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Episode: Is the Mood Turning Against AI? [AI Today Podcast]

Author: AI & Data Today
Duration: 00:16:11

Episode Shownotes

In our very first podcast we asked the question “Why Does AI Matter?”. So we thought it only fitting as we start our eighth season of AI Today to come back to this topic. In this episode of AI Today hosts Kathleen Walch and Ron Schmelzer discuss whether or not

the mood is turning against AI. Continue reading Is the Mood Turning Against AI? [AI Today Podcast] at Cognilytica.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_00
The AI Today podcast, produced by Cognolitica, cuts through the hype and noise to identify what is really happening now in the world of artificial intelligence.

00:00:10 Speaker_00
Learn about emerging AI trends, technologies, and use cases from Cognolitica analysts and guest experts.

00:00:22 Speaker_02
Hello, and welcome to the AI Today podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Walsh.

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And I'm your host, Ron Schmelzer. Now, some of you may not necessarily like to hear us talking about this all the time, but we've been doing AI Today podcasts since 2017. So I'll tell you that all the time.

00:00:38 Speaker_01
Actually, when people are like, stop talking about how long you've been doing the AI Today podcast. But I think it's relevant because we've been talking about AI for so many years and on a consistent basis.

00:00:49 Speaker_01
you know, well over 400 episodes heading to our 500 episodes, not too long from now. And we do revisit the same topics over and over again, because the answers are still relevant to people who are trying to implement AI today.

00:01:05 Speaker_01
That's why we never change the The title of our podcast is A.I. Today, right? You might think about maybe A.I. Today in different contexts, but it's always been the A.I. Today podcast.

00:01:14 Speaker_01
So we have to ask ourselves, we're from where we are today, because our today is not the same today as it was yesterday. I don't want to get too philosophical. Right. But like, you know, yesterday, today was in the future.

00:01:24 Speaker_01
I know it's so confusing to say all that, but it's true. So today's today is different than yesterday's today. And these questions about what's happening with AI really matter?

00:01:33 Speaker_01
I think we want to revisit a topic from the very, very, very, very first episodes of our podcast that we come back to, which is, does AI still matter?

00:01:44 Speaker_01
We'll ask that question perhaps from a different perspective today, on AI Today, where we'll think about is the mood about AI. Is the mood about AI changing? Is it getting worse? Is the mood turning against AI?

00:02:00 Speaker_01
We'll talk about some things we're seeing in the popular press, which, of course, reflects an aspect of the mood of what people think. It's not always the truth, but it represents the mood.

00:02:12 Speaker_02
Exactly. And mood matters, right? You know, we talk about fears and concerns when it comes to AI, and some of them are emotional and, you know, not very rational, but it matters.

00:02:22 Speaker_02
And so you don't want to diminish people's fears because that goes into their perception, right? And their mood as well. And so that then gets portrayed into different areas of their life, right? Including both personal and professional.

00:02:39 Speaker_02
So we are on season eight of our podcast. We're so excited about that. And that's why we do like to revisit some of these different topics, including does AI matter.

00:02:49 Speaker_02
And in particular for today's podcast, we want to talk about the mood of AI and is the mood turning against. AI.

00:02:57 Speaker_02
So we're going to talk, you know, we always like to have these ripped from the headlines, especially when it comes to our training and certification, because people want to see how AI is being adopted. They want to see different use cases.

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That's why we're in the middle of our big use case series. They want to see how different industries and organizations are adopting it. And also maybe on an individual level, how different people are adopting it.

00:03:19 Speaker_02
But we also say, you know, does AI still matter? We've talked about this a lot, and we want to talk about both sides, right?

00:03:27 Speaker_02
We want to talk about the negative sides that we're seeing, especially in some popular media and news, and then we'll talk about some positive sides that we're seeing.

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So I'm a link to all of these in the show notes so that you can check out all of these articles yourself.

00:03:40 Speaker_02
Generative AI obviously has been a big, big, big hot topic both for our podcast and in popular culture and, you know, at organizations of all different levels, people are really seeing the benefit of this.

00:03:53 Speaker_02
And research firm Gartner is saying that generative AI is sliding into the trough of disillusionment.

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They published their 2024 hype cycle for emerging technologies, and the study revealed that generative AI has now passed the peak of inflated expectations and is sliding down into the trough of disillusionment.

