I have scheduled myself to write a weekly blog, so I am now thinking about what I want to share this week. There's always so much to talk about when it comes to AI and its impact on businesses.

This week, I just finished a task related to AI. It was nothing special, mostly just calling another third-party service to outsource some work. But even in this seemingly mundane task, there were some interesting insights that I would like to share with you.

Small AI businesses nowadays mostly rely on generative AI to process their core business operations. It's an efficient approach, but it also comes with its fair share of risks. Just yesterday, I observed that the OpenAI service was down, which had a direct impact on a feature in our product. Until the service was back up and running, that feature simply didn't work. Thankfully, it was just a small feature with a lot of fault tolerance built in. But it got me thinking, what if an AI business heavily relied on the OpenAI service? They would go down together, potentially causing significant disruptions to their operations.

This situation made me realize the importance of not outsourcing our core competence. It's easy for anyone to build an application around OpenAI without truly understanding how AI works. However, there's a better way. By using an open-source model, we can take control of our AI implementation. We can run it on our own infrastructure, gaining a deeper understanding of its inner workings. We can train and fine-tune the model to better suit our needs, all while ensuring the security and privacy of our customer data. This approach empowers us to be the true owners of our core competency, allowing us to navigate the ever-changing AI landscape with confidence.

In our company, we take a practical approach to AI. While we use AI to improve certain features and content of our product, our main focus is still on the traditional market. Our product is already leading the market, even without AI. However, AI allows us to enhance our offerings and provide more value to our customers. It's important to note that our success in the market is not solely dependent on AI. We have a team of industry experts who drive our success.

Reflecting on my recent experiences with AI and its role in our business, I appreciate the need for a balanced approach. While AI brings great benefits, we must also be aware of the potential risks and maintain our core competencies. By doing so, we can leverage the power of AI to propel our businesses forward while maintaining control.