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Hi everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas, and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today, I would like to talk about a big dilemma that every single organization, every single project manager, and everyone handling artificial intelligence faces today. It's when I should stop exploring new things and I should start exploiting. The things I already know and why this is such an important concept. Because exploration is an act of discovery, it's an act of bringing new ideas. And for me, the best analogy I want to provide to you on that is: imagine that you have several doors, different doors in front of you. So before you take a decision and get inside one of the doors, what do you want? You want to do the best you can to understand what is behind that door, right? And this is exploration. It's where you do innovation, where you do research and development, where you try to reduce a little bit of your uncertainty about the different options. For example, you are exploring, okay? Which are the different large language models? Which are the different database models? Should I use a vector database? Should I use a traditional database? Should I use ChatGPT or Gemini? I'm just talking about the ones that are more commercially available.
But at some point, you need to go to action because exploration does not bring money to your organization unless your business is just research. But if you are a traditional company, what do you need? You need to explore to make the best estimate. And at some point, you need to open one of the 20 doors and get inside. Looking for short and medium-term gains where you are looking for efficiency, optimization, and process improvement. why I'm saying this? It is because of what I see and, sadly, many organizations. They say: Oh, we have a committee looking into AI. Oh, we are investing. It's on the top priority of everyone. And then I ask them, okay, but what are you doing? Oh, we are exploring the different options. We are mapping the landscape. We are trying to understand what is in there. And I say okay, and so what, when will you move to exploitation, and why? I'm saying this because many people when you have a volatile environment like artificial intelligence, are so insecure about what decision to make that you just, you know, imagine you go back to the doors. Imagine you with 20 doors in front of you, and you are starting, analyzing, and trying to decide on which door you will get into. You will open and then suddenly there is a new door. There is a new door every single day there is something new happening in AI and something bold. At some point, you need to have a cut-off decision and move forward because otherwise, you start exploring today. For example, let's suppose you were exploring a text-to-text in generative AI using a large language model, and you are saying, oh, why not create a chatbot that will answer specific questions about X, Y, and Z? Or, for example, analyze a PDF? Okay, the time to explore that is already gone. The exploration phase of that type of technology was in January, February, March, and April of 2023. And now this market is completely consolidated. If I today want to create or Ricardo PDF or Ricardo answer questions about something, this is not a winning strategy today. Why? Because the market for these types of tools is already settled. Its ChatGPT is Gemini. It's cloud. And maybe 3 or 4 other big players. Unless you are one of them, there is no space for you on that because it's a big money big. But when I say big, look, I'm not talking about millions. I'm talking about billions. And the time for exploration is over. So now OpenAI is exploiting ChatGPT, and of course, they are making a profit, they are selling to companies, and at the same time, what they are doing, they are exploring new frontiers. But if they were expecting to have a product ready to exploit, ChatGPT would not be released. And they will not have even the funds that they are receiving today from subscriptions from from reselling from companies like big consulting companies that are hiring them and using their tools. So this is why it's so important to, at some point, start exploiting, starting, optimizing. Imagine one thing that I love to use as an example. If Bill Gates, at the time of the release of Windows, was trying to release just a perfect Windows, windows would not be released up to today. At some point, Microsoft brilliantly decided to say, it's time to release, and let's start exploiting while exploring new things. For example, probably OpenAI is exploring. There are many things being explored today as a new frontier of what generative AI can bring, but now they are already exploiting that. What I see is that many companies, sadly, are so slow that when they start exploiting something, they're doing something that ChatGPT does for 1% of the cost for you as a user, and with a database that you cannot compete, you cannot compete. Basically, everything that is written, human knowledge, and that is available in a widely public domain was already captured. The big dilemma today is that there is no data in the world. For them to train these machines because all the data that is already already exists is there, and they. So, how can Ricardo compete with that? How Ricardo. For example, I'm just using myself. So it's time for you to explore new things, because the time, for example, for me, Ricardo, to explore was one year ago. And that's over its waves. It's like a portal. It's like a portal. The portal is open. It's time for you to enter, and the portal closes, and then another portal opens, and another portal closes. And what is critically important for you in this business is to be at the right place, at the right time, to explore, when it's the time to explore and exploit, when it's the time to exploit, and there is no benefit for you to be exploring something that people are already exploiting because you cannot compete with them. If any company today releases anything that looks like a ChatGPT, this company will be playing on a completely red ocean. Using the analogy with the blue ocean strategy, think always about that because, for example, I spend a lot of my time on AI today. I'm already exploiting several things in the works I'm doing with my clients, and I'm exploring new frontiers, things that do not exist. Maybe some of the doors will go nowhere. Maybe the other doors will make a massive difference in the work I'm doing in project management. And this is the risk. But I need to be ready at the right time. And again, companies are sadly incredibly slow on that and this is costing a lot to them. Think about that, and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
