The world continues to be both fascinated and frightened by the ChatGPT AI despite the fact that it’s not very numerate:

Yet maybe that’s the point:

And:

The universe of companies we typically see tend to be slow adopters of new technology despite having vast amounts of industry, product, and customer knowledge. Knowledge, in some ways, is an inhibitor of tool adoption because the new tool is not necessary for the company to do just fine given its knowledge advantage.

When we invested in our airplane parts business, for example, there were two guys (nearing retirement) who’d memorized tens of thousands of airplane parts numbers, knew what they were typically bought and sold for, and acquired millions of dollars worth of inventory every year based on that knowledge.

It was amazing but (as new investors) also terrifying.

When we asked if they ever thought about automating the process or writing a pricing algorithm, they laughed at us. They didn’t need to.

But one of the first things we did when we got involved was collect and structure that data so we could let computers train on the data and price parts for us. We thought it would make the business smarter, but also more prepared for when those guys retired. That technology has done that for us and then some.

The learning is that people with the most knowledge should be the early adopters of new tools even when it’s not obvious they need them yet. The reason is that if they aren’t, the tools will eventually level the playing field, but if they are, it’s in their hands that that new tool will be most powerful.

– Tim Hanson

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