Season 7, Post 6: What we talk about when we talk about AI
How things have changed. When your author last attended Tech-Ex – billed as “the leading international technology event” – ChatGPT had been available commercially for less than a month and the most packed seminar session was on blockchain. When he visited last week, unsurprisingly, the two words on almost everyone’s lips were artificial intelligence. Although the conference also had dedicated sections covering automation, cloud, cyber and data, these were distinctly emptier. Even here, the siren calls for AI remained loud.
Why the interest? If it were not obvious, then executives from leading businesses as diverse as BT, Meta, Pfizer, Sainsbury’s and Unilever cited with a remarkable degree of consistency that to embrace AI was necessary. To your author, this is not just a case of FOMO, but also one of FOBO. Businesses neither want to miss out or be rendered obsolete by the impact of this revolutionary technology.
The second message that was pervasive from almost every executive was the view that ‘data is our advantage.’ We are encouraged that businesses seem increasingly to recognise that perhaps their greatest edge lies in leveraging their proprietary data sets. It was not at all surprising to hear how regularly the arrival of DeepSeek came up in conversation. Think of this (open source) model as driving the next paradigm in AI. Cheaper and more efficient models will likely spur a transfer of value away from hardware towards software. Logically, the best software solutions will be supported by superior data.
Agentic AI also seemed to be everywhere at Tech-Ex. For those less familiar, think of it as a type of artificial intelligence that can independently act and make decisions without human input. Imagine a digital version of a human employee, able to understand natural language and adapt to changing conditions. Companies such as Salesforce and ServiceNow appeared to be doing brisk business with their agentic offerings. Fear not, however, that employees will be imminently obsolete. Optimists (your author included) see AI as a productivity enhancer. We were also reminded with regularity at the conference about the importance of ‘responsible AI.’ Ethical, moral and privacy concerns will not go away any time soon. Don’t expect them to either, since it seems abundantly clear to us that AI is still in a very early innings.
Your author will be trying hard not to talk about AI when he is away skiing next week. The Future Trends Blog will return at the end of February.
13 February 2025
The above does not constitute investment advice and is the sole opinion of the author at the time of publication. Past performance is no guide to future performance and the value of investments and income from them can fall as well as rise.
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Alex Gunz, Fund Manager
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