Request for Meetings

Are you a decision maker at a company? Any industry. How are you approaching AI? I want to know more. Seriously.

I want my next job to be “Head of AI”. The thing is, nobody is entirely sure what that means, so I’m on a path of discovery. I’m talking to as many people as I can find to learn what companies need, AI or not. Do you see AI as critical to your future? Why? How are you approaching that? And the big one: What would you expect from me in my first 5 months?

The Field of Play

So far, it seems to be based around what the industry & nature of the company is.

Traditional Companies

Think manufacturing or trucking.

These companies, if they’re thinking about AI at all, they want someone to blaze a strategy. Someone to figure out what AI can do for them. The general attitude is to see AI with trepidation (fear of what it’ll do) or domination (aha! magic I can crush my competition with!).

Technical Fields, Not High (Computers) Tech

Think biotech, ag-tech, ed-tech, materials science, etc.

In my opinion, these are the sweet spots for AI, not just LLMs (like ChatGPT), but all of machine learning & symbolic reasoning, all of it. It’s such a rich opportunity.

The companies themselves fall into two general buckets:

  1. Laggarts — Know there’s AI opportunities, havnen’t pursued. These are common in relatively non-competitive fields.
  2. Adopters — Have been using ML techniques like deep learning & statistical inference all along. LLMs are just the cherry on top.

It seems that the laggarts don’t want a Head of AI per se, they want a consultant to clarify and strategize. On the other hand adopters are so far down this path that they want a “Head of Deep Learning”. By that I mean they already have software engineering and data science orgs, and if they need to hire any kind of leader, its a manager of an established and sophisticated team.

Semi-Tech / Old-Tech

These are tech companies that have been around for a while. They sell software. They were cool companies in 2004, but now it’s 2024 and they’re deeply afraid they’re missing the boat with AI. Read Bloomberg and interpret every AI article with deep seated fear of missing out. That’s them.

These companies want a Head of AI that’s highly technical and highly product focused. They don’t need to be hands-on, they have plenty of people to be hands-on, they just need vision and strategy.

Tech Companies

Think FAANG, scale-ups, etc.

There’s 2 kinds here:

  1. AI startups — the title is “CTO”, sometimes “Head of AI”. It’s really just the head of engineering.
  2. Others — There’s no head of AI. The role is distributed accross product. Everyone is responsible for keeping up. If they’re big, they have a team of AI Scientists buildig an LLM.

I might find what I’m looking for at an AI startup, but probably not elsewhere.

Talk to Me!

Did I get it wrong? Then send an angry email. Seriously.

Want to help? Book a 30-min meeting.

Just curious? Use this Google Form. It’s just to let me know you’re interested in finding out how it ends up. I’ll email you when things start to come together.