"Next Level": AI-Powered "Digital Workers" Deployed At BNY To Work Alongside Humans

 If you’re working in banking, your next colleague could be a bot. Once unthinkable, the Bank of New York Mellon announced that it has deployed dozens of artificial intelligence-powered “digital employees” that operate with human employees, and even have their own company login credentials.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Similar to human employees, these digital workers have direct managers they report to and work autonomously in areas like coding and payment instruction validation, said Chief Information Officer Leigh-Ann Russell. Soon they’ll have access to their own email accounts and may even be able to communicate with colleagues in other ways like through Microsoft Teams, she said.

What the bank, also known as BNY, calls “digital workers,” other banks may refer to as “AI agents.” And while the industry lacks a clear consensus on exact terminology, it’s clear that the technology has a growing presence in financial services. 

“This is the next level,” Russell told the Journal. “I’m sure in six months’ time it will become very, very prevalent.”

BNY said its AI Hub developed two digital employee personas in three months, according to Adrienne Russell. One persona is engineered to identify and resolve coding vulnerabilities, while the other verifies payment instructions. Each persona can operate in multiple instances—up to several dozen—with each instance confined to a specific team to limit company wide data access.

Soon, the bank plans to integrate its digital workforce with email addresses and Microsoft Teams access in the near future, enabling these AI personas to proactively communicate with human managers, but will maintain its focus on recruiting top human talent while simultaneously expanding its digital workforce, according to the Journal.

Of course, BNY isn’t the only bank looking to shift work from its human staff to AI. Goldman Sachs has already launched an internal AI assistant to 10,000 of its bankers, traders and asset managers to use. In an interview with CNBC, the bank’s Chief Information Officer, Marco Argenti, said the AI assistant will pitch in with basic tasks like proofreading documents and improving language. “Think about all the tasks that you might want to complete with regards to a variety of use cases for all those professions that can be now at your fingertips,” Argenti said. “The AI assistant becomes really like talking to another GS employee."

“As we progress, the second step is when you’re starting to have this agentic behavior, that is, ‘I’m completing a task on behalf of a Goldman employee, and I need to take a set of steps,’” he added. “That’s where the model is going to start to do things like a Goldman employee, not only say things like a Goldman employee.”

At JPMorgan Chase, Chief Analytics Officer Derek Waldron thinks of “digital employees” as more of a helpful model for business people to conceptualize AI tools. They are fundamentally different from human employees, of course, but also traditional software systems, and so they may need their own type of system connectivity and access management, he said. It’s an open question exactly how much or how little access to give an agent, and it’s going to have to be figured out on a case-by-case basis, he said.

And while it’s not clear yet exactly what it will look like, he does envision a future where every employee will have an AI assistant and every client experience will have an AI concierge. 230,000 employees already have access to a general AI chatbot through the company’s proprietary platform, and the goal is to build out more autonomous and more agentic versions of it that are further and further tailored to individual job groups. -WSJ

According to Scott Mullins, Managing Director of AWS for Financial Servies, the question of how to integrate digital workers with a human workforce is a top issue across the finance industry.

"How do we coordinate that work together?" he said, adding "How do we manage those folks? How do we actually instruct those folks? What’s the new operating model? Those are the answers that we’re all working on right now."

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/next-level-ai-powered-digital-workers-deployed-major-bank-work-alongside-humans

FDA Signs Off on Neurogene’s ‘Best-Case Scenario’ Pivotal Study Design for Rett Syndrome

 

The pivotal trial for Neurogene’s Rett syndrome gene therapy makes use of baseline controls and a rigorous endpoint that could help ensure a broader label for the drug product, if approved, according to analysts.

Neurogene has reached alignment with the FDA regarding the design of a registrational study for the investigational gene therapy NGN-401 for Rett Syndrome, which will allow the biotech to convert its current Phase I/II study into a pivotal trial.

The FDA has allowed Neurogene to run a single-arm and baseline-controlled study with female patients aged three years and up, according to the company’s Monday announcement. NGN-401 will be given at a single dose with the trial assessing for treatment responders, as measured by the Clinical Global Impression-Improvement (CGI-I) scale and achievement of developmental milestones or skills.

