Rishad Tobaccowala's Blog, page 13

Remaining Relevant in an AI Age.

Photography by Xuan-Hui Ng

The history of AI is over 80 years old.

You can learn and view its developments here at the online Computer History Museum site.

After many ups and downs, false dawns and surviving many winters AI or what Ted Chiang, the author calls “Applied Statistics” has arrived due to a combination of access to swaths of training data available on the Internet, massive increases in computing power and several breakthroughs in neural network design.

Today a combination of daily breakthroughs and exponential improvements combined with tens of billions of dollars of capital means that every company, every job and every one of us will be impacted by AI.

How do individuals and firms adapt and thrive in what clearly will be a new landscape?

3 steps.

1) Embrace. 2) Adapt. 3) Complement.

Photography by Xuan-Hui Ng

Embrace

It’s 1977 and a new movie titled Star Wars: A New Hope is released and in it a General Dodonna ends a briefing to his fighters (which includes Luke Skywalker) with the words “May the Force Be With You” (watch this scene from what is now nearly five decades ago not just for the line but how far film making technology has advanced and hear the line first time it was said…it was not Obi-Won Kenobi or Yoda.)

It's 1599 and somewhere in England a play by William Shakespeare is staged during which the following lines are spoken (listen to them voiced by John Gieguld to understand why Shakespeare is best heard and not just read):

"We at the height are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

Both Shakespeare over 500 years ago and George Lucas 50 years ago shared the first rules of thriving in changing times.

Align with the force.

Go with the flow.

Every individual and organization should and must spend time learning and understanding this new tsunami.

It is real. It is powerful and it is moving extremely fast.

Yes, there are lots of issues from copyright to impact on employment to a terminator like bot getting all of humanity, but the genie is out of the bottle, there is no going back or time for individuals or organizations to dither.

As an individual it is essential to begin to understand Re-Generative AI including prompt to text (e.g., GPT-4), prompt to image (e.g., Mid Journey), prompt to audio (e.g., Voice lab) and prompt to video (e.g.  Runway ML). One way to keep up daily is to subscribe and read this free daily note called Ben’s Bites.

Another good place to start experiment with prompt to text is here at Pi (Inflection AI a one-year-old company which powers Pi this week raised 1.3 billion dollars from Microsoft and Nvidia among others.)

Photography by Xuan-Hui Ng

Adapt

Organizations need to re-think and re-visit every aspect of their products and services to see where productivity can be enhanced, product and services augmented, and completely new innovations launched.

And it is not as simple as automating and speeding up things as we have learned from a lawyer using AI to help in a legal case only to find that the AI had made things up (and increasingly this will be a huge issue) but a far deeper re-architecting of the business versus just a re-skinning or a re-structuring to cut costs.

The three big questions are:

a) What can be AI enhanced and what should not?

b) How will the AI product be built/trained and what quality control will ensure that the result is safe and legal among other things?

c)  How will the organizational design and talent allocation change to incorporate these new capabilities?

For most companies there is good chance that AI technology itself will become a commodity like ingredient.

In fact, smaller companies (outside of the mega cap tech companies that are funding and driving AI investments) are likely to benefit more from AI since it will now make amazing capabilities affordable to everybody.

Size maybe less of a competitive advantage.

Well thought out processes for yesterday may become anchors to change.

And even senior management who cannot adapt fast (AI is scaling so quickly it is wishful thinking for senior folks to believe one can delay things till retirement) will become a competitive disadvantage.

But a key to adaptation will be how to attract and retain talent to work in new ways to complement the AI.

Because the future will not be just an AI age but an HI age

HI= Human Inspired.

Photography by Xuan-Hui Ng

Complement

Successful individuals and companies will complement the power of computing machines and software.

They will do this by enhancing, training, and bending what the technology can enable with creativity, storytelling, empathy, provenance, humanity, insight and imagination.

There will be a premium on building and attracting talent who are strong in the 6 C’s.

Three of these have to do with individual competence (Cognition, Creativity, Curiosity) and three how we connect with each other and the world outside our minds (Collaborate, Communicate, Convince).

Cognition is simply learning to think and keeping our mental operating system constantly upgraded. This requires deliberate practice and sustained work. Improved cognition is achievable and essential in a world where the computing operating systems are constantly improving.

Creativity is connecting dots in new ways, looking beyond the obvious and this skill will be key as AI powered computers, data crunch and co-relate faster than we ever will.

