Latest news with #SeanPerry
Forbes
25-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Inside Kelly Services Tech And AI Journey With CIO Sean Perry
A Kelly Services Inc. booth during a Job News USA career fair in Jeffersonville, Indiana Sean Perry, Chief Information Officer of Kelly Services, oversees global technology for a company dedicated to connecting job seekers with opportunities across multiple sectors. "We help people on a daily basis find meaningful work," Perry shared. "To be able to leverage technology to deliver that is something that has been a great enjoyment throughout my career." Kelly Services has a diversified portfolio, including professional and industrial staffing as well as fast-growing education, science, engineering and technology sectors. The company generates approximately $4.3 billion in annual revenue. Under Perry's leadership, the company is driving forward with a modernization initiative that updates legacy systems and integrates cutting-edge solutions, all while preserving the company's mission of making work accessible and fulfilling. A CIO's Strategy for Long-Term Tech Evolution Perry's purview encompasses every aspect of global technology at Kelly. "If it plugs in and it's not working, it's IT," he joked. But his responsibilities go much deeper, focusing on long-term modernization during a time of rapid technological transformation. 'We're trying to make good decisions that'll last 10 years,' he explained. 'What worked four years ago isn't necessarily going to help us today.' A core focus has been integrating recently acquired companies. "Engaging those acquisitions and bringing them onto the Kelly core eliminates friction," Perry said. "We're also rethinking our applicant tracking, CRM and ERP systems, tools that have existed for a long time and now need modernization." Learning from Acquisitions and Building Stronger Foundations Kelly's acquisition of Motion Recruitment in April 2024 exemplifies the CIO's open approach to innovation. Perry praised Motion for its forward-thinking architecture when he said, 'They had implemented Workday, connected it to Bullhorn and added a CRM. It was a fresh, modern tech stack.' Kelly CIO Sean Perry Rather than enforcing top-down integration, Perry emphasized mutual learning. 'The 'Kelly Core' might need to change to accommodate this more capable technology,' he noted. He acknowledged challenges in scaling a system designed for a smaller private equity-backed company but noted that 'the Core is all there,' providing a leg up in their transformation AI through Governance and Grace AI has become a key enabler of Kelly's modernization. Perry described the AI Council's three-pronged approach: legal and compliance, external opportunity scouting and internal process evaluation. 'You had this sea of change coming in,' he said, 'and the Council had already built a model for how to assess and measure opportunities.' One of the most impactful outputs was Grace, a lightweight AI interface built internally. 'We support close to 5,000 users on about $700 a month of AI spend,' Perry revealed. Grace allows employees across the organization to experiment with AI without needing individual accounts. It also collects data to surface popular use cases. 'For example, reformatting a resume is a common task,' he offered. 'We built that functionality directly into Grace.' The Power of Contextual AI and Emerging Opportunities Perry is now spearheading an initiative to embed AI contextually into SaaS applications used by Kelly. 'Grace as a separate website was a good first step,' he said. 'But now we're working on embedding it in the actual tools people use, like Bullhorn or Workday.' The goal is to eliminate friction—copying and pasting between systems—and to deliver assistance at the moment it's needed. 'Shouldn't AI work like a digital adoption platform? Always available and in context?' Perry asked. The prototype, already demonstrated internally, is aimed at providing proactive, intelligent support across platforms. Reflections from Amazon and a Product-Led IT Mindset Perry had prior CIO experience, spending 13 years as the CIO of Robert Half International. In between that experience and his current role, however, he spent took an unusual turn as Senior Manager of Technical Program Management at Amazon. Perry's time at Amazon left a lasting impression. Working on both Kindle and Halo, a health and fitness tracking service and devices that was discontinued in 2023, he learned the discipline of customer-centric product development that company is famous for. "Amazon taught me to step back and ask, 'What's the customer problem I'm trying to solve?' rather than 'What feature should I build next?' He has since brought that philosophy to internal product development at Kelly, introducing planning processes inspired by Amazon's OP1 methodology. "We had each team write six-page documents about their wins, challenges and priorities," he said, highlighting another famous practice that Jeff Bezos introduced at Amazon years ago. "It surfaced common pain points and helped us align more effectively." A Future Fueled by AI and Human Potential Looking ahead, Perry is excited about the rapid evolution of AI. 'Capabilities that seemed impossible six months ago are now within reach,' he said. But he's mindful of the uneven distribution of understanding and success with AI. 'Some developers are building full-stack solutions with AI in hours while others are still struggling to fix bugs introduced by AI-generated code.' Ultimately, Perry is betting big on context-aware AI. 'We're discovering use cases everywhere, even in internal audit,' he noted. 'Now we have more justification to invest because we can see real usage and value. Our challenge is how quickly we can move from prototype to production because the potential to empower our workforce is enormous.' Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written three bestselling books, including his latest Getting to Nimble. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
