The AI Paradigm Shift: Are You Renting Your Technology, or Building It?

Lately, I've thinking about how there are certain technologies that are paradigm-shifting—that change the nature of everything. I’m sitting in front of the ocean as I write this and it's not hard for me to imagine a world of islands, where everyone used to get around by sailing. Then one day, one island invents the steamboat. The steamboat is fast, it's gigantic. Most importantly, it can move even when there's no wind or people rowing inside. This revolutionized what people can expect from ocean travel. These days, our steamboat versus sailboat analogy is with AI. AI is out there in the ocean, whether you like it or not, and it will reshape the world.

There will still be people (or companies) that sail, mostly as a hobby. But sailing—doing business the old way— will remain a kind of guerrilla tactic that will allow a single person or a small team to navigate the seas. What will dominate commerce is large ships with skilled crews.

Now, the invention of the steamboat took investment. It took investment in talent. It took hiring people with shipbuilding know-how. But beyond talent, it also took investment in infrastructure. You need infrastructure to manufacture or access the inputs that steamboats need. Steamboats need coal. Steamboats are built from metal. They need different inputs than wind-powered wooden sailboats.

So, whether or not you like that there are AI steamboats out there, people will have to eventually decide how to engage with them. It really comes down to: Do we build them? Do we rent them? Or do we find some other way to enjoy them?

Most of us, at best, will engage with these new powerful technologies by renting. We will pay a subscription to access an AI steamboat, like ChatCPT. It gives us a chance to go from doing business with just sailboats and start dipping our toes into the water of steamboats.

However, it takes more than just having the money to charter a steamboat to get the steamboat to do what you need. Remember, steamboats require specific inputs. In the analogy here, data are the inputs that AI technologies need. Custom business logic, often expressed as code or very programmatic language, are also the inputs that the AI steamboats need.

So, does your company have the data infrastructure and technical skills necessary to move your inputs across the land, move your data across the land, and move your business logic into that steamboat successfully?

This is really important. With this, you can take the powerful technology that is AI and get it to go where you want to go with the information that is unique to your company. If companies don't do this, if all they do is charter a steamboat, then everyone's going to charter a steamboat. None of these steamboats are very different from each other. And all we will do is make the steamboat owners rich.

So while it is important to not try to compete against steamboats with old technology, it's also important not to let bad data maturity, bad digital infrastructure keep you from getting the most from your AI rentals.

I've talked a little bit about renting AI and how data maturity is very important. We talked a little bit about building AI and how the first companies that build AI often have a digital first infrastructure. But we didn't talk about how to enjoy AI, so let's go back to our analogy with the steamships.

How do people enjoy steamships? Well, enterprising companies have found ways to convince people to go on cruises. Certain companies will build their services on top of new technology. They will design unique user experiences on top of new technology. The tech is the vehicle and the user environment for delivering new services, and these companies are very creative at combining the best of what they can imagine and what they have (what's internal) with what the best of the world can offer. New AI, cheaper than ever cloud computing, faster than ever data processing.

Once companies have a chance to engage with AI, I believe that many new service businesses will be created that incorporate AI in this way, by building a unique user experience on top. If you are running a business, or if you ever wanted to run a business, do you have the courage and imagination to imagine new services that people need?

We have hardly solved all of the world's social or practical problems. If you have an existing business, do you have the agility and the courage to update your services to imagine doing something different? Do you have experience with AI-first digitization? Do you know where the common challenges are with infrastructure and with technical skill?

If you have imagination and the willingness to design and digitize a unique service that incorporates AI, that is yet another viable path. It is the path of enjoying the gifts of AI.

A final note. There are a lot of AI tools out there. Some tools allow you to build. Some tools allow you to automate. Some tools allow you to delegate tedious tasks away. Those task automation AI tools typically don't demand much from the user. But job-changing, company-changing, service-changing, paradigm-shifting technologies always demand people to learn new skills, and always demand companies to adopt new behaviors to build new infrastructure.

So if you're interested in learning more about these transformative AI tools that can change companies and jobs, or if you're interested in learning how to design custom AI solutions, bring new technical skills onto your team, and design the infrastructure necessary to make the people and the technology successful, Komodo is here to help you.