The AI Sellers
Artificial Intelligence clients fall into three overlapping categories, by interests: those who make AI systems, those who buy AI systems (including law firms), and those who sell AI systems.
Artificial Intelligence clients fall into three overlapping categories, by interests: those who make AI systems, those who buy AI systems (including law firms), and those who sell AI systems. To better understand the third category, the Sellers, consider Marc Andreessen. He’s arguably the most influential tech investor in the world and he’s backing AI startups at a feverish rate (while arguably minimizing the risks from AI far too much). His most recent big article is “Why AI Will Save the World”.
Preparing to advise the AI Sellers? Here are some key points from Andreessen’s article (and a subsequent interview) that might give you some helpful perspective on what the AI Sellers are thinking:
The AI Sellers are … optimistic
“AI is quite possibly the most important and best thing our civilization has ever created, certainly on par with electricity and microchips, and probably beyond those…. In short, anything that people do with their natural intelligence today can be done much better with AI, and we will be able to take on new challenges that have been impossible to tackle without AI, from curing all diseases to achieving interstellar travel.”
"What will be legal” is one of three questions that might decide who "wins" the AI market
“[First,] is a really big question about the big models versus the small models (that's related directly to the big question of proprietary versus open). [Second,] are we going to be able to synthesize training data? [Third,] there's a huge pile of questions around regulation and what's actually going to be legal.... Whoever does this now – by these trillion-dollar questions – they're going to get really rich by taking this technology to the broadest possible market.”
They're thinking about product design
“The chat UI is just the first whack at this. And maybe that's the dominant thing. But maybe the experience most people will have with LLMs is just a continuous, passive feed: you just get a constant, running commentary on everything happening in your life, and it's just helping you kind of interpret and understand everything…. a pendant or your phone or, whatever, a watch with a microphone on…”
[Here’s a slick example of an AI product interface that one former Apple designer has designed.]
They're thinking about education and coaching applications
“[An] AI tutor will be by each child’s side every step of their development, helping them maximize their potential with the machine version of infinite love.... Every person will have an AI assistant/coach/mentor/trainer/advisor/therapist that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, and infinitely helpful.... Every leader of people – CEO, government official, nonprofit president, athletic coach, teacher – will have the same. The magnification effects of better decisions by leaders across the people they lead are enormous, so this intelligence augmentation may be the most important of all.”
They're thinking about science applications
“Every scientist will have an AI assistant/collaborator/partner that will greatly expand their scope of scientific research and achievement.... Scientific breakthroughs and new technologies and medicines will dramatically expand, as AI helps us further decode the laws of nature and harvest them for our benefit.”
They're thinking about entertainment applications
“AI-augmented artists, musicians, writers, and filmmakers gain the ability to realize their visions far faster and at greater scale than ever before.… AI art gives people who otherwise lack technical skills the freedom to create and share their artistic ideas…. Rather than making the world harsher and more mechanistic, infinitely patient and sympathetic AI will make the world warmer and nicer.”
They're thinking about military applications
“I even think AI is going to improve warfare, when it has to happen, by reducing wartime death rates dramatically…. military commanders and political leaders will have AI advisors that will help them make much better strategic and tactical decisions, minimizing risk, error, and unnecessary bloodshed.”