AI’s biggest bottlenecks, according to CIOs and CTOs

A decade ago, Jay-Z launched into a record with a plea to "let me be great." Based on the conversation I had last night with a rockstar group of CIOs and CTOs, you might think Hova was talking about artificial intelligence.

I know, I know, it's a stretch. You can't fault me for trying to work Jigga into the newsletter. But at last night's Fortune dinner, held in collaboration with AMD, the group clearly felt that the biggest bottleneck to AI advancement was...drumroll...humans.

Though the concept has been around for more than three decades, AI is a force to be reckoned with, the tech leaders agreed. It's a "transformational opportunity," said one. It's a "defining moment," said another. "It will really change the way we work, live, and play," said one exec, even though we're only "in the first inning," as another put it.

However, AI is today "developing faster than an individual or company's ability to adapt to it," one tech leader warned, suggesting process growth pains and cycles of job displacement and creation that would require the most human of features: grace and dignity.

A second said that rapid development will force corporations to confront the idea that their "data won't be as bright and shiny as the tech." Oof.

A third put an even finer point on it: There is an extraordinary burden on humans to verify AI-provided answers, they said—a human validation limiter. So how do we maintain supervision at scale?

In the end, the lively conversation—which carried on long after plates were cleared—boiled down to bottlenecks: regulatory bottlenecks as policymakers react, organizational bottlenecks as corporations cope, strategic bottlenecks as leaders plan, and yes, some technical bottlenecks, too.

But the biggest one of all? The meatbags operating the magic machines.

To quote an entirely different lyricist: "Same as it ever was."

P.S. We'll be talking about this topic and many more at Fortune's annual, invite-only Brainstorm Tech summit in July. Interested in attending? Register here.

Andrew Nusca
Brainstorm Tech, Editorial Director

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Today's Data Sheet was curated by Rachyl Jones and Alexei Oreskovic.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com