Fox Sports
19-03-2025
- Sport
- Fox Sports
Can AI help you win your March Madness bracket? One disruptor bets $1 million on 'yes' (and Houston)
Associated Press DENVER (AP) — Perhaps the surest sign that artificial intelligence really is taking over the world will come the day it wins your favorite March Madness bracket pool. The day could be coming soon. In an experiment that a) was bound to happen, b) might actually make us all look smarter and c) should probably also scare the daylights out of everyone, a successful CEO-turned-disruptor is running a $1 million March Madness bracket challenge that pits his AI programmers' picks against those belonging to one of the world's best-known sports gamblers. 'We're not a crystal ball,' says Alan Levy, whose platform, 4C Predictions, is running this challenge. 'But it's going to start to get very, very creepy. In 2025, we're making a million-dollar bet with a professional sports bettor, and the reason we feel confident to do that is because data, we feel, will beat humans.' Levy isn't the only one leveraging AI to help people succeed in America's favorite pick 'em pool — one that's become even more lucrative over the past seven years, after a Supreme Court ruling led to the spread of legalized sports betting to 38 states. ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by OpenAI, is hawking its services to help bracket fillers more easily find stats and identify trends. Not surprisingly, it makes no promises. 'With upsets, momentum shifts, and basketball's inherent unpredictability, consistently creating a perfect bracket may still come down to luck,' said Leah Anise, a spokesperson for OpenAI. Also making no promises, but trying his hardest, is Sheldon Jacobson, the computer science professor at Illinois who has been trying to build a better bracket through science for years; he might have been AI before AI. 'Nobody predicts the weather,' he explained in an interview back in 2018. 'They forecast it using chances and odds.' $1 million on the line in AI vs. Sean Perry showdown Levy's angle is he's willing to wager $1 million that the AI bracket his company produces can beat that of professional gambler Sean Perry. Among Perry's claims to fame was his refusal to accept a four-way split in a pot worth $9.3 million in an NFL survivor pool two years ago. The next week, his pick, the Broncos, lost to New England and he ended up with nothing. But Perry has wagered and won millions over his career, using heaps of analytics, data and insider information to try to find an edge that, for decades, has been proprietary to casinos and legal sports books, giving them an advantage that allows them to build all those massive hotels. Levy says his ultimate goal is bring that advantage to the average Joe — either the weekly football bettor who doesn't have access to reams of data, or the March Madness bracket filler who goes by feel or what team's mascot he likes best. 'The massive thesis is that the average person are playing games that they can never win, they're trading stocks where they can never win, they're trading crypto where they can never win,' Levy said. '4C gives people the chance to empower themselves. It's a great equalizer. It's going to level the playing field for everyone.' But can AI predict the completely unexpected? It's one thing to find an edge, quite another to take out every element of chance — every halfcourt game-winner, every 4-point-a-game scorer who goes off for 25, every questionable call by a ref, every St. Peter's, Yale, FAU or UMBC that rises up and wins for reasons nobody quite understands. For those who fear AI is leading the world to bad places, Levy reassures us that when it comes to sports, at least, the human element is always the final decider — and humans can do funny and unexpected things. That's one of many reasons that, according to the NCAA, there's a 1 in 120.2 billion chance of a fan with good knowledge of college basketball going 63 for 63 in picking the games. It's one of many reasons that almost everyone has a story about their 8-year-old niece walking away with the pot because she was the only one who picked George Mason, or North Carolina State, or VCU, to make the Final Four. 'You can't take the element of fun and luck out of it,' Levy said. 'Having said that, as AI develops, it's going to get creepier and creepier and the predictions are going to get more and more accurate, and it's all around data sets.' Levy suggests AI is no three-headed monster, but rather, an advanced version of 'Moneyball' — the classic book-turned-movie that followed Oakland A's GM Billy Beane's groundbreaking quest to leverage data to build a winning team. Now, it's all about putting all that data on steroids, trying to minimize the impact of luck and glass slippers, and building a winning bracket. 'We've got to understand that this technology is meant to augment us,' Levy said. 'It's meant to make our lives better. So, let's encourage people to use it, and even if it's creepy, at least it's creepy on our side.' The AI's side in this one: Houston to win it all. Perry, the gambler, is going with Duke. ___ AP March Madness bracket: and coverage: Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here. recommended
