Ask a room of investors to define artificial intelligence and the answers tend to run for several minutes. Alejandro Betancourt López, whose family office has backed AI companies since before the chatbot boom, gets there in about a dozen words.
“What is AI? It’s a machine that thinks faster and finds solution faster,” he said in an interview. “So AI just makes everything more efficient.”
Trial and Error at Machine Speed
A useful AI tool, he said, can “give a probability” of which approach will work and reach a better result “faster than a trial error that a human being can do.” Weeks of guessing, testing and correcting shrink to minutes.
He raised energy as his first example and then widened the claim. “They do trial and error faster than any human being and you can apply it to any industry in the world,” Alejandro Betancourt said. Timing is the open question, in his account. “It’s just a matter of what tools are going to be out there and when they’re going to be available.”
Jobs Alejandro Betancourt López Expects to Shift
Almost 40% of global employment is exposed to AI, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva wrote in a January 2024 post. Exposure rises to about 60% of jobs in advanced economies. Emerging markets and low-income countries came in at 40% and 26%, respectively.
Roughly half of the exposed jobs could benefit from the technology. For the other half, AI applications “may execute key tasks currently performed by humans,” the post said, which could mean lower demand for labor, lower wages and less hiring.
“A lot of transformation is going to happen. A lot of new jobs are going to be created, but unfortunately a lot of traditional employment is going to be lost or replaced by this revolution,” Alejandro Betancourt López said. “We’re living in the digital revolution.”
Many low-income economies lack the infrastructure and skilled workforces needed to capture the gains, Georgieva wrote. Richer countries, with more of their jobs exposed, also have more of them positioned to benefit.
Alejandro Betancourt López said his family office plans to put more money into AI and robotics. Those positions sit next to the consumer and banking companies already on his résumé, and he calls the newer fields high risk with high potential rewards. “We’re trying to get it right and trying to get involved with the right players in the market,” he said.