2,888 Wild Ways GenAI Is Not the Internet

Are your people using generative AI? If so, does your company have a generative AI strategy in which you direct a team of functional specialists to redesign a business process? Or are you giving all your people access to ChatGPT and seeing if any of them find a way to use the technology? If you are waiting to use AI, why?

For example, it took seven years for the internet to reach 100 million users. It took ChatGPT just 60 days, according to the Conference Board. And during the internet boom, 2,888 startups went public. Since ChatGPT launched almost two years ago, zero generative AI companies have gone public.

Generative AI is being driven largely by tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. By contrast, the internet was pushed forward by aggressive startups -- which the largest tech companies tried to ignore. 

Many of today's generative AI startups are in effect subsidiaries of the giant tech companies. For example, OpenAI received $13 billion from Microsoft -- much of which is a credit for the use of Microsoft's Azure cloud service, according to my recently published book, Brain Rush.

By contrast, during the internet boom, startups struggled to grow and become cash flow positive as they scrambled to raise venture capital. While many of the startups failed, some were able to go public -- abetted by the public's appetite for investing in internet companies, according to my book Net Profit.

Whether your company has adopted generative AI -- or any new technology such as blockchain or the metaverse -- should hinge on comparing the value the technology delivers to stakeholders with its investment and operating costs.