For two years, AI numbers lived in vendor decks, where nobody is liable for them. In the last two and a half weeks they moved onto earnings calls and into forward guidance, where a chief executive says them out loud to investors and gets measured against them later.

In this episode, Stephen Forte covers:

• The backfill ratio — WTW's chief executive Carl Hess told investors that standardization, process improvement and automation are letting the firm backfill roles globally at a rate of nine for every ten leavers. Alongside it: roughly $400 million in run-rate savings on an investment of about $625 million, and a target operating margin near thirty percent by the end of 2028.
• Half the revenue, and the contract worth copying — Adecco said fifty percent of group revenue is now enabled by A ...