Dropbox CEO Drew Houston says these types of people will be the ones to benefit from AI

• Dropbox CEO Drew Houston says AI expertise coupled with specific knowledge is the key to success.
• Houston emphasizes the value of combining AI with fields like music, healthcare, and archaeology.
• Dropbox launched “Dash for Business,” an AI tool to enhance productivity and content management.

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston says that the winners of the AI race will have two strengths — expertise in AI and a strong command of another subject.

At the MIT AI Conference on Saturday, Houston said the “intersection is super powerful and you become very valuable because you can actually figure out how to apply the technologies to make a bunch of things in your field better.”

Whether that’s bridging AI with music, healthcare, or archaeology — the combination is valuable, he said.

The productivity gains people will see in their given field will be exponential, he added.

“You talk about a 10x engineer? Well, now that 10x engineer who knows how to use AI is going to be a 100x engineer,” he said.

Dropbox, the cloud-based storage service that Houston co-founded in 2007, is riding the generative AI wave. Earlier this month, it launched “Dash for Business” a new AI-powered search tool that helps teams to “search, organize, share, and protect content” across all their apps.

Houston said he initially built a search engine years ago after getting “really annoyed” about how difficult it was to search across documents, emails, or Slack messages. The launch of ChatGPT turbocharged the process by making it easier to search with natural language, he said.

During Dropbox’s last round of layoffs in April 2023 — when the company cut about 16% of its workforce — Houston also acknowledged the impact of AI on the business landscape.

“Our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development,” he said in his message to staff at the time.