AI fears will be found to be 'overblown' in 2024: Appian CEO

Artificial intelligence took the world — and news headlines — by storm in 2023. As tech companies and hardware developers pivot harder into the rising popularity of AI, what will this all mean for AI regulation to come in 2024, especially in cases such as the New York Times' (NYT) copyright lawsuit against Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI?

Appian (APPN) CEO Matt Calkins comments on the shift in corporate discourse surrounding AI expected to come in 2024, while addressing certain fears still lingering around artificial intelligence.

"AI didn't take our job in 2023, it's not going to take it in 2024 either. It's going to make us stronger at doing our work, it's going to empower us to do more," Calkins tells Yahoo Finance. "AI is going to be a tool that we can use to... be faster, to be better at synthesis, to be more effective and faster and understand our data better than we understood it in the past."

Click here to watch the full interview on the Yahoo Finance YouTube page or you can watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live here.

Video Transcript

DIANE KING HALL: How do you balance the concerns about privacy and protections and kind of data protection with innovation?

MATT CALKINS: You're right. You're right. There would be a little bit of a brake on innovation if we precluded AI from using copyrighted information. They would have to go out and compensate the copyright owners for use of that information. And in some cases, they might not choose to do so. But I believe that that's fair. I believe that if you create something, you have a right to the thing you created. And so we should respect the authors, the artists, the musicians, the creators, even if it does slow down the progress of AI just a little bit.

By the way, Baidu and others are going to face a different kind of a brake. In China, AI is regulated based on what the output can be, right? Kind of the opposite of the way that I would prefer to regulate it. But there's going to be some different regulation zones. And every AI innovator is going to face hurdles. They just won't be the same ones.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And so then obviously, AI has been all the talk so far this year. As we head into 2024, and sort of a lot of investors are going to be wanting to see for all this AI talk that came up in earnings calls, where are the use cases? Where do we actually see these companies using this? How much is that going to dominate the conversation in 2024?

MATT CALKINS: How that is the conversation 2024. In 2023, you could be a leader in AI just by talking a good game. And we've had a lot of people out there competing, to say the most, hyperbolic things about AI. But in 2024, the conversation will shift. It's going to be about what you've accomplished, what you can actually deliver, the value you've created via the implementations you've done.

I think that there's a wraith out now between organizations as to which can show that their beneficiaries are benefiting from AI and for that matter amongst professionals, showing that they can master this new technology that is the future. My advice to any of those organizations or people would be start with something simple.

Start with something that you can achieve briefly with a rudimentary implementation of AI and use that as a stepping stone to build your skills and raise your reputation. I think that we should move incrementally on AI, but make no mistake, it's a different conversation in 2024. It's about what you've accomplished, not what you can forecast.

DIANE KING HALL: So, Matt, one of the questions also that has been hanging around AI over the past year is, an antagonist or protagonist kind of in this fast-moving world of technology. And I often ask people in this space, is it friend or foe, especially with the direction it's going in 2024. Will it work with people and workers, or is it just going to replace all of us?

MATT CALKINS: It's going to be a complement. It'll be a member of our team, but it's not going to replace us. And I'm glad to see that realization shifting and spreading throughout the economy. AI didn't take our job in 2023, and it's not going to take it in 2024 either.

It's going to make us stronger at doing our work. It's going to empower us to do more. AI is going to be a tool that we can use to be faster, to be better at synthesis, to be more effective and faster and understand our data better than we understood it in the past.

But I think in 2024, we're going to find that our fears about AI were overblown, and, in fact, it's a great complement and a team member. And particularly for those of us who can figure out how to use it to gain some benefit, it's going to be an explosive career enhancer and an asset.