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DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman "We've hit 'peak hype' of the AI revolution" - World Economic Forum CNBC Interview

Updated: Jan 22



Mustafa Suleyman is a notable figure in the field of artificial intelligence. He co-founded DeepMind Technologies, an AI lab in London, which was later acquired by Google in 2014. At DeepMind, Suleyman played a crucial role in developing AI for various applications, including health and energy efficiency. After leaving DeepMind, he co-founded Inflection AI, focusing on making human-computer interaction more natural and efficient. Suleyman's work spans across AI research, ethical AI development, and practical applications of AI in various sectors.


AI Hype and Market Reality

Suleyman discusses the current 'AI hype', noting how AI has become a buzzword, with many companies claiming to be AI-first. He acknowledges AI's transformative potential but cautions against inflated expectations. For B2B SaaS startups, this serves as a reminder: genuine AI integration is more valuable than mere AI labeling.


AI's Market Impact

Delving into AI's economic implications, Suleyman suggests AI's transformative impact is undervalued despite the hype. He highlights AI's potential in enhancing business operations, drawing attention to Microsoft's use of AI in cloud services. This perspective is crucial for our clients who are integrating AI into their SaaS products, underscoring the potential for increased efficiency and innovation.


Efficiency and Innovation through AI

Suleyman sees AI as a tool for both improving existing processes and enabling new capabilities. This dual nature—efficiency and innovation—is especially relevant for startups seeking to carve a niche in crowded markets. AI's role in automating tasks and offering new services can be a game-changer for our clients.


AI and the Workforce

A key topic is AI's impact on employment. Suleyman believes AI will augment human capabilities in the short term but may replace some jobs in the long term. For our B2B SaaS clients, this poses strategic considerations for product development and market positioning, balancing automation with human-centric service models.


AI in Mental Health Services

The conversation touches on Inflection AI's focus on empathetic AI, particularly in mental health applications. Suleyman discusses their AI, PI, designed for conversational therapy, highlighting AI's potential in personalizing and democratizing healthcare services. This is an area ripe for exploration by SaaS startups in the health and wellness sector.


Future of AI and Market Dynamics

Concluding, Suleyman touches on the future trajectory of AI in the market. He sees a significant, yet currently underrated, role for AI in enhancing customer experiences and operational efficiency. For our clientele, this underscores the importance of integrating AI in a way that truly adds value to their offerings.


Conclusion

In summary, Suleyman's insights provide a nuanced view of AI's current state and future potential. For B2B SaaS startups, the key takeaway is the importance of leveraging AI not just as a buzzword but as a tool for genuine innovation and efficiency. The AI revolution is more than hype; it's an evolving landscape where thoughtful integration can yield substantial benefits.



 

AI Generated Transcript: The power and pitfalls of AI is top of mind here at the forum. Join us right now is in stock to sell him on. He's the co founder of AI research lab, a deep mind was acquired by Google. He's now the co founder and CEO of inflection AI, also the author of the coming wave technology power and the 21st century's greatest dilemma and we're going to talk a little bit about the perils the opportunities in that dilemma with Mustapha right now. Good. Good to see you.

Great to be here, Andrew. Thanks for having me again. So

let's talk about maybe just say we were just talking about during commercial break AI hype, you go to the promenade, and it's quite prominent being this this street behind us and it's like you can't I mean, I don't know if people can see it over here. But you can't every every raising everything's AI,


It is quite surreal. I mean, it does feel like the entire event has been rebranded the world AI forum. Every company on the street has been, you know, leading with the fact that they're now an AI first company. Look, I think on the face of it, that's amazing. I mean, AI is truly one of the most incredible technologies of our lifetime, but at the same time, it feels like expectations about its delivery are higher than they've ever been and maybe we have hit a kind of peak hype for this moment. So we'll see.


The scary thing about that is that when we've hit peak hype for things in the past, that usually means there's a reckoning in the market. are you predicting that that's to come that the market which has been giving huge props to anything that's labeled AI is going to take and start digging down a little deeper to figure out what would separating the wheat from the chaff?