To be human is to be creative.

Creativity is at its heart the way we deal with a world of change by adapting, evolving, and re-inventing.

We need to learn and feed this inside us. The future will be about data driven storytelling and not just data or storytelling and the ability to leverage modern machines and algorithms to unleash connection and meaning will depend on creativity.

Curiosity is simply being alive to possibilities, questioning the status quo and asking what if? Today the key competitor or opportunity in any category comes from outside it.

Being cognitively gifted, creative, and curious will not be enough since we are living in a connected world where eco-systems, teams and linkages is how ideas are born, value created, and long-term careers forged. For these we need to hone and build and train for three other skills which are key since a great part of Human Inspired work is not just how to work alongside the machine but work alongside other humans.

Collaborate: Collaboration is key to work in a world where API’s (Application Protocol Interfaces) are not just about handshakes between software/hardware but between individuals with different skills, teams in different countries, partners, suppliers and much more.

Communicate: Learn to write. Learn to speak. Learn to present. It may be so old school but watch the people who succeed, and they are good at communication. And all of these can be taught and learned. One can use GPT to write the first draft and have Mid-Journey come up with great visuals for presentations and use other AI tools to provide amazing starter ideas and be a great co-pilot but Human Inspired means taking these outputs to the next level and requires communication skills.

But communication is not a one-way street and as important as it to write, speak and present it is as critical to be able to listen, to hear and to understand what others are saying with an open mind and a sense of empathy since this will also be a differentiating advantage in an AI age.

Convince: Every one of us is a salesperson regardless of what we believe our title is. This is true even if we do not sell anything at work. We must convince colleagues of our points of view.

We all must learn to convince and learn to sell often finding ways to sell something different than what the machines may recommend.

Time has proven that technology while bringing with it risks and downsides over time is a massive positive force for humanity.

The future is bright and all we must do is open our eyes, heart and minds and seize the benefits of this amazing era.

How to Think.

Harry Callahan

The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski is a fantastic overview of photography which is based on an exhibition curated by him for MOMA in 1964.

The book selects photographs from the entire history of photography up to 1964 both by famous photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Paul Strand, and Edward Weston but also work by amateurs to illustrate challenges and opportunities faced by photographers.

Szarkowski identifies five keys to see like a photographer: 1) The Thing Itself, 2) The Detail, 3) The Frame, 4) Time and 5) Vantage Point.

Each one of these five are also great tools to use to improve thinking for personal and business decisions.

Photographer Unknown

Photographer Unknown

The Thing Itself

“The first thing that the photographer learned was that photography dealt with the actual; he had not only to accept this fact, but to treasure it; unless he did, photography would defeat him. He learned that the world itself is an artist of incomparable inventiveness, and that to recognize its best works and moments, to anticipate them, to clarify them and make them permanent, requires intelligence both acute and supple.”

One of the keys to proper thinking is to see the situation for what it is.

To face reality. To collect the facts. To not have FOFO ( the fear of finding out).

If we traffic in magical thinking, look away from the problem and assume away what is real it is hard to think straight.

Garry Winogrand

The Detail

“The photographer was tied to the facts of things, and it was his problem to force the facts to tell the truth. He could not, outside the studio, pose the truth, he could only record it as he found it, and it was found in nature in a fragmented and unexplained form—not as a story, but as scattered and suggestive clues.”

Every challenge and opportunity lies in the details. One or two key variables that the enterprise turns on. Forgetting that interest rates could go up and that you can not lend in the long term while borrowing in the short term led to Silicon Valley Bank’s implosion.

Similarly in the sea of data lies the pattern which reveals the meaning.

In hindsight the key details and critical data are obvious. But to reveal what drives the machine and makes the clock tick we need to analyze and scenario plan.

The shifting of parameters often reveals the key variables we take for granted or need to be aware of.

Ask what key details or critical data that drive assumptions. And then think about when they change what new new risks or opportunities are created?

Andre Kertesz

The Frame

“Since the photographer's picture was not conceived but selected, his subject was never truly discrete, never wholly self-contained. The edges of his film demarcated what he thought most important, but the subject he had shot was something else; it had extended in four directions. If the photographer's frame surrounded two figures, isolating them from the crowd in which they stood, it created a relationship between those two figures that had not existed before.

The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge—the line that separates in from out—and on the shapes that are created by it.”

Framing a problem is a key to solving it.

If one does not start with the right question the solution might never have a chance of being correct.