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So people talk about this hype when it comes to generative AI, and now Gartner saying that the hype over generative AI and associated AI tech is waning, leading tech companies to seek concrete returns on their investment.

00:04:25 Speaker_02
So we've seen, you know, we talk a lot about ROI, and so now others are talking a lot about it as well.

00:04:31 Speaker_01
That makes sense. I mean, hey, you should have been talking about it from the very beginning.

00:04:34 Speaker_01
If you're following the CPBI methodology and you were doing it, but the first phase is the business understanding, you need to understand what this is going to have, this impact this is going to have on your business.

00:04:48 Speaker_01
And hopefully it's a positive one. And the only way to do that is it's a return on investment. So you should've been doing that all along.

00:04:54 Speaker_01
But, you know, Gartner, this hype cycle, what it measures is it measures sort of like this, measures this hype, which they define as sort of like interest and demand. And they also, you know, positive sentiment versus negative sentiment.

00:05:07 Speaker_01
There's a lot of things that go into it. In many ways, it's not an objective analysis. It's subjective. It's based on what they perceive, either from their conversations, because let's give them a little credit.

00:05:20 Speaker_01
Gartner does have conversations with the sea levels. They talk to them all the time. and they can get a feeling from the sea levels what their level of interest is in a technology.

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They might have hype of peak of expectations, you know, that inflated expectations mean like it's more than what the technology is actually capable of. That's sort of what they go to that peak. And then there's the opposite.

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When you get past that peak, you go into the bottom, the trough, which is the trough of disillusionment. You're like, this technology is not good for anything. before you're like, this technology was great for everything.

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So you've moved from the great for everything to great for good for nothing. Now, of course, neither of those perceptions are true, although some technologies never emerge out of that.

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Like virtual reality and blockchain has been perpetually in either the inflated expectations or the trough of disillusionment hasn't reached the next point, which is the plateau of productivity or whatever that is. right?

00:06:18 Speaker_01
Which is when people are actually gaining good value from it. It's neither overinflated or under whatever, deflated. So the question is really, because it's getting a lot of press, is Gartner correct that organizations feel the way they do?

00:06:32 Speaker_01
And it's hard to argue with somebody's feelings. That's why people are like, no, Gartner's wrong. It's like, well, it's not like Gartner's wrong or right. They just asked their C-levels what they thought.

00:06:42 Speaker_01
And the preponderance of their responses is that the sea levels feel like it's past the peak. And that's a data point. From our perspective, their feelings are relevant because they're in charge of budgets. They're in charge of direction.

00:06:58 Speaker_01
But it's a negative sentiment. They are not feeling as hot about AI today as they were yesterday. You could, of course, make the argument that maybe they were feeling too hot about it, and now they're maybe feeling more normal about it. I don't know.

00:07:14 Speaker_01
But when people argue with us, because we get the analyst business. We totally do. We get the analyst business. You're producing reports. You got analysis. You're tracking the markets. You need influence.

00:07:24 Speaker_01
But it's not like you're just creating random opinions. If you are, people will stop listening to you. So they come from a place. Our perspective is that these research pieces come from a pace of talking to people and how they feel.

00:07:38 Speaker_01
Now, does that actually translate? Well, what do you say? What does that mean? People are actually getting ROI from AI. Well, we'll get to that in a minute because the way people feel doesn't necessarily correspond to the value people are getting.

00:07:49 Speaker_01
But I would say in terms of the mood, I think, right, Kathleen, this is one of the signs that perhaps in some ways the mood is turning against AI.

00:07:59 Speaker_02
Exactly. And I think that you have to look at how people first, you know, when generative AI first really came on the scene and open AI had chat GPT, people were so excited.

00:08:09 Speaker_02
They, you know, said, Oh my gosh, how can I use this in a number of different ways? And then they started to play around with it.

00:08:15 Speaker_02
And now there's a bunch of different competitors that are out there and you can, you know, pick your larger language model of choice now from a variety of different people. And this, You know, I mean, it's at everybody's fingertips, which is great.

00:08:29 Speaker_02
And so you're able to use it, but it's one thing to have it. It's another thing to know how to use it. And it's another thing to use it properly. And then it's another thing to actually see positive return from it.

00:08:40 Speaker_02
So, you know, there's been other articles talking about how generative AI can actually make people who were good writers, worse writers. when they use the tool, and it's for a number of different reasons.

