AI+ SF Summit: AI agents are the next big thing

SAN FRANCISCO – AI's big advancements and challenges, the wave of AI agents, and Databricks' latest round of funding ​​were top of mind for leading tech leaders at Axios' AI+ SF Summit on Dec. 17.

Why it matters: The rapid pace of innovation is coming to a head with pressures to enact policy guardrails amid booming investment deals, which is shaping the future of AI developments.

Driving the news: Databrick CEO Ali Ghodsi said they "got a bargain" during this latest round raising $10 billion.

• Ghodsi also said AI is in its "peak" investment bubble. "When you get billion dollar valuations on companies that have nothing, that's a bubble," Ghodsi said, referring to other companies.

Separately, Anthropic chief product officer Mike Krieger discussed how AI agents are at least a year away from being autonomous.

• He said one of the biggest problems with current AI chatbots is how tough it is for users to learn to write prompts.
• "The future is here, it's just that not everybody knows how to use it yet.... is chatting with a model even the right UI? Can we do something better?"

AI chatbots make mistakes too and Sierra co-founders Clay Bavor and Bret Taylor are looking at ways to solve that with more chatbots.

• "The solution to many problems with AI is more AI," Bavor said.
• For instance, there could be "supervisor" bots trained on company policies that could review and potentially intervene if the frontline AI agents strayed from policy.

Of note: This event was sponsored by Meta, Siegel Family Endowment, Kapor Foundation, Intuit, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Workato.

Content from the sponsored View from the Top conversations is below:

Meta vice president of product management Sue Young highlighted the "incredible" growth of their AI assistant with 600 million users every month.

• "A lot of that has been really just giving utility and access to where people are spending time," such as Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Facebook, Young said.

Kapor Foundation CEO Allison Scott and Siegel Family Endowment executive director and president Katy Knight emphasized the need for investments and policies to support "a more equitable future" with responsible AI.

• "Those diverse viewpoints allow us the opportunity to actually think really differently about how we design, deploy, and govern new technologies," Knight said.

Intuit executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary Kerry McLean discussed how AI can enable small businesses.

• "AI can truly help level the playing field for these small businesses with larger businesses who have access to financial expertise, marketing expertise, all those things," McLean said.

Workato chief of AI products and solutions Bhaskar Roy said AI agents are going to become increasingly more prevalent.

• "Remember the time when we used to say 'there's an app for that'? I think we are in an era where everyone is saying 'there's an agent for that.' If not, it'll happen soon," Roy said.