Similarly framing a situation or an offer is key to how someone looks at it.

Everything is in context with everything else and this ability to frame is an essential tool to the best problem solvers and sales people.

Photographer Unknown

Time

“All photographs are time exposures of shorter or longer duration, and each describes a discrete parcel of time. This time is always the present. Uniquely in the history of pictures, a photograph describes only that period of time in which it was made. Photography alludes to the past and the future only in so far as they exist in the present, the past through its surviving relics, the future through prophecy visible in the present.”

Placing things in perspective from a past, present and future lens allow one to stress test one’s thoughts.

Scavenging the past reveals treasures for the future but stay frozen in the past and there will be not future to treasure. So it is critical to both move forward from yesterday to today as well as backward from tomorrow to today.

In addition, it reminds us that timing is key to understand when to launch a product or service.

Too soon or too late is a problem as is too slow or too fast.

A decision that can be reversed should be made fast versus one that cannot should be marinated in time.

Photographer Unknown

Photographer Unknown

Vantage Point

“Much has been said about the clarity of photography, but little has been said about its obscurity. And yet it is photography that has taught us to see from the unexpected vantage point, and has shown us pictures that give the sense of the scene, while withholding its narrative meaning. Photographers from necessity choose from the options available to them, and often this means pictures from the other side of the proscenium showing the actors' backs, pictures from the bird's view, or the worm's, or pictures in which the subject is distorted by extreme foreshortening, or by none, or by an unfamiliar pattern of light, or by a seeming ambiguity of action or gesture.”

In a famous Japanese movie Rashomon truth depends on where one stands. The same crime when viewed from four vantage points lead to different conclusions as to what actually happened..

Being able to think from the perspective of a buyer if one is a seller, from a disrupter if one is a legacy company or having the empathy to understand other peoples perspective are key to clear thinking.

So next time when making a decision or evaluating a situation 1) look hard at the situation or thing itself to make sure the facts are understood, 2) parse the detail and the data, 3) frame the question or the solution, 4) interrogate it with time scenarios and 5) view it from different vantage points.

Kindness.

Large Girl with No Eyes, Julian Schnabel

One of the keys to a good life and possibly success at work is kindness.

This includes not just being kind to other people but kind to oneself.

Often we spend our time regretting, self-flagellating, doubting our decisions and wondering if we can ever measure up especially in a world filled with standards and measures that are unattainable.

In today’s competitive marketplace of rapidly transforming landscapes and constant benchmarking we often forget that we are dealing not just with buyers, sellers, users, members, competitors, analysts, scientists, management and employees but with analog, carbon based, feeling filled people.

Humans.

Messy and Moody. Dream filled and desire driven.. Anxiously ambitious. Undulating with uncertainty.

Kindness is a way to connect in a world where connections are key.

But it not easy to model in an Excel spreadsheet, display in a PowerPoint , or be described with any depth by GPT.

The machine will rapidly compute an answer, garland it with perspective, refine and correlate what has been fed into its innards, and then emit an output in a dazzling display of verbosity.

Answers that may awe us.

But rarely move us.

Below are three takes on kindness. From GPT-4, author George Saunders, and poet Naomi Shihab Nye.

Take 1: GPT-4 on Kindness

Prompt: What is kindness?

Kindness is a type of behavior marked by acts of generosity, consideration, or concern for others, without expecting praise or reward. It is often considered a virtue and is recognized in many cultures and religions as an important value. Kindness can manifest in many ways, including but not limited to:

Helping others: This could involve assisting someone with their work, offering to carry heavy items, or helping someone cross the street. The act doesn't have to be grand to be kind.

Complimenting or praising someone: Words of affirmation can have a huge impact on someone's day. Complimenting someone genuinely can be a simple yet effective act of kindness.

Empathy and understanding: Kindness often involves understanding other people's perspectives and feelings. This could mean listening to someone when they're having a hard time, or refraining from judgment when someone makes a mistake.

Patience: Patience, especially when dealing with difficult people or situations, can be a significant act of kindness. It involves tempering your reaction, even when you're frustrated or angry.

Charitable giving: This is another classic example of kindness. Donating to a cause you believe in, volunteering your time, or even just offering someone a meal can all be acts of kindness.

Showing respect: Treating everyone with respect, regardless of their background or beliefs, is an act of kindness. This could involve simple things like saying "please" and "thank you," or more complex acts like promoting inclusivity and fairness.

