Advice for investors: what to bear in mind when looking at AI startups

Advice for investors: what to bear in mind when looking at AI startups

Ayman Alashkar, is the founder of UAE-based proptech startup OVERWRITE.ai

There are those who are calling AI a bubble. When AI-generated pizzas are touted on your local food delivery app, it's tempting to agree. 

Many investors are struggling to see pathways to AI profitability through the noise. Here are a few simple rules of thumb any investor should apply to their AI startup selection strategy:

Naming rights

It is NOT all in the name. Artificial intelligence is the process by which we teach computers to behave and reason, as humans would. To understand problems and to solve them, by and for themselves. There are two types of artificial intelligence - narrow AI and general AI. It is important not to mistake generative AI with general AI. 

General AI is where machines are able to outperform humans at all tasks. We have not developed any such technological capabilities yet, and the jury’s out on when or if we will anytime soon.

Narrow AI is where machines are able to learn and improve their performance of a singular task. Open AI’s ChatGPT is a conversational AI bot built on the GPT Large Language Model (LLM). Google’s Lamda is another such LLM. Both are examples of