The CEO Who Says Cheaper AI Could Actually Mean More Jobs

Bold Names

The Wall Street Journal

Technology

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cloud storage used to be a sleepy part of the computing world but, with artificial intelligence becoming cheaper than ever, the companies collecting and protecting that data are now a hot investment. That includes cloud storage company Box, which has seen its stock climb nearly 40% this year. Its customers include most of the Fortune 500, including movie studios, automakers, consumer electronics giants, marketing firms and the Pentagon. Box CEO Aaron Levie says AI is getting better at piecing through 90% of companies’ data that previously was an intractable mess, and is doing some tasks better than humans – from processing invoices and parsing contracts to building marketing campaigns. So why does he think that could actually lead to more jobs for humans? Plus, why his company plans to stay “model agnostic” and continue to work with all the major artificial intelligence models, including OpenAI ’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. He speaks to WSJ’s Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins in episode four of our interview series Bold Names. Let us know what you think of the show. Email us at [email protected] Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter. Further Reading Amazon Invests an Additional $4 Billion in Anthropic, an OpenAI Rival How to Make AI Less of a Power Guzzler What Is AI Best at Now? Improving Products You Already Own Elon Musk vs. Everyone: The New Fight in AI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:33.3	Aaron Levy is the head of the kind of company that we all rely on every day, but few outside his industry really know.
0:40.3	His customers include most of the Fortune 500, movie studios, automakers, consumer electronics giants, marketing firms, and also the Department of Defense.
0:49.6	They've all got endless reams of documents from contracts to top secret R&D plans.
0:55.0	It's the kind of stuff that used to go into filing cabinets, but now it's all stored by Levy's company called
0:59.6	Box. Box lets companies put that data into the cloud, organize it, and give access to those who
1:05.9	need to see it and keep out those who don't. Now more than ever, the business of Box is also AI and all the ways it can make us more
1:13.2	effective.
1:14.5	Levy is both a full-throated booster of AI and one of the most vocal critics of the hype
1:18.7	surrounding it.
1:20.1	But here's the twist.
1:21.7	Box isn't making its own AI model.
1:24.8	Levy says they'll work with anyone else's product.
1:30.6	Open AI, Anthropic, take your pick. That's something the industry calls being model agnostic. And he says customers are buying
1:36.9	his data storage for exactly that reason. They don't charge for the amount of AI customers
1:42.5	want to use. Something Levy says is unlocking the technology's true potential.
1:47.4	I think Sam Altman has this line of AI's becoming too cheap to meter.
1:51.6	And that's like a very profound concept.
	...

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