AI boom will produce victors and carnage, tech boss warns

There will be winners from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom, but there will be “carnage along the way”, the boss of a US tech giant has warned.

Chuck Robbins, chairman and chief executive of Cisco Systems, told the BBC that the technology would be “bigger than the internet”, but that the current market was probably a bubble and some companies “won’t make it”.

Cisco, one of the world’s leading technology companies, is behind some critical IT infrastructures that enable the daily use of artificial intelligence.

Robbins said some jobs will be replaced or even “eliminated” by AI, especially in areas such as customer service where companies will need “fewer people,” but he urged employees to embrace the technology rather than fear it.

His comments follow a series of warnings about the recent increase in investment in artificial intelligence; some claimed that the industry had become a bubble about to burst, shaking markets and bankrupting companies.

Similar concerns were expressed to the BBC from leading figures in the finance and technology world. JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon said: Some of the money invested in AI “will probably be lost”Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, said: There is some “irrationality” in the AI ​​boom.

Skeptics liken the so-called bubble to the dotcom boom and bust of the late ’90s.

Cisco was the world’s most valuable company in 2000, but saw its value fall 80% when the dotcom bubble burst.

It has since been rebuilt and now provides the underlying infrastructure that supports artificial intelligence by partnering with companies like Nvidia.

Despite taking orders worth £1.3bn this quarter alone, Robbins is well aware of the comparisons to the dotcom crash.

“‘Is this a balloon?’ There has been a lot of discussion about it. The answer is probably yes, but we had a bubble in 2000 with the internet. And look where we are today.

“So winners emerge and there is carnage along the way, but this will be bigger than the internet,” he said.

“It’s very similar to that (dotcom crash), but what happens is you’ll have money invested in companies that won’t make it, but winners will emerge, applications and use cases will start to evolve.”

Robbins compared AI to iPhones, with new applications constantly being developed, and said new uses for the technology will evolve over time.

He said it would make “a lot of things better” but also had “potential risks that we all need to mitigate.”

One of the risks is to people’s livelihoods, with growing fears that AI will lead to mass job losses.

Some jobs will be eliminated and others will be replaced, but they can improve if workers embrace technology and learn to use it, Robbins said.

“You shouldn’t worry about AI taking your job as much as you should worry about someone who uses AI very well taking your job,” he said.

Robbins warned that another risk of artificial intelligence is online security.

“This will make our cyber attacks better. It will make the scams people see in their inboxes look more real,” he says.

However, Cisco is using quantum technology to reduce the risks of artificial intelligence to online security.

“Anytime we have a major technological revolution, there’s always a security risk associated with it, and the industry is pretty good at finding and actually developing technology to help protect against that kind of thing,” Robbins said.

America and China are currently the dominant powers in artificial intelligence, and these countries are fighting each other for supremacy in the technology.

However, Robbins said the UK was also making progress in this area and had a “pretty good” chance of becoming an AI superpower.

“It’s early enough right now, and I think the one thing we know is that the countries that embrace AI will be the countries that win.

“And I think the UK has always been forward-looking towards these technology transitions,” he said.

In addition to leading the development of artificial intelligence, Robbins also has a key role as an intermediary between the business community and US President Donald Trump.

Robbins is president of the Business Roundtable, which represents America’s leading companies, and meets regularly with the Trump administration.

He said there was a “misperception” about the sometimes unpredictable US president that business leaders should be more vocal in questioning and criticizing his policies.

But the reality is that if you’re trying to get a result, “a better way to do it, especially with this administration, is to work in small groups,” he said.

He continued: “This is probably the most accessible administration we’ve had in decades. So they’re very open. We have a lot of dialogue.”

“We don’t always agree, but at least we have dialogue.”