235: The Cloud Pod Explores Looker for Mobile: Ruining One Vacation at a Time

Welcome to episode 235 of the Cloud Pod podcast – where the forecast is always cloudy! This week a full house is here for your listening pleasure! Justin, Jonathan, Matthew, and Ryan are talking about cyberattacks, attacks on vacations (aka Looker for mobile) and introducing a whole new segment just for AI. You’re welcome, SkyNet. 

Titles we almost went with this week:

• AI is worth investing in – says leading AI service provider, Microsoft
• Join The Cloud Pod for the ‘AI Worth Investing In’ Eye-Roll Extravaganza
• The Cloud Pod: Breaking News – Microsoft Discovers Water is Wet, AI Worth Investing In
• Jonathan finally wins the point for predicting ARM instances in Google Cloud
• Looker for Mobile: Ruining vacations one notification at a time
• Microsoft helps bring cloud costs into FOCUS
• Focus only on the path forward… not the path behind you. 
• GPT-4 Turbo… just be glad its not Ultra GPT-4
• I can only flinch at the idea of Finch
• The Cloud Pod finally accepts AI is the future

A big thanks to this week’s sponsor:

Foghorn Consulting provides top-notch cloud and DevOps engineers to the world’s most innovative companies. Initiatives stalled because you have trouble hiring?  Foghorn can be burning down your DevOps and Cloud backlogs as soon as next week.

New Segment – AI is Going Great! 

01:24 New study validates the business value and opportunity of AI 

• You may be shocked to find out that there is value in AI for your business! 
• To help you understand, Microsoft paid IDC to make a study that provides unique insights into how AI is being used to drive economic impact for organizations.  
• 2000 business leaders and decision makers from around the world participated in the survey.
  • 71% of respondents say their companies are already using AI, and 22% said within 12 months they would be using it. 
  • 92% of AI deployments take 12 months or less
  • Organizations are realizing a return on their AI investment within 14 months
  • For every $1 a company invests in AI, it is realize an average return of $3.5x
  • 52% report that a lack of skilled workers is their biggest barrier to implement and scale AI. We assume that’s prompt engineering or model builders. 
• IDC projects that generative AI will add nearly $10 trillion to global GDP over the next 10 years. 
• Key areas where businesses are finding value: 
  • Enrich employee experiences
  • Reinvent customer engagement
  • Reshape business processes
  • Bend the curve on innovation.

02:33 Ryan – “There were some questions that they didn’t ask that I wanted them to, like how many respondents are already using AI but wish they weren’t, or how many months do you think it wil