One of the most surprising aspects of the AI wave has been … seeing how many of the big-named companies have stumbled.

FAANGs and adjacent companies have experienced high-profile AI goofs. Like, say, Google's infamous "glue on pizza" incident or the recent displeasure with Apple Intelligence summaries. Not to mention the various "I can't believe a chatbot said that " stories.

This troubles me because these are companies that should know better. They have a strong gravitational pull for top AI talent, plus the money to fund proper research organizations, and deep knowledge of ML/AI. (I mean, c'mon, Google and Facebook gave us Tensorflow and Torch, respectively.) You'd expect their genAI work to be five-star affairs, setting the pace for everyone else's use cases. But not so much.

Do I think these industry behemoths are resting on their laurels? No. I think they suffer from the same problem as so many other companies out there: they're in a rush to implement AI. It feels like they're trying to cram it into every possible crevice of their business, practically forcing it into being. And that's not how AI works.

(Some of this stems from outside pressure, I get it. But flaws are flaws, no matter what the origin.)

So what's the takeaway lesson? It's simple:

When it comes to AI, focus on you.

Block out all the noise about the so-called "AI arms race" and figure out what this technology can do for your business.

Note where AI simply won't help, or where a simpler solution would provide greater benefit and/or smaller risk exposure, and adjust accordingly.

That's it.