In essence, kindness involves treating others the way you'd like to be treated. It's a simple concept but can have a profound impact on the world.

Take 2: Author George Saunders on kindness

The author George Saunders gave a short and remarkable speech on the importance of kindness which everyone should listen to.

A key theme is “to err in the direction of kindness”

Some key passages of his talk to students

“When young, we’re anxious — understandably — to find out if we’ve got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you — in particular you, of this generation — may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can . . .

And this is actually O.K. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously — as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.

Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.”

Later George was interviewed on this talk which went viral after it was posted in the New York Times on why kindness was important and here is what he said:

“Ninety-nine percent of the time if you just do your best to be kind, you’re better off. It’s the basic things, like trying to have good manners, keeping your assumptions about the other person a little open, being willing to revise your opinion.

Perhaps it’s all a self-fulfilled prophecy. We live in an unkind world because we believe it’s an unkind world.

The thing I’ve noticed is that if you go out into the world ready for confrontation, then confrontations find you. But if you go out with a sort of diffusing energy, the world reads that and feels more friendly toward you. So I think there’s a circular effect.

In the media and in our political rhetoric, we’re told don’t be a sucker, be firm, be strong, push back, they’re trying to get you. If you buy into that—even on a molecular level—the world smells it on you. Whereas—and here’s where it sounds corny—the world responds to you differently if you go out thinking, alright, I’m going to pretend that everybody out there is my brother or my sister, and if they are temporarily behaving like they’re not, I’m going to pretend that they’re just confused. I’m going to insist, through my mannerisms and my tone of voice, that I see them at their highest.”

Take 3: The poet Naomi Shihab Nye on kindness

Kindness.

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye

Exponential Organizations!

Earlier this week (June 6, 2023), a new book called Exponential Organizations 2.0 by Salim Ismail, Peter Diamandis and Michael Malone was made available.

Every subscriber of this thought letter regardless of whether one is employed by a firm, self-employed, unemployed or even retired is likely to benefit by reading this book.

It will stretch your mind and make you re-think a lot of things about firms and work and the future. There will be parts that may surprise you and parts that may anger you. You may nod along and occasionally fly into rage wondering if the authors have tripped into the light fantastic.

The book is filled with examples, charts, data, and graphs and step by step exercises and recommendations that you will  be able to leverage as you manage your career, your team, and your firm.

You can own it and read it now on any device that supports the Kindle app for only 99 cents here

The Changing Nature of a Firm.

Ronald Coase an economist from the University of Chicago won the Nobel Prize in part for his rationale that firms exist because internal transaction costs are lower than external transaction costs.

In short, despite internal bureaucracy and red tape and processes, large firms endured because no matter how bad the internal friction it was often less than the friction of negotiating and setting up each transaction necessary to get a job done with outside parties.

But then…

In the US in the three years beginning in February 2020, small establishments—locations with fewer than 250 employees—have hired 3.67 million more people than have been laid off or who quit. Larger establishments—those with 250 employees or more—have cut a net 800,000 job (and this was before the huge layoffs at the large tech companies). That is according to data from the government’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

A combination of enabling technologies including mobile computing, new marketplaces (Amazon Web Services, Shopify, Upwork) that allow for easy access to scaled resources through an API, a changing work force (free-lancers will outnumber full time employees next year in the US) and new mindsets (76% of Gen-Z want to be their own boss) have made Coase’s law less relevant than it was before.

Now combine the changes we have lived through in the past two decades with the disruptions of Covid-19  and the huge emerging technology platform shifts driven by AI, AR/VR, Blockchain and 5G-- all of which massively empower individuals and small agile teams-- and the nature of firms will change.

Large firms will continue to endure because in many cases scale, capital and other resources are better allocated and utilized with such structures, but these firms will increasingly work in radical new ways which include becoming flatter, faster, enabling fewer and fewer full time  employees than ever before.

In 2020, the Amsterdam based banking and financial company the ING Group with over a trillion dollars of assets decided the future was going to require much more autonomous ways of working and decided to develop a transformative new model. The asked each employee to re-apply for to the company if they were interested in the new ways of working which reduced the number of mangers, removed the ability to delegate tasks that you should do to others and required constant shapeshifting. Nearly one third of the employees quit and the following year ING delivered the same results with the remaining two thirds of employees.

Many firms have begun to realize that the future does not fit in the containers of the past and most organizations may have been built for yesterday rather than the very different challenges of today and the amazing opportunities of tomorrow.

