Recent rapid leaps forward in generative artificial intelligence (AI) have inspired both hope and hesitation. How can we best harness this new power to help our businesses? And more importantly, how can we harness it responsibly? Collected here are some of the most interesting and surprising AI quotes from top AI and business experts on how AI will affect our businesses and our lives.
These are people who design AI systems as well as leaders at organizations that are adopting this technology at a rapid pace.
Quotes by Topic
AI quotes on business impact
According to McKinsey, 40% of C-suite executives anticipate spending more on AI in the coming year. That’s because businesses need to begin implementing their own AI strategies at lightning speed. How are successful companies going to manage this rapid adoption cycle?
“Artificial intelligence and generative AI may be the most important technology of any lifetime.” [watch video]
— Marc Benioff, chair, CEO, and co-founder, Salesforce
“There’s no question we are in an AI and data revolution, which means that we’re in a customer revolution and a business revolution. But it’s not as simple as taking all of your data and training a model with it. There’s data security, there’s access permissions, there’s sharing models that we have to honor. These are important concepts, new risks, new challenges, and new concerns that we have to figure out together.” [watch video]
–Clara Shih, CEO, Salesforce AI
“Right now, people talk about being an AI company. There was a time after the iPhone App Store launch where people talked about being a mobile company. But no software company says they’re a mobile company now because it’d be unthinkable to not have a mobile app. And it’ll be unthinkable not to have intelligence integrated into every product and service. It’ll just be an expected, obvious thing.” [watch video]
— Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO, OpenAI
“We see the wave coming. Now this time next year, every company has to implement it — not even have a strategy. Implement it.” [read more]
— Emad Mostaque, founder and CEO, Stability AI
“The playing field is poised to become a lot more competitive, and businesses that don’t deploy AI and data to help them innovate in everything they do will be at a disadvantage.” [read more]
— Paul Daugherty, chief technology and innovation officer, Accenture
“The reality is that being unprepared is a choice. The benefits come when we see AI as a tool, not a terror, and bring it into our sales motions.” [read more]
— Anita Nielsen, president, LDK Advisory Services
“Harnessing machine learning can be transformational, but for it to be successful, enterprises need leadership from the top. This means understanding that when machine learning changes one part of the business — the product mix, for example — then other parts must also change. This can include everything from marketing and production to supply chain, and even hiring and incentive systems.” [read more]
— Erik Brynjolfsson, professor and senior fellow, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI; director, Stanford Digital Economy Lab; and co-founder and co-chairman, Workhelix
AI quotes on sales
Generative AI is transforming the sales landscape with intelligent business tools that improve customer engagement, create more personalized interactions, and optimize sales processes, so reps can sell more, faster. How will this all change our fundamental approach to sales?
“When deploying AI, whether you focus on top-line growth or bottom-line profitability, start with the customer and work backward.” [watch video]
— Rob Garf, vice president and general manager, Salesforce Retail
“The future of sales is to serve, not sell. Generative AI gives us guidance that’s so personal and precise, we’re always presenting the most relevant solutions — no pushing required.” [read more]
— Marcus Chan, president and founder, Venli Consulting Group
“Turn your sales org into a sales lab. Give generative AI tools to your sellers and tell them to experiment until they find the applications they love. That’s how we’ll train sellers — not from the top down, but from the bottom up.” [read more]
— John Barrows, CEO, JB Sales
“It’s about making connections through the data that you might not have made as a human being. AI has the uncanny ability to tease out things about the consumer you might never think about.”
— Ryan Bezenek, vice president of IT, Ariat International
“Sales AI is making it easier and better to work, but not by taking jobs from sales reps. Deals are won by having a conversation, and I think you’re always going to need a person to have that relationship and build that rapport with the customer. What we want to do is leverage AI so that they can do more of that.” [read more]
— Cory Benz, revenue operations manager, Crexi
AI quotes on workforce readiness
While AI will certainly change how we work, the experts we spoke to don’t foresee huge spikes in unemployment related to AI, or a future with most of us out of work. Instead, they predict a skill shift, and talent redeployment issues that will need to be addressed. Most experts are speaking of AI as a co-pilot who helps human workers do their jobs more quickly and with more precision.
