“The most radical transformation”

Hi everyone, it’s Ellen in San Francisco. The artificial intelligence craze is generating superhuman levels of hyperbole. But first… Three t [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi everyone, it’s Ellen in San Francisco. The artificial intelligence craze is generating superhuman levels of hyperbole. But first… Three things you need to know today: • Amazon is spending $100 million to [teach cloud customers about AI]( • Microsoft [began its court fight over Activision]( • Ocado shares [soared on reports of interest from Amazon]( ‘Existential discussions’ A central theme of the Bloomberg Technology Summit on Thursday was artificial intelligence. Onstage, leaders in the field kept repeating one idea: that AI, and the people building it, are very important. “This is unquestionably going to be the most radical transformation of our lifetimes,” said Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI. A few minutes later, he said widespread access to AI “is going to be the most meritocratic moment in the history of our species, for sure.” OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said AI’s impact will be measured on “an exponential curve.” Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque called it the biggest economic phenomenon “of our lifetime.” This grandiosity adheres to a longstanding tradition in the technology industry of framing every new invention as a giant leap for mankind. Sure, sometimes they are (the internet, reusable spacecraft, electric cars). Sometimes they aren’t (the Segway, Google Glass, [Juicero](). Usually the language, at least for a while, is equally breathless in either case. With AI, it seems quite plausible we are on the cusp of harnessing a new technology that will radically change our daily lives. But when the heads of AI companies are gushing in public, some part of that excitement can be attributed to a much more basic incentive: It’s good for their businesses if everyone believes AI will revolutionize our world — even if the potential is a little scary. Many AI leaders readily acknowledge the dangers of what they’re building — “there’s many ways it could go wrong,” Altman said at the summit — which also serves to raise the stakes for the whole industry. If they make a compelling case that so much depends on handling AI correctly, other aspects of running the business, such as raising money, attracting customers and recruiting the most in-demand engineers, become easier. Another reason AI has our collective attention in a chokehold? It plays into the primal fear of human extinction. There are few ideas more captivating than the inclination that we might all drop dead soon (just ask any sci-fi writer), whether from nuclear warfare, catastrophic climate change or rogue AI. (There’s a reason cults form around doomsday predictions: When you believe you and everyone you love are close to annihilation, very little else feels important.) Our brains love high-stakes drama, excitement and controversy. AI hits all of those. While wading through a river of AI news and predictions, it’s helpful to remember just how much we’re wired to want to believe that our work is important, not trivial. For a story about the Valley’s [obsession with the prospect of an AI apocalypse](, I interviewed people who believed averting such an endgame was their primary mission. They described how alluring it was to feel like your choices and your efforts would affect the direction of humankind. One person said they felt “cosmically significant.” While it’s important to guard against AI’s negative effects, the fear of human obliteration could also be a distraction, investor Reid Hoffman said at the summit. We should be wary about the more likely short-term effects, like how humans with bad intentions could misuse AI, he said: “One of the things that I think is dangerous about the existential discussion is it blinds us from some of the nearer things.” —[Ellen Huet](mailto:ehuet4@bloomberg.net) The big story Microsoft is a household name when it comes to products like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but it’s not necessarily the first one you think of when it comes to cool, new tech. [The Big Take podcast explains]( how the company’s big investment in OpenAI is launching it to the forefront of tech innovation. One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology Summit interview]( with OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Get fully charged While Nvidia shares have roughly tripled this year, its suppliers and partners have [not exactly seen such stellar rewards](. A criminal hacking gang added more names to its [lists of alleged victims]( from a recent campaign that exploited a vulnerability in a popular file-transfer product. The startup Stability AI is releasing a new model for generating images that it says [can produce pictures that look more realistic]( than past efforts. AI weed-killing drones are coming to mega farms, [helping reducing chemical use](. Who would win in a Las Vegas cage match [between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg](? 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