Estonia's industrial sector could use AI and information technology to improve its relatively poor productivity, investor and entrepreneur Taavet Hinrikus has said.
"I think AI will reach every sector. We are at the very beginning of a very rapid transformation. I think AI will already be helping you [host Andres Kuusk – ed.] prepare the questions in front of you in the coming months, and there is no field of work that it will not penetrate," Hinrikus, a shareholder in AI giant Anthropic, told Tuesday's "Esimene stuudio".
AI skills are important for improving the productivity of Estonian industry, he said.
"Our industrial productivity is below average, and I think that is embarrassing. But one way to look at it is that all the IT skills we have in Estonia are very heavily concentrated in our technology sector. And thanks to that, we have 12 unicorns, and everything is going well in that sector. But we have far fewer people with IT skills working in the traditional economy, and I think that is where we should be paying much more attention: how can we bring considerably more technological knowledge into the traditional economy?" the entrepreneur said.
"If we go back in time, you needed a team of five or six people to get something done. Say you have a manufacturing company. You need some software, you need a team of five or six people, and getting to that point, hiring them and managing them, is quite complicated. Today, you have one person who can do the same work with the help of AI, and I think we need to bring AI skills into everything – agriculture, tourism, energy and manufacturing," Hinrikus added.
He believes that the rapid changes AI is bringing to the world are not a negative phenomenon but rather the emergence of new opportunities.
"Perhaps some jobs will start to disappear. The statistics don't show that yet, but on the other hand, many new jobs will emerge, just as we now have new jobs such as YouTuber and drone pilot – things we didn't know about 10 years ago. And if we think 10 years ahead, what jobs will exist then? We don't know yet, but there will certainly be many of them," Hinrikus said.
Jaan Tallinn, also an Estonian shareholder in Anthropic, has warned about the dangers associated with the development and advancement of artificial intelligence. Hinrikus acknowledged that he shares those concerns.
"We have already seen dangers and accidents arising from AI, and there will certainly be more accidents. I have no doubt about that. We can only hope they won't be very serious. Perhaps I am a little more optimistic by nature and hope that human ingenuity will be able to save us from the worst," he said.
"On the other hand, we have faced dangerous situations in the world before and have managed to develop our way out of them. Perhaps nowadays we have paid too little attention to managing the risks of AI. Take Anthropic, for example: they are developing their capabilities very quickly, but they haven't put as much energy into developing safeguards. I think that if we put just as much focus into that, we can hope to avoid the worst," Hinrikus added.
Regarding Anthropic's planned initial public offering, Hinrikus noted that when it eventually happens, it will not necessarily have a significant impact on the development of artificial intelligence.
"It will not slow down or accelerate [development]. I think it might bring back some capital that can be invested in new companies," he said.
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