저자: BradleyHartmann · 외국인
요약 보기
AI 등 신기술에 대해 리더가 의견을 형성해야 한다고 주장. 찰리 멍거·버핏이 기술 투자를 오래 피했지만 이후 애플에 투자해 수익을 낸 사례를 들어, 이해 후 투자 판단이 중요하다고 설명. AI 투자 붐에는 과열과 버블 가능성이 있으나 인터넷처럼 AI가 미래라고 언급. 기술 도입 시 범용재 사업은 경쟁사가 비용절감을 가격인하에 쓰면 이익이 고객에게 돌아간다는 논리 제시. 대상 자산에 대한 가격 방향 예측 발언은 없음.
다듬은 글
Well, hello there, friend. Welcome to the Construction Leadership Podcast, where we help construction executives lead high-erforming teams finish on time and under budget without all the firefighting and babysitting so you can lead with focus and control. I am your host, Bradley Hartman. Now, on today's episode, my friend, we're going to be talking about resistance to change and artificial intelligence as it relates to Tuesday's episode.
So when that came out, I immediately got several different points of feedback, I'll call it. We had several people who because they hadn't invested in AI already, they thought that I was speaking down to them and I was telling them that they weren't doing their job. And to be clear, that is exactly what I was saying.
I think everyone needs to engage, especially leaders, to develop an informed opinion. I had other people who were saying, "I don't think you went far enough." If an executive leader of a billion-dollar company hasn't already formed an opinion 6 months ago, they're already at risk. And I don't agree with that.
But my point is, if you're a leader, you're in our space. You can't not form an opinion. And one listener kind of threw something back in my face here that I uh, you know, felt compelled to respond with. And he said, "You know, I was thinking about how much you like Charlie Mer, who is my mentor, who has no idea I ever existed." And he said, "You know, Charlie Mer and Warren Buffett famously stayed away from so much technology for so long because they didn't believe in it." And they were real technology lagards.
So this individual was saying it's ironic that I would bring up Charlie Munger and how Charlie Munger would think about it when we are at a very similar space to where Warren and Charlie were in the late '9s and refusing to invest in any technology. Now I thought this was a unique point and I thought you know what let me dig a little bit deeper.
So I grabbed one of my favorite books about Charlie Munger. It is short. It's a great little reference book. It's called the tow of Charlie Munger. It's a compilation of quotes from Birkshshire Haway's vice chairman on life, business, and the pursuit of wealth with a commentary by Mr. David Clark. And there were three specific mini chapters that I thought were relevant here.
The first one was number nine called the dawning of wisdom. And Charlie Mer said, acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom. And David Clark's commentary was, "The smarter we get, the more we realize how little we actually do know. By acknowledging what we don't know, we are putting ourselves in a position to learn more." Thus, the dawning of wisdom.
In Charlie's world of investing, there is what he calls a circle of competence, which consists of all the companies he is capable of understanding and valuing. But it also includes all the companies outside the circle that he doesn't understand and is unable to value. By acknowledging what he doesn't know, he can either avoid an investment or learn more about the business and see if he can understand it to the point that he can value it, which would then put it within his circle of competence.
Charlie's road to all this wisdom began by acknowledging what he didn't know and then doing something about it. So while Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett did not invest in Apple or any other tech company for a long time, the most profitable investment they had ever made as a duo was Apple. So they came around to it and what they did say when it came to technology if they invested the time to try to understand the value and how they could bring value through capital and how they would benefit they would invest and if they couldn't figure it out they wouldn't.
And I believe that is very different than what my friend was suggesting is that they just completely ignored it altogether. These guys sat around and read and talked to people so much that is what they did most of the time. So they were always really well informed but that is different than making an investment.
So that's how I'm thinking about this is we need to invest the time to try to understand it and don't delegate that to someone else. The second one that caught my attention was number 32 recognizing reality. I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn't like it. Indeed especially when one doesn't like it.
And I think that quote just says it all. And I think a lot of people right now don't like this. It's new. We're busy. Before you know it, people are talking about hundred billion dollar investments and then $7 trillion investments in new chip fabs to power AI and new data centers. That's right, 7 trillion with a T was in the October 22nd edition of the Wall Street Journal.
Like the amount of construction that's going to be needed to power all this AI is absolutely unbelievable. So, is there a ton of hype? Yes. And is there going to be a bubble where a bunch of these companies crash because everyone was just throwing money at anything that had AI in it? Yes. But just like the internet, that doesn't mean that AI isn't the future.
And the last one that is probably most relevant and most on the nose is number 44 on technology. The great lesson in microeconomics is to discriminate between when technology is going to help you and when it's going to kill you. And in the commentary to this chapter, David Clark writes, "New technology can either damage an existing business or increase its profitability.
The first question we should ask is, will the new technology be a threat to the existing business model? Cars replace buggies and horses. The telephone replace the telegraph. Computers and printers replace the typewriter. The next question is, will the new technology enhance the business? Here the question gets a bit more complicated.
Whether or not a company will benefit from a change in technology is dependent on the type of business it is. If you're a commodity type business which sells a product or service that a number of other companies also supply, any technology breakthrough that will lower costs and improve margins will probably also be picked up by your competitors.
Which means you will lose any competitive advantage the technology provides. But worse than that is when one of your competitors uses the cost savings the new technology provides to cut prices and increases its market share. As an example, new technology XY will deliver a 10% cost savings to our firm, which is a good thing.
Our competitor also buys new technology XY and also achieves a 10% cost savings. Now, both companies are ahead. Both are saving 10%. But if our competitor wakes up one morning and decides to use that 10% cost savings to cut prices by 10% and add to his market share, we are going to also have to cut our prices by 10%.
Or we're going to lose that market share. So at the end of the day, in a commodity type business with lots of competitors, it's only the customer who profits from the new technology. The ability of a company with a durable competitive advantage to utilize a new technology to actually cut costs and increase profit margins is one of the advantages that it has over the commodity type business.
So this is the question I was posing in Tuesday's episode. Is that as this new technology is adopted and your competitors use this, is it possible they are using it in more ways across more functions in their business to reduce their overhead and ultimately pocket some of those savings and pass the rest on to the market, your customers and potentially your prospects as well.
And if they're doing that at a faster rate, it's going to take you longer to catch up. So if you don't own a copy of the tow of Charlie Munger with commentary by David Clark, I would recommend that to a friend. And if you haven't listened to Tuesday's episode on artificial intelligence and the leader responsibility to form an opinion of it, whether you agree with that or disagree with it, I would hope that you spend time listening to it.
And do not hesitate to reach out to me directly and my team to let me know your thoughts and feelings because we're all in this together at info bradley hartman with two ends info at bradleyheartman andco.com. That's all I've got. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. You, my friend, are owed nothing. Deliver value first.
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