- The advice Jeff Bezos gave a few years ago still applies to today's AI boom.
- During his time as CEO of Amazon, he said he was often asked what would be different in the future.
- But he says he builds successful business strategies around “things that are stable in time.”
The business advice Jeff Bezos shared years ago remains as relevant in the age of AI as ever.
During his time as CEO of Amazon, Bezos was often asked to predict what the future held. a bit Rather than trying to avoid the question, he prefers to turn it around.
“I get asked a lot, 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' It's an interesting question, and a very common one,” he said in an interview a few years ago. “I rarely get asked, 'What's going to stay the same in the next 10 years?' And of those two questions, I think the second one is actually the more important one, because you can build your business strategy around things that will remain stable over time.”
Bezos explained how that applies to Amazon:
“In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and that's not going to change in 10 years,” he added. “Customers want fast delivery and a wide selection. I can't imagine a customer coming to me in 10 years' time and saying, 'Jeff, I love Amazon, but I wish the prices were a little higher,' or, 'I love Amazon, but I wish the delivery was a little slower.' It's just not possible.”
Bezos has echoed this sentiment over the years, dating back to at least a 2007 interview with Harvard Business Review, but his advice has taken on new meaning in the context of the growth and venture capital money flowing into the burgeoning AI industry these days.
CEOs like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have bet big on generative AI, but the payoff has generally been huge investments and little return so far. But in the long term, business leaders must balance trying to glide to where the puck is while also assuaging the concerns of restless shareholders looking for more immediate profits.
And of course, applying Bezos' advice in the current AI boom also means assuming that artificial intelligence is here to stay forever, and preparing for it now.
The Amazon co-founder seems bullish on the technology.
“If you're talking about generative AI, large-scale language models, things like ChatGPT and its successors, these are incredibly powerful technologies. It's escapism to believe otherwise. They're going to get even more powerful very soon,” Bezos said in a podcast interview in December.
While the technology carries significant safety risks, AI is “much more likely to help and save us than to disequilibrium, harm or destroy us,” he said later in the interview.
