Business as usual is not usual anymore, it has been disrupted by AI to a great extent. It has enabled corporate functions such as marketing, sales and finance, and helped them deliver predictive insights at extraordinary speed and scale. Given the possibilities that AI can bring to the fore, it’s little wonder that its adoption across the enterprise has attracted enormous interest and investment.
A question that looms large: Is AI overhyped?
The answer is layered and is much more than a simple YES or No.
With time AI is becoming increasingly more advanced and remarkable capabilities have emerged over the past few years. Many real-world and practical examples can be cited where organizations and governments are using AI for their day-to-day activities. AI, in that sense, is real,practical and has proved its worth.
Today everyone agrees to this, as it is becoming more like a fact– ChatGPT is the practical application of how AI can disrupt areas within every industry like sales, marketing, customer experience, etc., streamlining processes. It is evident AI has the potential to bring change that, too, for good!
Now, let’s talk about the Hype
Recently the New York Times published an article which stated: With $1 Billion From Microsoft, an A.I. Lab Wants to Mimic the Brain.
Is it a rational investment or a game of musical chairs
“If you want to see firsthand this latest surge of AI-related VC investment, a quick search on Artificial Intelligence companies funded within the past three months in Crunchbase will pull up some eye-watering results. As of December 2019, over $3.7B in capital has been raised by these firms just since October 2019! That’s both remarkable and concerning. Why is there so much money being pumped into this industry and will this sugar rush be followed by the inevitable sugar crash and pull back?”- Forbes
If you were to believe the experts, there is a method to their madness and is backed by irrefutable logic. In the past, Internet and mobile revolutions fueled trillions of dollars of investment and productivity growth. Just like the aforementioned technologies, AI and ML are showing great capabilities and promise. Hence this is all rational.
If AI truly stands for all the transformation that it promises to bring, then all these investments will pay off as companies and individuals change their buying behaviors, business processes, and ways of interacting. Undoubtedly, AI is already creating many so-called “unicorn” startups with over $1 Billion in valuation and could be justified if the AI-markets are worth trillions.
What is this money being used for?
According to Forbes, the founders of many of these AI companies state that their gigantic rounds will be used for geographic expansion, hiring, and expansion of their offerings, products, and services. A big roadblock for the AI powered organisations is to find skilled AI talent, and that pushes salaries and bonuses to ridiculous heights. Startup companies compete with each other for great talent, and also fight against almost unlimited deep pockets of the major technology vendors, professional services firms, government contractors, and enterprise end users also fighting for those scarce resources.
There is very little talk about the real-world applications solving day-to-day problems. These are highly valuable use cases and applications, but are not being discussed and written about. What makes for great and saleworthy headlines are AGI, and robots that are humanoids, and other science fiction style applications. This further enhances the general view that AI is all about the autonomous pattern of AI.
There are several real world applications that already exist and lend real value to its users such as: automatic document processing, to personalized loans, intelligent automation, or AI enabled chatbots or voice assistants, sales and demand forecasting tools and applications.
Nonetheless, ChatGPT has clearly cut through the noise helping differentiate between hype and reality. By highlighting practical applications of AI and separating fact from fiction.
It would be best to focus on the applications rather than AGI which is far fetched. The hype around AI will fade away but the real applications are here to stay.