00:08:51 Speaker_02
And so we just use these all as different data points.

00:08:54 Speaker_02
And so we've also talked about the great averaging, how it can take underperformers and bring them up to, you know, now on par and be average, but it can take high performers and not really increase their level

00:09:07 Speaker_02
much more so that they're not seeing necessarily all of these huge gains that maybe some of these underperformers are seeing, because now they're able to actually be at some sort of standard base level.

00:09:20 Speaker_02
We've also seen the hype machine of AI is running on empty. We've seen different reports that companies are really dumping- I have an Inc.

00:09:29 Speaker_01
magazine article called, The AI Hype Machine is Running on Empty, and it's quoted by a bunch of people, so yes.

00:09:35 Speaker_02
Yep, yeah, perfect. And we'll link to that. We'll link to all of these in the show notes. And so Inc.

00:09:40 Speaker_02
Magazine is saying that after dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into AI startups, investors are discovering that the payoff to date has been extremely underwhelming. And so we'll link to that and you can read it and take your own data points.

00:09:55 Speaker_02
From that as well, but it really you know it is interesting and i'm sure for every article that we are sharing today there's dozens more that we're not sharing.

00:10:04 Speaker_02
So we encourage you to go out and do your own research and think about this as well, but look at it from all the perspectives and we always say right, we have our soft skills and we say use your soft skills right and so.

00:10:14 Speaker_02
You apply critical thinking, dig one level deeper, and really kind of get to the root of even two, three levels deeper and say, what are these articles really sharing? I guess you have the face value, but then dig one, two, three levels deeper.

00:10:28 Speaker_01
I want to dig into these articles because there's some valid points here. I think one of the interesting things about AI, we've talked about the AI winters many times on these podcasts.

00:10:39 Speaker_01
One of our first podcasts was about the AI winters, and we've revisited the topic of the AI winters many times. The idea is that the AI winters is a period of decline of interest and investment.

00:10:51 Speaker_01
in a cold winter because it's from the perspective of a researcher you like wow in the summer everybody's giving me money is great.

00:11:00 Speaker_01
Everything is happy the sun is shining it's fantastic but in the winter it's cold it's brutal nothing's alive the world is dead.

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That's how it feels as a researcher when you can't get any grants, you can't get any support, you're getting no support from your university, nobody wants to work with you. You're like those weirdos working on AI in the corner.

00:11:21 Speaker_01
That's what happened twice before in the late 70s and early 80s and late 80s, late 90s, early 90s, the mid 90s. Those are periods of like you did not want to be an AI because you were the crazy person in the corner with no support, no investment.

00:11:34 Speaker_01
And if you look at the reasons for the AI winters, we talk about them, usually it comes from a bunch of really common places, over-promising and under-delivering, the lack of some step of realistic returns and investment, and hitting some maybe technological barriers.

00:11:49 Speaker_01
But actually, to be honest, a lot of it comes down to human sentiment. It's how do people feel. If people feel like AI is worth the continued investment, people will invest in it. And AI is just a technology. It doesn't have

00:12:05 Speaker_01
There wasn't a database winter. There wasn't an internet winter. People wish there's a social media winter, but it hasn't happened yet. So why does AI go through this? Because people get overexcited about intelligent machines. Let's just be honest.

00:12:20 Speaker_01
People get sci-fi crazy about it, and then they throw money into it. Then they go, oh, this is not as great as I thought. They take the money away, and they put it into databases or the internet. And then they go, wait a second.

00:12:31 Speaker_01
This new innovation happened. This is exciting again. Yay. Let's throw money and interest in it. It gets up, it gets hyped up. and then people are like, wait, this is not as great as I thought.

00:12:41 Speaker_01
Now we're in the yay cycle, but we're already starting to see, hey guys, winter happened twice before, and the winters happen when people just have a decline in interest.

00:12:50 Speaker_01
So these negative articles that we'll share, which we shared a few of them, there's one from Fortune that Kathleen was referencing called generative AI is getting kicked off its pedestal.

00:13:00 Speaker_01
So this is not AI in general, but generative AI, but it's the hottest thing right now. So if generative AI gets kicked off its pedestal, it's like, What's going to go on the pedestal, right? Good question.

00:13:10 Speaker_01
It'll be painful, but it's not a bad thing, is what they say in Fortune. Their argument is that Goldman Sachs is saying that generative AI is overhyped and wildly expensive. Venture capital firm Sequoia is basically saying the same thing.

