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Top futurist Amy Webb sees Fortune 500 firms suffering from ‘learned helplessness’ with AI, like taxi drivers who need Google Maps
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Large companies are behind on artificial intelligence, and much of the money they’re spending isn’t tied to a plan, futurist Amy Webb said at the Fortune AIQ Summit on Thursday, in conversation with Fortune ’s AI editor, Jeremy Kahn.
Key facts
- Let’s be fair, Fortune 500 companies are pretty late to the party on this,” said Webb, founder and CEO of the consulting firm Future Today Strategy Group
- Large companies are behind on artificial intelligence, and much of the money they’re spending isn’t tied to a plan, futurist Amy Webb said at the Fortune AIQ Summit on Thursday, in conversation
- Matt Maher, founder of M7 Innovations and a consortium partner with MIT Media Lab, asked who is liable when an AI agent breaches a contract or causes other harm
- It’s not helpful if I receive a 100-slide deck,” Kwon said
Summary
“Let’s be fair, Fortune 500 companies are pretty late to the party on this,” said Webb, founder and CEO of the consulting firm Future Today Strategy Group. Webb said she sees “enormous amounts of capital” going into pilots “with no strategy ahead of them.” Companies, she said, then argue with their security teams and end up with orphaned projects that never do anything. Webb argued that having AI everywhere doesn’t matter if workers don’t know how to use it, comparing it to taking a New York City cab and being handed a phone and asked to type in an address—a constant pattern for about two years now, she estimated. Her advice for companies wasn’t to aim to be “AI native” but was more about “being flexible.” Still, she said, companies must build mechanisms for that. Webb said part of the reason individual productivity gains don’t add up across a company is how firms define return on investment.