Society has repeatedly underestimated artificial intelligence capabilities to such an extreme degree that traditional benchmarks have become meaningless, OpenAI Chair and AI startup Sierra CEO Bret Taylor warned. 

The former Google engineer who helped rewrite Google Maps delivered a direct assessment of AI’s explosive growth in an interview with The Verge.

Sierra just raised funding at a $10 billion valuation. The customer service AI platform now enables customers to complete complex financial transactions without human intervention. “You can refinance your home with an AI agent powered on our platform end-to-end,” Taylor said during an interview on Sept. 11.

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Taylor said basic retrieval-augmented tools built with large language models are no longer a competitive advantage, according to The Verge.

He explained that combining ChatGPT with a knowledge base is now a weekend project for engineers, saying, “Slapping ChatGPT together with a knowledge base is not that hard. Most engineers nowadays could do that in a weekend, which, by the way, is mind-blowing. It was science fiction three years ago; now it’s a weekend project.”

Taylor pointed out that the real challenge lies in building guardrails for regulated industries, managing multilingual conversations, and creating systems that can handle voice interruptions or sensitive data like account numbers, he told The Verge. Taylor said Sierra’s focus is on solving those “hard parts” of applied AI rather than simply deploying generic chatbots.

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Taylor warned that most enterprise AI initiatives represent superficial efforts rather than genuine transformation, according to the interview. He used harsh language to describe the current state of corporate AI adoption.

“I call it AI tourism, like a lot of people doing performative AI projects, but to actually go to that last mile is quite difficult,” Taylor said.

Taylor told The Verge that the challenge comes from companies trying to build AI systems on their own instead of relying on platforms designed for specific industries.

He argued that applied AI firms are better equipped to deliver real results, adding, “I think the solution will be applied AI companies. I think if you want to build a better customer experience, buy Sierra. If you want a legal AI agent, buy Harvey.”

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Taylor’s personal journey shows how rapidly AI has advanced beyond human capabilities. The former Google engineer became famous for rewriting Google Maps in a weekend, but now considers that achievement routine for AI systems.

“There’s this story that goes on around me about rewriting Google Maps, and it’s mostly true and a little embellished like many great stories are,” Taylor told The Verge. “And now if you’ve used Codex or Cloud Code, you’re like, ‘Yeah, I can just have an AI agent do that over a weekend.’”

The realization forced Taylor to confront how AI has made his signature accomplishment obsolete. “So it’s like the thing that’s so exciting, that was actually part of my own personal identity is now an AI agent. Maybe not quite yet,” he said. “I wrote some pretty good code. But probably in a couple of years, yeah, an AI agent could totally do that. So it’s going to go from, ‘Wow, that was impressive,’ to ‘Wow, people did that?’ over the next couple of years.”

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