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Blind to Disruption – The CEOs Who Missed the Future

(steveblank.com)
128 points ArmageddonIt | 2 comments | 08 Jul 25 13:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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jampa ◴[08 Jul 25 15:43 UTC] No.44501089[source]▶
I like Steve's content, but the ending misses the mark.

With the carriage / car situation, individual transportation is their core business, and most companies are not in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

I say this as someone who has worked for 7 years implementing AI research for production, from automated hardware testing to accessibility for nonverbals: I don't think founders need to obsess even more than they do now about implementing AI, especially in the front end.

This AI hype cycle is missing the mark by building ChatGPT-like bots and buttons with sparkles that perform single OpenAI API calls. AI applications are not a new thing, they have always been here, now they are just more accessible.

The best AI applications are beneath the surface to empower users, Jeff Bezos says that (in 2016!)[1]. You don't see AI as a chatbot in Amazon, you see it for "demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations."

[1]: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2016-letter-to...

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hedgehog ◴[09 Jul 25 00:50 UTC] No.44505340[source]▶
Viewed from a different angle I think he's probably close. A service provider changing the back end while leaving the front end UI similar is not dissimilar to early cars being built like carriages. But when the product can shift from "give me an app that makes it easier to do my taxes" to "keep me current on my taxes and send me status updates" that's a pretty radical difference in what the customer sees.
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1. majormajor ◴[09 Jul 25 01:22 UTC] No.44505492[source]▶
> But when the product can shift from "give me an app that makes it easier to do my taxes" to "keep me current on my taxes and send me status updates" that's a pretty radical difference in what the customer sees.

For a bunch of stuff - banks, online shopping, booking a taxi, etc - this shift already happened with non-LLM-based "send me notifications of unusual account activity" or even the dead-simple "send me an email about every transaction on my bank account." Phone notifications moved it from email to built-into-the-OS even.

The "LLM hype cycle" tweak becomes something like "have an LLM summarize the email instead of just listing the three transactions" which is of dubious use to the average user.

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2. hedgehog ◴[09 Jul 25 04:13 UTC] No.44506283[source]▶
No the shift hasn't happened yet at all. Let's take those examples one by one.

Banks: Normal retail customers are responsible for managing their account balances, importing transaction data into whatever book keeping system, downloading their tax forms for filing, adjusting their services and strategy based on whatever they're planning to do in their life etc. Private banking is a reasonable model for the service that everyone should get, but can't because it's too expensive.

Online shopping: Most people have to figure out what they're looking for, research the options, figure out where to order from, keep track of warranties, repairs, returns, recalls, maintenance, consumables, etc. Personal assistants can absorb most of that, but that's expensive.

Booking a taxi: On the same theme, for all the scheduled travel that should be booked and ready to go based on your calendar. Personal assistants can do this too, but again it's expensive.

The core ideas of giving the service provider context, guidance, and autonomy to work without regular intervention are not unique to automation but only recently is there a conceivable path to building software that can actually deliver.