Embracing AI

During her keynote address at UCLA Anderson’s recent artificial intelligence conclave, dubbed the Embracing AI Summit, Alex Dumas, Google’s Head of VC and Partnerships, said that her company viewed GenAI as a profound development. She described it as the third shift in technological development following the growth of the internet and then the widespread availability of mobile devices.

With the profundity of that realization as a backdrop, the crowd in Anderson’s Korn Convocation Hall — filled nearly to capacity equally by Anderson students, alumni, staff, faculty and attendees from the greater Los Angeles community that included investors, startup founders and industry practitioners — settled in for an afternoon of insightful talks and panels, followed by a networking event that proved as popular as the conference itself.

The Embracing AI Summit is a student-organized event presented annually by UCLA Anderson’s Technology Business Association (AnderTech) and Entrepreneur Association (EA). Dumas and other panelists in fields as divergent as venture capital and music sampling contributed to the summit’s key takeaways.

HUMANS ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE

One of the common themes throughout the day was the allaying of common fears about artificial intelligence’s advancing past the point of human involvement. But the way we work with AI and, perhaps more significantly, the way humans work with each other are going to evolve. Humans will always have human co-workers, but they might have 100 AI co-workers as well.

UNDERSTAND HOW AI TECHNOLOGY WORKS

Improving fluency in generative AI will be meaningful for MBA students. While there’s no expectation that knowledge will rise to the level of expertise, some panelists recommended that MBAs start using the tools, for example, by building their own GPTs on OpenAI.

THE KEY VALUE DIFFERENTIATORS FOR STARTUPS

Panelists identified several key value differentiators for startups. From the investor perspective, these include the quality of data, the safety of data and how a company’s artificial intelligence interfaces with its customers.

GenAI is likeliest to disrupt organizational and individual productivity, robotics, human-AI relationship creation and industries that aim to solve difficult problems in fields such as healthcare and medicine.

SOME INDUSTRIES REMAIN CAUTIOUS ABOUT AI

The entertainment industry remains reticent to adopt AI technology because of employee concerns and workflow issues. Traditional entertainment focuses first on operational or productivity-related AI to reduce costs and save time. If a company or startup chooses to pursue AI in entertainment, it makes the most sense right now to focus on models that combine creators and AI, not replace creatives with AI.