In a note to investors on Monday, analysts at William Blair noted that reaching agreement with the FDA is the “best-case scenario” for Neurogene, “as it allows for fast conversion of clinical trial sites.” The agreed-upon trial design also involves “a favorable/feasible control strategy, rigorous primary endpoint, and broad age range,” according to the analysts.

The endpoint, in particular, poses a stringent definition of what a treatment responder is, they added. “We believe the demonstration of clinical benefit as measured through CGI-I will be helpful during future labeling and payer discussions, if approved.”

Stifel analysts agree, writing in a note that Neurogene’s pivotal study protocol is both “favorable” and “doable.” The use of a small sample and a single study arm, in particular, “aligns with the bull case,” they added.

Both Stifel and William Blair compared Neurogene’s study design on Monday with that of Taysha Gene Therapies, which last month also reached alignment with the FDA on a pivotal protocol for its own Rett syndrome gene therapy TSHA-102. The two studies look similar, according to both analyst firms, except for some key differences.

“We see Neurogene’s trial as differentiated by the lower age bound . . . and the definition of responder,” William Blair explained. Stifel analysts likewise flagged the differences in what constitutes a responder, noting that Taysha’s trial employs a lower hurdle for establishing efficacy. Neurogene however intentionally chose a more rigorous endpoint “for the broadest label . . . which could offer a meaningful commercial advantage,” Stifel explained, citing conversations with the biotech.

Monday’s news comes months after Neurogene revealed that a patient died in its Phase I/II Rett syndrome study after being treated with a 3E15-vg dose of NGN-401. The FDA at the time allowed Neurogene to push through with the trial, but only using a lower dose—the same dose to be used in the pivotal study.

The alignment with the FDA is also in line with statements from the agency’s new leadership signaling support for regulatory flexibility for gene therapies and rare diseases.

In April, for instance, Commissioner Marty Makary said that he is open to considering a new pathway for approving rare disease therapies based on a candidate’s “plausible mechanism.” If drugs have a mechanism of action that is “scientifically plausible,” then they could be approved on a conditional basis.

Vinay Prasad, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, also said last month that his office will “rapidly make available” treatments for rare diseases by being flexible with regulatory requirements, such as allowing the use of regulatory endpoints. “We will take action at the first sign of promise for rare diseases,” he said at the time. “We’re not going to wait.”

https://www.biospace.com/drug-development/fda-signs-off-on-neurogenes-best-case-scenario-pivotal-study-design-for-rett-syndrome

Perrigo to undergo strategic organizational changes

Perrigo (NYSE: PRGO), a leading provider of Consumer Self-Care Products, has announced a strategic organizational restructuring to optimize its global Category-Led, Market Activation Growth Model. The company is making key leadership changes, with Roberto Khoury appointed as EVP & Chief Commercial Officer to lead global market activation, while Triona Schmelter, EVP & President of Consumer Self-Care Americas (CSCA), will depart the organization.

The reorganization aims to enhance agility, accelerate innovation, and drive sustainable growth as part of Perrigo's multi-year Stabilize, Streamline and Strengthen ('Three-S') plan. The company will centralize its global brand-building capabilities while maintaining market-empowered activation and commercial excellence. The restructuring will not impact Perrigo's full-year 2025 adjusted EPS guidance or reporting segments.

The implementation will occur over the coming months, following all required legal consultation processes. The roles of EVP and President CSCI and EVP and President CSCA will be discontinued as part of this organizational alignment.

https://www.stocktitan.net/news/PRGO/perrigo-announces-strategic-organizational-update-to-drive-3bv98qaheq2x.html

What’s the Hong Kong Dollar Peg and Why Is It Causing Such a Stir?

 

Pegged to the US dollar since 1983, the Hong Kong dollar is usually a dull currency. Except when it’s not, like this year.

