“Free from hype and BS”

A reader of this newsletter recently introduced me to their colleague and said that my cofounder and I are people whose thinking is “free from AI Hype and BS”.

I’m glad this message is coming across in our writing. But I want to supply some nuance. Being clear-headed and pragmatic means not giving in to hype and BS, but it also means not giving in to doom and gloom. The media and public opinion can flip and flop drastically between depression and mania. One day it’s, “AI will become so smart it’ll wipe out all of humanity” and the next day it’s, “95% of AI projects fail”. The truth is somewhere in the middle, but not in the naive middle (50% failed pilots will wipe out 50% of humanity?).

Being pragmatic and level-headed also means leaving the overly philosophical debates to the philosophers. Is ChatGPT conscious or not? It’s fun to debate over beers, but does it really matter to your business? Will a rogue AI wipe us all out in 2027 (I hear the timeline has been pushed back to ~ 2030)? Maybe yes, maybe no, but in the meantime there’s real work to do.

Our current stance at AICE is: It might not be as good as the most ardent hypers claim it is, but even if it doesn’t get any better than it is right now, there’s still tons of untapped potential to tackle those annoying and expensive problems in your business. No need for hype and BS, no need for doom and gloom.