According to NextEarningsDate.com, the Adobe next earnings date is projected to be 6/15 after the close, with earnings estimates of $3.53/share on $4.78 Billion of revenue. Looking back, the recent Adobe …
The grim debate over whether it’s acceptable to edit older works of art to cater for modern ‘sensitivities’ has raised its head again with the discovery by eagle eyed film fans …
Investors are constantly bombarded with conflicting information on debt, in small soundbites without much additional context. If you scour the internet for influencers’ takes on debt, you’ll see two major schools …
iPhone 15 leaks have already detailed many of Apple’s most significant changes, but potential upgraders need to know that the company is working on something far more ambitious. Initially leaked via …
iPhone 15 leaks have already detailed many of Apple’s most significant changes, but potential upgraders need to know that the company is working on something far more ambitious.
Initially leaked via Chinese social media site Weibo, and since corroborated by respected Apple insider ShrimpApplePro, Apple is planning to overhaul the cameras in the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max with bigger sensors and periscope lenses. In contrast, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are understood to use the same primary sensor as the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
What this means is a 1/1.14-inch primary camera sensor for Apple’s 2024 iPhone Pros, compared to the 1/1.28-inch sensor in both the iPhone 14 Pro Max and iPhone 15 Pro Max. A larger sensor means the camera can take in more light, which is critical for low-light photography and improved dynamic range.
Where is Apple finding the space for the larger sensors? According to multiple leaks, both the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will increase in size, jumping from 6.1 and 6.7-inches to 6.3 and 6.9-inches, respectively, allowing Apple to fit a periscope lens in both models. Something the iPhone 15 Pro will miss out on completely.
First leaked iPhone 16 Pro Max CADs show the larger phone beside the well-leaked iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Interestingly, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman had already speculated that the increase in iPhone 16 Pro sizes could mean improved camera hardware, but this is the first detailed information to come out.
And the key here is ShrimpApplePro. While Weibo is something of a wild west for iPhone leaks, the leaker has a rock-solid track record and nailed numerous iPhone 14 details ahead of release as well as being at the forefront of iPhone 15 information that was subsequently collaborated by major sources.
Arguably, there is never a good time to upgrade your smartphone because every generation brings new advances. That said, there are better years than others, and the iPhone 15 range is shaping up to be a more incremental update with upgrades actively discouraged by one influential leaker. So for iPhone fans caught in two minds, your patience may well be rewarded.
More on Forbes
Workplace collaboration tools are supposed to make things easier. I think they just make everything more complicated. From my personal experience, these tools require quite a bit of manual input from …
Workplace collaboration tools are supposed to make things easier. I think they just make everything more complicated.
From my personal experience, these tools require quite a bit of manual input from users and are limited in their scopes of functionality. Strategy documents, proposals, roadmaps, meetings and notes may be found living in separate apps.
Notion hopes that AI can help cut down on the fragmentation within this space with its new product, Notion Projects. Projects aims to connect all aspects of collaboration in one place, making it easier for teams to plan, manage, and execute work, with the help of AI LLMs from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Notion Projects leverages AI to automate many tasks within a project lifecycle, reducing the need for a team member to manually provide updates, update action items or provide summaries within a workspace.
You may already be familiar with Notion as a project management tool, but the company is beefing up its project management suite with new project-specific features, including upgraded project templates and setup flows. Teams will be able to manage projects from beginning to end with more out-of-the-box functionality, comparable to its competitors Asana and Jira.
In a virtual interview, Notion COO and co-founder Akshay Kothari gave me a sneak peek of Projects. Having been a Notion power user for years, I was amazed at the AI Autofill feature, which is capable of filling out an entire workspace worth of information in seconds.
With the rollout of this release, Notion users can take advantage of AI Autofill, which automatically extracts information teams need and keeps it updated as projects progress. There are also new page-level and property notifications, improvements to subtasks and dependencies, and the ability to preview Google Drive files and Figma designs in project databases.
Additionally, Notion Projects comes with upgraded sprint plans, streamlined sprint templates, and a new sprint completion workflow, along with automations to help teams stay informed as things change, with more integrations soon to be announced.
For $10 per month, users can access unlimited AI functionality. Kothari acknowledges that the cost of running AI models is still high, but he hopes that as technology advances, AI will become more accessible and affordable for users.
Notion COO and co-founder Akshay Kothari
According to Kothari, Notion has always been interested in AI, but it wasn’t until last year that they began to see its true potential. After gaining early access to advanced AI models, the company quickly realized that AI could significantly change how people do knowledge work. In response, Notion launched an alpha program in October, followed by a general release in February, which introduced AI-powered writing features to the platform.
One of the key findings from the alpha program was that AI could be used to augment human intellect rather than replace it. Kothari himself uses AI to quickly turn bullet points into product specifications, speeding up his workflow and reducing procrastination.
Every consumer and business app seems to be finding a way to integrate generative AI. I asked Kothari whether the company would have integrated AI tools this quickly into the platform if OpenAI’s ChatGPT hadn’t gone viral.
“I think we would. We saw the power of this technology months before OpenAI launched ChatGPT. I think we were one of the only companies to see it, and we set up a bet on it,” he said, adding the company was one of the few to have early access to certain advanced LLMs. However, ChatGPT did influence Notion to take a more conversational approach with its AI tool.
I was curious whether Kothari was worried about a potential backlash to this functionality. For example, Samsung banned its office workers from using generative AI after finding out sensitive code had been leaked via ChatGPT. Was he concerned at all about businesses rejecting these new features?
“Our business is built on trust and people trust us with very sensitive content,” he tells me, adding that privacy was a starting point for Notion’s initial discussions with OpenAI and Anthropic around using their respective LLMs.
“We mandated that anything we send them to create this content can’t be used for training [the LLMs] and that we couldn’t offer this functionality to our customers unless that was in place.”
Thomas Edison, one of history’s greatest inventors and entrepreneurs, left a big mark on the world through his relentless pursuit of innovation. His experience and practices offer valuable lessons for today’s …
Thomas Edison, one of history’s greatest inventors and entrepreneurs, left a big mark on the world through his relentless pursuit of innovation. His experience and practices offer valuable lessons for today’s startup founders, who face similar challenges in their quest to build successful businesses out of innovative technology.