The new firm will be an Exponential Organization 2.0 which the authors define as

A purpose-driven, agile, and scalable organization that uses accelerating technologies to digitize, dematerialize, democratize, and demonetize its products and services, resulting in a 10x performance increase over its non-ExO peers.

The Key Drivers of An Exponential Organization

The chart above is a map of the terrain that forms the Exponential Organization 2.0.

It all begins with a Massive Transformational Purpose which is defined as “the core reason for the firm’s existence. It is the foundation upon which all the company actions take place. It establishes a long-term goal for the company that is so sweeping and profound that it is always within reach yet always unreachable. It sets a moral foundation for all company interactions between stakeholders. It keeps the company disciplined and on target. It inspires employees and customers. And it galvanizes employee morale and retention.”

Here are some examples of MTP’s:

Google: Organize the world’s information.

Uber: Go anywhere. Get anything.

Danone: Bring health through food.

Spanx: Elevating Women.

It is key to determine a massive transformational purpose ( MTP) for an ongoing firm and should be something every new business should figure out at launch.

The other two factors that drive new organizational design are external facing ones (SCALE) which is how the firm connects with the outside world and internal facing ones which are the key factors that the firm should run the business internally (IDEAS).

Connecting Externally: SCALE

Staff On Demand: Projects should be staffed, and work done by putting together teams of pre-qualified workers hired on a as-need basis. These individuals could be self-employed, free-lance, procured from third parties such as Upwork and other contracting , or even full-time employees who are re-aggregated around the jobs that need to be done and then dissolve post the job. Think how talent comes together in Hollywood around a tv show or project or consultants move from assignment to assignment at a Bain or McKinsey depending on their skills and the assignment.

Community and Crowd:  Communities are built around users, customers, alumni as well as vendors, suppliers and fans who are aligned with the massive transformational purpose who are granted special favors, given insider insights and forward look on future offerings and rewarded with gifts and trust. While they are not employees, they are pseudo employees, citizens of the firm’s larger community. Companies like Peloton and Apple of leveraged community from key developers to super and early fans. Community is often sourced from crowds. With most of the worlds 8 billion people connected online one can leverage crowds to grow a company and find community as TikTok did in entertainment and Kiva in finance and GoFundMe in fund raising.

Algorithms and AI: Both technologies allow for massive research, fast pattern matching, massive experimentation and more and will turbo-charge talent and company design.

Leveraged Assets: Increasingly companies will be asset light using APIs to access what they need when they need it whether it be compute power, manufacturing, or distribution. Cloud based computing is a common form of a leveraged asset.

Leveraged significantly reduce the need for capital, cost of carrying inventory and risk of obsolete technology.

Engagement: Engagement is the use of techniques like gamification, incentive prizes, and recently crypto economics like NFT’ s to keep stakeholders interested, involved and increasingly committed to a shared purpose. Examples include how Reddit uses its members to vote up or down on submitted content. It’s the classic example of reciprocity Engagement: if you share content you can access content which drives engagement of community and crowd.

Connecting Internally: IDEAS

Interfaces: Interfaces are the matching and filtering processes that allow a firm to translate the abundance of data into precise and meaningful information that can be acted on. For instance Shopify has created a number of interfaces that allow its customers to access all of its SCALE attributes which is it’s community, it’s AI, it’s external and internal talent and its assets so that an individual can find an eco-system of third party functions to help them sell as well as buyers for their products and services.

Dashboards: Dashboards are the internal and external presentation of  real time objectives and key results (OKR’s) a company needs to operate.  These include everything from leader boards and other data for users to internal metrics to drive the firm such as monthly recurring revenue (MRR), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Life-Time Value (LTV), Margin, Churn, Net Promoter Score etc. These dashboards constantly allow a company to re-allocate resources, change marketing plans, re-price products and navigate the firm.

Experimentation:  In a fast-changing world experimentation and iteration is the only way. Experimentation is a key to make data driven decisions even about innovation and creativity. By trying different approaches and A/B testing, measuring quickly, failing fast and honing and building on success a company can speed and scale rapidly.

Autonomy:  Some of the biggest drawbacks of large organizations are bureaucracy where there are scores of people empowered to say no and very few who can say yes, decision makers far from the customer or the marketing battlefield and an entire ethos of giving “good meetings” and “butt covering” versus making shit happen. Autonomy challenges this via an approach characterized by self-organized, multi-disciplinary teams that operate with de-centralized authority all focusses on hitting the company OKR’s, Massive Transformational Purpose and Moonshots.