The city’s currency has recently experienced wild swings, caused by volatility in the US dollar, which has come under pressure amid uncertainty from President Trump’s trade war.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-01/hkd-usd-why-is-hong-kong-dollar-pegged-to-us-dollar-why-it-matters

Mamdani eats with his hands, ostentatiously

 

By Monica Showalter

As Chris Rufo has noted many times, the left has always been fascinated with the exotic.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understood this. Now New York's top mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, who's only been a U.S. citizen for seven years, plays this up even better for his wealthy white left-wing political base.

Here he is in all his glory, ostentatiously eating with his hands:

Zohran says his worldview is inspired by the 3rd world while eating rice with his hands pic.twitter.com/FDaQfcNSJv

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 29, 2025

Now, there are some cultures that eat with their hands, India, the land of his heritage, is one of them. But it's mainly southern India, with its ancient Ayurvedic tradition where this hand technique is used most, and with his light skin and Muslim background, he looks pretty northern.

But he's not really northern Indian, either. Having been raised in the palmy elite environments of Columbia University and only with the elites, you can bet he didn't grow up eating with his hands.

What's more he ... doesn't do it right. Eating with the hands is a practiced art, you don't just scoop up food like a caveman as the video shows him doing. I see some effort on his part to get it right, using only fingers, but his thumb action is extremely clumsy. He doesn't do it with the swift, practiced, almost mechanical grace I've seen people in Singapore (which has a large southern Indian community) or Sri Lanka doing. He's pretty hesitant, actually.

According to Food Republic, there is a right way to do it:

First, washing hands thoroughly before eating is key. Use your fingers to create a utensil and the food itself as a tool. Rice, a grain, or flatbread provides the foundation for runnier dishes like a curry or soup. Bunch up a cohesive bite on the plate, and use your fingers to scoop or pinch the food. Do not stick your fingers or palm in your mouth. Instead, use your thumb to push the food in. It takes practice, but your fingers can act as a sort of spoon.

 

It is also crucial to only use your right hand to touch food or drink, pass dishes, and greet others. To preserve cleanliness, the left hand is historically reserved for activities like going to the bathroom. More specifically, you should eat using only the thumb, index finger, and middle finger, and should only lick your fingers once you are done eating. Strict adherence to this custom varies, but in general, avoiding using the left hand while eating is very important.

He doesn't do it the right way. He does it more the cave-man way, counting on his white leftist supporters to be favorably impressed with how down in the mud with the proles of India he is. It's complete theatre, a showtime shoveling, not the real way he eats.

As Rufo notes:

The thing about Zohran Mamdani is that he is not an Islamist, but a regime leftist who understands that the symbols of the exotic Other are an extremely valuable currency within the world of the radical Left. He was able to very skillfully combine the outward appearance of the…

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 25, 2025

And actually, he's a knife and fork man, eating even a burrito with those utensils,

This isn't even the worst
Zohran Mamdani's worst eating habit! Mamdani knows how to use a fork & knife but apparently saves it for when he's eating burritos on the subway like an animal.https://t.co/Rh534SJKkO

— Izengabe (@Izengabe_) June 30, 2025

Cripes, who eats a burrito with a fork and knife? It defeats the purpose of the burrito. Just shake it all out onto the plate and throw the wrapper away, dude. I bet he eats pizza the same way, which ought to get him drummed out of New York.

Rufo has seen this going on for awhile -- note the date:

America’s radical Left has always had a fetish for violent Third Worldism. Fifty years ago, they worshipped Che, Mao, Cabral. Now they make icons of Hamas paragliders and chant for “decolonization.” Same ideology, same play-acting, same seething fantasy of revenge.

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2023

It's all about projecting the exotic. The exotic impresses white leftists (Tom Wolfe, in his Radical Chic long essay, noted this phenomenon, too), and Mamdani has found a way to impress them with his supposed eating skills. Too bad he doesn't eat that way and neither do people in India. His lack of skill is the big tell.