In this article, we explore three important lessons that startup founders can learn from the story of Thomas Edison:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison
Edison’s story is a testament to the power of perseverance in the face of failure. His most famous invention, the incandescent light bulb, required thousands of experiments before he achieved success.
Edison viewed failures not as setbacks but as valuable learning opportunities. Each unsuccessful attempt brought him closer to understanding the technical and/or marketing issue at hand.
It’s not a surprise that resilience and persistence are arguably the two key character traits of startup founders needed to achieve success. Regardless of the nature of your project, if it includes any level of innovation, you’d likely have to “fail” multiple times before you find what works and what doesn’t.
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas A. Edison
Needless to say, cultivating a productive startup culture in your team is key to success.
Edison was known for his hard work, relentless experimentation, and dedication to iterative improvement. He understood that innovation required a willingness to explore uncharted territories and challenge conventional wisdom.
In his Menlo Park laboratory, he created an environment that encouraged curiosity, collaboration, and continuous learning.
For example, Edison recognized that the collective intelligence and diverse perspectives of his team members could lead to breakthrough innovations. He actively promoted open communication, teamwork, and the sharing of ideas. In fact, he implemented a practice called “group research,” where researchers with different expertise would collaborate on projects, leveraging their unique skills and knowledge. This collaborative approach allowed for the cross-pollination of ideas and accelerated the pace of innovation.
Continuous learning was deeply ingrained in the Menlo Park culture. Edison believed that learning was a lifelong pursuit and that knowledge was essential for progress. He encouraged his team members to constantly acquire new skills, stay updated with the latest advancements, and embrace a growth mindset.
Edison himself was known for his voracious appetite for learning and would often spend hours reading and experimenting. This dedication to continuous learning set the tone for the entire laboratory and inspired his team to always seek improvement and expand their knowledge base.
“Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.” – Thomas A. Edison
While Edison possessed a visionary outlook, he was also deeply pragmatic in his approach. He understood the importance of translating ideas into practical applications that could benefit society, and often measured this utility by the economic viability of the inventions of his team.
This balance between visionary thinking and practical execution is a critical lesson for startup founders. It’s essential to have a clear vision for the company’s future, but equally important to ground that vision in realistic goals and actionable plans. Startups must address market needs, build viable business models, and create products or services that provide tangible value to customers.
Like Edison, founders must be tenacious, adaptable, and committed to solving problems. By drawing inspiration from his legacy, startup founders can apply these lessons to their own ventures, increasing their chances of making a lasting impact and leaving their mark on the world of innovation.
Your ability to get the most from technology and services partners is a core competency for success in today’s ecosystem-driven businesses. We’ve been highlighting the strategies and execution to achieve this …
Your ability to get the most from technology and services partners is a core competency for success in today’s ecosystem-driven businesses. We’ve been highlighting the strategies and execution to achieve this over the years. We call it co-innovation — working with partners to co-create solutions that drive your business forward. To illustrate the benefits, we mined the submissions for the 2022 Technology Strategy Impact Awards and identified four best practices for getting the most value from partners:
Companies in North America can visit here, companies in EMEA can visit here, and companies in APAC can visit here to review complete Forrester Technology Award nomination criteria and submit an entry. The deadline to submit a nomination is June 19, 2023 for all three regions.
This post was written by VP, Principal Analyst Ted Schadler and it originally appeared here.
There’s a $600-billion river of cash flowing straight out of Corporate America—and straight into some dividend investors’ pockets. Today we’re going to grab our share. Companies don’t make much of the …
There’s a $600-billion river of cash flowing straight out of Corporate America—and straight into some dividend investors’ pockets. Today we’re going to grab our share.
Companies don’t make much of the cash outlays we’re going to talk about. You might catch a line or two about them in an earnings release, but that’s it. That’s because they’re trying to stay below the radar of the Biden Administration, which is starting to tax these payouts, and has even threatened to quadruple the slice they’re taking now.
As for us, we’re not really focused on these cash payouts themselves (though we’ll happily take our share!). We’re keen on how they combine with our growing dividends to form a “Dividend-Buyback Feedback Loop” that can double, or more, the share prices on our favorite stocks.
All right, I’ll come clean: these payouts aren’t really secret at all. I’m talking about share buybacks, $600 billion of which have been announced by Russell 3000 companies (or the 3,000 biggest US public companies) so far this year. That’s near a record, according to the folks at Birinyi Associates.
I didn’t use the word “buybacks” off the top because people’s eyes usually glaze over when I do. But we contrarian dividend investors know better than to ignore buybacks. Because when you find a company with a smartly run buyback plan and a growing dividend, you’re almost sure to find a growing share price, too.
It’s the most powerful investment strategy I know. Look at the chart below for drug distributor AmerisourceBergen
ABC
But go back a decade and you see something intriguing: as ABC’s dividend rose 131%, its share price trotted higher with it. But take a look at the orange line at the bottom—that’s the reduction in ABC’s share count due to buybacks:
ABC Price/Divided/Buybacks
You can clearly see that as those buybacks accelerated, the share price was “juiced” higher than ABC’s payout growth. I’ve seen that again and again in dividend stocks. Like with former Hidden Yields holding Texas Instruments
TXN
TXN Price/Dividend/Buybacks
Our “dividend-buyback feedback loop,” then, rolls like this:
There’s more, too, because buybacks cut the number of shares on which the company has to pay dividends, boosting future per-share payouts!
That’s where then real action is—getting in on one of these feedback loops and hanging on as buybacks, dividends and share prices feed off each other over and over again.
The good news is there are plenty of companies doing this. Many are among those that have announced that $600 billion in buybacks I mentioned earlier.
Throw in another year of dividend growth (the latest estimate is for 5% payout increases this year across the S&P 500), and you tilt the odds sharply in your favor, no matter what happens with the debt ceiling, the banking crisis, inflation or whatever other “wall of worry” the market is climbing on any given day.
But even so, I do have a caveat: we only want to target companies buying back shares the right way—that is, when the stock is cheap. Otherwise they’re just burning cash.
With that in mind, let’s zero in on a stock with a management team of “buyback jedis” the likes of which I’ve rarely seen. This one is also a habitual dividend grower whose shares are cheap, making them attractive to management—and to us!