Social: Social technologies accelerate conversations and therefore learning cycles. These include communication tools like Slack, Zoom and Google Docs, collaboration tools like Asana and Jira and workflow management tools like Dropbox. There are ranges of tools from Canva a collaborative graphics tool to Miro board that allow virtual white boarding.

The Imperative of Transformation

We have entered the dawn of a new era whether one is a CEO, or an intern, a gig worker or an investor will need to twist themselves and their organization into new shapes to continue to thrive in the future.

The ability to exponentially grow is now possible for every person and firm where most external barriers, excuses and obstacles are being dissolved away and our ability to change will make us grow while staying the course will likely see us going the way of Blackberry, Kodak.

No great talent or company is defeated.

They defeat themselves.

By failing to change and adapt and re-invent.

Lamentations of the Modern Manager.

Worked so hard for this corner office with a view.

This wonderfully awe-inspiring room.

But instead of enjoying my due.

Have the same square footage as everyone else on Zoom.

As a manager we would monitor and check-in.

Now with everyone working anywhere that is in the dust bin.

Worked my way up the ladder as I grew grayer.

But now everybody wants to “de-layer”!

All these young folks are now so entitled.

They refuse to bend their knee to our high title.

Even worse than being in awe of us they boo!

Asking what value, we add and exactly do?

They would rather be their own boss.

And look at the decades we put in as a loss.

A deaf ear to our beliefs that expertise, craft and skill are like fine wine.

Which get honed and grow working with people over time.

Things were clear cut and everything in its place.

Now everything is fluid, as if we are drifting in space.

Everything is leaking into everything and exploding everywhere.

Commerce and media, offline and online, and only attention is rare.

Just when one came to grips with all this digital stuff.

Our knowledge of Web3 and AI we need to shine and buff.

All the information and data on pay and other secrets only we knew.

Now on Fishbowl, Glassdoor and LinkedIn are freely shared in full view.

We need to balance a world of hybrid and remote.

Cannot be a boss but a coach and on talent dote.

Align with DEI and ESG while being sensitive to taking a political side.

Should we fail to deliver the market will have our hide.

Managing used to be quite a sweet gig.

Delegated work as paychecks grew big.

But now to remain relevant we must constantly learn.

And many old tricks and processes we need to burn.

Boards announce big audacious goals.

Press releases sparkle with promises and roar.

But it is us who need to be great at our roles.

Otherwise, the stock will droop, and we will be out the door.

Now the challenges come from far and near.

One wrong move and there goes all the sales of beer.

How does one navigate and steer?

When there is so much that we must fear?

We must improvise and be agile.

Constantly adjust to a world that is volatile.

Yet our deliverables increase and thicken.

While deadlines and timetables we are given grow short and quicken.

We are the glue that connects the firm.

So why is everyone making us squirm?

They take us for granted and rare is the pay hike.

Maybe we should go on strike?

But if we do, will they go all Elon Musk?

Mow down everything leaving just husk?

Or will they transfer funds to Open AI?

Use GPT and Dall-e and wish us goodbye?

These questions linger and add to our stress.

Even though it is us who they need to clean their mess.

We need to stay stoic, brave and maintain a stiff upper lip.

And to continue to bravely captain the ship!

The Magic of Tech / The Complexity of Humans.

Photography by Lizzie Shepherd

Technology is a form of magic that despite its downsides create more opportunities for more people and has done so on an ongoing basis.

In 2013 researchers at Oxford University predicted that modern computational technology including large language models would put 47% of all jobs at risk.

10 years later globally we have the lowest unemployment in decades with world-wide GDP and per capita income higher than ever.

Photography by Lizzie Shepherd

Jobs lost. Jobs gained. But all jobs will be changed.

Modern computational and communication technology from mobility to the Internet has changed all jobs. Most of them significantly because of new ways to discover data, increase efficiency, attract new employees and talent, find new suppliers, and means of production or accept payments.

There are three big benefits new technology brings.

a) Efficiency usually through time and or cost savings: It saves time by automating tasks that are often mindless or requires going through large amounts of data. Often because automation can do more faster it saves money.

b) Effectiveness by doing things better or doing things that were impossible: Adobe Suit of tools allows for manipulation of images and video that were impossible. Modern special effects enables creating movies like Star Wars and Avatar.

c) Enablement of “God like Power”: The most powerful technologies give human’s “God Like Power”. Mobile phones enabled billions to be connected to each other, entertainment, and information all the time for the fraction of what one long distance call used to cost.

