Shopify to take AI plunge

Photo: The Canadian Press
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke

Shopify Inc. is doubling down on artificial intelligence with new policies that will make the technology a “fundamental expectation” for all staff because it will be embedded into everything from performance reviews to product development.

A memo released by CEO Tobi Lütke urged the Ottawa-based e-commerce software company’s staff not already treating AI like a critic, tutor, programmer or deep researcher to use the technology.

“Frankly, I don’t think it’s feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying AI in your craft; you are welcome to try, but I want to be honest I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow,” Lütke wrote in a memo he posted to X on Monday because he heard it was being leaked.

“Stagnation is almost certain, and stagnation is slow-motion failure. If you’re not climbing, you’re sliding.”

The more than 1,100-word memo solidifies AI’s place at Canada’s most prominent tech company but also sets a new standard for how deep AI could penetrate corporate Canada. Lütke’s vision will have AI figure into every nook and cranny of his company and even wind its way into how staff pursues projects.

In Shopify’s current approach to product development, each project begins with a prototype phase, where ideas are tested before being built and released. Lütke’s memo said he wants AI to be used at that earliest stage because “AI dramatically accelerates this process.”

“You can learn to produce something that other team mates can look at, use, and reason about in a fraction of the time it used to take,” he wrote.

AI will also crop up in staff performance and peer review questionnaires because he said his “sense is that a lot of people give up after writing a prompt and not getting the ideal thing back immediately.”

He said teams wanting more resources and the ability to hire must also demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done with AI before they will be given permission to carry out their plans.

The priorities Lütke outlined will apply to everyone from executives like himself to the company’s most junior ranks because he wants to “totally change Shopify, our work, and the rest of our lives.”

The memo reminded Chris MacDonald, who teaches ethics at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University, of the Silicon Valley motto, “move fast and break things.”

It probably wasn’t a jarring note for a tech-savvy workforce like Shopify’s to receive, but he said anyone making moves like Lütke’s has to “make sure they’re not just leaping into a new technology without being pretty sure that the benefits are going to be substantial and that they’re going to outweigh the risks.”