“It’s natural to wonder if there will be a jobless future or not. What we’ve concluded, based on much research, is that there will be jobs lost, but also gained, and changed. The number of jobs gained and changed is going to be a much larger number, so if you ask me if I worry about a jobless future, I actually don’t. That’s the least of my worries.” [watch video]
— James Manyika, senior vice president of research, technology and society, Google
“Humans need and want more time to interact with each other. I think AI coming about and replacing routine jobs is pushing us to do what we should be doing anyway: the creation of more humanistic service jobs.” [watch video]
— Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and CEO, Sinovation Ventures
“It’s not about displacing humans, it’s about humanizing the digital experience.” [watch video]
— Rob Garf, vice president and general manager, Salesforce Retail
“Every team in your organization is looking to the IT team to help them deliver AI powered experiences. And I know we don’t want to admit it, but IT doesn’t have all the answers. Because AI isn’t as easy as just turning it on. Delivering great AI experiences requires time, expertise and data.” [watch video]
— Ahyoung An, senior director, product management, MuleSoft
“In most of the use cases we’re seeing, even in business — and there are a ton of interesting uses in business — [AI is] generally about making a human more productive. That’s where it’s really good today. And the companies, for a variety of reasons, both for what it’s good at, but also for legal liability, none of them are saying ‘Here, run this AI script and just let it go.’ They always talk about a human in the loop.” [watch video]
— Ina Fried, chief technology correspondent, Axios
AI quotes about the future of work
So we know that the way we work will be changing, with many processes becoming automated, and a refocus on those skills that only humans have. Being able to make judgment calls, think creatively, and practice emotional intelligence are skills that will stay in high demand — and these skills are not easily replicated by AI. As companies become more automated, there will be heavy competition for workers who can use this technology efficiently.
“I’ve long believed that AI won’t just enhance the way we live, but transform it fundamentally. … AI is placing tools of unprecedented power, flexibility, and even personalization into everyone’s hands, requiring little more than natural language to operate. They’ll assist us in many parts of our lives, taking on the role of superpowered collaborators.” [read more]
— Silvio Savarese, executive vice president and chief scientist, Salesforce AI Research
“I think the future of global competition is, unambiguously, about creative talent, and I’m far from the only person who sees this as the main competition point going forward. Everyone will have access to amazing AI. Your vendor on that will not be a huge differentiator. Your creative talent though — that will be who you are. Instead of chasing that race to the bottom on labor costs, invest in turning your talent into a team of explorers who can solve amazing problems using AI as the tool that takes the busy work out. That is the company that wins in the end.” [watch video]
— Vivienne Ming, executive chair and co-founder, Socos Labs
“I think what makes AI different from other technologies is that it’s going to bring humans and machines closer together. AI is sometimes incorrectly framed as machines replacing humans. It’s not about machines replacing humans, but machines augmenting humans.” [watch video]
— Robin Bordoli, partner, Authentic Ventures
AI quotes about trust
Trust and transparency are key areas of focus in AI. AI isn’t inherently good or bad, but the data that powers it can be biased and cause outputs that are toxic or perpetuate discrimination. Organizations also need to be clear with customers about how they’re using AI, how their data works with our AI systems, and what information they see is AI-generated.
