One of Us Thinks AI is Overhyped. The Other Doesn't | Live Debate

This is THE AI debate you've been waiting for. Will AI become as transformational as the internet, or will history remember it more like blockchain and the metaverse? In this episode of Digital Disruption, Info-Tech's Geoff Nielson and Jeremy Roberts go head-to-head over one of the biggest technology questions of our time: Is AI overhyped? The debate looks at whether generative AI is delivering measurable business value or whether the excitement surrounding OpenAI, Microsoft Copilot, Google, Nvidia, and today's AI investments has outpaced reality. From enterprise productivity and healthcare innovation to AI adoption, venture capital, cloud computing, autonomous vehicles, and the future of work, both sides present compelling evidence at the Info-Tech LIVE Conference in Las Vegas. You'll hear why the profitability of today's AI industry is being questioned, how massive capital investments are shaping the race among AI leaders, and what these financial realities could mean for the future of artificial intelligence. Whether you're an IT leader, business executive, or AI enthusiast, this debate offers practical insights into where AI is delivering real value, and where expectations may be running ahead of reality. Which side of the debate are you on? Like and follow for weekly episodes. In this episode: 00:00 Is AI Overhyped? 00:52 The case against AI being overhyped 03:31 How AI is already transforming business 04:18 AI's impact on healthcare, science & society 05:20 AI is overhyped 06:40 Why many people still don't like AI 07:18 Is the AI business model sustainable? 08:45 Does AI actually save time? 09:23 AI and the future of jobs 10:17 The human cost of AI 12:04 AI adoption vs. AI skepticism 13:52 Is AI following the same path as cloud computing? 15:05 Are AI companies creating another tech bubble? 16:50 Technology vs. company valuations 18:02 AI search, Google & the future of the internet 19:31 Is AI becoming the next Blockchain? 20:24 Is AI's transformation inevitable? 21:29 Healthcare, Watson & enterprise AI 23:34 Microsoft Copilot, enterprise adoption & ROI 24:18 The future of AI in business 25:12 Audience votes on winner 26:04 Final thoughts on if AI really is overhyped. Our links: Visit our website: https://www.infotech.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=podcast Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InfoTechRG

• 0:01Speaker 00

  OpenAI, que nunca se ha vuelto a lucir, está programado para ahorrar 218 billones de dólares en 2029. El modelo de negocio no es sostenible. Podemos debatir exactamente cuándo va a cambiar completamente el mundo, pero no es un "cuándo", sino un "si".

