Valleys, Shifting Sands & Pillars in AI
Same week. Almost 20 conversations. So similar, yet so different.
Almost every conversation touched on AI.
Last week was week 1 of what some of my friends call semi-retirement or self-imposed unemployment.
I spent it catching up with old friends, and connecting to people. Some who I wish I spoke to earlier. But not too late, I guess.
The familiar faces. An arts entrepreneur turned in-house art consultant. Another from when we were young kids playing basketball, now leading tech development. A colleague who is now the country head for a large asset manager. My supervisor from PhD days, still at the frontier of AI research. A government lead shaping national AI governance.
New connections. A global innovation head at a bank. An evangelist who’s been building AI awareness in Singapore for over a decade. A venture builder also doing executive education. The chair of a global trading body’s AI working group. Head of analytics at a global financial services firm. Startup founders building with AI. A student of my PhD supervisor before me.
Different worlds. But some simple patterns on AI emerged.
The Valleys
AI is everywhere, but peaks and troughs.
AI came up in every single conversation. Every single one. Not sure if it was because they were talking to me. But even when it was just old friends catching up, AI found its way in.
What struck me wasn’t the interest. It was the valleys. The diversity of understanding and usage.
The arts consultant works in a bank now. AI comes up all the time. Everyone’s curious. But her actual work? Largely unchanged.
The innovation head at a bank said something that stuck. Building things isn’t the hard part. Teaching people what AI actually is, how it works, what it can and can’t do, that’s the hard part.
An old friend who runs real money made it concrete. We discussed a possible talk for his firm. But his people range from technical natives to those as far from technical work as practically possible. How do you design something that speaks to both?
Which leads to a harder question: how do you move an organization forward when the spectrum is that wide?
The Shifting Sands
Under the surface, things are shifting.
The analytics head at a global financial services firm told a story of significant shifts already happening. Changes to the interface between staff and clients enabled by AI. Democratization of the use of AI and data in ways that weren’t possible a year ago. My personal take. It was not really just AI causing the shift, but a fundamental reframe of how to think about interfaces.
The lead of an AI working group brought the same lens to a different sector. AI usage in trading is growing. Understanding how it impacts trading systems is becoming urgent. We spent a long time on a question without clear answers: what are the limits of transparency and disclosure when AI becomes pervasive?
The Pillars
But none of this is new.
One conversation was with someone who’s been building AI awareness in Singapore for over a decade. Not the current hype cycle. The one before. And the one before that.
A government lead reminded me that the real magic isn’t in the applications. It’s in the horizontal capabilities. Testing. Assurance. The foundational work where the magic happens.
If you think about it, machine and deep learning were already genuinely useful before 2022. But it was not accessible, even with no code platforms. After ChatGPT, that changed. But did the underlying fundamentals change too? No.
So I think the valley is real. The uneven distribution of AI understanding and use. But the sands are definitely shifting. When they tip, they could tip fast. And the pillars continue to matter. Talk to people that have been doing this for years.
Still exploring
On a personal level, it was nice to catch up with old friends, and connect with new ones. Some conversations seem to take on a different veneer when you transit to a new state in life.
One week. Twenty conversations. No conclusions. But some interesting patterns.
What valleys, shifts, or pillars are you seeing?
#AI #AIRiskManagement #Transitions #Explorations