Jeff Bezos frequently said you should think about what's unlikely to change in the future when building a business strategy.
David Ryder/Stringer
A piece of business advice Jeff Bezos shared years ago is as relevant as ever in the AI age.
When he was CEO of Amazon, Bezos was repeatedly asked for his predictions on how the future would look. And while it's a bit of a side-step, he instead prefers to flip the question on its head.
"I very frequently get the question, 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is an interesting question, it's a very common one," he said in an interview years ago. "I almost never get the question, 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time."
Bezos went on to explain how that applied at Amazon.
"In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now," he added. "They want fast delivery, they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up to me and says, 'Jeff, I love Amazon, I just wish the prices were a little higher,' or 'I love Amazon, I just wish you delivered a little more slowly.' Impossible."
Bezos has repeated variations of this sentiment over the years, dating back at least as far as this Harvard Business Review interview from 2007. His advice takes on new meaning in the context of the growth and VC money pouring into the burgeoning AI industry lately.
CEOs like Meta's Mark Zuckerberg have made big bets on generative AI, generally with massive investments and little profit to show for it so far. But with any longer-term play, business leaders must balance trying to skate to where the puck will be while assuaging any concerns from antsy shareholders looking for more immediate returns.
And, of course, applying Bezos' advice in the AI boom also means expecting artificial intelligence to stick around for good, and preparing for that now.
The Amazon cofounder seems bullish on the technology.
"If you're talking about generative AI, large language models, things like ChatGPT, and its soon successors, these are incredibly powerful technologies — to believe otherwise is to bury your head in the sand — soon to be even more powerful," Bezos said in a December podcast interview.
While there are important safety risks associated with the technology, AI is "much more likely to help us and save us even than to unbalance, hurt us, and destroy us," he said later in the interview.