• 0:25Speaker 00

  La AI tiene algunos de los peores mercados en el mundo. Como salas llenas de personas, más grandes que esto, literalmente están boating la AI. Así que se siente un poco extraño ser un poco de underdog haciendo el caso para la AI. Y por cierto, el caso que voy a hacer hoy sobre que no esté sobrepasado, no estoy haciendo una declaración financiera, no estoy diciendo que todo el mundo invierta en la AI hoy. Estoy hablando de la tecnología, que la tecnología va a cambiar el mundo y que ya está cambiando el mundo. Así que empecemos hablando del momento y hablemos de tu trabajo y de tu mundo. Así que empecemos con tu trabajo. Para mí, en este momento, lo que estamos viendo en las organizaciones es que la AI es endémica y contagiosa. Es endémica y contagiosa.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  Lo que eso significa es que la gente la está adoptando a una velocidad extremadamente rápida y continúan usandola. Cuando miras las métricas de productividad de los empleados, estamos viendo que cuando realmente medimos esto, la cantidad de trabajo y la calidad del trabajo están ambos pasando por la pared. Estamos mirando la completación de tareas, que aumenta casi un 55% por un estudio de Microsoft, mejorando la calidad del trabajo un 20 a 40%, la MIT y Stanford lo hicieron. Y el 60% de usuarios de la AI está diciendo que han estado creando algo que no podrían haber hecho hace un año. Y puedo decirte desde mi experiencia vivida, la salida en volumen que veo, incluso las últimas semanas y días de slides que son de la AI, de correos electrónicos, es por la pared. Y para cualquiera con quien trabajo, te veo, te veo tu contenido de la AI que estás enviándome.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  La segunda pieza aquí es la transformación funcional que la AI está haciendo ya ha comenzado, ¿verdad? En IT, el 70% de los departamentos de IT ya están usando la AI, el 55% de la seguridad, y casi la mitad de todos los desarrolladores están usando la AI en este momento. Y en el negocio, no está lejos, el 50% de las equipos de servicio al cliente están usando la AI, los ventas y el marketing y la HR están ambos en un 40% y los números están simplemente creciendo. Ahora, cuando miro fuera del negocio, es lo que ya está sucediendo en este momento. Está ya siendo usado para la ciencia fronteriza, ¿verdad? Estamos escuchando sobre, ya sabes, las vacunas de mRNA. Estamos hablando de la COVID, fue una pieza clave en sacar la vacuna. Y Bob Leek, ayer dijo que la AI ya está siendo usada para el plan de quimioterapia para su esposa. Está cambiando el mundo.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Hay otra historia que amo que leí sobre que es un poco menos popular, pero la AI está siendo usada ahora para mejorar el pronóstico del sistema de clima. Y ha mejorado el pronóstico un 20% y esto ha salvado vidas porque si puedes predecir más con precisión el clima extremo, puedes decirle a la gente que evacue, puedes darles la información correcta de una manera adecuada y tiene un impacto dramático en el humano. La otra pieza que tal vez hayas visto es los vehículos autónomos, ¿verdad? Estos están impulsados por la AI en este momento. Waymo estará en 15 ciudades de Estados Unidos al final del año. Y por cierto, no sé si lo viste fuera del hotel, pero tenemos vehículos autónomos este año por primera vez en Las Vegas, que están desplegados por toda la ciudad. Está sucediendo ahora y está cambiando nuestras vidas.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Y ya estamos empezando a ver que las industrias cambian, las industrias enteras. La industria de diseño ha cambiado durante la noche, la industria legal ha cambiado durante la noche. Podría continuar y continuar. Pero hablemos un poco de lo que viene. Así que en tu trabajo, la agencia agente va a estar sucediendo con nosotros, ¿verdad? La reestructuración ya está comenzando. Como dije, es endémica y es contagiosa. Y lo genial de la agencia agente, que tal vez ya has oído en esta conferencia, es que hay una receta para ello, ¿verdad? Hemos caminado a través de los miembros, líderes de IT a través de ello y podemos empezar a construirlo para ti en cuatro días. Y estamos viendo a la gente decirnos que estamos obteniendo 100 millones de valor en cuatro días, 9.5% de los 10. La receta existe, ya está comenzando y crecerá desde allí.