What a fake, phony, fraud he is. And you can bet many New Yorkers of south Asian descent are not going to be fooled. No wonder so many of his ideas are foolish nonsense. His bid to 'go native' when he isn't a true native is a big tell.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/06/mamdani_eats_with_his_hands.html

Settler-Colonialist Zohran Mamdani Calls For "Seizing The Means Of Production"

 by Francis Menton

Last week I invited readers to get a good laugh out of New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s plan to avert impending energy disaster by green-lighting one nuclear power plant that optimistically might solve 5% of the problem when it is ready to operate in the 2050s. Now this week brings an even superior farce: A video clip has emerged of our settler-colonialist Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani calling for “seizing the means of production.”

Mamdani’s victory in last week’s Democratic primary has led researchers to dredge up a treasure trove of his old tweets and video clips, each one more ridiculous than the next. An excellent roundup can be found here at Legal Insurrection. Some choice examples include: “VioIence is an artificial construct"; “Under capitalism, housing is a commodity from which landlords & developers extract huge profits while our communities suffer eviction, foreclosure & displacement.”; “We need to dramatically curtail the power & presence of the NYPD.”; and “[A] statue of Columbus remains in Astoria, in defiance of the values of humanity, empathy & justice that we stand for.”

But my favorite is a clip from a speech Mamdani gave at a Democratic Socialists of America conference in 2021. The New York Post today quotes some excerpts from the speech, among them Mamdani’s statements that issues socialists “firmly believe in,” include “boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel” and “the end goal of seizing the means of production.”

“Seizing the means of production” — now there’s a retro concept. The “means of production” was good commie talk back in the 19th century, when Karl Marx and his followers looked around and saw things like steel mills, railroad engine factories, iron foundries, coal mines, textile mills, and other such big facilities to make lots of stuff. It seemed obvious that those facilitie were where the greedy capitalists got their wealth.

But has Mamdani even looked around the New York City of today? What even exists today that you could call a “means of production”?

In New York City today, we produce almost nothing that is tangible. I wonder if Mamdani has noticed that.

In May 2016 I did a big post with lots of research titled “The Devastation Of New York City’s Economy.” The post documented the complete transformation of New York City’s economy from the 1950s to the time of the post, and in particular the almost complete disappearance of manufacturing. As noted in the post, in the aftermath of World War II, New York City’s economy had over 1 million manufacturing jobs, distributed among some 37,000 different companies. Those companies and people made a huge variety of products, most famously women’s clothing, where New York City was completely dominant and supported about 231,000 jobs. By the time of the post in 2016, the total number of manufacturing jobs in New York City in all industries was down to about 80,000. According to the most recent statistics from the New York State Department of Labor, the current number of manufacturing jobs in the City (May 2025) is only 57,700. That’s out of total private-sector employment of some 4,248,300.

Such manufacturing as continues to exist in New York City is reduced to a few specialized niches. For example, there continue to be specialized clothing manufacturers to make things like costumes for Broadway shows and samples for runway fashion shows. Are their sewing machines what Mamdani means by the “means of production”?

In the way of mass production of physical goods for human consumption, almost none of it occurs in New York City. Food? Obviously, we don’t grow that here. Clothing? Almost certainly, nothing in your wardrobe or mine was manufactured in New York City. Housing or other buildings? They are put together on site, but the materials almost all come from elsewhere (structural concrete is one exception). Automobiles? There are no assembly plants in the five boroughs; and if you know of a manufacturer of some kind of parts for the auto industry in New York City, I would like to learn of it.

But aren’t there some kind of “means of production” to make all the wealth that gets generated in the hundreds of big office buildings in Manhattan? I would love to see Mamdani’s plans to seize whatever this may be. When he sends in his shock troops to make the seizures, all he’s going to find are a bunch of laptops no different from what you could get at the Apple store.

How about the investment bankers and traders and hedge funders who make millions of dollars per year dealing in the capital markets? I suppose that their “means of production” mainly consists of the proprietary software that they use in their businesses. The bankers may know how to make big money using this software, but seized and distributed among the masses, it would be almost completely useless. It’s really quite funny to contemplate.