The Independent
19-03-2025
- Sport
- The Independent
Can AI help you win your March Madness bracket? One disruptor bets $1 million on 'yes' (and Houston)
Perhaps the surest sign that artificial intelligence really is taking over the world will come the day it wins your favorite March Madness bracket pool. The day could be coming soon. In an experiment that a) was bound to happen, b) might actually make us all look smarter and c) should probably also scare the daylights out of everyone, a successful CEO-turned-disruptor is running a $1 million March Madness bracket challenge that pits his AI programmers' picks against those belonging to one of the world's best-known sports gamblers. 'We're not a crystal ball,' says Alan Levy, whose platform, 4C Predictions, is running this challenge. 'But it's going to start to get very, very creepy. In 2025, we're making a million-dollar bet with a professional sports bettor, and the reason we feel confident to do that is because data, we feel, will beat humans.' Levy isn't the only one leveraging AI to help people succeed in America 's favorite pick 'em pool — one that's become even more lucrative over the past seven years, after a Supreme Court ruling led to the spread of legalized sports betting to 38 states. ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by OpenAI, is hawking its services to help bracket fillers more easily find stats and identify trends. Not surprisingly, it makes no promises. 'With upsets, momentum shifts, and basketball's inherent unpredictability, consistently creating a perfect bracket may still come down to luck,' said Leah Anise, a spokesperson for OpenAI. Also making no promises, but trying his hardest, is Sheldon Jacobson, the computer science professor at Illinois who has been trying to build a better bracket through science for years; he might have been AI before AI. 'Nobody predicts the weather,' he explained in an interview back in 2018. 'They forecast it using chances and odds.' $1 million on the line in AI vs. Sean Perry showdown Levy's angle is he's willing to wager $1 million that the AI bracket his company produces can beat that of professional gambler Sean Perry. Among Perry's claims to fame was his refusal to accept a four-way split in a pot worth $9.3 million in an NFL survivor pool two years ago. The next week, his pick, the Broncos, lost to New England and he ended up with nothing. But Perry has wagered and won millions over his career, using heaps of analytics, data and insider information to try to find an edge that, for decades, has been proprietary to casinos and legal sports books, giving them an advantage that allows them to build all those massive hotels. Levy says his ultimate goal is bring that advantage to the average Joe — either the weekly football bettor who doesn't have access to reams of data, or the March Madness bracket filler who goes by feel or what team's mascot he likes best. 'The massive thesis is that the average person are playing games that they can never win, they're trading stocks where they can never win, they're trading crypto where they can never win,' Levy said. '4C gives people the chance to empower themselves. It's a great equalizer. It's going to level the playing field for everyone.' But can AI predict the completely unexpected? It's one thing to find an edge, quite another to take out every element of chance — every halfcourt game-winner, every 4-point-a-game scorer who goes off for 25, every questionable call by a ref, every St. Peter's, Yale, FAU or UMBC that rises up and wins for reasons nobody quite understands. For those who fear AI is leading the world to bad places, Levy reassures us that when it comes to sports, at least, the human element is always the final decider — and humans can do funny and unexpected things. That's one of many reasons that, according to the NCAA, there's a 1 in 120.2 billion chance of a fan with good knowledge of college basketball going 63 for 63 in picking the games. It's one of many reasons that almost everyone has a story about their 8-year-old niece walking away with the pot because she was the only one who picked George Mason, or North Carolina State, or VCU, to make the Final Four. 'You can't take the element of fun and luck out of it,' Levy said. 'Having said that, as AI develops, it's going to get creepier and creepier and the predictions are going to get more and more accurate, and it's all around data sets.' Levy suggests AI is no three-headed monster, but rather, an advanced version of 'Moneyball' — the classic book-turned-movie that followed Oakland A's GM Billy Beane's groundbreaking quest to leverage data to build a winning team. Now, it's all about putting all that data on steroids, trying to minimize the impact of luck and glass slippers, and building a winning bracket. 'We've got to understand that this technology is meant to augment us,' Levy said. 'It's meant to make our lives better. So, let's encourage people to use it, and even if it's creepy, at least it's creepy on our side.' The AI's side in this one: Houston to win it all. Perry, the gambler, is going with Duke. ___