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  Y luego estoy más emocionado por los verdaderos diferenciadores que vienen de la AI. Así que si piensas en lo que pasó cuando nos mudamos a Internet, como dijo Joel, cuando la web llegó, cuando nos mudamos a, ya sabes, las ofertas de productos digitales, ya estamos empezando a ver esto y solo va a desbloquear más y más. Y luego en el mundo, la AI se está convirtiendo en una utilidad, ¿verdad? Esta noción de poder tener inteligencia en demanda que no se mide, ya ha comenzado y está cambiando la forma en que hacemos todo. Y luego la otra pieza, ya sabes, podría darte 100 ejemplos para esto, voy a tratar de mantenerlo breve. La atención médica es la que más me emociona personalmente. Y si estuvieras en la sesión que hice antes, ya estamos empezando a ver cómo los médicos pueden usar esto para ser más eficientes. Y ya sabes, estamos viendo cuando hacemos pruebas, la AI reduce el desgaste en los médicos por 10 puntos.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Y si podemos obtener una mejor precisión en la forma en que diagnosticamos, estudios han mostrado ya que incluso captando un adicional, usando la AI, puedes captar un adicional 6 millones de errores diagnósticos en los Estados Unidos por año. Esto previene a 200.000 muertes, ¿verdad? 200.000 más discapacidades por encima de eso, más personalización, más acceso amplio. Esto es un cambio de la costa, es extremadamente emocionante y creo que no hay dos formas de ello. Y con eso, lo voy a pasar a mi oponente.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Muchas gracias, Jeff, y espero escucharlo de ti ahora, Jeremy.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Bueno, así que cuando me preguntaron si quería hacer este debate, lo framingo por esta manera. Dijeron, ¿te gustaría decirle a tu jefe, Jeff es mi jefe, que está equivocado frente a miles de personas? Y dije, no puedo pensar en una mejor forma de pasar un día vivo, así que hagamos esta conversación. Si no trabajas en tecnología de empresa, puedes saltar adelante o tomar una rápida cajada cerebral. Pero si lo haces, Infotech es tu arma secreta. Infotech ayuda a las equipos de IT a hacer proyectos más rápidos, mejores y a un menor costo. Ya sea que estés desarrollando nuevas tecnologías, mejorando procesos o simplemente buscando reducir costos, Infotech proporciona acceso ilimitado a herramientas prácticas y guía experta que necesitas ejecutar a una fracción del costo de la consultoría tradicional.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  No importa el proyecto, desde la estrategia de la AI hasta la seguridad ciberínea hasta la negociación de vendedores, Infotech te cubre. Visita el enlace abajo y no olvides darle like y suscribirte. Estoy de acuerdo ampliamente en que la AI es muy emocionante y muy interesante, pero tengo una perspectiva un poco diferente y creo que tengo una sospecha de que muchas personas en la audiencia estarán de acuerdo conmigo. No te preocupes, todo el mundo, este es un espacio seguro. Así que el emperador no tiene ropa. Y una vez, en realidad, puse un pantalón de despliegue y estaba... De todos modos, se veto. Alguien dijo que se podía hacer en una conferencia diferente. Así que tengo algunos puntos en esto que creo que todos necesitan escuchar. Número uno, muchas personas que trabajan con la AI no la gustan.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Si haces un encuesta de estadounidenses, muchos de ustedes en la sala son estadounidenses, algunos no, el 50% de la gente tiene una opinión negativa de ello. Y la AI tiene una gran conciencia. Todo el mundo y su tía y su hijo y su perro están usando esto, están familiarizados con ello y no les gusta. Hay muy pocas cosas en las que puedes conseguir que el 50% de la gente esté de acuerdo. En todo el país, ese es un informe de Pew, puedes mirarlo. La gente no la gusta. Así que si es tan genial, ¿por qué la gente lo odia? Ese es el número uno. Número dos, el modelo de negocio no es sostenible. Hey Jeff, ¿puedo pedirle 300 billones de dólares de dinero? Puedes darme el dinero en el backstage, no te preocupes. Lo reanudaré de nuevo a través de Rob