Engine maker Cummins
CMI
But we should be keeping Cummins high on our list, for many reasons: for one, it “starts us off” with a 3% yield, much higher than the typical S&P 500 name. Thanks to that and its 38% dividend growth in the last five years, you’d already be yielding 4.6% today if you’d bought back then.
That payout growth, on its own, has pulled the share price higher.
The firm has been posting solid sales growth in the last five years and saw sales rise 8% in the first quarter, as truck demand jumped in North America and the Chinese construction market improved. Cummins also recently boosted its sales outlook for the year, to 15% to 20% growth over last year from 12% to 17%.
So it’s got plenty of growth to keep that dividend rising. Now let’s talk buybacks, because there’s a pattern here that is, frankly, stunning.
CMI Buybacks – P/E Ratio
Above we’ve got a chart of CMI’s number of shares outstanding (orange line) laid over the P/E ratio (purple). As you can see, the orange line gets steeper (meaning CMI is buying back more shares) when the ratio falls and levels off when the P/E moves up.
That’s a clear sign of a management team that knows how to bargain-hunt its shares, and they’ve got another opportunity now, with CMI boasting a P/E of just 11.9. That’s what I call a “shoe size” P/E, and they’re not very common these days, even with the market still off its highs after last year’s dumpster fire.
Finally, Cummins’ strong balance sheet gives it a buffer in case of recession, with $2.4 billion of cash and long-term debt of $7.75 billion, for net debt of $5.3 billion.
That’s a small fraction of its market cap (or value as a public company) of $30 billion—and yet another reason why CMI—and its expertly run Dividend-Buyback Feedback Loop—is worth our attention now.
Brett Owens is chief investment strategist for Contrarian Outlook. For more great income ideas, get your free copy his latest special report: Your Early Retirement Portfolio: Huge Dividends—Every Month—Forever.
Disclosure: none
The Biden administration announced its interest in creating a renter bill of rights. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) just announced a request for input on tenant protections specifically for properties …
The Biden administration announced its interest in creating a renter bill of rights. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) just announced a request for input on tenant protections specifically for properties with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae
FNMA
It’s a significant step as the government sponsored enterprises (often called GSEs or, when the FHFA refers to the two agencies, ‘the Enterprises’) have significant power in what they can require though the mortgage purchase process.
The renter bill of rights is a collection of principles that are supposed to ensure better experiences and treatments for renters. They include the following:
What makes the involvement of the two enterprises notable is the position that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae play in the housing market, particularly the affordable part. They underwrite a huge portion of the mortgages on single-family and multifamily (at least five units of housing) buildings by buying mortgages and then selling them as mortgage-backed securities at a profit to make capital available.
It’s impossible to overstate how important the two are in helping fund the availability of apartments. Although technically private corporations set up by Congress—and which have been in federal receivership for years—they can borrow money from the Treasury and buy mortgages from commercial lenders, guaranteeing principal and interest, which allows housing construction to grow.
“The Enterprises have a responsibility to not only ensure liquidity is available for affordable rental housing, but also to address challenges faced by tenants and property owners in the multifamily housing market,” said FHFA Director Sandra Thompson in a statement. “FHFA is seeking public input to help identify these challenges nationwide, particularly in underserved communities.”
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already have requirements for the types of apartment housing that can be made, like what portion has to support rents low enough to be affordable to lower-income people. In other words, the two can reach down through mortgage requirements and affect the process of renting, as a result, what might appear in a rental lease.
It may be an assumption that lower-income individuals and families are most exposed to inequities in rental housing. The U.S. home ownership rate is 66% as of the first quarter of 2023, and those people, while having their own challenges, aren’t subject to actions of landlords.
Those who rent tend to be “young people, racial and ethnic minorities, and those with lower incomes,” according to Pew Research. According to Federal Reserve data as of 2019 (the most recent figures available), the median pre-tax income of all families was $59,050. The average was $106,250, showing that income was heavily top-weighted.
Break that out by owner versus renter status and those who owned had a median income of $77,380 per family versus $35,630 for renters. Look at average incomes and you see $136,410 for owners and $50,490 for renters.
With their focus on lower income, the two GSEs could have a direct impact without an action of Congress or a state or local government. Because the rental housing industry as a whole can’t walk away from them, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae could put a great deal of a renter’s bill of rights into place for the people most likely to need it without legislation on any level.
Then again, executive action can modify direction just as easily if there were a change of the political party in control.
Key takeaways Bitcoin has gained in popularity as an alternative investment and has recovered surprisingly well after last year’s crypto winter Bitcoin and Ethereum have stalled since the debt-ceiling crisis picked …
Crypto: love it or hate it, it’s an asset class that’s here to stay. The industry has always been turbulent, but it went through arguably its most challenging period last year with the ‘crypto winter’ and collapse of crypto exchange FTX. But that’s all changed this year with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies making a serious comeback.
Does that make crypto a buy this year? Quite possibly, depending on your risk appetite and portfolio make-up. We’ve got the lowdown on what’s happening in the crypto market, the big and small cryptocurrencies that are trending at the moment and some wider crypto industry stocks to consider for your investments.
Crypto is full of pitfalls and without proper research, your portfolio could lose out. Take away the hours of digging and let AI do the heavy lifting with Q.ai’s Crypto Kit. It’s a diversified way of investing in crypto, so it’s lower risk than diving headfirst into the market – it’s more like dipping your toes in the water while relaxing by the pool.
It works by an AI algorithm that assesses reams of data each week to find the best-performing crypto assets in the Kit’s universe. It then dynamically updates your investment in the holdings as needed to help you get every last drop out of your money. It’s fuss-free and helps you build wealth with crypto – what’s not to love?
Download Q.ai today for access to AI-powered investment strategies.
In 2023 crypto recovered from the 2022 market crash where over two-thirds in value was wiped off the market, FTX’s CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, was revealed to be a fraudster and many other companies collapsed into bankruptcy.
As it stands, crypto’s entire market cap is $1.14 trillion – that’s a lot of value, and way off its peak of an estimated $3 trillion, so various countries are vying to become crypto hubs including the UK, Hong Kong, France and Canada among others. China has even introduced its own digital yuan in a bid to create the first central bank digital currency.
The debt-ceiling crisis has also turned a lot of investors to look at alternative assets if the US were ever to default on its debt. That’s a very unlikely scenario given it’s the world’s biggest economy, but the latest drama has spiked interest in crypto in the last few weeks.
