“We’ve pivoted to AI.”

“We’re all in on AI.”

“We’re incorporating AI into everything we do.”

Let me say upfront: I don’t think I’m an alarmist. I’m also not a Luddite. At least I don’t think I am. And I don’t long for the good ‘ole days of the typewriter, the horse and buggy, or (for what I do), the simple days of marketing when you had a highway billboard, a newspaper, and nothing else.

Technology advances. It’s inevitable like death and taxes, and Thanos. And yes, as a general rule, I’m a believer that we all have to be adaptable. Period.  

But to me, this AI revolution we’re all undergoing is different. It’s different from the Industrial Revolution. It’s different from the creation of the first car or the first airplane or the first computer. It’s different from the start of the Internet, which I was around for. The fact of the matter and perhaps the most troubling part about it, is that this revolution will move faster than most people can adapt to it. And I don’t mean just use it. What I hear few people talk about seriously or in any ongoing matter is that AI will wipe out whole categories of workers.

Sure, some have discussed it. But most of the time, I see companies rushing headlong to adopt it, create with it, or push it forward, without really thinking of any bigger consequences. That is, one day, in the very near future, AI will be better at most things than humans. It can work 24 hours. It will create anything (and likely better than any human can) in seconds. It will know more than any single human.

What are we all going to do then?

There’s actually little doubt, to me, about the outcome of this AI revolution. People who do jobs today simply won’t have them tomorrow. That wasn’t true of past revolutions or innovations, which may have only affected a single industry or workers in a single category. A horse and buggy craftsman could reskill and find work somewhere else once the car was introduced.  

Is the same true about the AI revolution? Will a designer or a lawyer be able to do the same thing? We seem to keep pushing this question aside, as if it’s a pesky fly in the ointment of our profit-making endeavors.

I mean, is anyone else out there worried about AI?  

From a business owner standpoint, it makes absolute sense. There’s no doubt it’s a great bet. We at Marketing Nice Guys certainly use it and marketing, in general, has become a lot more efficient in the last two years because of it. (And no, I didn’t use AI to write this, maybe to make a point.) At some point down the road, maybe some of some of us become owners of a GPT, because we have proprietary content or a specific set of skills we can impart to the machine.

But think about it. How many people can that possibly cover?

The 1 percent will be fine, at least economically. They’ll have machines to do everything for them. Maybe the majority of us are headed for Universal Basic Income (UBI) but will it also involve anything resembling work?

Before we continue with that question, here are some other hesitations about AI…

 

Imagine a World Where We Only Interact with… Machines?

I’ll be the first to admit that I generally like being around other people. Yeah, not assholes, but real people. People who get it. People who feel things. People who can think about things and talk about things. I like meeting people randomly. I like finding out about who they are, or what drives them. 

But the other day I came across this concept of “machine customers.” Have you heard of it?

“Machine customers are systems and algorithms powered by AI that make purchasing decisions and carry out transactions on behalf of a business or an individual.”

Yes, you read that right.

Indeed, by 2027, “Gartner predicts, 50% of people in advanced economies will have AI personal assistants that will be able to make purchases for the person. And by 2030, 25% or more of all consumer purchases and business replenishment requests will be delegated to machines.”[1]

I took this verbatim from a site that was talking about AI marketing trends. But it’s a lot more significant than that if you think about it. The fact of the matter is, some of us are going to be too lazy to interact at all with another company brand to make a purchase. Forget the brick-and-mortar interaction and saying “hi” to Sally at the counter. We’re not even going to interact personally with an e-commerce site.

For those of you with kids, you see the trends. More and more, our kids aren’t interacting with real people in person, only devices. They don’t go out as much as we did. They don’t socialize. They don’t go to bars as much. Machines make it easier to not have to deal with others. We always say that the “human experience can’t be replaced,” but it’s literally being replaced.

 

Does Anyone Know What’s Real? Does Anyone Care?

The other day I stumbled upon a particular Instagram account. One of the video posts from this account was using a distinct narration – I think it was 10 Things That Real Men Never Do or something dumb like that. The narrator was the actor, Denzel Washington. Except it wasn’t. It was just an AI recreation of his voice that sounded exactly like him. Because his voice is so distinct and recognizable, it lent credibility to the words being spoken. The problem is, of course, he never said those things, but you get the impression he did.[2] This being the Internet, though, you can’t really police all the accounts that use fake voices. And a lot of people don’t seem to care as they consumed it like I did. 

And another machine (a.k.a., Instagram) saw that I consumed it and passed it around to be viewed by more people like me.

