Time is Now

April 8, 2024
Arguing that business leaders have a “moral responsibility to neither run from AI nor exploit it,” Verma’s thoughtful debut considers the opportunities and challenges of not just the age of artificial intelligence but also “the moment of Now” and the ever-more-rapid pace of “Real Time.” Time Is Now urges readers to embrace the fact that, with “highly curated fresh data,” AI can “amplify human intelligence and performance,” aid in business decision making, help sellers understand customers’ needs, and much more. We’re now in the “dead center of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” Verma argues, making the case that staying the new “Gold Rush” of AI is nothing for business leaders to fear—instead, it’s a chance to make better, more-informed choices in the Now, a moment where generative tools allow us to draw as much information from the present as from the past. “What is intelligence,” Vermer asks, “if not the ability to make choices in Real Time?”
At the heart of Verma’s case are the “three components” that come together to form the opportunity to make good decisions in the “moment of Now”: information, context, and choice. In the book’s first half, Verma demonstrates how these pillars have informed decision-making over the course of a life that has crossed countries and companies, eventually bringing him to the role of CEO at SingleStore. The emphasis is on lessons learned, especially in moments of technological disruption, which Verma has learned not to fear.
Throughout, he writes with welcome candor about challenges, scandals, and the responsibility of business leaders to “make decisions that are in the best interest of society versus what is only best for profit.” (He points to Meta/Facebook as an example of not always measuring up.) The final chapters offer clear, heartening explanations of how AI actually works and can be implemented as a tool, one that brings much new information and context into the Now—"Technology isn’t the problem,” he writes, with persuasive power. “The problem is how it’s being used.”
Takeaway: Clear-eyed look at how AI technology can help business leaders make choices.
Comparable Titles: Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb’s Prediction Machines, Kavita Ganesan’s The Business Case for AI.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: B+

A view of the current and future roles of AI in the workplace. In his nonfiction debut, Verma reminds readers that we are now squarely launched into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in which an increasing number of companies are driven by artificial intelligence--or are on the cusp of becoming fodder for AI themselves. (He cites the example of the bookselling chain Borders essentially selling its electronic soul to Amazon.) In this data-driven new reality, Verma maintains, the key to understanding the past and grappling with the future is what he calls "the discovery of Now," which rests on three pillars: Information, Context, and Choice. "In the rush of life, it's easy to forget the impact a single moment can make. It's easy to neglect the power of Now," he warns. "Until Now comes rushing toward you to change everything." Drawing on stories he shares from his own globetrotting professional experience (including many years at the software startup TIBCO), Verma passes along some of the lessons he's learned, such as "Your potential is limited only by how much you're willing to learn and whom you are willing to learn from." The book is structured so that these lessons loop back to the author's focus on how businesses should view the challenges of AI. ("You can outexecute a poor application," he writes. "But in infrastructure? Not a chance.") He writes with genuine zeal, although many of his rubrics are painfully self-evident, such as "No one gets to avoid trials in life" or "Life is inherently filled with risk." His core insight into demystifying AI seems both reductive and astute: He reminds readers that for all its impressive sophistication, AI is just another human tool. "The essence of our quest for artificial intelligence is a mirror in many ways," he writes. "It reflects back our own cognitive processes, our own intelligence." A forceful, if occasionally predictable, rethinking of the usual approaches to working with AI.

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