President Biden had wanted to impose a 30% tax on crypto miners for their electricity use, but that appears to be off the table now in the debt-ceiling deal. Crypto miners beware: it wouldn’t be surprising to see the talk of a tax revived again in the future.
Bitcoin is the biggest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $537.5 billion. On Monday Bitcoin surged to near highs of $28,500 and the highest price in two weeks as news that the debt-ceiling drama had finally reached an agreement, but it hasn’t kept the gains since and is back down to the $27,000 mark.
It’s still up 63% this year and in 2024 we have the Bitcoin ‘halving’ which some Bitcoin acolytes think could send the price to the moon – it could well happen after the 2020 halving saw Bitcoin gain 533% in value by 12 months later.
Then there’s Ethereum, which last year saw a major upgrade to the network to drastically reduce the crypto’s energy usage by 99%. It briefly came within reach of the $2,000 mark at the start of May but has been hovering around $1,800 ever since.
Ethereum is still down around 60% from it’s all-time high and has a market cap of $233 billion, but the background work on reducing energy use and position Ethereum for DAOs and dApps positions the crypto well for long-term growth.
XRP is much more of a gamble than the others. It was created by Ripple, which has been battling the SEC for three years now – and it’s looking like the tide is turning after it’s been revealed the SEC’s former director made comments in 2018 saying Ether token transactions were not securities.
If Ripple wins the case then it would be a rallying cry for XRP, which has already seen a 48% lift since the start of the year to hit $0.51. It could be the buy of the year should the price shoot up at Ripple’s vindication moment. But that’s still a big if.
It’s not worth putting too much stock in these, but they could be a fun addition to an existing crypto portfolio. Dogecoin is famous for its price swinging wildly depending on whatever Elon Musk tweets; it’s down 90% from its all-time high from 2021, and at just $0.072 you could buy this one just for kicks.
The latest new memecoin is Pepecoin, which launched anonymously in April as an Ethereum blockchain token. After a meteoric rise at launch and hitting a $1.6 billion market cap, it’s now sitting at around $700 million in total value.
There’s the wider crypto industry around the currencies themselves that could also be a worthwhile buy in 2023.
Now they’ve dodged a bullet with the crypto mining tax pushed to one side, Bitcoin miners are continuing their upwards trajectory for the year as they ride the Bitcoin price rally. Marathon Digital Holdings closed 5.49% up on Tuesday, with the stock hitting a massive 177% hike since the start of this year. Riot Platforms has an even better trajectory, climbing over 10% this week and soaring 256% in 2023.
Crypto exchanges are another option, though every investor needs to do careful research beforehand as the SEC has many of these companies in its crosshairs. Coinbase had its stock upgraded by analysts this week which saw the share price rise by 7.5% – though, fair warning, the SEC threatened the company with legal action back in March.
Crypto remains unpredictable and volatile as ever, so every investor looking to get into crypto should do some thorough research beforehand (or let AI help you out with the hard work). Diversifying your options and going for a mix of cryptocurrencies will help you to weather any storms in the crypto market.
But it’s a remarkably resilient market with a strong investment base – once it works out the kinks with regulation, the enterprise client base will certainly give the crypto industry a boost.
Crypto is set to see a boost from the rise of AI as the tech rapidly develops. Join in on the action with Q.ai’s Emerging Tech Kit, which is designed by humans and runs on AI to do the manual work and catch the upside in the volatile tech market.
The AI scans through the data to find the top-performing tech stocks and ETFs for the week. It then readjusts your investment in the Kit’s holdings to help you grow your returns and stay one step ahead of the curve to capitalize on buzzy tech announcements.
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In response to a request from House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated the impact of the debt ceiling agreement. The analysis found that under …
In response to a request from House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated the impact of the debt ceiling agreement. The analysis found that under the May 28 version of the bill, budget deficits would be reduced by about $1.5 trillion over the next decade, and interest on the public debt would decline by $188 billion.
The CBO is a non-partisan federal agency that provides budget and economic information to Congress—something they’ve done since 1975. The CBO does not make policy recommendations but instead issues reports and cost estimates, together with an explanation of the methodology used to arrive at the numbers.
The CBO notes that the estimates they provided in their analysis go beyond—at McCarthy’s request—those they typically use. Specifically, their estimates include effects on projections of discretionary spending and interest on the public debt that ordinarily would not be part of a cost estimate.
The CBO also points out that the overall impact of the bill on the deficit could differ from the CBO estimates due to future legislative, judicial, or executive actions—it is, after all, a bill that’s intended to affect coming years.
The bill would suspend the debt limit through 2025. Non-defense spending would remain flat for the 2024 fiscal year and increase by 1% the following year. CBO projects that total discretionary funding under the bill would amount to $1.795 trillion in 2024 and $1.818 trillion in 2025.
Beyond 2025, there are no budget caps, only “non-enforceable appropriations targets.” You can read a summary of the bill here.
So how do the individual pieces of the bill measure up?
The bill claws back money promised as part of the 2022 reconciliation act. Most of those funds were targeted to enforcement and related activities. The CBO “anticipates that rescinding those funds would result in fewer enforcement actions over the next decade and in a reduction in revenue collections.” The result? A decrease in outlays by $1.4 billion and a decrease in revenues by $2.3 billion over the 2023–2033 period resulting in a net increase in the deficit of $900 million over ten years.
The bill would modify work requirements for SNAP and TANF. The CBO estimates that those provisions would increase federal spending by about $2.1 billion over the 2023–2033 period.
When it comes to SNAP, in particular, expanding the work requirement period would reduce spending by $6.5 billion over the next decade. But, excluding several groups (like veterans) from those work requirements would lead to a spending increase of $6.8 billion over the same period, largely offsetting the savings.
Under the bill, federal funds previously earmarked for Covid, and still unspent, would be returned. CBO estimates that would reduce outlays by $11.0 billion over the 2023–2033 period.
The bill would write into law the end to the pause on federal student loan payments, interest accrual, and collections of loans in default, along the late summer timetable previously announced by the Biden Administration. The CBO estimates that enacting this provision would have no effect on federal spending.
The bill would require the executive branch to follow pay-as-you-go procedures before finalizing certain administrative actions. That means that discretionary administrative measures that would increase direct spending by more than a certain threshold would be required to be fully offset by decreased spending. As a result, the CBO estimates that this provision will have a minimal effect on spending and revenues.
