In this talk, Mike Andes argues that artificial intelligence is not a frightening, autonomous force but simply a new form of software that carries additional risk for greater speed. He uses a historical analogy—walking, then horse‑and‑buggy, then cars—to illustrate how societies repeatedly accept higher risk to achieve faster outcomes. Andes frames AI hallucinations as bugs in the software rather than mysterious failures, emphasizing that AI has no soul and does only what it is instructed to do. He warns that businesses that choose to stay on the “sidewalk” will fall behind, while those that adopt AI—getting into the “car”—will gain a decisive competitive advantage in the coming decade.
Chapters
AI is not scary. It is just a new technology that people are afraid of. The same thing happened when people were walking on a sidewalk and then someone else came along and said, we should ride a horse and buggy. There was more risk, but it allowed you to go faster. Instead of taking 30 minutes to get to the grocery store, you got there in 10. Then someone came along and made a car that could go 70 miles an hour and it gets you there in 2 minutes. More risk, because if you get in an accident, you could die. However, there were people when we were riding the horse and buggy that said if you went over 30 miles per hour— smart people, by the way, mathematicians— That said if you go over 30 miles per hour, your atoms will eviscerate and you will literally die. And guess what? Now we go a whole lot faster than 30 miles per hour. And so the same thing is true when it comes to AI, comes to software technology. Anytime there's a new technology, someone's gonna get afraid because it does add more risk. But none of us are walking to the grocery store. We have all decided that it is worth the risk of driving in our car in order to get there 10 times faster. And you've gotta ask yourself when it comes to software or AI, and that's all AI is, is just software. It does not have a soul. It's just doing what you want it to do. And if it hallucinates, it's just having a bug. It's a piece of software. But when you choose that, you are inherently taking more risk, but you're allowing yourself to go faster. And the businesses that are the biggest in the next decade will embrace this technology. They'll get on the car instead of walking on the sidewalk.
