Two faces of AI adoption (and lack thereof)

Right about now I hear the same story over and over: "I'm under pressure to use #ArtificialIntelligence at work, but I receive no guidance on what to use it for and how."

This is reflective of another disconnect in how different groups talk about #AI adoption. At large companies, and the vendors that serve them, adoption is equated with buying tools and infrastructure. It tends to be true only among smaller companies and individual people that questions around actually using the tools get much attention, and it might be true that the much of the true power-user productivity explosion is actually a really small and neglected part of the AI economy.

There is an economic lens on AI adoption through which it is picking up steam, and an immediately practical lens through which it seems to be developing some unexamined stagnation.

The potent economics of vibe coding

People are very expensive and not necessarily good at their jobs. Most of us react to stories about high salaries with a "hell yeah!" but many of the people that will make decisions about adopting #ArtificialIntelligence are going to have the opposite perspective. There is a lot of skepticism about #VibeCoding that is not incorrect in and of itself, but the implicit conclusions about adoption are wrong for ignoring the economic half of the issue. Or maybe economics is really 100% of the issue...

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Why OpenAI became a Delaware public benefit corporation

In this video, I give an update on OpenAI's long-running incorporation saga and analyze their choice to reincorporate their for-profit arm as a Delaware public benefit corporation (PBC). Along the way, I analyze recent trends in where firms incorporate and why. If you aren't tired of Elon Musk yet, he manages to appear in this story in a surprising variety of ways.

McKinsey’s “Lilli” and our possible reactions

You may have seen some viral articles about McKinsey & Company's new #ArtificialIntelligence tool Lilli and its reported wide use. In this video, I unpack this story and use it to discuss...

why #AI may pile on more reasons you should prefer to work with a smaller company.

how agentic AI is something one might discover naturally refining and systematizing ad hoc #LLM usage.

why good product sensibilities require sensitivity to how stakeholders think about AI, independent of whether the AI works well or not.

Arguing about what words mean: AI edition

Many of our uglier parlor room arguments about #ArtificialIntelligence are really projections of arguments we have been having about ourselves for thousands of years. In turn, the story of these arguments is that they involve things close to us which we do not understand, and to handle our fear of the unknown we construct two straw men to fight each other rather than confront how far away from enlightenment we might be.

(RAG / Agentic AI) is dead! Long live (RAG / Agentic AI)!

In this video, I argue that retrieval augmented generation and agentic artificial intelligence are both great (and related) design principles that solve important problems around large language models... yet, they are also buzzwords catching a little abuse as we rush to define AI product categories that might not last anyway. Keep the philosophy, but be prepared for the details to change.

The U.S. sells assets, too!

Macroeconomic accounting principles quietly frame our public conversation about trade - the US also sells assets abroad beyond cash, and this is not part of the trade deficit calculation. In this video, I examine recent events involving OpenAI, SoftBank, the "Stargate" project, and dig up some old history on WeWork to argue the big picture of global trade looks a little different when you consider the big picture of how we measure it.

OpenAI abandons bid to go for-profit: Context & Analysis

OpenAI's corporate governance saga continues... In this video, I discuss the recent news that they have abandoned their effort to reincorporate with a for-profit status and discuss context like...

- their history as a not-for-profit

- the role of threatened lawsuits from Elon Musk

- SoftBank's "IPO-or-die" rider

- why becoming a public benefit corporation helps

- why becoming a public benefit corporation doesn't help

#ArtificialIntelligence

It's time to start worrying about OpenAI

I think it is time to start worrying about OpenAI a little. In this video, I discuss a number of warning signs and risk factors like...

1 commodification of LLM

2 erosion of scientific leadership

3 lack of product identity

4 financial sustainability

5 limitations from irregular corporate governance

6 powerful enemies like Elon Musk waiting in the wings to attack 4 and 5

Subtle but important is that these are not parallel risks but risks that are interacting destructively.

Take care with the silent surge of AI

It may be you can access a lot of value right now simply by taking a closer look at what your employees are already doing with #ArtificialIntelligence. These days, #LLM is likely oozing out of software you've long been using perhaps even including your operating system. There will be good in this you want to accentuate and risk in it you want to regulate with intention.

I also discuss related reasons why #DataGovernance and #DataPrivacy expertise can be important #AI to the extent they allow you to adopt new technologies with intention.

OpenAI's bad governance through the lens of SoftBank's fine print

There's a story circulating today about SoftBank's investment in OpenAI and their requirement that OpenAI reincorporate quickly, in pursuit of an IPO, or lose half the investment. In this video, I recap the broader story here of OpenAI's unusual corporate governance situation as a not-for-profit with a for-profit subsidiary. It could turn out to be very impactful if OpenAI gets bogged down in related lawsuits that delay its potential IPO, and it is not so fanciful as people like Elon Musk have already demonstrated the will (and at least a little bit of the standing) to bring this kind of litigation.

Macroeconomics holds many hints on the future of AI

#ArtificialIntelligence, as an industry, is likely to prove unusually sensitive to #macroeconomics for some time. The stakes could be high: it is certainly possible, if not likely, we could have a third #AI winter in which investment and credibility collapse. In this video, I discuss two major avenues by which economic conditions are likely to make an important impact...

1) the well-established effect of interest rates, and indirectly of #inflation and growth, on technology investment

2) the new frontier of economies of scale in #LLM, natural monopoly, and how #tariffs, trade, and geopolitics determine what kind of scale is possible

4.5 and the optics of the hot new models

You may have heard OpenAI is rolling out ChatGPT 4.5 and more generally there is always a new model out. I digest some of the prelim reviews on 4.5 for you before arguing that this release is in some ways probably not "good enough" for the business optics around it. It's a great conversation piece for a broader examination of what we should all make of this drip of new models and what kind of curve different companies are implicitly being graded on when they release them.