Funston Brief (Issue No. 17)
This month, our featured commentary discusses the deployment of generative AI, and how this is affecting the productivity frontier and the efficiency of the workers.
AI deployment is progressing at full speed, with companies continuing to announce new AI strategies. Most recently, project management tool Asana launched an AI layer, and WPP, the ad agency network, struck a deal with NVIDIA for generative AI to automate campaign asset creation.
Big tech is also quietly deploying technologies previously announced but yet unreleased. Google is now using a DeepMind model to generate descriptions for YouTube Shorts, and image and text generation is rolling out in Slides, Gmail, and Docs. Auto-describe for video represents a significant conceptual leap. Historically publishers had to rely on video metadata to know what was in a video, while now they’ll be able to understand its contents. Although Apple didn’t mention AI during their recent WWDC keynote, they systematically use it to enable new capabilities in their product lineup. For example, the keyboard autocorrect has been rebuilt around the new transformer technology, while most of the features in the Vision Pro (such as eye and hand tracking) rely heavily on AI.
Separately, in a widely circulated article, Marc Andreessen contends that the fear around AI is overblown. Instead, he asserts it’s our moral obligation to use its capabilities to create a better world. On the economic impact side, Andreessen highlights that the sectors with the most technology-driven change also tend to create the most equality regarding product access (e.g., freely accessible information via Google). At the same time, the industries that make inequality more salient are slow-moving ones where nothing changes except the price. To complement Andreessen’s view, an article in the Atlantic makes the case that office workers will soon be pressured to act more like robots instead of being replaced by AI.
ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS.
What every CEO should know about generative AI? Generative AI is evolving rapidly while CEOs are still learning the technology’s business value and risks. Generative AI can be used to automate, augment, and accelerate work. In this report, McKinsey showcases how generative AI can enhance work rather than replace the role of humans.
Key Insight: While text-generating chatbots such as ChatGPT have received outsized attention, generative AI can enable capabilities across a broad range of content, including images, video, audio, and computer code. And it can perform several functions in organizations, including classifying, editing, summarizing, answering questions, and drafting new content. Each of these actions has the potential to create value by changing how work gets done at the activity level across business functions and workflows. Read the report for in-depth examples. Link
The economic potential of generative AI - The next productivity frontier: Generative AI is poised to unleash the next wave of productivity. McKinsey takes a first look at where business value could accrue and the potential impacts on the workforce.
Key Insight: Generative AI’s impact on productivity could add trillions of dollars to the global economy. McKinsey’s latest research estimates that generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually across the 63 use cases analyzed - by comparison, the United Kingdom’s entire GDP in 2021 was $3.1 trillion. This would increase the impact of all artificial intelligence by 15 to 40 percent. This estimate would roughly double when including the impact of embedding generative AI into software currently used for tasks beyond those use cases. Link
EAR TO THE GROUND.
Podcast Episode: Conversations with Tyler - Reid Hoffman on the Possibilities of AI
Guests: Reid Hoffman
Takeaway:
Tyler Cowen interviews Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and a partner at Greylock Partners, a VC firm. Hoffman talks about AI regulations and the idea that every AI should have some legal person or company associated with it. Cowen makes some good points about how hard that is to implement in practice. There are also good thoughts on AI in education and exploring the limits and complementarity of AI tools (e.g., LLMs are much better at answering questions than asking them.)
“I think the creativity thing is the creativity ability amplifier with AI. For example, in Impromptu (Editor’s Note: the first book written with the help of AI), I have things that are poems. I have lightbulb jokes. I have a whole bunch of stuff that normally wouldn’t be within my quick skillset, but I can do that, so it amplifies me. There’s a whole bunch of amplification within the current things like I can do things that I couldn’t do before.”
- Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn
736
Tesla’s Autopilot software has been involved in 736 U.S. automobile crashes, resulting in 17 fatalities since 2019. Link
PROFILE.
Forbes has a long and very negative profile of Stability AI’s founder. Stability AI became a $1 billion company with the help of a viral AI text-to-image generator and - per interviews with more than 30 people - some misleading claims from founder Emad Mostaque. Enjoy the read!
“What he is good at is taking other people’s work and putting his name on it or doing stuff that you can’t check if it’s true,” said a former Stability employee.
ON MY RADAR.
Apple will offer developer kits and labs for the Vision Pro in the next month or two, along with more developer resources. Link Press Release