“The future of consumer goods is Data + AI +CRM + Trust. You can’t think about these things in a silo and you can’t think about them as separate investments. All of them work together in a continuous loop to help you unlock the step change and amazing transformation ahead of you.” [watch video]
— Najah Phillips, senior product marketing manager, Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud
“The world of enterprise software is going to get completely rewired. Companies with untrustworthy AI will not do well in the market.” [watch video]
— Abhay Parasnis, founder and CEO, Typeface
“There’s a real danger of systematizing the discrimination we have in society [through AI technologies]. What I think we need to do — as we’re moving into this world full of invisible algorithms everywhere — is that we have to be very explicit, or have a disclaimer, about what our error rates are like.” [watch video]
— Timnit Gebru, founder and executive director at The Distributed AI Research Institute
“While I don’t necessarily subscribe to all the hype — or hysteria — around AI, I do believe in AI’s transformative potential and I’m encouraged to see Trust become as central to the AI conversation as the technology itself. And I feel heartened that more and more of us think about the ethical implications of today’s most exciting innovations, and take steps today to ensure safe, trustworthy AI tomorrow.” [read more]
— Paula Goldman, chief ethical and humane use officer, Salesforce
“If your users can’t trust the technology, you’re not going to bring it into your product. And so we pour a lot of resources and effort behind closing potential risk factors, like toxicity or bias, [so we’re] able to give our customers comfort about the data that was used as part of training.” [watch video]
— Aiden Gomez, co-founder and CEO, Cohere
“I think trust comes from transparency and control. You want to see the datasets that these models have been trained on. You want to see how this model has been built, what kind of biases it includes. That’s how you can trust the system. It’s really hard to trust something that you don’t understand.” [watch video]
— Clem Delangue, co-founder and CEO, Hugging Face
“When I talk to experts in the field, the area they’re most concerned about is misinformation. …I think we’re going to have to get better and that means companies coming up with automated tools. It means watermarking videos and other things so that we know they were created artificially. It means having a provenance chain so that you can tell this is footage that was legitimately captured from a device and here’s everything that’s happened to it along the way.” [watch video]
— Ina Fried, chief technology correspondent, Axios
“There is a silver lining on the bias issue. For example, say you have an algorithm trying to predict who should get a promotion. And say there was a supermarket chain that, statistically speaking, didn’t promote women as often as men. It might be easier to fix an algorithm than fix the minds of 10,000 store managers.” [watch video]
— Richard Socher, CEO and founder, You.com
“A lot of times, the failings are not in AI. They’re human failings, and we’re not willing to address the fact that there isn’t a lot of diversity in the teams building the systems in the first place. And somewhat innocently, they aren’t as thoughtful about balancing training sets to get the thing to work correctly. But then teams let that occur again and again. And you realize, if you’re not thinking about the human problem, then AI isn’t going to solve it for you.” [watch video]
— Vivienne Ming, executive chair and co-founder, Socos Labs
“With great power comes great responsibility, and that responsibility comes in the form of security and privacy. This battle between data protection and business objectives is not new — most of us are very used to balancing speed and cool new technology with safety.” [watch video]
— Suzie Compton, senior director, product management, Salesforce Privacy and Data Management
AI quotes about ethical and privacy considerations
AI experts universally agree that there needs to be more discussion and collaboration around AI ethics, privacy, and government regulation. These will continue to be areas that change as technology advances and regulations play catch up.
We’re seeing a kind of a Wild West situation with AI and regulation right now. The scale at which businesses are adopting AI technologies isn’t matched by clear guidelines to regulate algorithms and help researchers avoid the pitfalls of bias in datasets. We need to advocate for a better system of checks and balances to test AI for bias and fairness, and to help businesses determine whether certain use cases are even appropriate for this technology at the moment.”
— Timnit Gebru, founder and executive director at The Distributed AI Research Institute
“We’re just trying to race to keep up with the societal impact of all this. And one of the reasons for creating Stability was so that we could create some standards … A lot of the standards around the industry right now, I think are incorrect. Like, scrape the whole internet and then just try and tune it back in the preferences. … If I watched all of YouTube, I’d be a bit crazy too.” [watch video]
— Emad Mostaque, founder and CEO, Stability AI
“I think it’s promising that we have policymakers who are trying to get smart about this technology and get in front of risks before we’ve had mass deployment across the product space. I think there are some very obvious things that we need to establish, one of which is the right to know whether you’re consuming content from a bot or not.” [watch video]
— Clem Delangue, co-founder and CEO, Hugging Face
“The problem that needs to be addressed is that the government itself needs to get a better handle on how technology systems interact with the citizenry. Secondarily, there needs to be more cross-talk between industry, civil society, and the academic organizations working to advance these technologies and the government institutions that are going to be representing them.”
— Terah Lyons, founding executive director, Partnership on AI and affiliate fellow, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI
“In this era of profound digital transformation, it’s important to remember that business, as well as government, has a role to play in creating shared prosperity — not just prosperity. After all, the same technologies that can be used to concentrate wealth and power can also be used to distribute it more widely and empower more people.” [read more]
— Erik Brynjolfsson, professor and senior fellow, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI; director, Stanford Digital Economy Lab; and co-founder and co-chairman, Workhelix
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