in legal, for example, patent research work. I'm doing discovery on cases on legal; there is a big cost savings there. We're seeing it in a lot of other applications. So I think it's going to be there. And we haven't really started to get into yet robots and AI and robotics together. I think at some point, we will. ”Is Dow AI-washing or truly anticipating big changes from AI? Hard to say, but C&EN will be parsing conference calls