At London-headquartered payments technology company Paysend, access to artificial intelligence tools has to be earned.CEO Ben Chisell told CNBC he is a “very cynical man” about the hype around the technology, though he still sees value in it.
Chisell, who previously worked at Amazon, eBay and Starling Bank, estimates that Paysend can now deliver around 25% more engineering work with the same-sized team, but argues that getting results isn’t as simple as handing everyone the latest tech.
Instead, he limits AI tools to his highest-performing employees, often only after they’ve proved what they can do with them. In the wrong hands, he said, AI can magnify bad habits such as laziness and poor judgment.
His broader rule is to resist the “fear of missing out” and focus on customer problems.
“I know it sounds very unglamorous and unsexy as an approach given the world of tokenmaxxing and AI, but I think it’s really, really important,” Chisell said.