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BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

AI Enterprise - Databricks & Glean | BG2 Guest Interview

45 min episode · 2 min read
·
Ali Ghodsi,Irvin Irvin

Episode

45 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Productivity, Health & Wellness, Investing

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • LLM Commoditization: Large language models function as interchangeable commodities like gas stations. Companies switch between OpenAI, Anthropic, and others weekly based on price and marginal performance differences. Competitive advantage comes from proprietary company data and business processes, not model selection.
  • AGI Already Exists: Current AI capabilities meet the artificial general intelligence definition used by researchers for thirty years. The industry moved goalposts after achieving original AGI benchmarks. Enterprises need to focus on making existing AI useful rather than waiting for superintelligence breakthroughs.
  • Enterprise Success Pattern: Royal Bank of Canada reduced equity research report generation from two hours to fifteen minutes using agents that analyze earnings calls, competitor data, and market news. Seven Eleven automated marketing segmentation and content creation. Success requires engineering effort, evaluations, and strong teams, not quick implementations.
  • Speech Interface Revolution: Keyboards will disappear as speech becomes the primary interaction method. Data entry shifts from manual form filling to conversational input captured through tools like Zoom. Meeting recordings automatically update CRM systems and knowledge bases, eliminating structured data entry workflows entirely.

What It Covers

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi and Glean CEO Arvind Jain discuss enterprise AI adoption realities, explaining why 95% of AI projects fail, where economic value accrues, and how their companies automate workflows across finance, healthcare, and retail sectors.

Key Questions Answered

  • LLM Commoditization: Large language models function as interchangeable commodities like gas stations. Companies switch between OpenAI, Anthropic, and others weekly based on price and marginal performance differences. Competitive advantage comes from proprietary company data and business processes, not model selection.
  • AGI Already Exists: Current AI capabilities meet the artificial general intelligence definition used by researchers for thirty years. The industry moved goalposts after achieving original AGI benchmarks. Enterprises need to focus on making existing AI useful rather than waiting for superintelligence breakthroughs.
  • Enterprise Success Pattern: Royal Bank of Canada reduced equity research report generation from two hours to fifteen minutes using agents that analyze earnings calls, competitor data, and market news. Seven Eleven automated marketing segmentation and content creation. Success requires engineering effort, evaluations, and strong teams, not quick implementations.
  • Speech Interface Revolution: Keyboards will disappear as speech becomes the primary interaction method. Data entry shifts from manual form filling to conversational input captured through tools like Zoom. Meeting recordings automatically update CRM systems and knowledge bases, eliminating structured data entry workflows entirely.

Notable Moment

Ghodsi attended a meeting with four humans and six AI note takers present. Another discussion reportedly had seventeen AI note takers. He describes this as resembling the opening scene of a movie where AI begins taking over human spaces.

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Episode Transcript

Think we have AGI. Mhmm. I think we have artificial general intelligence. We really have. You you hear these 95% of projects fail, but, like, you know, like, that's that's that's actually what you want. I I think the LLM is a commodity. People are not saying that, but it is a commodity. Like, you can get gas from this gas station. You can get gas from that gas station. It doesn't matter. Just compare price. Is AI in a bubble? There is an AI bubble. Okay. Okay. So then green is also in the bubble. Everybody's in the bubble. No. I would I would say there is a bubble. I I would say those three camps. Yeah. There is a super intelligence quest camp. Mhmm. I would be very worried there. There's a second. The researchers doing the, you know that's definitely not in a bubble. They're like the They're sober. Yeah. They're they're super sober and nobody cares about them. And then there's right? And they're probably the ones that are right, unfortunately. And then there's the third camp, which is us trying to make this valuable. We're not in a bubble in a sense that we're not spending huge amounts of capital on what we are doing. We're just trying to get actual economic value inside of these organizations. Two legendary builders, Ali, Irvin, I'm so thrilled to get into this with you because both of you have seen every super cycle I've lived through, Internet, mobile, cloud, data and AI, not just through the super cycles, but also through the hype, the trough of disillusionment, and this time, it's different. Today, we're gonna chop it up on the state of AI. You know, let's let's start with a 20,000 feet view. Take stock of where we are. AI, we've seen consumer AI, billions of users, Chad GPT said the guns went off three years ago, cloud, perplexity, Chad GPT. People use it in the room. On the SMB and developer side, you've got hundreds of millions of users with cursor and codex and cloud code and and and so on. Enterprise, on the other hand, there's a lot of divide. It's hard to see a lot of fog of war. On one side, you've got models that are earning math benchmarks and science benchmarks and engineering benchmarks. But on the other side, you've got the MIT report that's saying 95% of AI deployments don't work. What's the reality? Bridge that gap for us. Lay it out as you see it. View from the top. So I think, first of all, I think we we we should know that people use AI in their personal and work lives both. So there's not so much of a divide. Like, you know, everybody in your company is probably using ChargeGPD, and cloud and and other tools, on a daily basis. The, the the thing that I I feel, you know, is happening in enterprises, you you hear these 95% …

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