tech
Executive Briefing: Your Company Is About to Get Cheap Intelligence. That Is Not the Same as Being Able to Use It.
Last week I got a call from a founder I’ve known for years. He runs an agentic startup, meaning his software does work for customers instead of waiting for customers to work inside the software. He had just moved his product off a frontier model and onto an open-weight model.
TL;DR
- Public markets are pricing AI based on the scarcity of intelligence, while useful AI is becoming cheaper within companies.
- The 'harness'—the company's internal systems and context around an AI model—is the key to making intelligence useful and may be the real scarce asset.
- AI labs are hiring humans for implementation, indicating that the complexity lies in integrating AI into existing workflows, not just in the models themselves.
- Companies must prepare for a future where intelligence is abundant and focus on how their internal structures can leverage it effectively, rather than solely on acquiring the most advanced models.