• 7:31Speaker 00

  y luego puedes usarlo para comprar algo de mí. Mira cuánta valor justamente creamos.

• 7:40Speaker 00

  Gracias, gracias.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  En este ejemplo, Rob es Nvidia, yo soy OpenAI, Jeff es Oracle.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  Quiero decir, venga. Venga. Este no es un modelo de negocio sostenible. Hey Jeff, hey Jeff, lo siento, estoy debatiéndolo, así que tengo que irle. ¿Has oído hablar de Tesla?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Cuéntame más sobre Tesla.

• 8:04Speaker 00

  Voy a decirles más, lo escribí, no quería equivocarme. Tesla primero se vino a lucir en 2018 después de ahorrar 9.3 billones de dólares. Eso es mucho dinero. Es menos que lo que me estás devociendo, pero es mucho dinero. Uber, famoso capital de venture, me encanta, ahorró 18.2 billones de dólares antes de que finalmente se vino a lucir. OpenAI, que nunca se ha vuelto a lucir, está programado para ahorrar 218 billones de dólares en 2029. Es un poco sobrepasado. Creo que hay un poco más de hype que podemos construir en eso, así que sé que no querías hablar sobre los financieros, pero esto solo funciona si podemos realmente pagar por ello. Muchas personas que trabajan con la AI dicen que están ahorrando poco o nada de tiempo.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Showé un gráfico ayer. Si preguntas a los ejecutivos si están ahorrando tiempo, 20% de ellos dicen que están ahorrando 12 horas a la semana. Si preguntas a la gente que trabaja en el nivel de trabajo, que no tienen ningún informe, si están ahorrando tiempo con la AI, el 40% de ellos dice que no están ahorrando nada. Y sé que has citado ese estudio de Microsoft sobre productividad. Y es gracioso porque fui a un taller de Toyota y tomé un test sobre qué carro debería comprar y dijeron un Toyota.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Come on, Jeff.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you. I worked hard on that. We focus grouped it.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  We hear a lot about AI automating the boring stuff. The boring stuff is how we train juniors. No juniors today, no seniors tomorrow. It can be an individually rational thing, but bad for society. I saw one of my colleagues talk about the diamond-shaped organization because we cut the bottom out. Is that actually a good thing? Does anybody actually want that? I don't know that I do. I think it's overhyped. For now, it's not even cheaper. People are like, "We're gonna save money." Are you? A mystery organization, this is reported, I think in Politico or Axios, they burned $500 million in AI credits in one month because they forgot to put guardrails up. I haven't seen any mega caps doing amazing things, so I think some of that money might have been wasted. It's not even cheaper.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Imagine paying more money for what is often a worse output.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  And then, finally, this is maybe a more philosophical point here. Dehumanizing interaction isn't a net benefit. I want a show of hands. Who here likes getting a chatbot when they need support?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  No, I don't see. Do you see any hands, Jeff? You gotta look that way. No, I don't see any hands. Nobody wants this. The people pushing this aren't pushing it for them. They're pushing it for you.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  If you get a robot that says, "I really feel your pain, you know, the next agent will be with you," that's not exciting. That's not a good thing. You ever heard of a Waldorf school? Lots of wealthy people send their kids to Waldorf schools that don't use technology at all. And guess what? Before I pass it on, because I know we've got to have a little bit of a discussion, I mean, the reality that I'm seeing on the ground is that there's a lot of people out there who are very excited about this technology in the abstract, but the excitement they have isn't concrete. And to me, that's the definition of being overhyped. So I'll leave it at that, and I think maybe I'll click to this next slide here, and let's have a discussion. So, Rob.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yes.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Pass that back to you.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  All right. Well, Jeff, you've got some time to the position there. Jeremy has clearly won the hearts of the people by the interaction.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  But, but, but, but, but hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  We've got a rebuttal.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Anytime there's a generational, transformational technology or change in our world, it will be met with maybe some level of skepticism, but there's some value. And you talked about some of the values, so I'm interested in hearing some of your points. Is this something that has been overhyped, or is there some value out there that we can't lose sight of, too?

• 11:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'd like to remind the room and Jeremy, my opponent, that we're not actually debating who's the best comedian, right?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Well, that was a good line, so you might have.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  If that was what was on the ballot, you know, I might be in real trouble. But I want to talk about AI. And, you know, even in the stats you presented, a lot of them say things like, "Well, 50% of people aren't really liking it," or "50% of people aren't getting a lot of benefit." But you know what? That means 50% are. And that is transformational, right? For a new technology that's still in its infancy, for people to be using it and getting real-time savings out of it, I think that's extremely exciting. And as I said, we're seeing more of it, not less of it. I don't see anyone who's saying, "You know what? I used to use AI, but I don't use it anymore." And that, to me, is extremely telling. This is a train that more people are getting on than they're getting off of. And that, to me, says we're going only in one direction here. In terms of it not

• 12:49Speaker 00

  being cheaper, you know, that's every technology, right? Who remembers when we were all gonna move to the cloud because it was gonna save us money, right? Oh, what a sad time that was, right? But that doesn't mean that it's not the future. It doesn't mean that it's overhyped. It means that it unlocks new capabilities. We can do things with it that we never could before. And so I don't think, you know, that really bears a lot of fruit there. And honestly, all of this comes into the question of, when Jeremy makes his point, I still want to ask you, are you going to adopt AI or not? Are you going to invest in it? Are you going to learn it? Are you going to tell your boss, "Hey, I went to this conference, and there was this hilarious guy, and he said, he said, 'Don't worry about AI. You don't, you don't have to adopt AI.'" And you say, "Boss, I'm listening to the

• 13:34Speaker 00

  funny man. No AI for this organization."

