Managing AI FOMO
As leaders face pressure to demonstrate innovative approaches, AI FOMO has to be matched with a proper understanding of the technology’s abilities and limitations
Is your firm missing out on AI? It’s a question that has weighed heavy on the minds of tech leaders for the past 18 months and as new developments are announced leaders are presented with an ever-increasing buffet of AI products.
While the pressure to commit to AI adoption can be intense, it’s essential that leaders integrate AI in a strategic fashion. But what does this mean in a practical sense and how can leaders match this need for caution against their fear of missing crucial AI opportunities?
In this episode, Rory speaks to Sharon Mandell, CIO at Juniper Networks, to unpack how the expansion of AI is being handled by businesses, the response leaders can take to increased competition, and what forms AI will settle into at an enterprise level.
Highlights
“We're perhaps building things right now, because of this, you know, pressure to show progress and show that we're developing this understanding and getting things in people's hands where the vendors may not really be quite ready yet.”
“I still think there'll be a high demand to run those open source models in the public cloud, right? Because you're going to experiment with them, you're not going to want to set up necessarily permanent infrastructure for everything. But you might find, at some point, you do have enough constant use of that open source model that it may behoove you to have a different cost structure. Because you know that it's going to be always, always being accessed, just like any other workload.”
“I think the first thing for a C-suite, whether you're the technologist or not, is find ways to use the technology yourself. Because the best way to understand something is to actually use it. Think smartly about the data that you're using when you do it.”
Footnotes
- The future of generative AI lies in open source
- Three open source large language models you can use today
- Big Tech AI alliance has ‘almost zero’ chance of achieving goals, expert says
- Why not to invest in generative AI – for now
- OpenAI's Sam Altman: Hallucinations are part of the “magic” of generative AI
- Will Nvidia's AI dominance shake up the public cloud ‘big three’?
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Rory Bathgate was Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro until 2026, overseeing all in-depth content and case studies. He also co-hosted the ITPro Podcast with Jane McCallion, swapping a keyboard for a microphone to discuss the latest learnings with thought leaders from across the tech sector.
In his free time, Rory enjoys photography, video editing, and good science fiction. After graduating from the University of Kent with a BA in English and American Literature, Rory undertook an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King’s College London. He joined ITPro in 2022 as a graduate, following four years in student journalism. You can contact Rory on LinkedIn.
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