We are on the wrong track in generating artificial intelligence.
Over the past few months, I have been impressed by the messages coming from major generation AI solution providers. Unfortunately, this information has fueled a craze for implementing generative AI in creative and marketing operations.
for example, OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati’s recent words In response to a question about artificial intelligence replacing humans: “Some creative jobs may disappear, but maybe they shouldn’t exist in the first place.”
Really?
But she’s not the only one making such comments. Open AI CEO Sam Altman claimed Artificial intelligence will handle “95% of what marketers do today using agencies, strategists and creative professionals.”
Of course, there are Economist Richard Baldwin’s famous quote At the 2023 World Economic Forum Growth Summit: “Artificial intelligence will not take away your job. Someone will use artificial intelligence to replace your job.
Now, these statements are not entirely true or entirely false. If you take these statements apart, you’ll hear some people say, “Well, what they mean is…”
This is where the problem lies. The problem is not the accuracy of the statement but the interpretation.
Tech companies make technology the hero of the story. They tell people to feel lucky to have such an amazing tool. They also argue that human creativity is a problem to be solved.
This is ironic when you consider how each of these technologies was developed using the products of human ingenuity.
That’s complex mediocrity
During this generational AI gold rush, business leaders scramble to tell investors, analysts, customers and audiences How many roles can they replace with technology? In the name of efficiency.
But will some early adopters regret these decisions? Two researchers think so. them Published an article Last year Harvard Business Review argued that while initial numbers may “look good, especially when it comes to cutting costs, companies will miss out on opportunities to make big gains through the creation of real value — or a defensible future niche.” .
I see this happening with companies that replace content creators with generative AI. Yes, they are producing more content than ever before – and they have managed to become more efficient at producing content at scale.
What content are they creating? This is average. It’s neither bad enough nor good enough to be noteworthy. This is just average.
It is leading us into an era of complexity and mediocrity.
Serious problems in content and marketing
I wrote about “evil question“It emerged a few years ago in corporate content and marketing strategies.
A evil question Because “incomplete, contradictory, or changing requirements may be difficult to identify,” they are difficult to resolve. Information researcher Jeff Conklin describes wicked problems as “not understood until the solutions are developed.”
Think about the way you organize your kitchen. It might be good enough for you, so you can’t see how good it can be until someone comes up with changes to make it work better. Only then will you realize that you actually have a problem worth solving.
Marketing evils are rampant. Your content or marketing approach may be working well. You know it’s not running at full speed, but there’s nothing more important than fixing it.
But then you try to fix a few minor issues and realize that many other areas of the operation need improvement as well. Are these issues serious enough to cause outages? Unfortunately, you won’t know until you try.
For example, about three months ago, I worked with a rapidly growing technology company to launch a new governance model, workflow, and content lifecycle plan. People who have been with the company for less than a year are happy. They love it.
But senior leaders and some senior marketing and content practitioners are not doing this. They agreed the new plan sounded good. But they don’t think the problems it will solve are important enough to be worth their time.
That’s evil.
I often hear CEOs and CFOs ask, “What are the benefits of solving this problem?” The answer is: “We don’t know yet.”
Why the Age of Artificial Intelligence Isn’t a Wicked Problem (Probably)
Unfortunately, those exaggerated claims about AI replacing humans or teams have created a thorny problem in terms of creativity and marketing.
Business leaders hear about the development of a new generation of artificial intelligence and think: “This is a cool innovation. We must have a problem that we can solve—we just don’t know what it is.”
Then, amid exaggerated promises about a new generation of AI replacing agencies and creatives, the sentiment shifted to: “Some of our creative work may be redundant and obsolete. Maybe that’s what generative AI can solve for us.”
I’m not saying there aren’t organizations that hire more people than they need or that can be more efficient or productive. These are tough questions.
But using a new generation of artificial intelligence as a (theoretically) cost-effective replacement for humans interacting with customers or creating content is generally not the answer to a tough problem.
This is solutionism.
Resist the solutionist message
solutionism, a term Popular with tech critics Evgeny Morozov believes that every problem can be solved through technological solutions.
Solutionism is at the core of all these claims from generative AI solution providers.
When Mira Murati says that certain creative roles “should never exist in the first place,” she’s embracing the idea that the need for creative roles is a problem that can be solved through technology.
When Sam Altman said that “95% of what marketers do today using agencies, strategists, and creative professionals” will be handled by artificial intelligence, he hinted that inefficiencies in the art of creative marketing need to be addressed correct.
The bumper sticker warning “AI won’t take your job, but the people using it will” suggests that generative AI is the hero to whom we should demonstrate our worth.
Believing these claims pushes us into an age of complexity and mediocrity. This means that we accept the diversity of human thought in exchange for a complex solution to a non-existent problem.
No CEO wakes up and says, “We have too many people, too many ideas. Let’s save some money and get rid of them.” But when a CEO tells their team to figure out what they can When how many (or which) resources are given up Implementing next-generation artificial intelligencethey are forcing calculus.
There are steps we can take to avoid this trap. The most important thing is to take the crucial first step: understand And document opportunities where you plan to apply artificial intelligence. This sounds like a natural thingbut I see more and more companies failing to do this with generative AI.
Just last week, It is reported 20,000 energy giant Chevron employees are testing Microsoft’s co-pilot, a suite of AI-powered chatbots and other tools in Microsoft Office 365 applications that can answer questions and produce email drafts. question? “We’re a little bit dissatisfied with their ability to understand how they’re operating,” said Bill Braun, the company’s chief information officer.
My opinion is that they will continue to be so. You can’t provide 20,000 people with a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist and expect them to report an accurate value.
When effectively rolling out innovation enterprise-wide, you must first understand the value you want to assess. To do this, you must understand existing processes that are worth evaluating. Chevron can’t truly capture overall value until it understands the problem it’s trying to solve.
I’m not opposed to the use of generative AI. I caution against using specific arguments to advance technology. There are a lot of thorny issues waiting to be discovered in content and marketing. Many of the activities we do every day can be improved by generating technologies such as artificial intelligence.
The key is to understand the difference between solving a real problem and forcing technology to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
This is how to avoid complex mediocrity.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