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Well, so you think I'm funny? Thank you.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  That's gonna, that can go in your performance eval. That AI will actually write for me, by the way. And you'll probably use AI to read. There will be a point about it being funny, and we'll see what AI thinks about that. But I just want to be really clear. You will all go back, and if you're not working on an AI plan, you will. And by the way, I don't know that there's anyone in this room who's saying, "You know what? No, AI is not for me," because you can't, because we all recognize that it is the future. And we can debate exactly when it's gonna completely change the world, but it's a when. It is not an if.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Okay. So, I mean, I love your points, Jeff, and not just because you're my boss. There's some, there's some good points there. I will say, there's, there's a couple of things. First of all, I love your cloud example, because anybody in here been in IT for a long time? Remember when the cloud sort of first became a thing? Yeah, I see some hands up? I mean, if we were having this "the cloud is overhyped" conversation, I think we're kind of on the same side. It was overhyped when it first came out, right? It was expensive. It was a difficult thing to migrate to. It wasn't right for every situation, but the cloud sort of eventually found its spot. If you came in and said, "The cloud is going to fundamentally transform the world, and everyone's gonna adopt it," yeah, I would agree that it is overhyped. I'm not saying that AI is inherently bad. I'm simply saying

• 15:00Speaker 01

  that the amount of excitement that it's ginned up in a very particular corner of the internet, LinkedIn, I think, is dramatically overstating the real value. And like, I've got a good example here for you. Did you guys know that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is actually diluting its shareholders? Anybody here about this? For the first time since it went public, Alphabet has issued new equity, $85 billion in new equity, because they need to pay for these massive data centers that I use to make memes of Jeff.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  For the first time, they can't, and I read a JP Morgan Chase article on the AI bubble a little while back, and it said, "Don't worry, this is nothing like the dot-com bubble because it's being funded by companies that can afford it out of their free cash flow." I guess not. So like, if Google, one of the most profitable companies in the world, is dipping into a reserve that it has never had to dip into before, if OpenAI is at a trillion-dollar, almost trillion-dollar valuation, if Anthropic is at a trillion-dollar valuation, and people are still coming to me and saying, "This AI thing is really interesting. What should I use it for?" That, to me, is the textbook definition of being overhyped. And

• 16:19Speaker 01

  so I think you gotta vote for me if you think that AI is, you know, pretty cool, but like, we're still trying to figure out how to use it. You know, maybe we'll summarize some service desk tickets, you know, optimize some, you know, deployments to AWS or whatever. But I don't think it's worth, what, how much market cap do you think AI has added to the S&P 500? You know, $10 trillion? $12 trillion? Think about that number next time you make a meme using Nano Banana, which is a silly name, by the way.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  So I want to, I want to reiterate that we're talking about the hype of the technology, not the companies making the technology. You mentioned cloud. I'll come back to that in a minute. But talking about dot-com, there were a ton of companies that went bust during the dot-com boom, and we very likely will see that again. But does companies going bust mean that we're not moving to the internet, that we're not moving to digital? No, of course it doesn't. It is an innovative phase. There are gonna be winners and losers. We're not betting on specific horses here. The reason that these companies are spending so much money on this is because of demand. It's because of people like Jeremy who demand to make memes of me as their boss. It's because we're all using it for work, right?