I will say one of the funnier things in this era has been the creation of fictional AI videos which depict an athlete saying something “they really feel” after a game. I’ve seen videos of Lebron talking at a press conference about how bad his teammates on the LA Lakers “really” are after a game. And his voice is dubbed into a visual that makes it seem like he’s actually saying it. A lot of people online have the reaction of: “I can’t believe he said that! So disappointing…” And they go on to rant about what a terrible person Lebron is. The problem, again, is that he never said those things and others in the comments have to tell that commenter that it’s not a real video. That AI is behind it.

To their credit, many of the accounts that do create these videos say that they are indeed an AI-spoof. But a lot of people don’t read the fine print and are fooled by what seems to be a real thing.

And going forward, how will we know?  Could a politician claim he never said something or that it was just an AI of his image and likeness? (That’s indeed already happened.) Could a robot show up and one day look and sound exactly like a real person and make some claim about something that sets off a firestorm? When the real person never uttered a word of it?

 

“We Gotta Do It to Stay Competitive”

I often hear the argument that we in the U.S. have to be at the forefront of AI for competitive reasons. “It’s better if we do it, than the Chinese, Russians, or some other country.” So, any guardrails put on AI by an administration are often seen by Silicon Valley executives as making us inherently less competitive. And let’s face it, Silicon Valley doesn’t want to be held back from its profits either.

That’s fine on the one hand.

But right now, the question is, are we truly being responsible stewards of this? Think about Open AI’s ChatGPT, released in November 2022 – it was basically like opening Pandora’s Box. Since then, many of us have been singularly focused on developing the technology – and with a singular aim: to sell something.

Yes, this approach to commercializing things is probably what sets us apart and has made the U.S. as prosperous as it has been over the last 248 years. (And whatever your view on that, it’s made us all richer for sure.) In that way, the race to win AI is as American as anything we do.

On the other hand, look at the results in industries where we put up only minimal guardrails. Think of the things we’ve done to the environment or the development of our pharmaceutical or food industry. The companies certainly get rich but many people pay for this lack of regulation or oversight. And who pays? It’s typically the less well-off.

In the case of AI, it will likely be the same. The business owners and the 1 percent will own something. What about the rest of us? When you ask Google, which jobs will be replaced by AI the fastest here’s the list:

• • Customer service representatives
  • Accounts/auditors
  • Graphic designers
  • Market research analysts
  • Paralegals
  • Teachers
  • Stock traders
  • Telemarketers (OK, we’re not so upset about this one)
  • Receptionists
  • Salespeople
  • Administrative
  • Data entry clerks
  • Journalists
  • Bookkeepers
  • Chauffeurs
  • Computer programmers
  • Human resources (ironically)
  • Manufacturing and industry
  • Proofreaders
  • Bank Tellers
  • Healthcare professionals
  • Lawyers
  • Chief Executives
  • Couriers

That’s only the initial list of jobs to be replaced by AI first. In March 2024, Sam Altman said that AI will do “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today.” (Gulp!)

The point is – and it’s not just about us – there are very few things AI won’t do better and more efficiently than a regular person in the very near future. And if that is indeed the case, what happens to our economies? What happens to whole industries? What happens to ordinary people’s lives?

I think the unease we all feel about the future for us and our kids is that we sense some of this, innately. And that the people who are rushing headlong into this, in their zeal to create more money for themselves and their companies, aren’t actually thinking about this at all. Or, they are and don’t care. After all, again, they will fine. 

Won’t they?

In the back of my mind, I can’t help but wonder about that question too. It’s like creating a Frankenstein and the monster turns on you. Eventually there are always consequences – some of which you see, some of which you don’t.

Are we moving into a more Darwinian era where “I have it but you don’t” means “I’ll survive but you won’t”? 

Are we just trying to adapt to something that eventually overwhelms us all?

I don’t know the answer and maybe we all have no real choice in the matter, but my sense is we should talk about this more seriously and come up with some real answers, not just keep brushing it all under the rug in the name of “Oh, it will all work itself out.”  

This isn’t Henry Ford creating the Model T after all. It’s not just one industry. You can’t disrupt whole economies completely and not face any negative consequences, or at least consider what the impacts might be. And while you can try to claim you never saw it coming, that wouldn’t be true now, would it?  

[1] https://improvado.io/blog/ai-marketing-trends#bonus-the-impact-of-ai-on-marketing-jobs

[2] Indeed, a big part of the recent Screen Actors Guild Strike was over a studios’ ability to recreate the image and likeness of actor who isn’t actually acting in a film or show.