00:13:25 Speaker_01
The AI bubble has reached a tipping point. We just referenced the article called The AI Hype Machine is Running on Empty that Kathleen just mentioned.

00:13:33 Speaker_01
That's the reason why I mentioned it by name because people are like, what did you read this article about the AI hype machine is running on empty? Now, we talked about Gartner and Gartner's perspective.

00:13:42 Speaker_01
We talked a little bit about these customers' perspective. Now, these are the perspectives of who? Investors. These articles are talking about what investors are thinking about AI, and some of them are saying it's overhyped.

00:13:56 Speaker_01
Are they right are they wrong does this matter to you if you're a customer and you're investing your own money if you're a government agency do you care what an investor says about a high maybe you do maybe you don't but if these guys investors are putting money into companies that are doing the innovation.

00:14:13 Speaker_01
And they think i is getting overhyped that means you gonna stop putting money in there that means that the innovation may not be happening where it is so again reception can turn into reality.

00:14:25 Speaker_01
And so i think we're saying how to understand these articles it's not like we're gonna say this articles right this articles long it's. Understand the perspective from what that article is written and who is expressing that perception.

00:14:38 Speaker_01
And also, will the perception turn into reality? So now let's flip the coin over and let's talk about, in the same time frame that all you wrote about negative, I would say less positive perspectives on AI.

00:14:51 Speaker_01
There are people who've been writing articles on the positive perspectives. Let's get into those and kind of let's apply the same critical thinking and say, well, what is that? Where are they coming from and why are they so positive about it? Yeah.

00:15:03 Speaker_02
Yeah. And it is important to understand that, too, because, you know, for example, KPMG has this article and this is on the positive side. It says AI spurs widespread ROI confidence.

00:15:14 Speaker_02
And you can say, oh, that's interesting because we just talked about how this ROI isn't being seen, right? Companies are growing skeptical of AI's ROI. That was a TechCrunch article and the negative side.

00:15:28 Speaker_02
But now suddenly we're saying, wait, AI spurs widespread ROI confidence.

00:15:32 Speaker_02
And in this article, 78% of business leaders responding to a recent KPMG survey said they were confident that planned investments in generative AI will produce returns such as revenue growth or cost savings over the next one to three years.

00:15:52 Speaker_02
Interesting data point. Also, the article is saying that the study also revealed to the generative AI is already having a significant impact on many businesses. We say, okay, well, you know, think about that from your own perspective.

00:16:07 Speaker_02
Is it having an impact on your business? Is it having an impact on your day-to-day job and tasks and roles as well?

00:16:14 Speaker_02
This article is saying that 71% of those surveyed said the technology is being leveraged in their organization's decision making, and 52% said it's helping to shape competitive positioning, and 47% said that it's opening new revenue opportunities, according to the report.

00:16:31 Speaker_02
So you can go, wow, that's interesting, at least 50% were saying almost, 50% seeing new revenue opportunities, 52% shaping competitive positioning. Okay, this maybe is showing some positive returns.

00:16:45 Speaker_02
Again, this is sentiment, this is mood, this is how people feel, and that's what these articles are reflecting.

00:16:53 Speaker_01
Yeah. If you just read this article, you'd be like, everything sounds great. They said, generative AI is a game changer.

00:16:58 Speaker_01
Business executives expect to see payoff in the next three years as they scale its use in the organization to gain a competitive edge and grow their business.

00:17:07 Speaker_01
That's what Carl Karende, if I'm pronouncing his name right, who is the vice chair of advisory at KPMG, that's what they said. Now, that's a pretty bold claim, because we just said the investors aren't that positive.

00:17:20 Speaker_01
The gardeners are saying, we talked to C-levels. The C-levels say this is off-peak. Then other people are saying, hey, this thing ain't returning ROI. Meanwhile, KPMG is saying, wait a second here. On our survey, that's not what we're seeing at all.

00:17:31 Speaker_01
And we're not saying vague claims on maybe there'll be ROI in the future. They're very specific, like ROI within the next one to three years. in this very specific ways. Now, maybe KPMG has something to sell.

00:17:45 Speaker_01
As we always say, behind every survey is a business. a service or a product that's being sold. That is true. Nobody does surveys for fun. They're not, they're not easy and cheap to do. And there's always something you want to get out of it.

