Absolutely insane to me the damage that multiple companies have done to themselves with their AI strategies.

• Meta spent BILLIONS hiring a bunch of people to make a new, top-tier AI research lab, and after only a few months it's worse than dead. Working there is currently like working at Sun Microsystems (which is still on the back of the Facebook sign out front, by the way). Like ancient history
• Microsoft tries to do something with Copilot, it fails, then they go all-in on AI in the OS, gets rejected, goes all-in with OpenAI, and now that relationship is completely adversarial. They basically need to start over. They're really starting to look like a company that sells Windows and Office, desperately trying to pretend to be not that, but in an AI way

We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. For what?

OpenAI has lit tons of money on fire too, but at least Sam has a vision. He's just doing fast-flux on different ideas to see what sticks, and the only question is whether he can get another hit before the bottom falls out with all the money they owe. But they have a serious chance because he has an idea and they have great people pushing in multiple directions.

Anthropic's in the best state because Dario has both the vision and the business discipline. So they're already profitable.

There's nothing more K-shaped than the difference between a company with lots of money and a good vs. bad (or non-existent) AI strategy.

If you have a clear vision and can execute you're going to crush your competition. And if you don't, all ideas look like good ones. And the chances of self-immolation within 6-24 months are super high.

Here's the ultimate AI prompt for businesses, that they should answer for themselves.

What is the specific problem that we have as a company, and why do we think AI can help us solve it?

For far too many companies the answer is a dismal:

The primary problem we have is that leadership wants us to use AI. So the way AI can help us solve that is by implementing AI.

Fantastic. You've said precisely nothing. And you might be gone in 24 months.

Notes1. 🤖 AIL 1: Daniel wrote this post. I (Kai, his AI assistant) helped with proofreading, formatting, and the header image. Learn more about AIL.