We may have reached an early AI usage peak
And: Some tech companies are still in it for good fun
Welcome to Cautious Optimism, a newsletter on tech, business, and power.
Wednesday! Welcome back. If you were the person tasked with fixing Grok after it went off the rails yesterday, I hope you at least got some free Red Bull.
Catching up for those offline: Elon Musk recently announced that his team had “improved @Grok significantly.” Afterwards the AI chatbot began to vent its spleen, including unleashing barrage of posts that the ADL called “irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic, plain and simple.” Grok was later blocked from responding in text-form, leading to some hilarious work-arounds. For Grok, which is gearing up for the launch of its ‘Grok 4’ models, the episode was a notable misstep.
But not the first of its nature. Recall that Microsoft’s Tay chatbot also went nuts back in 2016, quickly morphing from a seemingly pleasant AI persona to Nazi supporter. Microsoft retreated. Precisely what happened to Grok will become clear, as will what was done to fix the mess. But, the joke of the day goes to Homebrew’s Hunter Walk, who skeeted: “If we don’t let Grok be antisemtic we’re letting China win the AI race.”
📈 Trending Up: Abuse … Fed chair auditions … tariffs on copper, nations, etc … Spiritbox … Swiss watches/freestyling … VCs backing Ukrainian arms … LangChain … deflation in China … AI memory …
📉 Trending Down: Legacy auto brands … Federal employment … rural hospital health … spam? … Christian Horner …
We may have reached an early AI usage peak
I’m an AI bull. Having spent time working for companies of all sizes, my bullishness is predicated on the view that paying humans is expensive and if corporations can save money, they will. That’s a massive tailwind.
But rare is the trend that only goes up. AI adoption in the genAI era could prove the same.
Ramp, a corporate spend startup that is rapidly expanding its fintech footprint, charts its customer spend data as it relates to AI products. To wit, here’s Ramp data of “U.S. businesses with paid subscriptions to AI models, platforms, and tools:”
The recent surge started in March, in case you were trying to eyeball it.
But observe the top of the chart: The last time we saw a similar pause was in mid-2023, around when OpenAI released GPT-4, for reference. Now, a similar surge and a pause.
The slowdown in adoption shows up across sectors: