CNBC had a story the other day about how Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos, appearing onstage at Italian Tech Week in Turin, Italy, said that “artificial intelligence is currently in an ‘industrial bubble’ but the technology is ‘real’ and will bring big benefits to society.”
What does that mean exactly?
According to the story, “The term bubble usually refers to a period of inflated stock prices or valuations of companies that have disconnected from the fundamentals of a business. One of the most famous bubbles that burst was the 2000 dotcom crash where the value of internet companies plummeted .. Bezos laid out some of the key characteristics of bubbles, noting that when they happen, stock prices are ‘disconnected from the fundamentals’ of a business.
“‘The second thing that happens is that people get very excited like they are today about artificial intelligence,’ Bezos added.
“During bubbles, every experiment or idea gets funded, he told the audience. ‘The good ideas and the bad ideas. And investors have a hard time in the middle of this excitement, distinguishing between the good ideas and the bad ideas. And that’s also probably happening today,’ Bezos said.”
But the fact that AI may be experiencing this kind of bubble is not an excuse to minimise the impact that the technology will have on business, culture and society at large, Bezos said. ‘The [bubbles] that are industrial are not nearly as bad, it can even be good, because when the dust settles and you see who are the winners, societies benefits from those inventions,’ Bezos said. ‘That is what is going to happen here too. This is real, the benefits to society from AI are going to be gigantic’.”
KC’s View:
I don’t really disagree with Bezos – nor would I have any real credibility if I did, at least on this issue.
When I read this story, though, it reinforces for me the importance of collaboration, and why retailers need to identify technology companies that can help them through all this in ways that are tangible and focused on delivering better customer experiences by acting on shopper data in effective and efficient ways.
Bezos is absolutely right when he says that during a bubble, good and bad ideas alike get funded, and CNBC is right when it suggests that a bubble often results in Wall Street being disconnected from (at least in this case) Main Street. That’s certainly where we are now. All sorts of companies are reaping investments and being bought up, at what often seem like absurd valuations, because there is a kind of a land grab taking place; everybody is staking out their territory, hoping that they’ll find the digital equivalent of gold or oil below ground.
But as we know, not everybody does.
Which is why, it seems to me, retailers need to have specific targets and strategic goals when they connect with companies that can deliver AI solutions. Retailers have to establish their strategic priorities, and then empower AI to deliver tactical solutions. Though, to be fair, time and experience hopefully will allow retailers and their tech providers to collaborate on new strategies and tactics together as they get runway and see new opportunities.
My hope is that they will do so responsibly.
An example of how not to be responsible comes – no surprise – from Elon Musk, whose AI company xAI, has unveiled what the New York Times refers to as “sexually explicit chatbot companions” and has urged “his followers on X to try conversing with the sexy chatbots.”
The Times notes that Musk, “already known for pushing boundaries, has broken with mainstream norms and demonstrated the lengths to which he will go to gain ground in the A.I. field, where xAI has lagged behind more established competitors.
“Other A.I. companies, such as Meta or OpenAI, have shied away from creating chatbots that can engage in sexual conversations because of the reputational and regulatory risks. The companies also put guardrails into their products intended to prevent users from having sexual interactions with their general use chatbots, but users sometimes find ways to circumvent those. Smaller companies that do allow some intimate content usually let users create their own custom characters without designing explicit chatbots themselves.”
All this at a time when there is much concern in the mental health community about ways in which young people can isolate themselves and become antisocial when they are ensnared by responsive AI creations that often cater to their worse, even self-destructive instincts. (I know this is a digression away from my main point, but I can’t help myself.)
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