According to the CBO, implementing the energy-related provisions in the bill would have “an insignificant net effect on direct spending and revenues stemming from fees federal agencies would collect to issue permits and amounts the ERO would collect and spend to carry out the study.” The CBO did not evaluate the potential economic effects of the bill’s changes to federal permitting rules.
The most significant impact on the budget in the bill is the result of caps on discretionary funding. Of the projected $1.5 trillion in reductions over the next decade, discretionary outlays account for $1.3 trillion. Net mandatory spending would decrease by $10 billion, and net revenues would reduce by $2 billion between 2023–2033.
You can read the letter from the CBO and view the projections here.
A vote on the bill is expected in the House on Wednesday, and McCarthy claims to have the votes he needs. If it passes, it will then move to the Senate.
In today’s column, I will examine the newest of those seemingly endless series of proclamations about AI as an existential risk to humankind. The latest instance made a big splash yesterday, …
In today’s column, I will examine the newest of those seemingly endless series of proclamations about AI as an existential risk to humankind. The latest instance made a big splash yesterday, Tuesday, May 30, 2023. Furthermore, surprisingly but with devout intent, the impactful statement this time was a mere twenty-two words in size (in contrast, most such public statements have been several paragraphs or several pages long narratives).
Turns out that this petiteness in length has ingenuously hastened largeness in stature, as I’ll be explaining shortly.
Global reactions both within the AI field and by the public at large to the missive have already been swift and boisterous. Some insist that we desperately need these dire pronouncements or else we are all going to silently and without ample preparations be utterly devastated by AI. Others exhort that this is entirely premature and amounts to doomsday predictions or outright fearmongering. Within the extremes of the counterbalancing views is a rough mixture of partial belief and partial disbelief concerning the value of these alarm bell-ringing declarations.
As you know, it seems that nearly all topics these days are often met with polarizing viewpoints, no matter what the topic might consist of. Even the most innocuous of matters can give rise to dramatic and radical clamoring from opposite sides of a spectrum.
That being said, you would be hard-pressed to assert that discussing or making declarations about the wiping out of humanity due to AI taking us over should somehow avoid our societal tendency to polarize. You could try to argue that if there is any chance at all of AI enslaving or destroying humankind then we should all be working together arm-in-arm to prevent this. The retort is that we are deluding ourselves into a false state of fear and panic, out of which all manner of adverse inadvertent consequences can occur.
I’ll be covering these perspectives as I unpack the pronouncement made.
For those of you wondering why these outspoken statements about AI are incessantly right now garnering massive headlines and spurring widespread social media chatter, the root of this recent flood can be laid at the emergence of generative AI such as the widely and widely popular ChatGPT by AI maker OpenAI, along with other generative AI apps such as GPT-4 (OpenAI), Bard (Google), Claude (Anthropic), etc.
Generative AI is the latest and hottest form of AI and has caught our collective rapt attention for being seemingly fluent in undertaking online interactive dialoguing and producing essays that appear to be composed by the human hand. In brief, generative AI makes use of complex mathematical and computational pattern-matching that can mimic human compositions by having been data-trained on text found on the Internet. For my detailed elaboration on how this works see the link here.
The usual approach to using ChatGPT or any other similar generative AI is to engage in an interactive dialogue or conversation with the AI. Doing so is admittedly a bit amazing and at times startling at the seemingly fluent nature of those AI-fostered discussions that can occur. The reaction by many people is that surely this might be an indication that today’s AI is reaching a point of sentience.
To make it abundantly clear, please know that today’s generative AI and indeed no other type of AI is currently sentient.
Whether today’s AI is an early indicator of a future sentient AI is up to highly controversial debate. The claimed “sparks” of sentience that some AI experts believe are showcased have little if any ironclad proof to support such claims. It is conjecture based on speculation. Skeptics contend that we are seeing what we want to see, essentially anthropomorphizing non-sentient AI and deluding ourselves into thinking that we are skip-and-hop away from sentient AI. As a bit of up-to-date nomenclature, the notion of sentient AI is also nowadays referred to as attaining Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). For my in-depth coverage of these contentious matters about sentient AI and AGI, see the link here and the link here, just to name a few.
Into all of this comes a plethora of AI Ethics and AI Law considerations.
There are ongoing efforts to imbue Ethical AI principles into the development and fielding of AI apps. A growing contingent of concerned and erstwhile AI ethicists are trying to ensure that efforts to devise and adopt AI takes into account a view of doing AI For Good and averting AI For Bad. Likewise, there are proposed new AI laws that are being bandied around as potential solutions to keep AI endeavors from going amok on human rights and the like. For my ongoing coverage of AI Ethics and AI Law, see the link here and the link here.
The development and promulgation of Ethical AI precepts are being pursued to hopefully prevent society from falling into a myriad of AI-inducing traps. For my coverage of the UN AI Ethics principles as devised and supported by nearly 200 countries via the efforts of UNESCO, see the link here. In a similar vein, new AI laws are being explored to try and keep AI on an even keel. One of the latest takes consists of a set of proposed AI Bill of Rights that the U.S. White House recently released to identify human rights in an age of AI, see the link here. It takes a village to keep AI and AI developers on a rightful path and deter the purposeful or accidental underhanded efforts that might undercut society.
With those foundational points, we are ready to jump into the latest pronouncement and explore the erstwhile splash that was made by it.
What The Statement Says And Why It Is Controversial
I hope you are ready to examine and assess the recent AI existential risk declaration.
Perhaps you might be wise to find a comfy chair and have a glass of spirits available, just in case needed.
The succinct statement that was released and that has managed to have a number of AI researchers and AI scientists add their signatories to is this (as was posted on May 30, 2023, by the Center for AI Safety):
There it is.
Seems straightforward.
One interpretation is that we would be sensible and prudent to give attention to the possibility of AI going awry and causing humankind extinction and that the level of attention should be on par with other considered akin risks such as the chances of potentially encountering worldwide killer pandemics or of a destructive cataclysmic global nuclear war.
Easy-peasy as a proposition. Nothing seems oddish or outlandish in that interpretation. If someone told you that there was something that could gut humankind, shouldn’t we be putting sufficient consideration toward that disruptive deadly matter? Of course, we should, comes the prudent reply.
