The AI Generation

As I read a book about the difference between those that grew up before 1980 and those born after 1990 - that grew up with the internet - I can't help but think about the impact AI will have on those born after 2020. They will quite literally grow up with AI as part of their life from the start.

They will be “AI Native.”

Before we dive into the AI generation, let’s quickly overview the previous paradigm shift. Those born before 1980 spent most of their time building physical goods as part of the shift from the agrarian to the industrial age. While information was important, people often spent time searching for information not creating it.

In the Agrarian age, those who naturally had information or who gathered that information (such as phone book manufacturers) could sell it as valuable. To make a simple anology, think of knowledge as “rocks”. Those who had a lot of rocks on their land or did the hard work of carving out stones, could make money.

Then the internet arrived.

Suddenly, anyone could find, organize and even create information and make it available for others to find and consume. As the amount of information being created exploded, value accrued to those who helped organize and find the information (e.g. Google) or enabled others to create information itself (e.g. Facebook, TikTok, etc.).

To further the analogy, it suddenly became easier to organize and even create or “print” new rocks. People also began using these new rocks to build bigger buildings, around what people were alredy doing. As an example, buying things moved online (e.g. Amazon) creating a bigger “building” or in this case “business” than had been possible before.

Then AI arrived

It’s as if one day someone made a machine that can do more than just print new rocks. It can build the whole damn wall and the more types of walls you show it, the better, it gets at building them.

We are now in a transition period. Similar to the 1980s where a vast majority are operating on the previous paradigm. Operating the way they always have. Not realizing there is a paradigm shift under foot.

I can't predict the future, but I can try to reason through what that shift will mean.

More specifically, I want to think through what it will mean for the next generation. I think this generation will be really good at indirectly creating and consuming. While “indirectly” may just be one word. It makes all the difference. Back to the analogy: if millennials and Gen Z are really good at printing rocks (i.e. knowledge and content), then Gen AI will be really good at creating AI agents that can create whole buildings. How is that for a new skill set!

For those thinking, what the hell are agents?! Stick with me, I'll explain.

Several people have posited that the natural extension of the current LLM phase of AI is a move to “Agentic AI” where we give an AI not just a task (e.g. rewrite this text to be clearer and less than 500 words) but an actual end goal to accomplish and the autonomy and power to do it in whatever way it sees fit (e.g. Get me $10,000 worth of new business however you think best, you have a budget of $1,000). Here we are essentially asking an agent to operate independently on our behalf. It doesn’t involve just one task, but a series of them (create a website or social media presence, create content, edit it, publish it, receive inbound inquiries, negotiate, sign deals, etc.).

AI can’t do this, yet, but I think it will soon.

That sounds crazy, right?

I agree that it’s mind blowing science fiction crazy sounding and I also believe it's not just possible, but highly probable that it happens in the near future.

That is it’s a matter of when, not if.

Back to the original train of thought: what does it mean for Gen AI?

It means they will grow up living their life in a sort of “god mode” where, with a single utterance, they can build entire empires. I original originally wrote digital empires but I don't think that's right. Their digital abilities will have very real impacts on and manifestations in the real world just as the internet does now. If you think Gen Z grew up awash in an assault on their senses, by the volume of content being created, on the likes of Twitter YouTube, TikTok etc… you ain't seen nothin’ yet!

The volume of content that's about to be unleashed on the world will dwarf anything the world has seen to date.

Growing up in this environment, will force Gen AI down a path of using AI to filter out the signal from the noise. Adding yet another abstraction layer between them and the world around them. In turn, the companies whose software wins as the abstraction layer of choice will have unprecedented power. These companies will quite literally be the gatekeeper who determines not just what info Gen AI sees, but because they will be summarizing all the content, they will also control the message Gen AI receives.

This transition will be fast!

Back to the rocks and walls analogy. I can't help but envision it as if one person is sitting there printing rocks, manually building walls brick by brick, when all of a sudden the person next them prints a whole wall, then a whole damn building. That is a huge leap in productivity. The previous generation of old rock printers (*cough* me *cough) may not grow up with AI, but I doubt we will stand there and print rocks for long before trying to print whole buildings ourselves. This thought exercise makes me believe this technology adoption will be fast!

I was recently talking with somebody in the AI space who said that it costs roughly eight dollars an hour to run the open AI algorithm. Think about that. It means that they are basically harnessing a human-equivalent worker ad hoc, as needed, for below minimum wage in most of the United States. And the cost will only go down from here (I’ve since heard it possibly already went down 70% since then). That means anyone will be able to hire someone else to do work on their behalf for ~$3/hr.

This will seriously change the game.

So… the question is:

What will you do with your own agentic AI army of workers?