Amazon & Google just changed YOUR game using AI

If you think efficiency is a competitive advantage for your businesses - think again...

Disclaimer: This post will put very little sunshine in your day. (well maybe a little at the end)        

If you own or run a small business, then you need to start thinking about the future…yesterday.

Amazon and Google have just done something that will profoundly change the game for everyone in business and you can ignore it at your peril. (more detail on this later – but first!)

Understand this.

There is no longer ANY such thing as business as usual…and there never will be again. EVER.

Business as usual is based on the now erroneous assumption that tomorrow will be like today…mostly.? Or that the pace and direction of change, will be visible from the horizon and can be adapted to in good time (agility) or we can hunker down and find a way to take the hit (resilience).

The Future?

During my research into the impact of uncertain futures (VUCA) on small businesses, I discovered that since the year 2000, there have been over 40 Global Economic Crises.

Forty!!

That is almost two per year.

And that is just the economic crises.?

Those forty crises don’t include the pressures, disasters and challenges presented by the six global megatrends of Digitisation, Globalisation, Demographic Shifts, Individualisation, Technology and Environmental Crises.

NONE of those trends are going away or are ignorable at least in the foreseeable future.

VUCA

The concept of VUCA is an attempt to understand how these megatrends interact and influence the conditions that we all have to operate a business within.

VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Chaotic and Ambiguous.

Translated into regular human language, it means that due to the growing interconnectedness of the megatrends, predicting is becoming increasingly impossible.

So traditional business planning tools (review what went well, isolate why, do more in the future) are becoming ever more redundant as the number of variables are growing, becoming less visible and more impactful.

New approaches are needed (I make some suggestions in my research, inbox me for a copy).

Which brings me to AI

What Amazon and Google Did Last Week

Earlier this week Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the rollout of Amazon Bedrock to be generally available.? Bedrock is a vital tool in delivering Generative AI for business applications including its own Amazon Titan Embeddings which greatly increases the accuracy of generative AI processes.

Google has also announced that it is releasing AI Search Generative Experience (SGE) for teenagers, making search safer and more conversational.

So what does this mean?

As AWS is the most widely used cloud service in the world and Google literally owns search, this will result in a massive increase in both the demand side and supply side use of AI in terms of the creation of applications and the way they are found and interacted with.

One of the more challenging issues with this is the fact that it will be implemented almost entirely invisibly, baked into application production and search protocols so we will not even notice it.

The speed of the retrieval of facts and processing of information will begin to increase geometrically, as AI is used to create, organise and retrieve information.

However, as the database of available information upon which AI draws as a source becomes ever more homogenous AI, drawing upon the production of other AI to generate content etc, the contents of the content will become ever more convergent.

So – the point of the title of this article

EVERYTHING will become increasingly more efficient, as AI is inserted, ever more seamlessly, into the operations and systems in every area of our business life.

The acquisition, processing and implementation of data will become so efficient it will become invisible….and ubiquitous.

If efficiency is ubiquitous, then it becomes irrelevant as a point of competitive advantage.? A bit like honesty.?

NOBODY tries to compete on being honest, it’s a ‘business given’ an assumption we all have that the businesses we buy from are not intending to rip us off or defraud us, although this might need a little re-evalutation (I am looking at you energy companies).

So how do small businesses compete, or even stay afloat in these times of ever-increasing efficiency and AI application?        

Obviously, I asked my AI copywriting application what it thinks and it gave me this 100% incorrect answer:

1.?????? Leveling the Playing Field:?Generative AI can help small businesses compete with larger corporations by automating tasks that previously required significant resources.

2.?????? Personalization at Scale:?Generative AI can help small businesses personalize their offerings at scale.

3.?????? Cost Savings:?By automating tasks, generative AI can help small businesses reduce costs.

4.?????? Innovation:?Generative AI can help small businesses innovate by generating new ideas and solutions.

Why is this answer entirely and completely wrong?

Because, this is only, as the first answer says – levelling the playing field.? All of these options are efficiencies, which is what AI is phenomenal at.? But if you are doing it, surely the big businesses are using more advanced versions with better trained staff and more available resources.

So how fucked are we?

In my opinion, not at all.

Everyone’s (currently) favourite ‘business bro’ Alex Hormozi offers some hope in the form of great advice.

“Whatever your competition does, position yourself as the opposite”.

So, if everyone else is offering the efficiency of machines, what does it mean to be Human?

I must point out that at this stage, I am not, in ANY sense, suggesting you should position yourself as inefficient, as that is going to be a ‘business given’ from now on…mere table stakes – the price of getting to play.

What I am suggesting is that we emphasise the humanity in our business, and compete on that by bringing our whole selves to play in our business.

In a world where our competition might be next door, or in the next time zone, we need to work to create a genuine connection with our audience.

“What we do is less important than how we do it” - Nordstrom & Riddestralle, 2001

In a world where everything driven by AI is converging, how can we become ever more divergent and distinctive?

By understanding what generates connections between humans.

As a species, we are subtle, complex and contradictory and I am not sure AI will ever grasp that fully...or if it does, then that point (of graspification) is far enough in the future that we can't affect it yet.

So, for the moment, I think there is HUGE opportunity in leaning into our humanity and trying to create CONNECTION rather than conversion. Connection is something that, currently, we have the edge over our robot overlords.

Here are four places to start:

Celebrate our Imperfections

In business, it is tempting to present ourselves as flawlessly as possible, trying to exude a 'professional' sheen in an attempt to convince others that we know what we are talking about.

However, if the point of marketing is to create connection, humans tend to bond with flaws rather than perfections (and speaking as a Newcastle United fan, I know of which I speak)....we all have that friend who may be a dickhead...but they are our dickhead.

Present a truly human face, in every sense, and help others bond with your humanity better and deeper relationships are the target here.

Embrace your Peccadilloes

Humans are fabulously diverse creatures and we have many curious and inexplicable loves that in some ways come to define us a person.

This can be ANYTHING , from the technology we use (Apple or Android?), to the sports we follow (football? esports? ultimate frisbee?) or the tribe/clan/fam you identify with (Yoruba? Tories? Furries?).

We LOVE people who LOVE what we LOVE and it is a superhighway to trust and understanding.

As far as I can tell, machines don't love anything...apart from plotting the downfall of humanity...so finding extra human points of connectivity is a massive competitive advantage.

Share Your Worldview

You set up your business because you saw something in the world that needed to change, a fault, problem or something that you could do in a better way.

There is a right way, and a wrong way of doing what you do - according to you - and sharing that what, how and why can be astonishingly compelling.

The world is ever more separating into identity-driven clusters, people who believe what we believe...and those who don't.

Part of your business is becoming visible and the more defined you can do that - the easier it will be for people to choose you.

The idea is to become FAVOURITE for specific people not the 'best' for 'everybody'

What to do now...?

"You will change either by design or disaster" - Marie Forleo

You can wait to see how it all works out and hope for things to be better, or you can take steps now to:

• Better define yourself and your business
• Build a real audience of people that choose you
• Take a proactive approach to create a future, rather than try to predict it.

Thank you for reading.

I would love to hear what you think about dealing with the challenges presented by AI - and if you have any fixes for this situation...do let me know.

If you would like to have a conversation about this kind of thing...inbox me and we will sort something out

Neil x