To make things easier to comprehend, the handy-dandy comparison to pandemics and nuclear war is essential in the statement and provides a hefty one-two punch since it immediately establishes how serious and disconcerting the AI takeover could be.
The abstract nature of an AI takeover is made much more personal and tangible via the claimed analogous settings. We have recently lived through a pandemic and already know the devastation that can be wrought. We all understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and realize the immense catastrophic results that would occur in any large-scale nuclear strike conflagration. AI is said to be yet another such endangerment.
Well, that is where, for some, the statement goes off the rails.
They ask with genuine pointedness whether those comparisons are outsized, unfair, and made with a tinge of intentional doomster spuriousness at play.
They ask these direct questions:
Those skeptics would say that the statement should not have included the stated comparisons. In essence, the statement should be presumably shortened to this:
A counterargument would be that such a shortened declaration would be loosey-goosey. The concern is that saying that the AI risk of extinction ought to be (merely) a global priority is insufficient and lacks punch. Everyone might agree that this is something of a global priority, but then the ranking would potentially leave the AI risk topic in the dustbin of global prioritization. You see, by purposefully tying the AI risk to the likes of pandemics and nuclear war, this ensures that the matter lands into the topmost stratosphere of worldwide interests and worries.
Think of it this way. We can’t let AI extinction risks fall into the everyday muck and mire of routine global troubles. This would shortchange the attention. It would be one of those paper-pushing endeavors of going back and forth with little resolve and inadequate desire to deal with it. When push came to shove, other topics such as pandemics and nuclear war would continually overtake the AI topic. Mitigating AI extinction risks would become hidden, unresolved, and rarely see the light of day.
I trust that you see the conundrum of whether it is considered judicious, reasonable, and altogether fair to put AI extinction risks on the same bandwagon as pandemics and nuclear wars.
Things get murkier.
Some would argue that placing AI extinction risk at the pinnacle of global issues will hamper all sorts of other vitally crucial global priorities. Are we to believe that AI extinction risk should be more important than worldwide hunger? What about worldwide poverty? On and on the list goes. Those other vital issues might be pushed downward by the addition of AI extinction risk at the top of the heap.
The difficulty is that we might give undue short shrift to those other compelling topics due to the desire for now heightened (some say hyped) and stridently proclaimed AI extinction risk. Clear your head, some bellow. We know for sure that worldwide hunger exists, and so does poverty, and other such readily demonstrative issues. The viewpoint is that by focusing on AI extinction risks, which are less demonstrative, you are willing to undercut the in-hand and utterly valid issues that we have right in front of us and that clearly exist today.
On a related tangent, you might find of interest my coverage of how AI can both help and potentially hinder the United Nations SDGs (sustainable development goals), see the link here. Likewise, I’ve discussed how AI pertains to nation-state geopolitical power positioning, see the link here and the link here.
The ping-pong match of tit-for-tat can be undertaken when arguing about global priorities. For example, some would say that you are assuming a zero-sum gambit whereby the addition of AI extinction risk is going to undermine those other priorities. Not so, the reply comes. We can have our cake and eat it too, namely that the pie expands to encompass AI extinction risk, ergo nothing else is reduced or minimized in priority.
Another retort is that you have to be thinking about short-term and long-term horizons. Even if the AI of today is not immediately an extinction risk, you would be foolhardy to decide to stave off the topic until some later time. The gist is that while you are ignoring the AI extinction risk and paying attention to other global priorities, AI is inevitably and inexorably going to arise and wipe you out. You had your eyes on the short term and failed to give due attention to the long term. Oopsie.
I’ll add another twist if you are willing to dive deeper into this mind-bending dilemma.
Diehard skeptics would say that the statement should not have included the stated comparisons and also should not be tied to extinction risk. The statement should be presumably further shortened to this:
That would be a version that likely most skeptics would also be willing to support (not all, mind you, but a lot more would).
As you might guess, the counterargument is that this drastically pruned variant is purely milquetoast. You might as well ask people if they are in favor of apple pie. It would seem that just about everyone could agree that we should mitigate the risks of AI. Period, full stop. In addition, doing so should be done on an international or global basis else we will have some countries that won’t care and we’ll still all be in a sinking ship.
The battle of words rages on.
I had earlier mentioned that the succinctness of the statement was a notable characteristic.
Here’s why.
You can indubitably now see that even a rather short proclamation can incredibly give rise to numerous contentious considerations. The longer ones are rife with zillions of contentious points. Trying to get AI devotees to sign onto the longer missives is hard to do since there is bound to be something in there that will splinter off a variety of alternative perspectives. And, without getting signers, the declaration will likely not get much media stickiness. The names are often what makes the pronouncement have a newsworthy impact.
If you want to maximize the number of signers, the odds are that you’ll need to be short and sweet. Even still, you can bet that some big-name AI devotees will not find the statement suitable. Anyway, there is an art and science to devising AI-related pronouncements. One thing we can say for sure is that this won’t be the last. Many more are going to be heading to the public square. You can take that prediction to the bank.
Okay, go ahead and take a preparatory sip now from the spirits that you have hopefully had within your reach. Please do so before we get to the next set of considerations.
You’ll need it.
There Is Much More To Crow About
Better put on your seatbelt while in that comfy chair. I am going to rapidly cover a slew of jarring bumps in the road that pertain to these kinds of AI extinction statements.
Some cynically contend that these AI extinction statements are being done on a wink-wink basis. The assertion is that this is either hollow posturing or insidiously crafty as a regulatory and societal form of trickery. You’ll have to decide which perspective you find most convincing, either the perspective that this is tomfoolery or whether this is entirely sincere and heartfelt.
I’ll cover these in three main points, doing so with a sense of balance by aiming to cover both sides of the contentious issues.
(1) Virtue Signaling Or Bona Fide Concern
One shrill claim is that this is nothing more than virtue signaling. Let’s unpack that. I’ll try to cover both sides equally.
You can presumably be gallantly virtuous by wanting to save the world and protect humanity from the AI extinction curse. This surely is heroic and thoughtful on the part of those making their voices heard on the looming matter. Thank goodness that there are those in-the-know that are trying their darnedest to make sure humankind survives in the face of destructive AI.