00:17:59 Speaker_01
So behind the survey is a service. So perhaps KPMG is trying to bolster their own sales of services around data value. You could say that.

00:18:05 Speaker_01
But then again, you can go back and you could find the people who responded to the survey and see if they feel the same way. Now, the difference here is it didn't tell you who within your organization responded.

00:18:15 Speaker_01
This is, I think the first little insight I want to give you. Don't assume it's always the same people. Gartner's talking to C-levels. Maybe the C-levels do feel the way they do.

00:18:23 Speaker_01
They're like CEO, CIO, CFO, COO, CMOs, CAIO, heaven forbid, CDOs, things like that. And they may be feeling like CFO is like, no good. CIO is like, I don't know.

00:18:36 Speaker_01
COO is like, but these business leaders could be people who are in charge of some customer product line, some sales line, some marketing activity, some customer experience thing. And maybe they are legitimately getting value. So we have disconnect.

00:18:51 Speaker_01
That's part of the other way. If I want to be charitable here and not just assume that's a survey written for purposes of selling things, you can see it's like, well, maybe there is inconsistency in perception, in the mood.

00:19:03 Speaker_01
But we have more articles that sort of bolster some of this. Because there's another article that we quote here that was from Tech Republic, where they talked about there was a survey, a report. Now, I have to say, this was only done in the UK.

00:19:17 Speaker_01
But it said that 1 in 10 businesses are going to spend over $25 million on their AI initiatives in 2024. So this doesn't talk about the R part. This just talks about the I part, how much they're investing. But that's a pretty strong signal.

00:19:32 Speaker_01
If 10% of the companies that they talked about are going to invest,

00:19:37 Speaker_01
Over $25 million, let's be specific, 8% of the UK companies and 7% of US decision makers said that they plan to spend over $25 million on their AI initiatives this year, in 2024, not in the future.

00:19:52 Speaker_01
And they said that, and this is from a consultancy called CERCE, I think, S-E-A-R-C-E, had their state of AI report. And they said that there's quite a bit of investment going into AI.

00:20:04 Speaker_01
So that would suggest that the mood hasn't necessarily turned against AI if people are willing to make short-term, large investments in AI. Now, you could also make the argument that maybe these were budgets from the previous year.

00:20:21 Speaker_01
Maybe they set the budget in 2023 and they're spending it in 2024 and we don't know what the budgets are going to look like in 2024 to spend in 2020. Maybe things will change, but I don't know.

00:20:32 Speaker_01
That's like a measurement of some positive sentiment there.

00:20:36 Speaker_02
Yeah, and in that article also, it said that the top reason for making these investments was to drive new business growth, as cited by 31% of UK and 35% of US respondents. So, you know, again, okay, let's take that.

00:20:51 Speaker_02
We heard that in the last article, now we're hearing it again. And so, all right, driving new business growth. Maybe people are really seeing AI and generative AI for that use case.

00:21:04 Speaker_02
And then another article that we've seen, so we had talked about, OK, well, in this negative sentiment, Gartner and other organizations talk to the C-suite. But in this positive sentiment, we also get some data points from C-suites.

00:21:17 Speaker_02
And 74% of orgs reap ROI from generative AI investments within a year. C-suite AI experts fueling revenue growth. This is from Days Info.

00:21:27 Speaker_02
And this recent report was done by Google Cloud and National Research Group and it highlights how organizations worldwide are integrating generative AI into their operations and those having gen AI leaders in C-suite positions are really reaping the most benefits.

00:21:45 Speaker_02
84% of surveyed organizations have transformed a generative AI use case from idea to production within a mere six months.

00:21:53 Speaker_02
So when we talk about following a best practices methodology for running and managing AI projects, we say it should not be taking you a year. And so they have seen now, This whole process takes six months.

00:22:06 Speaker_02
I'm hoping that they're thinking big, starting small, and iterating often, and that there were many iterations in that. But that's also, you know, it goes from idea to production within six months. That's what we want to see, right?

00:22:17 Speaker_02
Because you want to be seeing these positive returns, and that's going to help fuel growth, and that's going to help fuel future use cases.

00:22:24 Speaker_02
So it says the rapid deployment is not only accelerating the adoption of AI, but also contributing to significant financial gains.

00:22:31 Speaker_02
Well, yes, of course, right, because we don't want to be spending all of this time, money and resources, right, to see a negative ROI and the longer that you spend on your projects.

