Where are the benefits of AI?

The last time I recorded one of these videos, it was about why I don’t think AI will bring the SaaSpocalypse. The tl;dr version is that GenAI will enable lots of customisation, and certainly tools whose entire raison d’être is to present dashboards (sorry, Tableau) are probably in trouble. But ultimately this is all front-end stuff, and the underlying app functionality is not something that non-specialists will be creating any time soon, no matter how good the tools get. It’s a simple build-vs-buy decision: why waste tokens on the part that is not differentiated? Buy the foundational platform, and then build on top of that.

The proof of that argument is in a piece from an outfit called Apollo Global Management, titled No Signs of AI Payoff Outside the Tech Sector. Only the IT industry is really showing any benefits from AI — so far. Sure, it’s still early days; ChatGPT has yet to celebrate its fourth birthday. But the pattern does seem to be that you need to have an idea of what you would be doing by hand in order to be able to guide the AI tools effectively.

The other reason why the benefits of AI are limited to tech is that tech is legible to AI. In fact, the IT industry has spent its entire existence making itself easy to automate. It is therefore not surprising that a world so easily legible is also the first to show tangible benefits.

The next question will be about ownership of the data, but that is a whole other video.

The video is also available on LinkedIn, if you prefer to join the conversation over there.