Some companies give AI to everyone. This CEO is doing the opposite

Laurence Dutton | E+ | Getty Images

At London-headquartered payments technology company Paysend, access to artificial intelligence tools has to be earned.

CEO Ben Chisell told CNBC he is a “very cynical man” about the hype around the technology, though he still sees value in it. 

Chisell, who previously worked at Amazon, eBay and Starling Bank, estimates that Paysend can now deliver around 25% more engineering work with the same-sized team, but argues that getting results isn’t as simple as handing everyone the latest tech.

I know it sounds very unglamorous and unsexy as an approach given the world of tokenmaxxing and AI, but I think it’s really, really important

Ben Chisell

Paysend

Instead, he limits AI tools to his highest-performing employees, often only after they’ve proved what they can do with them. In the wrong hands, he said, AI can magnify bad habits such as laziness and poor judgment.

His broader rule is to resist the “fear of missing out” and focus on customer problems. 

“I know it sounds very unglamorous and unsexy as an approach given the world of tokenmaxxing and AI, but I think it’s really, really important,” Chisell said.

Companywide AI rollouts

The pressure to demonstrate AI’s value is growing, from the legal sector to software engineering and finance, and many companies are responding by putting the technology in as many hands as possible.

London-based Lloyds Banking Group has rolled out 40,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, with 97% of employees who have one actively using it, the bank said. Newcastle-headquartered software company Sage said its AI coding tools had saved hundreds of thousands of work hours, while London-based professional services firm Grant Thornton UK has encouraged all of its staff to use Anthropic’s Claude as part of a £500 million ($660 million) investment in AI.

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