Anyway, these are the levels of ignorance and foolishness that we are dealing with.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-6-30-settler-colonialist-zohran-mamdani-calls-for-seizing-the-means-of-production

Democrats May Not Be Able to Resist Mamdani’s Pull

 Once upon a time, a New York member of the Democratic Socialists of America won the Democratic Party’s mayoral nomination, backed by the Working Families Party. This thirtysomething activist ran on a platform of publicly owned grocery stores, reallocating police funding to community-based mental health responders, and tenant-friendly policies. The primary election delivered a major surprise, with the socialist candidate capturing the Democratic line.

But then Byron Brown, the incumbent Democratic mayor of Buffalo, launched a write-in campaign against India Walton, the surprise nominee. Brown defied expectations, winning nearly 60 percent of the vote in the 2021 general election. He would still be mayor today had he not resigned in 2024 to become CEO of Off-Track Betting in western New York.

Could Brown’s experience repeat itself in New York City in 2025? Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member with WFP support, defeated former governor Andrew Cuomo to secure the Democratic line in this year’s mayoral race. Incumbent mayor Eric Adams, weakened by scandal and criticized for his willingness to work with President Trump on immigration enforcement, sat out the primary and instead registered as an independent for the November ballot.

The parallels with Buffalo—a longtime local incumbent challenged by a left-wing insurgent—are striking, but the differences are greater. Buffalo, though New York’s second-largest city, is just one-thirtieth the size of New York City. Write-in campaigns are rarely successful, but Brown needed only 38,000 votes to stage his comeback. As a four-term mayor in a shrinking Rust Belt city where political patronage remains strong, he had plenty of loyal allies to rally support. Adams will need far more votes to win his independent bid—though unlike Brown, he will appear on the ballot.

But New York is vast and diffusely governed. Its residents aren’t closely tied to municipal government for jobs or services, and many tune out local elections. Democrats outnumber Republicans almost six to one, and when they vote, they tend to stick with the Democratic line. Persuading hundreds of thousands of Democrats to back an independent—especially one with Adams’s baggage—will be a tall order. So will getting the city’s half-million registered Republicans to vote for a Brooklyn-machine Democrat.

The Adams camp is hoping for strong support from New York City’s black communities, along with a majority of the city’s Jews—many of whom are uneasy about Mamdani’s deep hostility toward Israel and longstanding Jewish-American institutions. Mamdani’s push to eliminate the specialized high school admissions test could prove divisive in Chinese and Korean communities, while his vocal criticism of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi may hurt him among the city’s Hindu voters. He also performed poorly in the Bronx. Adams has already played the “class card,” highlighting Mamdani’s privileged background: a tract of land in Uganda’s most fertile region, internationally renowned parents, and a lifestyle far removed from that of working-class New Yorkers.

Business leaders and the city’s billionaire class are alarmed at the prospect of New York electing an avowed socialist as mayor. They are preparing a major campaign to stop Mamdani—but it may be too late.

In 2015, the Republican Party underwent a wrenching transformation as Donald Trump seized control and turned it into a vehicle for MAGA populism. Many lifelong Republicans either left or were sidelined during this political realignment. That transition is now complete. Today’s GOP bears little resemblance to the party of a decade ago.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have resisted popular pressure to change. They are still wedded to the Baby Boomer Clinton/Obama/Biden consensus of a strong stock market undergirding generous entitlements, and a crusading view of American foreign policy, including generally strong support for Israel (though more qualified than Republican support). That may be changing. Bill Clinton, Hakeem Jeffries, and Chuck Schumer have all cheered Mamdani’s win, congratulating him and giving him some claim to be a new leader of the Democratic Party. If this trend continues, the Democrats will have to undergo their own catastrophic molting, shedding centrists and donors, as the party becomes something closer in appearance to the British Labour Party, with socialism and anti-Zionism at the center of its agenda. America may or may not like Democrats’ aggressively left-wing remodeling, but it seems that the process is under way.

Seth Barron’s next book, Weaponized, will be published in January.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-city-zohran-mamdani-democratic-party-byron-brown