AI is Here To Stay. Now what?
Artificial intelligence is changing the world. Is AI a net-positive or net-negative for the world? Only time can really say - but I’m excited. Let’s dive in together.
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Repeating History
We’ve seen monumental shifts like this before. Consider the horse and buggy industry, which was probably terrified of motor vehicles. Or how the technology leap of the photograph took business away from portrait painters’ business.
With each new technological leap, established jobs of the century were supplanted, sometimes by new jobs, and sometimes by nothing. Nevertheless, prosperity grew.
For innovation to take place, there are always sacrifices. Those who figured out how to adapt stay in the game. So how do you adapt?
Everyone Can Use AI
You may question what on earth you’d use AI for. Twenty-five years ago, might have you asked the same question about the internet? The answer is anyone can use AI for any reason they might be using Google now, and there is a large volume of additional use cases.
A work consultant, a mini therapist, a legal expert, and a health advisor (insert required “always consult a real lawyer, doctor, or other expert” here) are just some examples. What makes using generative AI categorically distinct from an internet search is your query can be hyper specific to your needs. If your traditional internet search is obscure enough or too specific, sometimes no search results will appear - not so with generative AI.
Good Tech Always Beats Bad Tech
Advertising became mainstream when companies realized they could concisely communicate their products’ value and get more business. However, this coaxed consumers into believing everything they read, which led to betrayal when some bad actors lied about their products. As distrust and cynicism grew, independent reviewers began to gain authority rather than the businesses themselves. When some independent sources were bought out by those companies, that’s when online reviews came in. Once fake review generation started to occur, tech identifying the validity of reviews emerged. We can expect a new corrective tech in the future that will further improve any new issues and lead to greater transparency, accountability, and knowledge share.
This is why I’m an Optimistic Futurist. Historically speaking, bad tech has always been outdone by better tech. I can’t see a reason why this would change. AI is the final frontier of innovation in many ways, especially as AI begins to create AI (which is already to happening). It will kick-off a vicious cycle of radical improvement never seen before!
Maintaining The Human Element
Once organizations figure out AI can replace many things, they will try to jump into the deep end. Ultimately, though, humans desire to work and interact with other humans, and that intrinsic need will never go away (“it is not good that man should be alone”). So the best implementation of AI is automating what should be automated, and giving the tender loving care any piece of work requires to come across authentically.
For example, creating a tech spec sheet. Maybe you already have all of the documentation ready as a database to source and can automate most of the creation of the sheet. So you have ChatGPT or Grok do an initial pass, but ensuring you look over it and make any necessary modifications is vital.
Doing this “bare minimum” will actually set you apart from most trying to use this technology. While AI will automate a large swath of tasks with a level of polish unmatched by human effort, a market appetite will emerge desiring messy, “human” endeavors.
One example of this is a resurgence of lower production value viral YouTube videos. Overproduced videos still have their place, but there’s a renewed desire for authenticity and content that feels more human.
Human vs. AI Mistakes Track Record
As you use AI more as a tool, I encourage you to take count in your own life of how often humans make mistakes that affect you vs. how often AI makes mistakes that affect you. In my experience, generative AI has actually made fewer mistakes (in proportion to work output volume) than working with actual customer support agents.
Recently I used AI to push back against a lawyer who was intercepting a legal agreement incorrectly - something unfathomable even just a few years ago. That’s because in theory, AI can have perfect knowledge. If you provide the right prompt and the right information, it will give you the right answers. Of course there’s a chance for a hallucination - but you can count on humans to make mistakes, too.
Humans have intent and generative AI can have innate biases from that intent (don’t forget, AI was created by humans after all). As long as there’s a commitment to transparency and accountability, perhaps built within the AI model itself, we can identify those biases and better understand what outputs we can expect from it.
The Worst It Will Ever Be
You may still be skeptical. After all, sometimes it’s obvious when text was written by ChatGPT or an image was generated by Midjourney. Bear in mind - this is the very worst this technology will ever be. It’s only going to get better from here.
For now we can still play the game of identifying every AI-generated giveaway phrase like “it’s not X, it’s Y” in a LinkedIn post or “I hope this message finds you well” at the start of an email. But soon will come the day where it will be significantly more difficult to discern what was penned by human hands vs. what was compiled from some Large Language Model.
For example, Humanize AI is a human-readable language translator from AI’s standard output. It’s used to foil services like GPTZero which attempt to figure out whether or not a body of text was generated with AI or written by a human.
No doubt this hyper-real wave of generative AI images and text will bring about an entirely new level of skepticism by the general populace. How can we know anything is real or true? You may not be able to rely on your rational faculties for long. AI is about to seem as real as the real thing.
Using AI For Good
As an optimist, I strongly believe AI will bring about more good than harm. We can now build tools like never before, assemble useful information in the blink of an eye, and accelerate research into any topic you could dream of.
Drudgery can be automated. Humans will be able to focus on doing more human things and let robots do robot things. Productivity will continue to soar and we’ll see leaps in technology and innovation we can’t even imagine today.
Everyone should be excited about what the future holds. Sure there will be growing pains like everything else, of course there will be bad actors, and AI can certainly be used for ill. However the positives far outweigh the negatives.
What I’m Doing About It
I use AI every day. It helps me make decisions, brainstorm ideas, and help people in my life. Rather than replace work I do, I try to use it to accelerate it so I can do more in a day.
Some colleagues and I recently started a company called lilAgents. It’s an AI-first marketing organization. There are not many of us - but we can act as a team 10x our size through the use of automation. But it’s not simply the fact that we use automation that helps us move quickly and allows us to deliver stellar work - there’s 15+ years of experience in marketing, design, and development there.
Hopefully you can tell - I’m very excited about it. I’ve wanted to take the plunge on starting a company before, and it turned out it was just a matter of finding the right cofounders and being the right moment in time.
I’m reminded of the 10 Commandments of Team Dynamics - the importance of trust, communication, and a shared vision - and that is abundant here. We’ve been dialed in and building amazing things for clients, and we’re about to share some free products that you’ll probably find very useful.
I can’t wait to share more. For now, follow us on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok - or wherever else you like to hang out. You can find us with the @lilAgents handle.