This is close to being an appeal to authority. These companies - and IBM is the classic case of this - are the last to pick up on new trends and are usually blindsided by new technologies. If AI was perfectly superhuman IBM's CEO is still going to be one of the the last people in the tech world to pick up on it. He'd hopefully be ahead of other industries.
Startup CTOs are the people deciding how much code is going to get written by AI. They're going to be building products in new, untested ways. Mostly failing, some succeeding. Technical growth doesn't come from established majors. The entire AI boom left Google doing a cartoonish impression of being run over by a gaggle of bystanders heading to the next big thing and they thought they were actively researching and leading the field of AI.
As news of what IBM is doing he's a leading authority, but following IBM's exploits is going to be skating to where the puck was last year on a good day.
It's not an "appeal to authority" to report on the opinions of tech leaders. The only way it would make sense to call this an appeal to authority is if you think TechCrunch is making an argument for a side. This just looks like ordinary reporting, however.
But it is close to one to look to him as an authority on where AI is going. He's technically only commenting on exactly what IBM is going right now; which isn't where we expect the interesting things to happen.
Startup CTOs are the people deciding how much code is going to get written by AI. They're going to be building products in new, untested ways. Mostly failing, some succeeding. Technical growth doesn't come from established majors. The entire AI boom left Google doing a cartoonish impression of being run over by a gaggle of bystanders heading to the next big thing and they thought they were actively researching and leading the field of AI.
As news of what IBM is doing he's a leading authority, but following IBM's exploits is going to be skating to where the puck was last year on a good day.