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Can AI help you win your March Madness bracket? One disruptor bets $1 million on 'yes' (and Houston)
DENVER (AP) — Perhaps the surest sign that artificial intelligence really is taking over the world will come the day it wins your favorite March Madness bracket pool. The day could be coming soon. In an experiment that a) was bound to happen, b) might actually make us all look smarter and c) should probably also scare the daylights out of everyone, a successful CEO-turned-disruptor is running a $1 million March Madness bracket challenge that pits his AI programmers' picks against those belonging to one of the world's best-known sports gamblers. 'We're not a crystal ball,' says Alan Levy, whose platform, 4C Predictions, is running this challenge. 'But it's going to start to get very, very creepy. In 2025, we're making a million-dollar bet with a professional sports bettor, and the reason we feel confident to do that is because data, we feel, will beat humans.' Levy isn't the only one leveraging AI to help people succeed in America's favorite pick 'em pool — one that's become even more lucrative over the past seven years, after a Supreme Court ruling led to the spread of legalized sports betting to 38 states. ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by OpenAI, is hawking its services to help bracket fillers more easily find stats and identify trends. Not surprisingly, it makes no promises. 'With upsets, momentum shifts, and basketball's inherent unpredictability, consistently creating a perfect bracket may still come down to luck,' said Leah Anise, a spokesperson for OpenAI. Also making no promises, but trying his hardest, is Sheldon Jacobson, the computer science professor at Illinois who has been trying to build a better bracket through science for years; he might have been AI before AI. 'Nobody predicts the weather,' he explained in an interview back in 2018. 'They forecast it using chances and odds.' $1 million on the line in AI vs. Sean Perry showdown Levy's angle is he's willing to wager $1 million that the AI bracket his company produces can beat that of professional gambler Sean Perry. Among Perry's claims to fame was his refusal to accept a four-way split in a pot worth $9.3 million in an NFL survivor pool two years ago. The next week, his pick, the Broncos, lost to New England and he ended up with nothing. But Perry has wagered and won millions over his career, using heaps of analytics, data and insider information to try to find an edge that, for decades, has been proprietary to casinos and legal sports books, giving them an advantage that allows them to build all those massive hotels. Levy says his ultimate goal is bring that advantage to the average Joe — either the weekly football bettor who doesn't have access to reams of data, or the March Madness bracket filler who goes by feel or what team's mascot he likes best. 'The massive thesis is that the average person are playing games that they can never win, they're trading stocks where they can never win, they're trading crypto where they can never win,' Levy said. '4C gives people the chance to empower themselves. It's a great equalizer. It's going to level the playing field for everyone.' But can AI predict the completely unexpected? It's one thing to find an edge, quite another to take out every element of chance — every halfcourt game-winner, every 4-point-a-game scorer who goes off for 25, every questionable call by a ref, every St. Peter's, Yale, FAU or UMBC that rises up and wins for reasons nobody quite understands. For those who fear AI is leading the world to bad places, Levy reassures us that when it comes to sports, at least, the human element is always the final decider — and humans can do funny and unexpected things. That's one of many reasons that, according to the NCAA, there's a 1 in 120.2 billion chance of a fan with good knowledge of college basketball going 63 for 63 in picking the games. It's one of many reasons that almost everyone has a story about their 8-year-old niece walking away with the pot because she was the only one who picked George Mason, or North Carolina State, or VCU, to make the Final Four. 'You can't take the element of fun and luck out of it,' Levy said. 'Having said that, as AI develops, it's going to get creepier and creepier and the predictions are going to get more and more accurate, and it's all around data sets.' Levy suggests AI is no three-headed monster, but rather, an advanced version of 'Moneyball' — the classic book-turned-movie that followed Oakland A's GM Billy Beane's groundbreaking quest to leverage data to build a winning team. Now, it's all about putting all that data on steroids, trying to minimize the impact of luck and glass slippers, and building a winning bracket. 'We've got to understand that this technology is meant to augment us,' Levy said. 'It's meant to make our lives better. So, let's encourage people to use it, and even if it's creepy, at least it's creepy on our side.' The AI's side in this one: Houston to win it all. Perry, the gambler, is going with Duke. ___ AP March Madness bracket: and coverage: Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here.