Photography by Lizzie Shepherd

Take the current when it serves.

From “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare:

"We at the height are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

If an individual or business does not wish to be more efficient, effective, and enabled and turns down the benefits of the new technology they are likely to be an individual who is less relevant, less successful, and likely to be out of a job.

There is no choice but to utilize the technology.

Technology has always enabled both the math/analytical/left brain part of work and the magic/creative/right brain part of work.

Excel made finance easier, and Word made writing easier.

PDF’s made publishing easier, and Adobe Photoshop made design easier.

Today GPT allows efficiency in telemarketing centers where AI assists in answering questions while Mid-Journey and Runway ML creates amazing new options for creativity.

A case can be made that jobs will be changed so much that we will be working at many jobs and the future is about work and not jobs.

The choice is in how one uses the technology.

To that end successful individuals and companies use different criteria to decide how much technology to use and where to use it and the most successful will marry the magic of tech with the mystery of humanity to differentiate, innovate and turbo-charge talent.

Photography by Lizzie Shepherd

1) Differentiation: Over time most technologies become commoditized or are available to most businesses for an affordable price. Thus, while using the technology keeps one competitive there is more that is needed to be differentiated. It is differentiation that enables a company to gain market share or charge a higher price.

If two companies were competing and both fully automated their process there would be no difference between their products and services driving them to commodity pricing. A large part of the differentiation between firms is driven by the ideas, storytelling and creativity brought by the different talent to differentiate their company.

While Delta and American use the same technology (aircraft) and resources (airports), and operate under the same rules and regulations (FAA), Delta has been consistently higher rated and more profitable than American because of its talent and culture.

Apple uses production lines at FoxConn which many of their competitors also use and most of the raw materials are similar or purchased from competitors (screens from Samsung or LG) but it is design and branding and storytelling that allows Apple to become the most valuable company in the world.

Most marketing services companies like advertising and media agencies of a given size have access to exactly the same platforms and technology but they differentiate via focus (what they specialize in so they can build unique knowledge, data, or IP), by how they work (how various teams come together to develop solutions) and by level of service or range of capabilities (ability to understand and respond to client needs) and the quality of talent and partners.

Photography by Lizzie Shepherd

2) Innovation: Machines tend to learn and optimize based on pre-sets of learning data or pre-programmed algorithms which do adapt but are often unable to recognize if the landscape has changed either due to competition or new customer needs and so it requires humans to identify these changes and develop new ways to re-program and direct the machines in production.

Most modern technology is an aid to innovation but is not innovative itself.

It was not microscopes and gene-editing technology that enabled a Nobel Prize in Medicine or access to a Particle Collider and Supercomputer that discovers new particles but institutions and talent who challenge the status quo, imagine new answers, and break the mold.

If a machine can enhance the outcome by either doing it cheaper or faster or better it would be a competitive challenge for any company not to optimize and allocate more work to automation especially if the work is repetitive, boring and does not enhance or build skills.

However, most firms whether they are in the product or service sector will always have humans in the mix because it is the mix of computing of robots and the dreams of humans, the logic of data driven, digital silicon objects and the mysteries of feeling driven, analog carbon based humans where new products, services, ideas and creativity will thrive.

Photography by Lizzie Shepherd

3)  People and talent will grow more important and not less important: The jobs least impacted by AI are jobs where there is a need for interaction with a person. Some of these involve dentistry or delivery or restaurant service.

Increasingly people will look for people to talk to, guide them, or enhance their experience. Remember how irritated one gets when one cannot reach a human in customer service? Phone trees and automation while they save costs can enrage much more than they engage.

Time after time, many industries from the medical field to the teaching field have tried to create assembly line, industrialized, technology timed and monitored models and doctors have quit, the best teachers have become dispirited.

Employee joy is critical for service, idea, and innovation and if one finds less purpose, meaning or growth in a job it will hurt the product or service. If people are a cog in the machine, they will find ways to hobble the machine.

Martin Sorrell who runs S4 an advertising firm that buys media recently was asked if S4's adoption of AI “super tools” will threaten jobs at the company, Sorrel said: “Automation poses risks all round but we don't know what those will be. We don't know whether AI will be a net generator or net destroyer of jobs. But the algorithm will be more effective than a 25-year-old media buyer.”

