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Box founder Aaron Levie got us talking this week with a social media post suggesting that tech CEOs are \u201cuniquely prone to AI psychosis.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n On the latest episode of TechCrunch\u2019s Equity podcast<\/a>, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O\u2019Kane, and I did our best to unpack Levie\u2019s comment. For one thing, we noted that he isn\u2019t disavowing AI tools, merely insisting that CEOs need to actually use<\/em> those tools to understand them.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a relatively gentle note of skepticism compared to other signs of a broader backlash, whether you look at graduating college students booing any mention of AI<\/a>, the bad vibes around tech industry layoffs<\/a>, or the apparent surge of installs at search engine DuckDuckGo<\/a> after Google\u2019s announcement that it\u2019s bringing more AI to the search experience<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kirsten suggested that Google faces a dilemma where it\u2019s \u201cchasing that thing it feels like it has to do to keep up, but it\u2019s messing with the thing that people attach to the brand the most, and it\u2019s not improving it.\u201d More broadly, she wondered \u201cif this anti-AI moment is an opportunity for startups or other areas of business.\u201d<\/p>\n Keep reading for a preview of our conversations, edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n Anthony Ha:<\/strong> AI is incredibly polarizing. And that\u2019s part of what\u2019s challenging to talk about, you can feel a little crazy because [simultaneously,] everybody\u2019s using it and everybody loves it, but also no one\u2019s using it and everybody hates it at the same time. There are large contingents for whom both of those things are true.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the user side, one thing that was very striking, we [already] talked about Google\u2019s announcements about search and how AI is becoming a bigger part of search<\/a> \u2014 although it\u2019s been interesting to see how Google has tried to walk that back a little bit, or at least add some nuance in terms of, if you want that 10 blue links experience, there are still ways you can get it. It\u2019s not going away entirely.<\/p>\n But I think a lot of people are not excited about the direction Google is going in. And so you see, for example, that DuckDuckGo said installs are up 30%<\/a>, which is a huge leap. Now, of course, DuckDuckGo is a much, much smaller product than Google. I don\u2019t think Google is in any immediate trouble, but I think that\u2019s a sign that there is a very significant audience that does not like the current AI direction.<\/p>\n Sean O\u2019Kane:<\/strong> I will say one thing that I keep looking for when I look at all of these leading AI labs or tech companies that are really pushing AI features and products \u2014 to me, there seems to just be this collapsing towards Anthropic\u2019s approach, this idea of really trying to understand what it is you want to offer people and sticking to that.<\/p>\n And Google is one of the ones that I would say is actually still pushing the other direction. They\u2019re trying to do a lot of different things, but they don\u2019t do themselves any favors by being so vague about it.<\/p>\n What I mean by that is, when Google goes on stage at IO and talks about the way that it thinks it\u2019s going to change search, so much of what they\u2019re talking about, they\u2019re talking about shopping or stuff that ends in a commercial transaction. And I think so much of what we think of Google as collectively, especially people who have been using it for two or three decades, is as an information retrieval system.\u00a0<\/p>\n Google can struggle with that a lot, where they get reactive fears of how they may be damaging the information retrieval side of things, and their response is, \u201cYeah, but that\u2019ll still be there. Let\u2019s focus on how it\u2019s going to help you book a flight or something like that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And then they also go off and sort of shoot themselves in the foot by releasing \u2014\u00a0 it must be very challenging to stress test these systems, but they go out and they release this stuff and they\u2019re running into the same problems they\u2019ve run into for years.<\/p>\n Kirsten Korosec:<\/strong> We had a great article that just published about how Google doesn\u2019t know how to spell its own name<\/a>. If you ask it, \u201cHow many P\u2019s are in Google?\u201d it says two.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s this tension between: Google is chasing that thing it feels like it has to do to keep up, but it\u2019s messing with the thing that people attach to the brand the most, and it\u2019s not improving it.<\/p>\n What I\u2019m wondering is, we\u2019ve already seen some early evidence of people\u2019s fingers doing the voting or walking for them, by literally going to another service. But I wonder if there are opportunities for other startups out there or culturally speaking, if this anti-AI moment is an opportunity for startups or other areas of business that we haven\u2019t really thought about.