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A view through the AI fog

What a tech week in the Bay Area. I had the chance to attend both, Nvidia’s GTC and Andreessen Horowitz speedrun demo day. The Game Developers Conference was also in town.

AI is the future of intellectual property which is at the core of democracy and modern economy. Hence, AI sovereignty should not have a defensive touch, but it is key for each country and corporation that they have control over their AI capabilities they need and their data to be able to shape their future. Uljan Sharka, CEO and founder of igenius gave a great speech at GTC about it.

At speedrun, 41 impressive early stage ventures in the areas of gaming and other areas presented. And again, AI is the “game-changer” and disrupting entire industries with incredible speed. For the first time, a game from China was top ranked on the gaming distribution platform Steam. The other important factor became very clear again: the much higher early adoption of users and businesses in the US is a key competitive advantage. These early ventures get out of the gate much faster, with higher user and engagement numbers which again puts them into a position to improve their products much faster.

Who is going to drive innovation in the future?

At this year’s TED conference in Vancouver, Vinod Koshla started his speech by saying the following:

“Experts extrapolate the past… and do harm when people believe them!“

and

“Entrepreneurs, with passion for a vision, invent the future they want”

Over the last twelve to eighteen months and in light of the raise of AI, there have been a lot of discussions about who is going to drive innovation in the future – big corporates or agile venture businesses. With his two sentences, Vinod Koshla answered it to-the-point. Except for biotechnology, all major innovations over the last decades have been driven by entrepreneurs with a bold vision and idea. Google, Apple, Microsoft, WhatsApp, Tesla and most recently OpenAI started like that.