The counterclaim is that this virtuousness is misplaced. It is the sky is falling type of virtuosity. These are Chicken Littles that are stoking confusion and fear across society. They are using their position of influence and misusing it, whether doing so blindly or by intent. It is abject clutter and overstated.
Mull that over and see where you opt to land.
(2) Regulatory Capture Or Protecting Humankind
Another vibrant claim is that this is a sneaky form of what is known as regulatory capture, or what is commonly in the tech world referred to as building a moat around your technology. Again, I’ll try to cover both sides of this.
Suppose you are an existing company that has spent a huge chunk of money on devising today’s AI. You naturally want to profit from that investment. Meanwhile, if other comers can build or devise similar AI, perhaps at a much lower cost due to other advances and awareness of how to do so, you are not going to come out looking pretty on this outcome. Those competitors might knock you out of the water or at least diminish whatever financial stream you had hoped to earn as a needed payback on your AI investment.
How can you disrupt your upcoming competition?
One answer would be to try and get regulators and lawmakers to establish new laws that might be shaped to your benefit. The odds of that happening would seem low if you explicitly tried to tie this to your circumstance. Thus, instead, you use as a cover screen that the new laws are required to cope with the AI extinction risk.
The aim would be to help gently influence new laws about AI that could bolster your current standing and serve to heighten barriers to entry for new entrants that want to compete. For example, if the new AI laws strictly stipulated that all AI apps have to henceforth be scrutinized and approved by the government before being released to the public, this would add a lot of cost to any effort to devise and release new AI. Your existing efforts might be grandfathered in, or perhaps your firm is large enough in existing resources to readily deal with the added requirements.
Small firms would have little chance to compete. Large firms would have to decide whether the added cost is worth whatever they might gain by freshly entering into the AI arena. New firms would have to raise enormous capital to get off the ground and bring their AI to the marketplace. And so on.
This is known as regulatory capture, whereby an attempt is undertaken to influence lawmakers or regulators to enact laws that are favorable to a particular marketplace segment. In the tech world, this is also considered a means of virtually constructing a kind of competitive moat around your castle, as it were. We all know that a moat serves as a barrier to those wishing to storm the castle. New AI laws could potentially serve that same purpose for existing AI companies (or, even for companies that want to move into AI and that they want a fast track to do so, thus this works both ways).
Let’s consider the counterargument on this.
We expect and assume that our regulators and lawmakers will do what is best for their constituents. Any attempt by an AI company to intentionally hone new AI laws will certainly be discerned by the policymakers and be rebuffed. Imagine the backlash toward any AI company that got caught trying to rig the new AI laws.
Furthermore, it seems highly likely that we do genuinely need new AI laws to contend with AI issues involving the lengthy list of AI concerns such as AI that contains undue biases, has insufficient transparency, lacks suitable explainability, etc. Those are legitimate needs, regardless of whether a particular AI company is touting that those laws are needed.
As an aside, not everyone agrees that we do need new AI laws, and instead that existing laws already on the books are well-suited to the AI era. They would also suggest that if we start adding new laws about AI, we are going to get bogged down in years upon years of court wrangling over the meaning and realization of those laws. Existing laws have pretty much worked out most of those kinks. New laws, whether AI-oriented or not, will need to stand the test of time and be challenged throughout our courts.
For more of my discussion on these weighty tradeoffs, see the link here and the link here.
The crux is that some would indicate that it doesn’t matter whether this AI firm or that AI firm wants new AI laws. In the end, the AI laws if properly put together and enforced, would serve to protect us from the AI extinction risk or at least help in mitigating that risk. The aim would be to make balanced laws that presumably do not favor or disfavor one firm over another. Instead, the laws should be protective of society all told and create a playing field of sufficient safety and balance.
Ponder that for a few moments and decide which side you tend toward.
(3) Imaginary AI Or Tangible AI
An outspoken concern about focusing on AI extinction risk is that we are perhaps foregoing day-to-day contemporary AI risk. I’ll seek to cover both sides of this.
Whenever a reference to AI extinction risks arises, most people probably think about AI overlords. Those would be the sentient AI that comes alive, akin to what you see in sci-fi movies and TV shows. The AI miraculously attains sentience and decides that humans aren’t worthy. Since the AI is presumably super intelligent and all-powerful, it can crush us like bugs.
Goodbye, humanity.
One viewpoint is that we have enough AI issues today to deal with that we don’t need to overfocus on some speculative AI demon future. Keep our heads in the game that we already have AI today that has undue biases, lack of transparency, and the other assorted AI Ethics issues that I’ve discussed at length in my columns. We should be putting our scarce resources in the direction of dealing with current AI rather than frolicking into some outsized imaginary AI takeover that might not ever occur or happen eons from now.
The worry is that any new AI laws or other provisions will be aimed at the imaginary future AI. This in turn might allow existing non-sentient AI to continue unabated. We can get ourselves into quite a mess with regular AI and do not necessarily need to achieve sentient AI to wipe us all out. For my analysis of how conventional AI that controls autonomous weapons systems could be a daunting risk to us all, see the link here.
There are several counterarguments to the qualm of overfocusing on an imaginary AI.
One viewpoint is that we can do both, namely we can aim to devise AI Ethics and AI Laws that cover the current issues of AI and also be constructed to deal with the futuristic sentient AI too. We don’t need to split the baby, as some might say (a phrase perhaps worth retiring). Both objectives or goals could possibly be simultaneously pursued. The counter to that point is that we might fail to deal with both and that the limelight will inevitably go to the futuristic AI instead. And so on.
Another viewpoint is that we can muddle along with the existing AI issues. We don’t need any special effort to do so. On the other hand, AI as an extinction risk requires extraordinary attention. Since our very existence depends on coping with the AI extinction risk, naturally and sensibly the bulk of our attention to dealing with AI should go in that direction. The counter to that point is that meanwhile, we end up devasting ourselves with regular AI. And so on.
You are probably shifting around uncomfortably in your comfy chair, trying to figure out which of these myriads of points and counterpoints is best to adhere to. Welcome to the evolving and heated realm of AI and the role of AI Ethics and AI Law. There is no end to the excitement.
Conclusion
I’d bet that some of you might be tossing your hands in the air and decrying that we should just ban AI and be done with all this handwringing. The idea seems simple. If we don’t allow AI, we don’t have to worry one iota about what AI is going to do or become.
