Remember that rollicking, strange moment, just a few weeks after ChatGPT came out in 2022, where everyone was awed but asking: Wait, what can I do with this?
I was thinking about that time—a veritable century ago in AI years—as I sat on the stage and in the audience at Fortune Brainstorm AI London. It occurred to me: Part of why that time feels so far away is because we now have so many answers to that question. Synthesia and WPP are using generative AI to build corporate avatars that are actually being used, and to make commercials that are actually being aired. Legal AI startup Harvey is deployed massively across companies like PwC, helping thousands of lawyers with documentation and case law. Winston Weinberg, CEO and cofounder of Harvey, said this frees up young lawyers from grunt work to pursue in-person, higher-level opportunities sooner in their careers.
“If you can give [junior associates] that human training earlier on, they’re going to actually really enjoy their job more, and it looks more like what it looks like on TV,” Weinberg told the audience.
There are more, and more: EBay is now using AI agents. Tye Brady, Amazon Robotics chief technologist, took the stage to talk about the AI innovations behind the e-commerce giant’s new warehouse robots that can “feel.” And Accenture’s Fernando Lucini told the audience: “we use it very extensively with our HR systems,” along with other functions like marketing.
As social media vibe coding discourse may suggest, software development is especially huge. Seth Dobrin, founder and CEO of Qantm AI, said that “there are startups doing 90% to 95% of their code with AI.” It’s also thorny—Jason Warner, cofounder and CEO at Poolside, was really candid about what might change for software engineering workers in the coming years.
“When you’re talking about technology like this, you must talk about human replacement,” Warner told the audience. “I think when you say something is capable of doing the mean information work of somebody, there are many people out there saying: Oh yes, I can’t wait to replace some portion of my employee base with this. But I think that’s obviously going to be a strategic decision for every business. When this is available, every company is going to have a choice.”
And that begins to get at something that I think is essentially true—that the clearer and more real this wave of AI use cases is becoming, the more questions we have. We’re so far removed from “what can we do with this.” The question, instead, has decisively become “how?” and “what limitations do we (or should we) have?”
Which is where the tension lies. We’re starting to have an incredibly clear sense of what’s possible, but we don’t have a good sense about what the societal implications of AI adoption actually look like. Looking at financial services, for example, agents are clearly going to play a role, but how much of a role remains to be seen, said Carlo Bruno, VP of Product at Adyen.
“Our customers are looking for frictionless shopping experiences, lower costs, and better fraud management,” Bruno said onstage. “The key question is: Will agents completely take over the digital storefront experience?”
We don’t know, because AI is right now caught between its theoretical past and its practical future. In that gap, there are a lot of exciting questions about what AI might mean for our collective future. And a lot of scary questions. In one panel about how AI is affecting children, Baroness Joanna Shields spoke passionately.
“We can’t productize humanity,” said Shields. “We can’t productize a person, and create something that’s a substitute for real human contact.”
It’s a gripping statement that’s fighting a relentless tide, with more questions than ever about what’s possible. And in London, it felt like we were all looking for answers together, in a brainstorm.
ICYMI…At Brainstorm AI London, I was joined by a stellar group of VCs onstage to talk about AI investing in Europe—a profound thank you to GV’s Tom Hulme, IVP’s Alex Lim, Accel’s Ben Fletcher, and Balderton’s Rana Yared. You can read our writeup of the panel here.
See you Monday,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
