AI and the End of Awful

From a young age, educational systems worldwide familiarize us with the notion of grades and evaluation. Our academic life involves constant assessments, whether we are writing essays, creating art, composing papers, or crafting poems. Each piece of work is scrutinized, evaluated, and eventually ranked.

This pattern extends well beyond academia. Blue Collar workers, too, are familiar with the constant monitoring and measurement fetish that has been the hallmark of business since the industrial revolution. White-Collar workers produce output as well. We write reports, send emails, create PowerPoint presentations, generate magnificent Excel sheets and communicate over Slack.

What we produce there, also gets to fit in this distribution curve that slides from bad to great. Yes, we might like to think that all our work is 'pretty, pretty good', but reality often falls short. While we occasionally deliver exceptional emails or presentations, our output is usually average at best. At times, it's even downright poor.

So, we see a distribution in the quality of work.

If you were to sort all your intellectual efforts into three categories: Brilliant, Mediocre, and Awful, how that would look like?

Guardian angels at work

Since ChatGPT took the world by storm in 2023, everything has changed. And this is probably just the very beginning of that wave.

AI is starting to become our everyday companion. Take Microsoft’s Co-Pilot, your very own AI minion that guides you every step of the way. It’s a sounding board to help you generate ideas. It’s a co-writer helping you formulate your thoughts. It’s a guardian angel that tells you that maybe you should re-phrase that email before you send it out. While you may remain in the driving seat, your friendly and cautious co-pilot adviser keeps you safe and relevant.

With AI’s capabilities expanding rapidly, it is reshaping the nature of professional output. Every email, presentation, report, and document will most likely be affected by the fact that the people who produce it have an incredible co-pilot at their side, one that seems to be getting better and smarter every day.

But what will that do to the quality distribution of work?

How much awful, mediocre and brilliant will we get now?

The End of Awful

This evolution in technology is likely to standardize the quality of work, leading to a proliferation of mediocrity.?

I'm already seeing it in my inbox. I receive an increasing number of emails which are clearly generated by AI. Granted, some are cleverly generated. But the reality is that most of this stuff is horribly mediocre. And it has the complete opposite effect on me as a consumer, having developed an almost allergic reaction to it. I find this content as irritating as it is uninspired.

Chances are, though, that the increased use of GenAI will trigger an almost exponential rise in mediocre narratives and content.

On the other hand, ‘Awful’ probably will cease to exist.

And that might be a good thing. Let's face it, that moment seems to be creeping closer already: when you hit 'send' on a particularly poorly written email, your faithful AI co-pilot will gently suggest reconsidering it, asking " Do you REALLY want to send this out like that?". Before we upload that report, print out the document, or finalize the PowerPoint, all the terrible, horrible, awful mistakes will have been automatically adjusted, mended, and cleaned up by the AI. Like magic.

I like to call this phase “The end of Awful”. ?'Awful' is a term we will only remember from the 'BC' era: Before ChatGPT.

So, the quality distribution of work, content and other output in organizations will fundamentally be altered by AI. Mediocre will explode. Awful will disappear.

And what about 'Brilliant’?

I also believe that Brilliant will keep existing. Humans will keep making unique observations, write hypercreative content and develop one-of-a-kind and incredibly original work.

But it might also become more difficult to trace this brilliance in a sea of mediocrity. True genius might become even more scarce in the world of AI generated content and very hard to find.

So that would be my advice to you: in a tsunami of mediocrity, identify where you can be brilliant. Don’t settle for a job where you’re just average, or worse, where a co-pilot helps you become mediocre instead of awful. Find out where you shine, and then keep polishing that. Because you’ll need it where we’re going.

This is the abbreviated first part of a brand-new e-book that I wrote together with my friend and business partner Steven Van Belleghem . It examines how Generative AI is reshaping professional output and customer interactions and what that means for organizations. You can download the full long read here! Enjoy!