Generative AI Means Doing More, Not Less

We hear a lot about the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially around Generative AI products like ChatGPT. You have almost certainly seen new "AI-powered" features popping up in whatever software products you use. Then there are all the proclamations of AI taking over the world, replacing jobs, and causing all sorts of disruptive havoc.

Clearly AI technology will have an impact on how we work. I am not here to make specific predictions. I do know that generative AI is beginning to change the cost of completing certain tasks. For example, it is driving down the cost of writing an email, searching for information, and brainstorming ideas.

There are two key changes that happen when the cost of doing something is reduced. One is that people do more of it.

Remember in a time before we had GPS available on our phones, if we wanted detailed step by step instructions of how to drive from one location to another, we would go to AAA and have them draw up a Triptik, a collection of map pages bound together and marked up with a highlighter to indicate the path we should be following. Since that was quite a hassle to go to AAA and wait for them to create a Triptik for you, you would only use Triptiks for long trips to places you had no familiarity with. Your fall back was stopping at a gas station to ask for directions - and who likes doing that (especially if you are of the male persuasion)! Now, think about how you get directions today. You simply open Google Maps or your favorite map app, type in your destination, and the app will provide you real time, step by step directions, even giving you a heads up when your turn is coming up. How often do you use Google Maps? I'm guessing it is for almost any trip outside of your normal commute or regular hangouts. That's because there is virtually no cost or friction to do so. Plus, when you are out and about and you want to find the nearest Starbucks, Panera, Wendy’s, or whatever your go to place for food or “me time”, you can just plug the name into your maps app and be directed right to the one closest to your current location.

The fact that everyone is using it enables higher level benefits. Before omnipresent use of GPS, it was difficult, if not impossible, to get real time assessments of traffic, which made it much harder to avoid traffic jams. Now with the proliferation of GPS on every road and highway, we now have collective information that can be turned into intelligence in our favorite map app to steer us, as much as is possible, away from congested areas. At the very least, we get a heads up about what awaits us.

So we save time, use it more, and can leverage the tool to answer questions we never thought were possible to answer. This brings us to the second impact of when tools become cheaper. and more powerful With the time we are saving and with the new possibilities now in reach thanks to the new tool, we start asking bigger questions and solving bigger problems. Make no mistake, though, expectations are raised with the new capabilities. If you don’t learn to master the new tools and apply them to increase your abilities at more complex endeavors, you will be left behind as the rest of the world adapts to the new dynamic.

Generative AI has the ability to drive down the cost of things like search, generating content, and brainstorming ideas. My prediction is that we will use these tools to do deeper searches than have been possible to date, we will generate more content that we ever have before (not sure that is a good thing), and we'll be exposed to a wider range of ideas when we brainstorm in ways that weren't possible before.

While Generative AI may cause the elimination of some jobs that were responsible for some content writing and basic source research, there will be a new market for people who can use these new tools to perform complex research that we could never before imagine possible.

As organizations, we need to look at how these technologies might impact our business processes. Which steps can now be automated? Which steps no longer make any sense and can be eliminated? What are the new steps we should adopt related to things that were never possible before but are now feasible to implement? What are new products or services we can now offer that were previously unthinkable?

The organizations that invest time to investigate the power of generative AI and think critically how to answer the above questions will be best positioned to adapt and respond no matter how the technology evolves.