We Are All Horses Now
US consumers choose speed over sensible robotics, teenagers turn to chatbots for therapy, and we discover the “billion-dollar solo founder” is a myth.
Dear Friend,
As some of you know (or, more accurately, as you know us from), for the last couple of years, we have been working with CPA.com, an affiliate of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), empowering accounting firms and finance teams for the digital age. It’s been an incredible collaboration, and this year the team at CPA.com asked us to form and lead an AI working group comprised of some of the leading software vendors and firms. As part of this work, together with the working group and the CPA.com team, we have published a set of resources whose usefulness extends well beyond the accounting profession! Check them out:
More to come! And if you haven’t done so, sign up for our Built for Turbulence behind-the-scenes authors club. I am 8,000 words into the first book of the series and just asked our community (you) to pick a cover art direction. 🤗
And now, this…
Headlines from the Future
Not So Fast, Baby. US grocery giant Kroger is clawing back on an initiative to build out its network of robotic-warehouse-powered delivery services. Not because the technology doesn’t work (it does – Kroger was using the UK’s grocer Ocado’s proven robots), but because US consumers demand instant delivery.
With its automated fulfillment network, Kroger bet that consumers would be willing to trade delivery speed for sensible prices on grocery orders. That model has been highly successful for Ocado in the U.K., but U.S. consumers have shown they value speed of delivery, with companies like Instacart and DoorDash expanding rapidly in recent years and rolling out services like 30-minute delivery.
It goes to show that it’s not just technology that makes or breaks a business model.
↗ Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far
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Agentic Browsers, Anyone? Analyst firm Gardner just issued a stark warning: under no circumstances should you use agentic browsers, which the AI giants are fiercely promoting and claiming “will be the future of Internet browsing.”
Gartner’s fears about the agentic capabilities of AI browser relate to their susceptibility to “indirect prompt-injection-induced rogue agent actions, inaccurate reasoning-driven erroneous agent actions, and further loss and abuse of credentials if the AI browser is deceived into autonomously navigating to a phishing website.” The authors also suggest that employees “might be tempted to use AI browsers and automate certain tasks that are mandatory, repetitive, and less interesting” and imagine some instructing an AI browser to complete their mandatory cybersecurity training sessions.
↗ Block all AI browsers for the foreseeable future: Gartner
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Agentic Employees, Anyone? Technology magazine WIRED put Sam Altman’s bold statement that “the one-person billion-dollar company is coming” to the test. Of course, it didn’t work.
As we started hashing out our product, though, their fabrications became increasingly difficult to manage. Ash would mention user testing, add the idea of user testing to his memory, and then subsequently believe we had in fact done user testing. Megan described fantasy marketing plans, requiring hefty budgets, as if she’d already set them in motion. Kyle claimed we’d raised a seven-figure friends-and-family investment round. If only, Kyle.
↗ All of My Employees Are AI Agents, and So Are My Executives
What We Are Reading
🕳️ What AI Doesn’t Know: We Could Be Creating a Global ‘Knowledge Collapse’ AI is learning everything the internet knows, which turns out to be almost nothing. @Jane
🤝 Ford And Renault Group Form A Strategic Partnership For Electric Passenger And Commercial Vehicles The companies have signed a partnership agreement to develop two Ford-branded passenger electric vehicles based on Renault’s Ampere platform in what they’re calling “a fight for our lives” against Chinese competitors. @Mafe
⚖️ The 5 AI Tensions Leaders Need to Navigate For our polarity thinkers out there: This essay on leading AI transformation eschews easy “answers” to explore instead a set of critical tensions to be managed as the landscape continues to shift. @Jeffrey
🏛️ Winning With Intelligent Choice Architectures The true advantage of AI today isn’t smarter humans, but smarter decision environments. @Kacee
🗺️ How Google Maps Quietly Allocates Survival Across London’s Restaurants - And How I Built A Dashboard To See Through It A fascinating and sobering look at how Google Maps ratings impact the economics of owning a restaurant. We really live in an algorithm-driven world! @Pascal
Down the Rabbit Hole
📼 What is old will be new again: Cassette tapes are making a comeback. Yes, really.
⛴️ It is not just cars: CATL Expects Oceanic Electric Ships in 3 Years
🧠 Progress toward AI’s long-term memory issue: Titans + MIRAS: Helping AI have long-term memory
🤗 Toward a more empathetic AI: The Resonant Computing Manifesto
👺 Awful AI is a curated list to track current scary usages of AI - hoping to raise awareness to its misuses in society
🇨🇳 China might be playing a very different game when it comes to AI: Why China is going all-in to win its version of the AI race
🪫 A ChatGPT prompt equals about 5.1 seconds of Netflix
⏳ A research paper unveils Microsoft Copilot usage throughout the day
🤗 It’s getting progressively worse: ‘I feel it’s a friend’: quarter of teenagers turn to AI chatbots for mental health support
🧬 Gorgeous visualization: The Size of Life
🐴 We are all horses now.
🤡 The AI clownshow: AI as artificial ignorance (hattip thanks to our community member Manos for digging this one up)
Pascal just discovered the Uni Kurutoga Advance Upgrade mechanical pencil – and his pencil life will never be the same.