Warren Buffett is known for not following the latest technology trends, preferring to invest within his “circle of ability.”
Greg Abel, who succeeded the legendary investor as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway earlier this year, also signaled at the company’s shareholder meeting in Omaha on Saturday that he is wary of jumping on the bandwagon.
Business Insider’s Theron Mohammed watched from the press box at the CHI Health Center in Buffett’s hometown as Abel told the audience that Berkshire was not going all-in on AI.
He struck a starkly different tone from tech executives such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who have pledged to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to win the AI race.
“We’re not going to do AI for AI’s sake,” Abel said, adding that the technology must be “additive to our business.”
Berkshire’s new boss said the conglomerate’s subsidiaries will carefully embrace AI in areas where it creates real value.
Business Insider spoke with the CEOs of See’s Candies, Dairy Queen, Brooks Running and Jazwares on Friday. They said their companies have adopted AI to varying degrees, but are generally positive about how AI saves time and makes employees more efficient.
The investment world is divided on the big topic surrounding AI.
Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary and fund manager Ross Garber, among others, dismissed comparisons to the dot-com bubble and told Business Insider that technology has led to measurable productivity gains, generating significant increases in profits.
In contrast, Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ fame and veteran investor Jeremy Grantham have warned that AI is a bubble of historic proportions, with devastating consequences.