AI has 'real role to play' for workers: Thomson Reuters CEO

In This Article:

Thomson Reuters (TRI) CEO Steve Hasker joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss ongoing AI integration strategies after a strong fourth-quarter earnings report. The company announced the licensing of Reuters' news archive to large language model developers. Hasker says Reuters' "greater source of pride" is its speed in leveraging generative AI across segments like legal and tax services.

Hasker expects "profitable growth" through 2025 and 2026 from AI adoption. On job displacement fears, he notes it "depends on the profession" while acknowledging "acute talent shortages" in areas like accounting. Hasker believes AI has "a real role to play" in doing complex work to ease strained demand rather than replace professionals.

Overall, Hasker believes AI should be viewed as an asset for closing talent gaps and enhancing human productivity, not as a threat.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

- Thomson Reuters doubling down on AI. The company announcing today it will license the Reuters news archive to large language model companies. News coming after Thomson Reuters reported a beat on the bottom line during the fourth quarter forecast, a larger-than-expected revenue rise in the year ahead thanks in part to its ongoing AI investments.

We are joined now by Steve Hasker, Thomson Reuters CEO. Steve, it is great to see you. I thought we could start, Steve, just help us think through the quarter, what drove the quarter, Steve, and what is going to kind of drive this acceleration in organic growth that you all see ahead.

STEVE HASKER: Yeah, thanks, Josh. Good to be here. So we met or exceeded all of our targets and guidance for both the fourth quarter and also the full year 2023.

So we're happy with that. I think-- but more important or a greater source of pride is the speed with which we've been able to integrate generative AI in our core flagship products starting in legal in the content-driven technology that serves lawyers across the world and soon to roll out into the products and services that we use to serve tax and accounting professionals and, ultimately, news professionals through the Reuters news agency.

So that's really been the basis of the conversation that we've had with investors today since we announced our earnings. We're going to increase our investment intensity through this year. And we've talked about that with the implied return of higher and more profitable growth through '25 and '26.