• 17:29Speaker 00

  Because we're doing things that are agentic. But the difference to me between a technology like cloud and a technology like AI is, cloud is exciting for people in this room. AI is exciting from everyone to, you know, the kids who are making their own t-shirt companies, to the researchers who are using it to come up with new vaccines and treatments and change lives. Everyone is using AI. Everyone. And it's only getting better, and only more people are using it. So these arguments, they just don't really hold water in my books.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  So everyone is using it. That's because Google says, "We're changing search to be AI. We just raised $85 billion to do it." You know what that did? It drove DuckDuckGo installs up 70% the next day, because people see this, and they don't actually like it. I mean, there's, there's sort of the usability case. Sometimes that Google summary can be pretty useful at the top of the page. You know, we can acknowledge that AI is actually pretty good at taking big pieces of text and making them slightly smaller pieces of text. $10 trillion in market cap. But like, is that worth the hollowing out of the entire internet? Because there's now no incentive for people to create stuff, because Google's not sharing links anymore, and they're sucking up all the advertising revenue? Like, I'm

• 18:46Speaker 01

  not worried about Terminator, Jeff. I'm worried about Wall-E. You know, that's the direction I see us going with this, right? So if, if AI, you know, can truly abstract away all of the really boring drudgery-type stuff that we do, it creates an amorphous mush of content that's out there that these big companies can sort of sell back to us. And to me, that's not a future that I'm excited for. Like, who here says, "Oh, all novels should be written by AI"? Probably nobody. You know, I'm really looking forward to AI movies, you know, probably nobody. I'm really looking forward to AI, you know, doing the work that my kids would do in their first job at a consultancy like Deloitte or something, probably nobody. And yet, it's being sold as this incredibly valuable thing. And I'll

• 19:31Speaker 01

  add one more point before I move on. You know, I was listening to your points, and it's well researched. I don't mean that in a glib way. But like, it reads a lot like a white paper about blockchain or the metaverse from 2021. And like, the march of technology is not inevitable. Just because we get better at doing something doesn't mean we should do that thing. VR is better than it's ever been. Still sucks, you know? Blockchain was never gonna change the world, but we still talked about it like it would, because there's a, there's a select group of people who stand next to what they perceive to be big piles of money and yell loudly about it. So maybe, before I pass it back to you, Jeff, I wrote down a one-liner here. I'm really proud of this one. You ready?

• 20:12Speaker 00

  I'm ready, Jeremy.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  AI is solving poverty, one influencer and venture capitalist at a time.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  It's actually in some ways very nice for me that I feel like Jeremy, you're actually making my point for me. Which is that you're saying, "I don't like where AI is taking us." Right? Because by saying that, you're actually acknowledging that it is taking us there. I'm not making the argument that it's going to be all sunshine and roses, and everything will be better, and we'll live in a utopia created by AI. There's lots of folks that believe that. There's lots of folks that will tell you that. Coincidentally, they all sell AI. Right? That's not the argument that I'm making. What I'm making is that the change is happening.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  We don't even know exactly what it's going to look like. We don't need people using AI for absolutely everything. If there's use cases for AI that people don't like, that makes complete sense to me. We're still figuring it out. But we are using it. We're using it for a ton of things. It has a lot of good uses. And we're getting there. And so when you say, "I'm worried about this future," you're worried about it because it is happening. It's inevitable in some way, at a transformational scale. So thank you for arguing my point.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  So, not bad. I gotta give you that. I will say this. I've got a couple of points here. I think the real test is if we go forward and we look at the future that I've sort of laid out and that Jeff has. I'm not going to say you agreed with it, but you know, we're talking about AI having a real impact on like the internet and search, for example. Will people look back if that comes true and say, "Wow, that sure lived up to the hype"? Probably not. If we, you know, create the dead internet, right? And you've used other examples. You mentioned healthcare. I want to come back to that. Obviously, we've heard some pretty inspiring stories here. But at scale, I mean, this has actually been quite a tough business to penetrate. Anybody remember IBM's Watson? Yeah? Leading voice in AI.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  They won on Jeopardy in like 2011. Watson was going to take over the world. It was literally the go-to name in AI. And then they pivoted into healthcare. That was how they were going to bring this to market. And they did pivot into healthcare. And it went about as well as you probably think it did. And IBM CEO was asked about why Watson isn't a household name in AI. And he said, "Because we went into healthcare." So even the people who are building these models are actually pretty skeptical about that particular use case. So I think the test that you guys need to apply, when you're voting in a few minutes, it's very important to me that you vote. One person, one vote. The test that you need to apply is, do you think that the future that I painted and that Jeff painted

