Fancy Pants
I have writer’s block today. My post was due last evening, and creativity and deadlines don’t always go hand in hand. Turning to ChatGPT felt disingenuous. For a minute it was tempting though.
Maybe I have writer’s block because of it. My mind is chock-full. Yesterday, we hosted 30 CEOs on topics covering concerns, opportunities, challenges, experiments, policies, and the way our customers are asking us to explain our use of AI. Last week I said it was a tsunami in the making. I am convinced it will give us all an amazing opportunity to rethink our businesses from operations and processes through to our products and people.
One speaker said this will be bigger than the internet and happen faster. Adoption will make Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Instagram look like child’s play. Look at Chegg last week.
And while we were talking about all these heady and relevant implications, in came a text from a close friend (I didn’t multitask but getting it on the heels of this meeting was wild!):
ChatGPT just released Code Interpreter. It’ll move very quickly — like having a Ph.D. analyst online. Depends on how comfortable people are sharing clean data online to train the “machine.” It’s so brand new, even AI experts don’t yet know how disruptive it’s going to be, except some are saying it could disrupt the analyst industry in as quickly as 12 months.
Another CEO asked me how to use this technology to manage fancy pants analysts and editorial staff. Read “reduce reliance on this talent,” which he deems a headache. Those were his words not mine. As for me? I’m a big believer that the few and specialized staff we have are truly the pointy end of the spear and our job is to enable them with amazing data and machine-driven knowledge that makes their jobs easier and gives them more time with clients to do the real work, outside of populating spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides.
Our strategy has long held that we can rely on variable staff to handle long tail needs about so much of this industry. Scaling with a network of experts and machines was, and remains, key. But I don’t have 1,000 analysts or 1,000 journalists. It will be interesting to see how it all pans out for them. I don’t know how you put machines on the ground in war-torn countries. Maybe drones will help if they’re not shot down first, but better that than journalists in harm’s way.
This is such a crazy and amazing time to be in our industry. It’s exhilarating and exhausting, all at once. I think about my grandmother who lived to be 101 and all she witnessed between 1890 and 1990. We got to witness the rise of the semiconductor, personal computing, the WWW, mobile, social, and now this. It’s astounding and it’s happening at breakneck speed. There’s a reason for that term and the era of AI is perfect for it.
Have a plan. Work the plan. Toss the plan. Adjust and iterate the plan. But get going, because it’s already late and we’ve just begun. Fancy pants or no fancy pants, it’s time to reinvent our world as our world gets reinvented. We are in for a wild and exhilarating ride. Maybe that’s why Disneyland retired Space Mountain this week. The real thing? Oh, it’s so much better.