Associated Press
19-03-2025
- Sport
- Associated Press
Can AI help you win your March Madness bracket? One disruptor bets $1 million on ‘yes' (and Houston)
DENVER (AP) — Perhaps the surest sign that artificial intelligence really is taking over the world will come the day it wins your favorite March Madness bracket pool. The day could be coming soon. In an experiment that a) was bound to happen, b) might actually make us all look smarter and c) should probably also scare the daylights out of everyone, a successful CEO-turned-disruptor is running a $1 million March Madness bracket challenge that pits his AI programmers' picks against those belonging to one of the world's best-known sports gamblers. 'We're not a crystal ball,' says Alan Levy, whose platform, 4C Predictions, is running this challenge. 'But it's going to start to get very, very creepy. In 2025, we're making a million-dollar bet with a professional sports bettor, and the reason we feel confident to do that is because data, we feel, will beat humans.' Levy isn't the only one leveraging AI to help people succeed in America's favorite pick 'em pool — one that's become even more lucrative over the past seven years, after a Supreme Court ruling led to the spread of legalized sports betting to 38 states. ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by OpenAI, is hawking its services to help bracket fillers more easily find stats and identify trends. Not surprisingly, it makes no promises. 'With upsets, momentum shifts, and basketball's inherent unpredictability, consistently creating a perfect bracket may still come down to luck,' said Leah Anise, a spokesperson for OpenAI. Also making no promises, but trying his hardest, is Sheldon Jacobson, the computer science professor at Illinois who has been trying to build a better bracket through science for years; he might have been AI before AI. 'Nobody predicts the weather,' he explained in an interview back in 2018. 'They forecast it using chances and odds.' $1 million on the line in AI vs. Sean Perry showdown Levy's angle is he's willing to wager $1 million that the AI bracket his company produces can beat that of professional gambler Sean Perry. Among Perry's claims to fame was his refusal to accept a four-way split in a pot worth $9.3 million in an NFL survivor pool two years ago. The next week, his pick, the Broncos, lost to New England and he ended up with nothing. But Perry has wagered and won millions over his career, using heaps of analytics, data and insider information to try to find an edge that, for decades, has been proprietary to casinos and legal sports books, giving them an advantage that allows them to build all those massive hotels. Levy says his ultimate goal is bring that advantage to the average Joe — either the weekly football bettor who doesn't have access to reams of data, or the March Madness bracket filler who goes by feel or what team's mascot he likes best. 'The massive thesis is that the average person are playing games that they can never win, they're trading stocks where they can never win, they're trading crypto where they can never win,' Levy said. '4C gives people the chance to empower themselves. It's a great equalizer. It's going to level the playing field for everyone.' But can AI predict the completely unexpected? It's one thing to find an edge, quite another to take out every element of chance — every halfcourt game-winner, every 4-point-a-game scorer who goes off for 25, every questionable call by a ref, every St. Peter's, Yale, FAU or UMBC that rises up and wins for reasons nobody quite understands. For those who fear AI is leading the world to bad places, Levy reassures us that when it comes to sports, at least, the human element is always the final decider — and humans can do funny and unexpected things. That's one of many reasons that, according to the NCAA, there's a 1 in 120.2 billion chance of a fan with good knowledge of college basketball going 63 for 63 in picking the games. It's one of many reasons that almost everyone has a story about their 8-year-old niece walking away with the pot because she was the only one who picked George Mason, or North Carolina State, or VCU, to make the Final Four. 'You can't take the element of fun and luck out of it,' Levy said. 'Having said that, as AI develops, it's going to get creepier and creepier and the predictions are going to get more and more accurate, and it's all around data sets.' Levy suggests AI is no three-headed monster, but rather, an advanced version of 'Moneyball' — the classic book-turned-movie that followed Oakland A's GM Billy Beane's groundbreaking quest to leverage data to build a winning team. Now, it's all about putting all that data on steroids, trying to minimize the impact of luck and glass slippers, and building a winning bracket. 'We've got to understand that this technology is meant to augment us,' Levy said. 'It's meant to make our lives better. So, let's encourage people to use it, and even if it's creepy, at least it's creepy on our side.'
