Non-tech companies remain lukewarm, if not downright asleep, on radical GenAI business plans. This is in stark contrast to the tech giants making bold announcements. Advancements in healthcare overwhelmingly come from Amazon, Google, or IBM. In synthetic proteins, Google and Microsoft dominate headlines. Even in cutting-edge robotics, Google leads while Tesla pushes generative AI for driverless cars. Sift through announcements in industrial design, environment tech, mineral processing, and drug discovery - the lack of enthusiasm from those industries' major players is jarring compared to the hype from many of its consultants or those who dabble in these fields sitting in the offices of technology companies.
The reasons are straightforward amid economic turmoil. Few sectors or companies are booming. GenAI is seen as an expensive adventure, and new, uncertain investments have few takers these days, given the high and rising capital costs.
We're still in the shadow of crypto's meltdown. Many enthusiasts lack the goodwill or courage to champion another revolutionary technology. Given the focus on hallucinations and errors, professionals have little interest in early adoption and spend a lot of time on the clean-up. Plus, unresolved ethical issues, the unsettling pace of technology change, and fast-changing regulations give more pause to big plans. All-pervasive focus on AI's risks (the same few tend to consume a lot of place in nearly every one of the hundreds of articles written daily) provides another reason not to be pioneering.
As a result, bold moves come almost exclusively from tech companies at the source of GenAI. They remain starry-eyed about capabilities while appearing to exaggerate to others. Sure, non-tech players dabble in the low-end use cases in employee/process augmentations, chatbots, and analytics - relatively uncontroversial toe-dips that won't lead to major professional or corporate mishaps.
Meanwhile, Big Tech's gradual incursion into other sectors is turning more than strategic as it is going unimpeded. Big Tech can't and won't do everything. But GenAI's true potential will have few eye-popping expressions until broader adoption. The global environment risks delaying the proofs needed until billions start getting invested in new non-tech projects by their industry's giants.
It's not too late for most, but it will be later. Big Tech's creep catches little serious attention. If the internet consumed bookstores and photography giants, and smartphones displaced all previous-generation mobile phone giants, GenAI could bring even larger disruption.