Problem solved.
Sorry to say that this does not solve the problem. As I’ve discussed in my analysis of proposals to ban AI, you aren’t in any practical sense going to be able to do so, see the link here. One way or another, people will be devising AI. This can lead to those that have AI and those that don’t. Plus, the AI that they surreptitiously devise will presumably be completely unfettered and unkept, since they are ignoring or flaunting the ban and will seemingly concoct whatever they wish to contrive.
AI is here to stay.
AI is going to be further advanced.
Those are rules of thumb to live by.
We undoubtedly need to be carrying on a societal dialogue about where AI is heading. Trying to bury our heads in the sand doesn’t seem like a viable approach. In that case, you could persuasively say that having proclamations about the future of AI is duly warranted.
The counterargument is that if the statements are repetitive and cover the same ground, or are over-the-top in terms of sentiment, this can lead to a kind of AI overlord alarmist fatigue. Perhaps regulators and lawmakers will tire of the repeated clamoring. Maybe the public will see this as a hackneyed trope. If that occurs, the worry is that all attention to everyday AI concerns, such as the regular AI qualms that I’ve mentioned, will be tossed into the same category as a crying wolf mantra.
Wait for a second, a heated retort arises, is this an implication that we should remain silent? But we cannot remain silent when so much is on the line. Silence would be disastrous.
We might find the famous quote by Pythagoras, the renowned philosopher and acclaimed mathematician to be instructive on these modern-day AI issues: “It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few. Be silent or say something better than silence.”
You’ll have to judge each new AI-risks proclamation in light of those ancient but thoroughly insightful words.
By Amine Rahal, a tech entrepreneur and writer. He is currently the CEO of IronMonk Solutions. Last year saw the release of one of the biggest technological marvels of my lifetime: …
By Amine Rahal, a tech entrepreneur and writer. He is currently the CEO of IronMonk Solutions.
Last year saw the release of one of the biggest technological marvels of my lifetime: ChatGPT. After it publicly launched on November 30, my companies had all-hands meetings to discuss how we can adopt this artificial intelligence chatbot to streamline how we do business. Since then, ChatGPT (and its recent successor, GPT-4) has made its presence felt in virtually all aspects of our workplace.
Because ChatGPT is capable of producing human-like text and code, and other OpenAI creations like DALL-E 2 can generate original artworks, many of the creative tasks typically assigned to humans can now be delegated to AI programs. Does that mean entrepreneurs should clean house and send their entire human workforce home? Not at all. At least that’s not what I did. Instead, I’ve leveraged these technologies to streamline our output and make every human on the team more efficient.
Entrepreneurs of tomorrow will have to accommodate AI in their workflow. If they don’t, I don’t think they’ll be competitive enough to go up against those who do. Here are some of the ways in which entrepreneurs can harness AI systems to make their companies more productive and competitive.
ChatGPT is more than capable of authoring full-length blog posts all on its own, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Why? The text usually turns out to be dry, repetitive and humorless. An AI author is still no match for a skilled human one—at least for now.
Instead, I recommend using AI systems to make blog writing faster and more research-dense. If there’s a particularly fact-heavy part of an article that you’re writing, ask ChatGPT to write that particular section. Then, read the text carefully and edit it to improve flow and continuity before pasting it into your article.
Remember, you want the tone and voice to match in every section of your article. Always double-check whatever output ChatGPT gives you and make changes wherever necessary. You can also paste large segments of your own writing into the ChatGPT prompt and ask it to mimic your unique writing style and tone.
If you need low-level support with content creation, copyediting or simply finding the right phrasing or messaging for an email or press release, ChatGPT can help. Whereas I used to delegate many of these tasks to my administrative assistant, I now free up more of their time by leaning on the expertise of ChatGPT.
For instance, I run any important email to a client or prospect through ChatGPT to make sure there aren’t any typos or tonal errors. Not only has this saved me time I would’ve spent waiting for my assistant’s response, but it has also saved me the embarrassment of having missed a typo!
I often use online platforms to conduct market research surveys. I then share the survey findings on my social feeds or client websites in order to drum up interest in the findings and build organic traffic to the websites.
As a bonus, I like to add ChatGPT’s responses to certain questions. I feel like this can often add an interesting additional perspective to human-generated answers, especially for open-ended qualitative questions, such as “What do you think of the relationship between the stock market and the spot price of Bitcoin?”
ChatGPT is able to provide unique responses that often deviate from those I typically hear from subject matter experts. This appears to be a growing trend, too, as other survey and expert roundups are also starting to include ChatGPT responses.
If I’m brainstorming a YouTube video title or drafting versions of an Instagram post caption, sometimes I can’t decide between a few options. In the past, I’d fire off my proposed titles or captions to employees or assistants and wait for their response. And while I still do this in most cases, when I’m truly crunched for time, I’ll ask ChatGPT.
ChatGPT tends to prefer titles and captions that have strong calls to action, include a value proposition and are personal. It’s nothing groundbreaking but is a good reminder of what constitutes good marketing copy. So far, it hasn’t failed me.
Goodbye boring, repetitive stock photos, and hello DALL-E 2, an image-generating AI system that creates everything from hyperrealistic photo imagery to abstract artworks. When I need custom art to accompany a blog post, or to come up with a creative thumbnail for a YouTube video, it helps to lean on DALL-E 2 from time to time. Although I find that it is sometimes limited in creating photo-like imagery of people, in my experience it can create super compelling abstract pieces that generate clicks at rates far superior to generic stock images.
Remember that AI is a tool, not a replacement. The best entrepreneurs will use AI to streamline their output and speed up systems that would otherwise depend on time-consuming and tedious human activity. Even the best AI right now cannot replace a qualified human employee in a creative role—rather, it can only enhance what they’re already capable of.
Employers need to keep this in mind as the AI revolution takes off. Keep it human-centered whenever human sensibilities are required. For instance, entrepreneurs may use ChatGPT APIs and other chatbots to handle frontline customer support services. I recommend going against the grain and maintaining a phone number with a real human on the line. This will help your business stand out and build connections between your team and your customers.
In short, entrepreneurs need to know when to use AI and when not to. When in doubt, don’t. But when it comes to mechanical tasks and time-intensive processes like those listed above, you may be better off delegating them to AI to free up more of your time for human-centered work.