• 22:54Speaker 01

  is something that people will look back on and say, "That was hyped and it lived up to the hype"? And I just don't think, given the scale of the promise, given the potential negative consequences, given the lack of adoption of key tools, Copilot's only adopted by 20 million of the 450 million Microsoft 365 subscribers. That's a slam dunk. Just go sign up for an E7. You've got yourself some AI. People aren't doing it. The adoption isn't actually at that level. And we're in the VC-funded stage. This is Uber in 2015, when rides were cheap. In five years, it's going to be Uber now, when rides are shockingly expensive. Are people going to be using it at that level? I don't know.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  If the debate we were having was, "Is Copilot overhyped?", I would be in real trouble. With apologies to anyone from Microsoft in the room. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about AI. And when you look into the future, I want to ask you, is there going to be less AI? Is there going to be more AI? Is there going to be substantially more AI? Or is there going to be so much AI that it's almost inconceivable for us to even answer that question right now? And for me, it's pretty obvious that we're leaning closest to the last option I had there. It's going to be a level that we haven't seen. It's always difficult to look back at things and say, "Was it worth the hype? Was it not worth the hype?"" But it's penetrating every single thing that we're doing. And I do want to briefly touch on the hospital piece,

• 24:17Speaker 00

  because I had a hospital CIO up here, a CTO actually, just about two hours ago, who's already using AI to free up substantial resources from doctors. Right? This is happening right now. If that's happening in hospitals right now, imagine what we'll be doing in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years. As we said, I don't think this is a matter of if. I know it's a matter of when. And we can't even begin to scratch the surface of what is going to happen with this. It's like, when we first got electricity, being able to predict the internet, we have no idea. But this is going to be a utility. This is going to be a foundation that we build on. We're already starting to see it. And you're hearing people all over the place say, "We can't even predict more than a year or two out,

• 25:01Speaker 00

  because we don't know where this is going." That's the only future I can see at this point.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Wow. Well, yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  I want to make sure we leave a little bit of time. We're getting down to the last really seconds here in terms of our time on stage. But can we get the poll back up? We're going to ask our audience, our attendees, vote agree. We heard from two experts, two recognized world-class experts, share their insights. And the question to you is, "AI, overhyped? Agree or disagree?"" I'm not liking that. Down. Thank you, everyone, for voting. We have "I voted" stickers outside.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  All right. In 15 seconds or less, your response to seeing the results. Well, it seems like most folks agree that AI is overhyped. And I will just say, that doesn't mean that it's not good or useful in some context, but it does mean that you can't blindly apply AI. It's not like Flex Seal, that you just slap on everything that's giving you a problem. You need to have a problem to solve. Solve it with AI, if AI is the right tool.

• 26:22Speaker 00

  I just want to confess that we decided who would take each side with a coin flip before we did this. So as passionate as we were, this is performative for everybody, and I think we both fall somewhere in between.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Awesome. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together. Let's give Jeff Nielsen and Jerry Roberts a round of applause.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Great job. Congratulations.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Welcome.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  But digital disruption is developed by Infotech Research Group, a leading advisor to technology leaders around the world. If that's not you, you don't need to care. So skip ahead and enjoy our content. But if you are a technology leader, Infotech helps IT teams get projects done faster, better, and at a lower cost. Infotech provides unlimited access to practical tools and expert guidance you need to execute at a fraction of the cost of traditional consulting. No matter the project, from AI strategy to cybersecurity to vendor negotiation, Infotech has you covered. Check it out at the link below, and don't forget to like and subscribe.