AI and Generative AI is Not Going Anywhere
I woke up this morning to the Outsell Doorway reading that Strat7 named a new COO. Hah! Imposter. Strat7? Great name but man better to be Strat 1 or just Strat. My first CEO used to call me Strat when I was a member of his executive team. “Let’s hear what Strat has to say.” he’d remark. Or his calls would always start with “Hi Strat!”
A couple weeks ago a client in the UK apologized to me for the silly companies who have usurped my last name after I apologized to him for getting his name wrong — two names (with no hyphen) with me leaving one half off! I told him people using Stratigos to name their companies Strat7, Stratego (a game,) or some riff on strategy for a management consulting firm was fine by me.
Stratigos actually translates to ‘military general’ in Greek and my husband often calls me ‘the general.’ Not sure that’s always a compliment but I will take it and carry the badge with pride. My first name means ‘of the flower’ so having those two names side-by-side is interesting to say the least. Names can be copied, reused, repurposed or even cut in half. We roll with it.
But fake content? A world where a recent Dove commercial sites most of the content on the web in 2025 will be AI generated? Just today, I heard a reference to AI technology so powerful it will ‘wipe out Hollywood in five years.’ That’s quite a statement. That’s our world now.
It is changing and changing fast, and I am not sure it’s for the better. But the train has left the station. The horse is out of the barn. The genie is out of the bottle. There is no going back, and we are here to live with it, whatever metaphor we choose. It’s done. All we can hope for is some regulation and a belief in humanity to do more of the right things than the wrong ones. I’m not sure how well that’s going but it seems its what we have. AI and generative AI is not going anywhere, and it will redefine our next era of work, solutions, labor, entertainment, and so much more. It already is.
But how do we make money with it? How do we improve efficiency? How do we manage the costs that come with generative AI and can we demonstrate ROI? If there is a ‘trough of disillusionment’ — how do we come out of that trough and ride the wave of productivity. It is early days but the questions are real and we have to move out of the hype and into the realities of making this technology and big tech work for us.
We can use the technology for our own productivity and develop new revenue streams. We can license to big tech, having the content they need. But how? And how do we make sure this technology is sustainable. Anyone looking at water use in server farms or the need for nuclear power to power this future (also a water hog) needs to look at this too. The world’s natural resources are not infinite. We have rolling brown outs in California right now. EV cars? Bah! We can’t keep the lights on and yet the compute power necessary for the era ahead is mind boggling.
We are going to explore all this and more with this year’s theme From Hype to Reality: Creating Value in the AI Era at the Outsell Signature Event co-produced with JEGI CLARITY. The next era is upon us. This is your chance to get it right. The world we are operating in is changing. Make it work for you. To request your invitation contact us. And plan to join us October 9–10 in Boston.