Sunday Reads and Listens..I Picked A Bad Week to Quit Sniffing AI..and How Am I Investing In This AI Speed Race

The latest developments at OpenAI, Google, X (Twitter), and even Meta may seem distant or even irrelevant to some of us, given the advanced technology being used.

But I assure you, these topics we’re exploring are going to dramatically impact our lives, whether we drive trucks, lay concrete, balance books, sell insurance, or work in healthcare.

What these companies are building are the foundational models upon which thousands of AI-powered applications will be built.

The technology is already being woven into products we use every day. It won’t be long before we don’t even think about it. “It” will just be there.

And because these companies have technology platforms that reach the majority of the world’s population, and the technology is software based, distribution and adoption will happen at light speed.

OpenAI’s GPT-4o is too good not to be used. Google knows this, and we can be sure that it’s racing to improve its own Gemini software to have just as much utility as OpenAI’s GPT-4o.

And how about Apple, which has been woefully behind in AI technology. The rumors have been swirling that a deal with OpenAI is pending. In the short-term, that would make perfect sense. Apple can integrate with GPT-4o APIs, and it can still call its voice assistant Siri, it will just have a major upgrade.

Most consumers will think that Siri has just massively improved, and they’ll love it. Apple can take a portion of the $18 billion a year it receives from Google related to search… and use that to pay for the licensing of OpenAI’s technology. 

And when it finally has something good enough developed in-house, it can simply make the change on the backend.

Time is of the essence though.

These new personalized AIs will be very sticky for consumers. And in many cases, humans will develop emotional ties to their new artificial companions. Changing AI assistants will be difficult for many. 

“Owning” consumers with a personalized AI is how money will be made with search-related advertising. Trillions of dollars are at stake.

Adoption will be the fastest in history, which is why getting in early is so critical.

With tech giants unleashing ever more powerful models and piles of money to accelerate their AI efforts, startups find themselves in a precarious position. Startups must hustle to find and defend their AI niches as the landscape rapidly evolves.

Startups’ advantage is agility and singular focus. They can build superior solutions in specific verticals and use cases. A good lesson from the past is vertical search and marketplaces like Booking.com, Expedia.com, and Zillow.com, that have carved out big niches despite Google. 

Startups can bet big on their deeper domain expertise and tighter customer relationships. Nevertheless, we are still going to see a lot of wreckage as a result of the “AI Ambiguity” because it will make it ever so much harder to rise above the noise.