Experimenting thoughtfully with artificial intelligence

June 3, 2021 - In The AI-First Company: How to Compete and Win with Artificial Intelligence, prominent venture capitalist Ash Fontana asserts that we are in the second half of a century-long cycle in the development of artificial intelligence (AI). Pointing to Google, Apple, Amazon, and other tech giants, Fontana contends that businesses in all industries will be dominated by companies that prioritize and rely upon AI in the next 50 years. That is, the world will be dominated by "AI-First Companies" – companies that focus on "collecting important data and then using that data to train predictive models that automate core functions" within their, or their customers, businesses. In Fontana's vision, AI empowers the predictive models to process the collected data to generate information, information which both provides value to the business and permits the business to generate proprietary insights. This self-reinforcing process is a "loop," which Fontana asserts is a competitive advantage, akin to a moat but more powerful because it is dynamic, capable of both widening and deepening on its own.