00:22:40 Speaker_02
the more the world's changing, the less that your use case, you know, may be relevant, right? I mean, think about what changes in a year at your organization.

00:22:48 Speaker_02
So that's what this report is saying, that they are seeing, you know, the majority of the companies surveyed reported that once in production for 12 months or more, generative AI had a direct and positive effect on their overall revenue growth.

00:23:03 Speaker_02
All right, so we're seeing that the C-suite is saying that they are seeing generative AI fuel revenue growth.

00:23:09 Speaker_01
Yeah, and it's interesting because they say that 86% of the organizations in the survey have seen a revenue increase of 6% or more as a direct result of generative AI initiatives. So I'm like, Okay, right.

00:23:25 Speaker_01
So it's interesting because these articles are direct counterpoint to the previous articles we talked about, you know, past the trough, the trough of disillusionment and companies are growing skeptical of AI's ROI and the AI hype machine is running on empty and generative AI is getting kicked off its pedestal.

00:23:40 Speaker_01
And it's interesting because they're from different perspectives. The investors are seeing one thing. Maybe there's different C-suite sentiment here. But the people who are actually implementing it, they're saying, hold up, hold up.

00:23:51 Speaker_01
Don't you be taking that AI away from me. I saw a 6% revenue growth that I can directly attribute to generative AI specifically, not just AI generically, but generative AI and some of these other things. So now, of course, who wrote this report?

00:24:04 Speaker_01
Google Cloud. So there's a little bit of that. As I said, behind every survey is a service or product being sold. But you can do that sort of same sentiment in your own organization.

00:24:19 Speaker_01
Maybe there are groups of people within your organization who are working on generative AI projects. They may not be gigantic, but they may be small and be like, how has this had a material impact in the last year?

00:24:30 Speaker_01
And they might say, has it been positive or has it been negative? And so you can get that. But the overall question we're trying to answer is the mood. Is the mood turning against AI?

00:24:39 Speaker_01
And I think we're starting to say it's like, well, it's not that it's turning negative. It's just that we're starting to see more of a balance now between positive

00:24:49 Speaker_01
articles and positive things that talk about only the great things about AI and not so positive. I want to call them negative, maybe they're neutral, but not so positive articles that are talking about some of the issues and problems.

00:25:01 Speaker_01
I would say we're starting to see more of a balance.

00:25:04 Speaker_01
of that i just we just quoted three or four articles on the positive side and three or four articles on the positive side i'm sure if it's kathleen mentioned you can do some digging you can find some more and it probably is and i think what you'll find is there'll be a balance that's why there's actually more of a debate if you will about ai's long-term value

00:25:20 Speaker_01
There's only one additional thing I'd like to throw into the mix here, which is, what are governments saying about AI? What is the government sentiment about AI? Because that will have an impact.

00:25:30 Speaker_01
When government agencies regulate AI, they put laws into place, that can prevent the growth and use of AI or that can enable the growth of AI in specific ways. And very recently, we've seen a number of laws that have come to fruition.

00:25:47 Speaker_01
Of course, EU AI Act is the most notable one that has actually come to be and come to pass.

00:25:52 Speaker_01
There's a few that, as of the recording of this, haven't been complete, but I would say California Bill SB 1047 is the most notable one because the first of its kind AI bill, still working its way through California states,

00:26:07 Speaker_01
legislation process, but California tends to lead the nation because that's the home and in the world, because it's the home of companies that are building these large models, Facebook, Google, Amazon Space headquarters in Washington.

00:26:19 Speaker_01
But still, they're all impacted by what happens in Silicon Valley. And this bill says the AI safety bill is going to put responsibility on any developer who spends more than $100 million to build an AI model.

00:26:31 Speaker_01
And that's going to be requirements for safety testing and implementing safeguards. And it allows the state attorney general

00:26:38 Speaker_01
to take action against any developer of any model that causes severe harm, as they defined it, mass casualties or any incidents that causes 500 million more in damage, and that the companies who build these models must agree to third-party audits and implement a kill switch that can turn off the technology at any time.

00:27:00 Speaker_01
Like, boom, your LLM is off. I was using chat GPT. Oh, it's gone, off. They want that in the law. So you can tell this is kind of freaking some people out. But also, does this mean something about the mood, right?

