What are the pros and cons of artificial intelligence?

What are the benefits of AI?
There are many ways in which AI can be used to the benefit of society and individuals. Productivity and efficiency are some of the most obvious examples of the use of artificially intelligent platforms to deliver benefits to companies. But perhaps some of the other benefits would include objectivity, transparency, perspicacity and accuracy.

There are many things that humans are not very good at; we’re not very good at being attentive, you know, we like to take breaks, we need to take holidays. There are lots of things that artificially intelligent systems, if implemented well, can do with a greater level of intention and competence than we can.

And that, of course, causes some to think about the drawbacks of AI and the issues of the workplace and the way in which that could be disrupted, causing redundancies, is something which we spend a lot of time thinking about. But of course, many of these new artificially intelligent technologies are going to create jobs as much as they destroy them. These platforms need to be overseen, they need to be curated, they need to be developed, they need to be invested in. And all of that will require people with quite acute data science skills, often skills that result in higher paid jobs than those which are being displaced by the technology.

Is AI a threat to companies?
AI can certainly be a threat to businesses, and we’ve already seen some significant parts of the economy significantly disrupted as a result of the presence of artificially intelligent systems. This week we saw Chegg [, Inc.] the US investment education company, lose 45- 50% of its value in one day as a result of the disruption that’s now being visited upon its business model by ChatGPT. And we’ve seen other companies in different parts of the economy also disrupted by competitors with perhaps a more acute and more thoroughgoing deployment of artificially intelligent systems at the heart of those businesses.

We think that will continue. In fact, one of the things which we believe and stands at the heart of our fund is that those that engage with artificially intelligent systems most thoroughly will enjoy considerably enhanced competitive and economic moats around their businesses over time.

So, for those companies that aren’t yet engaging with AI, I would suggest that it would be a good time to start doing so soonest. And for those that already are on that journey, I think that they are in a position to enjoy those benefits for a very long time to come.