Why I’m Whoa in a Good Way over ChatGPT

When ChatGPT crashed into our collective consciousness towards the end of a tumultuous 2022, I had a ‘whoa’ moment.??

Whoa because I realized how much of our current work AI can (and will) do faster and, most probably, better than us.?

As consultants, we sell brand transformation. We turn X into X+ or sometimes Y. We build reputations on “we’re the ones who did…”.??

Except in an AI-powered future, will we still be able to say this??

True, some people will tell you that AI can’t be creative; that it can’t originate ideas; that it can build only on what exists already. But remember AI is still in its infancy. As we move from narrow AI to full Artificial General Intelligence – a technology capable of thinking and acting for itself- it’s likely that we will see this argument lose ground.?

And already, just from reviewing some of the artwork that Dall E 2, the AI system which can create stunning images from language-based descriptions, is producing in tandem with our human creatives, I appreciate that the potential of AI goes far beyond my original comprehension.?

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been that surprised about AI’s capacity to generate shock and awe.?

After all, the technology draws on the sum of all recorded human endeavor. It riffs off the collective brainpower, imagination and genius that took us from fishing to fusion; petroglyphs to Picasso; bagpipes to Beyoncé.??

And then when you factor in the limitations that we - humans - put on ourselves: our emotional need to conform; our respect for the power vertical; our hardwired resistance to vulnerability; the sheer amount of time it takes to create this technology in the first place, well is it really that astonishing that an AI system taking creative cues from Michelangelo and Missy Elliott is willing to leap further and faster than our timid selves???

But, to me, the more interesting question is should we be scared that it can???

To which I would answer: the scared person in the room is the person not in control. We are not submitting power or control to the machine. We are using the machines to regain control of the answers to questions we’ve been too afraid or na?ve, or simply too mentally under-powered to demand.??

Let me be clear: I believe that AI is going to make humans more creative, smarter, and inquisitive. Far from it being the rise of the machines we should see it as the rise of the humans. When DeepMind’s AlphaGo became the first AI technology to defeat a professional human Go player it devised moves that no human Go player had ever used, moves that are now available to every Go player on the planet.?

And where games lead, other sectors are often not far behind. The applications for AI are already dramatically transforming how we collate and interpret data in everything from protein folding to meteorology. It is allowing us to make huge leaps of understanding in time frames we would never have dreamt possible even just a few years ago.?

So, the way I see AI is as a new tool designed to help alleviate, remedy, complete and duplicate tasks so that we will have more time to think -and here’s the crucial coda -time to think about what it is we really want to create. To me, we humans don’t think or do enough. We currently just talk too much. The thinking and doing are what changes the world and AI will help us do this more, better, faster.??

There are, of course, profound issues we need to address: the use of such technology by malign actors; the impact it will have on different ethnic and generational groups; the tension between transparency and privacy; its ability to weaponize social media; its potential for deployment in the field of conflict.?

But all technologies carry this baggage and so, it must be remembered, do humans. Admittedly, the stakes are stratospherically higher with AI but so too are the rewards. And, as ever, our greatest safeguard will be our ingenuity, our ability to problem solve.?

When I think about AI, I recall something I heard math-ed specialist Conrad Wolfram once say: Assume computers exist, and that they can calculate things for you. Now ask yourself: what do I have to learn, as a human, to be able to use the full power of math?1?

To put it bluntly, ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. If AI is to deliver brilliant answers, it is up to us to ask brilliant questions.??

In Landor & Fitch’s own field of expertise many of these questions will be framed around change and deciding what the most important things are that we need to change, and what aren’t.?

When we work with our clients, a big part of our job is to navigate the emotional tensions inherent in the decisions we make.??

So, for example, when we consolidate a brand architecture, we ask ourselves how does the boss of a sunset sub-brand live that experience, emotionally? If we rename a brand, how do the people with twenty-year tenure feel about the end of their shared identity???

Change management is emotional management. And here’s the thing: AI will engender a lot of change at breath-taking speed. Naturally, this will trigger a lot of emotion. Those questions we habitually ask ourselves about brand architecture, about shared identity? They will be legion and urgent as AI shatters the conventional paradigms of our industry and demands we deliver a far more dynamic response to its potential.??

But the emergence of a new, transformative technology does not mean we should respond solely in a technological manner. Amid the turbulence good old-fashioned human empathy will become an increasingly vital commodity. Perhaps one response to the rise of AI that should be hard-wired into our industry -an industry, remember, that is ultimately built around relationships, around trust, around shared values- will be to dial up the sensitivity, to read the room.??

No expert system can replicate that. For now, at least.?

Finally, here’s a provocative point of view. I’ve never liked the name artificial intelligence. There’s nothing artificial about it. It’s augmented intelligence -intelligence that augments our human capability and creativity for the better.???

It augments our gut instincts with facts or hypothetical scenarios that we can then prove or disprove. It augments a creative idea and expands it beyond what we thought possible.??

And finally, it augments our perception of the future. The future needn’t be scary. It’s a lot more intelligent with both humans and machines working together - if we start asking the right questions, right now.?

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1 https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-09-19-conrad-wolfram-let-s-build-a-new-math-curriculum-that-assumes-computers-exist?