As the summer in Sweden is coming to an end, I thought I’d share a few summer reflections before returning to the ongoing blog post series on the AI-driven company next week. The summer for me was cycling in Denmark with my youngest son, a 2 week trip to the US and some hiking by myself on Bohusleden, one of the long distance trails close to Gothenburg.
The US trip consisted of one week on the East coast and one week on the West coast. I had not been there for close to a decade and it was good to be back, especially in the parts where I lived for several years. For all the political tensions between Europe and the US, it is an amazing country with stunningly beautiful nature, wonderful people and great companies that changed the course of humanity, at least in the western world and mostly for the better.
The first reflection that I had is that AI is everywhere. Especially in San Francisco, there are numerous ads offering to replace human employees with AI employees. Or rather, instead of hiring additional humans, complement your existing staff with AI agents that can make your human employees much more productive.
And it’s working. There are several news reports on how software engineers have a harder time finding jobs due to AI solutions making engineers much more productive, reducing the need for hiring more humans. Research shows that information technology is the industry most rapidly adopting AI, but other industries will soon follow suit. This is great news as AI, in my view, is a general purpose technology that will allow companies to become much more effective, initially driving up profits but over time leading to lower prices.
One of the concerns is unemployment, but I do not worry about that at all. Over the entire history of humankind, we have managed to introduce new jobs for people to get busy with. According to David Autor from MIT, over 60% of jobs did not exist 80 years ago. In fact, there are studies that claim that over 1 billion jobs were created in the last 40 years. In my view, there is no reason to assume that this will stop with the introduction of AI. We will increase the effectiveness of companies, which is needed to improve the wellbeing of humankind, and find new, meaningful jobs for people to work on.
As a second reflection, contradicting the first one, I see the first signs of AI slowly moving towards the trough of disillusionment, to use a Gartner hype cycle term. People are disappointed with the latest release by OpenAI and it seems that the relentless move towards larger and larger models is plateauing in terms of the performance of these models. Again, this is a normal development during the emergence of a new technology and it tends to lead to the overinvestments having to be metabolized over a period of time before we get to the “plateau of profitability”. The important thing here is to not throw out the baby with the bath water, but instead enjoy getting access to powerful technology for pennies on the dollar. AI isn’t going anywhere, but the news articles will tend to swing all over the place.
For those that are old enough to remember the internet bubble in the early 2000s may see the parallels. Also then, there was significant overinvestment in anything related to the internet, which led to a hype of proportions not seen since the tulip bubble in the Netherlands in 1636. However, after we had written off all the stupid ideas and investments, the internet has become quite a boon for society. The same will be the case with AI.
The third reflection came when driving past the headquarters of several Silicon Valley companies. We stayed in a place in Menlo Park next to the Meta campus and headquarters and I passed the campus every morning during my run. Although we tend to focus on these companies as the pinnacle of innovation and tech, I realized that it really is not the buildings that make these companies. It is the people working at these companies that jointly built a culture that makes these companies so successful. Especially for those of us that have worked at companies with a significant manufacturing function, it is easy to get stuck in the view that it’s the buildings and manufacturing equipment. But it really is the wetware, the stuff between the ears of every employee in the company, that is what makes the company. This may seem obvious to many, but it is so easy to forget. I promise you that the Meta campus at 7AM on a Sunday morning is not exactly a place bristling with energy and momentum. But the people working there probably are thinking about what to build next for you!
Finally, three more personal reflections. In 1994, Jon Kabat-Zin published a book with the title “Wherever you go, there you are”. The book is concerned with the importance of meditation for reducing stress and improving awareness and cognitive function. However, the title also stresses that you can escape many things, but you can’t escape yourself. Getting on a plane to fly halfway around the world is not going to get you away from the things in your head. So, rather than hiding away from these things, it’s better to address these “negative” things head on.
Second, although none of us like boredom, I have noticed over the years that to transition from work mode to vacation mode, I need to spend time in a place that gets very close to boredom. The Buddhists consider boredom a lack of attention to the current moment and that is exactly what it is. By entering a state of boredom, you start to pay attention to the things that you normally ignore. And that is incredibly helpful when trying to get into vacation mode.
Third, this summer I recognised the importance of spending time alone. I’ll come back to this in a daily reflection, but I spent a few days by myself on Bohusleden and it was incredibly good for me to simply be in the moment without others around me that I have to interact with, manage expectations with, etc. Instead, I could just hike at my own pace, take breaks, sit quietly and watch the thoughts flow by and do all the things one does by oneself.
Concluding, vacation is coming to an end and many of us, at least in Sweden, have or soon will return to work. I thought to share some reflections concerning the tech field that we are in as well as some personal ones. Next week we continue with the regular blog post series on the AI-drive company. For now I want to leave you with a quote from Oscar Wilde: “Live with no excuses and travel with no regrets!”
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