00:27:11 Speaker_01
Does this say something about the mood about AI that maybe it's not all, was it roses?

00:27:15 Speaker_02
Roses and sunshine, butterflies, I don't know, rainbows.

00:27:18 Speaker_01
Rainbows and all that stuff.

00:27:22 Speaker_02
Yes. And, you know, we talk, I think of, gosh, in one of our very first podcasts, maybe the Does AI Still Matter, I don't know, one of them about an AI kill switch. And can you really have it? And is that even possible? And the answer is, no, it's not.

00:27:36 Speaker_02
Because think about the internet. Can you just shut that off? No. I mean, yes, you could, but it would have huge catastrophic consequences.

00:27:42 Speaker_02
Think about everybody that has embedded the large language models into different applications, and if you turn it off, then all of that functionality can get shut off with it. But again, Again, this really is about the mood.

00:27:56 Speaker_02
And it's like, why is this law even coming in the first place? And we also have talked a lot about ethical and responsible AI and those use cases.

00:28:03 Speaker_02
We had somebody from the state of Colorado on the podcast as well to talk about a law that was recently passed there. And so it's like, OK, well, why are states now thinking about this? And why is the EU thinking about this?

00:28:14 Speaker_02
And why are different regions thinking about these different things? And that comes down to mood, right? And maybe, again, we talk about these fears and concerns. Do people have these fears, even if they're irrational?

00:28:26 Speaker_02
And so they want to safeguard it and protect it. And maybe that's why these are coming up. Because if you think about this, too, it's responsible for any developer spending more than $100 million to build an AI model.

00:28:41 Speaker_02
This is a very targeted bill towards a very small number of organizations that can spend $100 million or more to build an AI model. So this is not for the general use for most organizations.

00:28:54 Speaker_02
It's a pretty targeted bill, which I also find very interesting.

00:28:59 Speaker_02
it's because, you know, maybe people think that there's, you know, lots of power in a few organizations, and they want to kind of control that, and this bill is a way to help control that.

00:29:11 Speaker_02
And this idea of a kill switch, even if it's absolutely impossible, is there a way to say, hey, hold on a second, you don't have ultimate control, we do.

00:29:20 Speaker_02
Because if we, as the government, feel that this is just getting out of control, we can tell you to stop.

00:29:27 Speaker_01
So I think this all really comes down to the basic question we asked at the very beginning, does AI still matter? And the answer is it does.

00:29:33 Speaker_01
For a lot of people, like for the people who feel like it's having an impact on their business and their organization today, contributing positively to the revenue, to their business, for them, absolutely.

00:29:44 Speaker_01
Even for folks who are legislating against it, does AI matter? It does, because if it didn't matter, they wouldn't be coming up with legislation about it, would they? So even to the regulators, AI matters.

00:29:55 Speaker_01
If they didn't care about it, there's no regulation on blockchain, that's what I know of, because nobody cares about it, or VR, things like that. They care about AI. Even to the people who are legislating against it, to them, AI matters.

00:30:08 Speaker_01
Even for the folks who are saying that AI is past its hype cycle, down in the trough, it still matters for them. They are talking about it. They are still thinking about it. They're still thinking about how AI has impacted the organization.

00:30:21 Speaker_01
You know what? That's a healthy conversation. To say, I'm going to use AI for everything and it'll help me in all these great ways, whether or not it's true or not, is not healthy.

00:30:30 Speaker_01
Just as much as saying AI is not helpful for anything and I can't do anything with AI and it's useless, that's not healthy either. It's not helpful. The balance is AI is, as we said actually in other podcasts, AI is not good or bad.

00:30:43 Speaker_01
AI is good for certain things and is good, bad for other things, et cetera, et cetera. And I think this is why AI does still matter because it's here, we're using it, we're getting value, and it matters as part of our everyday conversation.

00:30:56 Speaker_02
Absolutely. So we hope that you've enjoyed this discussion. Reach out. We'd love to interact and engage with our listeners. You can find us on LinkedIn, also engage with our social media posts as well, and you can reach out to us.

00:31:09 Speaker_02
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00:31:20 Speaker_02
And that'll also helps play into this whole idea of does AI matter and how are people applying AI. So definitely stay subscribed. Like this episode and want to hear more?

00:31:30 Speaker_02
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00:31:38 Speaker_02
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00:31:51 Speaker_02
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00:32:03 Speaker_02
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