<\/p>\n Anthony:<\/strong> Absolutely. Again, it\u2019s probably a challenge because there is such a range of opinions. And if you build something that\u2019s tailored for a group that\u2019s skeptical [of] AI, then you\u2019re probably going to alienate other users who are much more evangelistic or gung-ho about it. But I think that\u2019s just the moment we\u2019re living in.<\/p>\n And you can see in how DuckDuckGo is promoting itself, that they\u2019re very much emphasizing this idea of being anti-AI, which I find very striking because I\u2019ve mentioned before, [I\u2019ve been] moving away from Google myself, trying out other search engines. And I would say that a year ago, when I started that exploration, even these alternative search engines were still trying to experiment with AI features, emphasizing AI to some degree because they also thought they had to do it.<\/p>\n And now I think they\u2019re seeing that there is actually a lane to be like, \u201cNo, we just were not interested in that stuff at all. Or inasmuch as we\u2019re doing it, we\u2019re very much putting it in a separate sandbox that\u2019s not going to affect your core search experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Kirsten:<\/strong> I think we unfairly sometimes categorize all the tech CEOs as force-feeding people AI. And there\u2019s at least one tech CEO who has come out and said, \u201cI think that there\u2019s a little bit of psychosis among other tech CEOs around AI.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m talking about Box founder Aaron Levie, who has come to Disrupt many times and is a friend of TechCrunch for sure. He made these comments about how CEOs are uniquely prone to AI psychosis<\/a> because they\u2019re sufficiently, and I\u2019m reading this, \u201cdistant from the last mile of work that still has to happen to generate most value with AI.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n I thought that was really interesting. And I\u2019m wondering if there are other CEOs out there who agree with it. I also wonder, as part of that shift of thinking about what has to happen to generate the most value, if they\u2019re also thinking about how their workforce is changing, which is our other topic today \u2014 [not] just about the AI divide, it\u2019s also how AI is changing work. And we\u2019ve seen, certainly, some of the bad news side of that, and that is a lot of layoffs.<\/p>\n But I think also, we\u2019re seeing big changes in how people work. I\u2019m wondering in the areas that you two cover, if you\u2019re seeing evidence of that, because I don\u2019t think it\u2019s just in the quote unquote \u201cAI startup sector\u201d or the big tech companies.<\/p>\n Sean:<\/strong> As far as the companies that I cover, a lot of them tend to be working on, if not physical transportation, then stuff adjacent to it. And it\u2019s seemed much slower there than it is, unsurprisingly, on the software side of things.\u00a0<\/p>\n We\u2019re starting to see some of that changing. We\u2019ve talked on the show a little bit about Mind Robotics, which is the spin out from Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe. And, you know, there\u2019s certainly more AI being applied to physical infrastructure and manufacturing and robotics and self-driving.<\/p>\n I think the software side is where it\u2019s really changing things, where you have people whose job is just directly tied to producing code.<\/p>\n Anthony: <\/strong>Part of the question, I think, [involves] both AI adoption in companies and then AI-driven layoffs \u2014 to what extent are they top down or bottom up?\u00a0<\/p>\n Because I think a lot of other transformations in the workforce in the last couple of decades have at least been, to some extent, bottom up: These are tools that people actually like to use, they bring them in, and then at a certain point, executives and IT managers accept that.<\/p>\n There is some sense that a lot of the [belief that there are going to be these] AI productivity gains seems to be embraced by the executives \u2014 or, if you\u2019re at a startup, probably by the VCs who are funding you \u2014 who love this dream that you can have just a tiny team and be as effective as a company with a much larger team.<\/p>\n And I don\u2019t think that that is necessarily impossible, but I think that Aaron\u2019s point is essentially that if you\u2019re not really touching any of the end work, how would you know? He\u2019s also not somebody who\u2019s saying we should just throw out all the AI tools, but he\u2019s saying that you actually have to use these tools and understand what they\u2019re doing. You can\u2019t just look at a slide and be like, \u201cYes, incredible efficiency, let\u2019s go.\u201d<\/p>\n Kirsten:<\/strong> Well, I think there\u2019s a lot of real evidence out there that these companies are using these tools, and it is directly affecting workers in the form of layoffs, and also the way that they work. The two truths are accurate here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n