This morning I happened across a new publication called Futurism. Doesn’t it always make the day better when you come across a new journal?
Anyhoo, scrolling through the homepage this headline caught my eye—Sam Altman's Right-Hand Man Says AI Is Overhyped. Sam being the Sam who was fired from OpenAI, hired by Microsoft, quit his job at Microsoft, and went back to take over OpenAI all within 24 hours. Damn, the job market is so crazy stupid right now.
Back on topic. I love this statement about the state of AI and the Enterprise:
In an interview with CNBC, OpenAI COO and CEO Sam Altman's right-hand man Brad Lightcap said that certain aspects of AI are "overhyped," especially when it comes to the sky-high expectations of the company's enterprise AI customers.
"And there’s almost never a silver bullet answer there — there’s never one thing you can do with AI that solves that problem in full," he said. "And I think that’s just a testament to the world being really big and messy, and that these systems are still evolving, they’re still really in their infancy."
While I was at IBM I worked with a few engineers on Watson AI-powered projects. I learned a lot, especially their disdain for the people in marketing. At the time, IBM ran a lot of advertising featuring Watson as a simple device that could solve all kinds of very complex challenges easily.
Customers were excited and came to IBM in droves with massive problems expecting to hook up the magic box and solve all of them within seconds. In reality, Watson couldn’t do many of the things it was advertised to do because it wasn’t mature enough and almost all of the time the customer's legacy systems were in such a state that simply hooking up AI wasn’t an option, and it’s still not. Mostly because the data on the customers end is so messy and scrambled across so many systems that the cost-benefit doesn't work out.
This left the engineers in a very awkward position of having to burst all of the bubbles and bring customers back to Earth as gently as possible. Nobody likes doing that, least of all, engineers who are so often put in that position.
It’s interesting that seven years later, the problem still stands. AI is not a silver bullet and engineers are still left to the task of busting bubbles. Some things never change.
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We finished lunch early and headed back to our Airbnb. Almost to the house, an undercover cop car sped through traffic in the opposite lane. It was startling to see the all-black vehicle with distinctive lights seemingly come from nowhere and vanish similarly. My first thought: Whatever they are responding to is not good.
For the last five weeks, we have been residents in a very peaceful Las Vegas suburb. The area reminds us of a much more relaxed version of Orange County, California where we lived for ten years. Traffic is relatively light, people are very friendly and of course, the weather is fantastic for this time of year.
About an hour after getting home a notification popped up with news of an active shooter situation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas—About 20 minutes north of our position. And then it clicked, that’s why the cop car was traveling at insane speeds. They were responding to the crime.
This morning I read that a 67-year-old white male asshole decided to seek revenge for not being hired as a professor at the school. I’m sure next of kin, neighbors, and former colleagues will either say he was the nicest guy, but mostly quiet or that he was always a little-off and kinda angry. Either way, another person decided that they had no other way to respond to their situation other than death. I’m angry but I’m also incredibly sad that this person felt it was the only way out.
Before yesterday afternoon I have had thoughts and slight anxiety about the weeks ahead. The holidays are already a rough time of year to get through, but there are so many folks who have had compounding problems. And this year has not helped anyone at all.
Knock on wood, I haven’t lost anyone to depression directly, but I have friends and acquaintances who have. I have felt their tangible grief. I hate having to write this post but I’m concerned and my heart compels me to say that I hope you are okay right now but if you’re not, let me or someone else know. Do whatever you can to get some help. Walk into a fire department if you have to! In addition to receiving care, maybe they’ll show you around and how cool is that?
I hope you are all well. I hope that this post never needed to be written in the first place and you’re all good, but my gut is telling me that’s not the case. Don’t spend the next weeks alone or in agony. Don’t throw in the towel, but raise it as a flag.
Also, consider getting a cat or two.
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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that line. It’s even come out of my mouth on occasion. It’s can’t speak for others but for me it’s not a matter of not knowing what to do, more like, I don’t know which interest I should prioritize. I envy those folks who found that one thing that drives them either through interest or opportunity. Like Neo sees the Matrix, I see opportunity everywhere and I chase them like a dog chases a squirrels. It’s not so much a matter of FOMO as it is interesting to go down the many paths of what could, might, and sometimes, should be.
This thought comes from my own reflection of all of the things I have pursued in roughly the last calendar year. From full-time jobs to new businesses and, ugh, additional hobbies. You might insert a joke about ADHD to which I would laugh and wonder if you’re right, but this year I have refrained from many distractions and tried to hold back only digging into the opportunities that I know from experience would turn into another passing phase.
Ryan Rumsey recently shared an article about minimum viable products vs. minimum viable tests (MVP vs. MVT). And that sums up exactly what I have done throughout the year—dig into something enough to turn ideas into copy and images. Put it out into the world, talk about it, and gauge the interest. It’s the difference between trying to create a new way to fish vs. using a new, intriguing lure.
I’ve had a handful of ideas this year that I tried to promote on LinkedIn, met with potential clients, did the road show and nothing has hit. After a year of no hits, a younger me would have started to take it personally but this year it’s not me. There are so many frozen budgets and head counts that I’m starting to wonder if all this freezing might offset global warming by a degree.
Yet I move forward at a casual pace because eventually the world will reconfigure and new opportunities will introduce themselves if you’re out in the crowd looking to meet them. With that in mind, today I announced my next attempt at consulting. It’s called Same Team Partners and, frankly, it’s the business I should have created after my time at InVision. By that time I had observed and experienced a solid set of patterns that are behind the core of problems facing leaders, teams, and organizations.
This is not to say I don’t have more to learn, but my view of the world has been validated many times over at all size and scale. Now it’s time to go to work and start making everything work better.
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