Idon't think so. I think that this is a truly transformational technology. I mean, think about it. Everything that is a value in our world has been created by our intelligence, our ability to reason over information and make predictions. These tools do exactly that. So it's gonna be very fun.

Let me ask you this. So Jim Breyer was almost us yesterday, right? Yeah. He said that he believes there's a trillion dollars of market cap in Microsoft's valuation today, focused solely on AI. The question is, is there really a trillion dollars of value in that company, as a function of AI is AI going to be a feature set that it's an that's an app that's embedded in every company? Are there going to be other companies that are going to be sort of massive winners, everyone's going to lose? And then how does that work in your mind?


I mean, I think more than 70% of the s&p 500 use Microsoft for various cloud services services. Imagine how much of that data about the way that a business operates is already embedded in their systems. And so the key goal of putting that data in there in the first place is to extract insight from the information but to run things more.


The question is, are they going to capture more share as a result, how much more is a company like a Microsoft or Google or yourself in the future can be able to charge those companies for this service? And on the other side, clearly, those companies are either going to think they're going to create remarkably more revenue as a function of it, or going to save on the cost side in terms of workforce.


These tools do two things, they take an existing process and make it massively more efficient. And there's a huge saving there. And what I'm starting to see is business models that share in the saving, and the value adds that is created. But secondly, they allow us to do new things that software has never been able to do before. These tools are creative, they're empathetic, and they actually act much more like humans than a traditional relational database, where you only get out what you put in. What does that mean for for jobs in the future?


I know right now, it's a really tight labor market. But are they going to replace humans in the workplace and massive amounts?


I think in the long term, we have to think over many decades we have to think very hard about how we integrate these tools because left completely to the market and to their own devices. These are fundamentally labor replacing tools. They will augment us and make us smarter and more productive for the next couple of decades. But in the longer term, that's an open question actual hype, but there haven't been enough public companies to be a true mania yet in terms of sucking.


Remember to the.com pets.com We're nowhere near there yet. So what inning are we in before enough of the public gets to you know, act on the hype with a publicly traded IPO or a stock we had just at the very beginning but I mean, these are Hydera bad it might be there. But but the stock market hype is not there yet.


That's right. And in many ways, I think that things are undervalued because if if you're a company that has are amazing data, really good distribution, you control your supply chain and your customer, then these tools definitely allow you to deliver a better experience to your to your user and I think that that is underrated. How much that's gonna cost you

question real quick. One of things inflection does and you guys have talked about this as therapists we just talked about psychiatrists, right. People like to interact more with his interface effectively right then they like to interface with an actual therapist as you're lying on the couch trying to tell them all your problems because they don't think the AI is judging them the way a person would.


Exactly right. So we make an AI called PI which stands for Personal intelligence and we focused on E to chat CBT and the other is ai ai is out there focus on IQ they're all about productivity and knowledge. We want to have smooth and smooth conversational experience, which is kind and supportive, or somebody just basically tells me I'm right the whole time.


Well, no, I mean, it occasionally pushes back. That would be super boring after a while, right? You wouldn't want to really engage with that. So it's finding the essence of where materials and here's my question, if an hour with a therapist is 100 or $150 in purse, right, is your version in the future if you and I create psychiatry.com Right, and you're gonna that's how you do this, is that $5 An hour because because, or are you trying to Olsen's $80 an hour that's the margin

scale, though, right?


So hundreds of millions of people who don't have access to kindness and support to a really good analyst to a project manager to a chief of staff to a scheduler a personal assistant to a financial advisor. You know, these services are only available to the top few percent of us in the world today. In the future pi is going to be like having a high net worth family office for everybody but it is available but he else for therapists and everybody else who are in the market.


For sure it will create competition in that market


Buy a dog. I don't know what you pay for therapy. But seriously, you should see the way my my dogs look at me I feel Yeah, it's so fun.


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