I tend to agree with the second expert, Dharmesh Shah, on this issue—they should deploy the generative ai sales bot. Like he states in his response, those unfamiliar with the technology drastically underestimate the rate of progress with Gen AI tools, and when you try to compare them to technological innovations of the past, you can be led grossly astray. This is effectively exactly what the first expert, Jim Lecinski is doing. He gives a non-answer, saying that he is worried about the executives’ mentality and what mistakes Gen AI tools could make while completely minimizing the opportunity cost of not making the switch.
I liken this issue to self-driving cars, where there have been studies done showing that even if people are presented with the fact (fabricated for the study) that self-driving cars are much less likely to crash than human-driven vehicles, the vast majority of people were still highly skeptical of having them on the road. People are inherently afraid of change, especially when it is related to technology that they do not really understand. The problem with this is that when this technology is something as powerful and rapidly developing as generative AI, it is a reality for businesses to contend with, not a choice that executives get to make.
The considerations to make are simply the upside and opportunity cost of using these new tools. On one hand, there is very short-term uncertainty: what if the bots miss opportunities? What if customers don’t like losing the “personal touch”? What if the bots make costly mistakes? And while on the surface, these may seem like valid concerns, they are far outweighed by the devastating downside of being left scrambling while your competitors outcompete you with superior technology from there, more complex strategies.
Concerns related to customer accounts are also not nearly as big of a deal as they are made out to be. While Orion does express skepticism for working with new Gen AI tools, this is simply not a sustainable position, and they are going to need to accept the reality of technology moving forward. This is similar but honestly even more egregious than not wanting you company to use email in the year 1999. Yes, the technology is still young, and perhaps some “traditionalists” are hesitant to move away from what they know, but it is simply not an option to ignore progress, and trying to appease customers who feel this way is a fool’s game.