Martin was right in not being sure about AI;s impact on jobs though history suggests it will end up creating more jobs than it will destroy. And, yes an algorithm can be more effective than a 25 year old media buyer but recently a Japanese company replaced its CEO with an AI so technology may also be coming for more senior roles like Martin Sorrel’s then someone who has grown up comfortable with technology. And the reality is that the 25 year old media buyer will still be key because she will be working with the algorithm, modifying the algorithm and augmenting the algorithm versus being eaten by the algorithm.

If a company can replace a person completely with an algorithm their Client does not need the service firm since they can just tap into the algorithm! Which many will do where they can so there has to be other value than replacing people with machines. And every company will be shouting about their “super tools” and it will be a cacophony of noise and and a sea of claims with little differentiation.

Also imagine if you are a young talent why would you join a company where your CEO is hungering to replace you as soon as they can? ( Never mind the fact that 76% of Gen-Z want to work for themselves so the shortage will be getting these talented people to stay on board versus optimizing them away).

The world of media increasingly has been automated with all sorts of advertising and marketing technology and this has allowed for optimization of media that humans alone could not do but the total number of people working in the field has increased and not decreased because the world is not a static place.

As soon as one optimizes a certain type of media there is new break throughs in communication whether it be voice or connected TV’s or gaming which requires new tools, techniques and ideas and a way to integrate across them all and infuse all this optimized media with ideas.

Service businesses involve humans and to be human is to often be unpredictable, incomplete, illogical, and incomprehensible and no machine will be able to do things alone because humans do not compute!

We often make no sense and in it is the wonderful complexity of humanity.

We choose with our hearts and use numbers to justify what we just did. All the AI’s are being optimized for intelligence which is IQ that might in conversation sound like EQ but they do not have a heart.

Combining the magic of tech while embracing the complexity of humanity is will be the key to thriving in a transforming world.

Irresistible!

Mid Journey. Prompt…Imagine what irresistible looks like?

Josh Bersin is a legend in the world of Human Resources and Talent.

His four decade long career has spanned all the twists and turns and ups and downs of a career from studying to be an engineer at Cornell and Stanford, earning an MBA from the Haas School of Business at University of California Berkeley to working for large companies such as IBM as well as smaller firms. Josh also has had the experience of being laid off which gave him the opportunity to began Bersin & Associates in 2001 an advisory firm focussed on corporate learning which expanded and grew and was bought by Deloitte in 2012. Josh spent 6 years at Deloitte before he began yet another career in launching the Josh Bersin Academy in 2019 to help develop HR and Learning professionals and in 2020 the Josh Bersin Company which today has 40 analysts and advisors who publish constantly, undertake research and help guide organizations through the transformations at work. And in Fall of 2022 he published Irresistible: The Seven Secrets of the Most Enduring Employee Focussed Organizations.

What Next in the World of Talent?

I was lucky to have Josh as my guest on the latest episode of my What Next? podcast and it is a conversation that everyone who is interested in the future of work whether you are a CEO, a Human Resources professional and most importantly talent navigating your career should listen to!

Some highlights include the following insights and statements and this is just a sampling:

Companies will become their employees rather than the employees becoming the company as the future of talent is crafting jobs around skills of the people versus fitting people into jobs.

Too much emphasis on measurement can lead to reduced productivity as people work to hit goals versus doing the right thing and many times the goals can be counterproductive and can lead to significant damage to a company like Wells Fargo employees opening fake accounts since they were compensated on how many accounts they opened.

Many organizations compensation and reward models as well as management styles are broken being stuck in a world where people moved up a hierarchy, worked full-time in an office, stayed at a company for many years. In today’s environment when skills rather than tenure, unbundled and distributed work and side gigs and side-hustles permeate and careers last much longer than most companies it is management that is failing to transform themselves from bosses to coaches.

Focussing on employee experience and culture is even more important than customer experience and investor relationships. We discuss the ups and downs at two world class firms Starbucks and Microsoft and what we can all learn from them. And how in a world of AI the best companies will be Human Services Companies.

A conversation with Josh Bersin:

Listen wherever you can access podcast from Apple to Spotify. Here is the Spotify Link.

It will change the way you manage and grow yourself, your teams and your business.

The Seven Secrets of the World’s Most Enduring Employee-Focussed Companies.

I have been reading and re-reading Josh’s latest book and have marked it up a lot since it is chock full of examples, methods, approaches and stories on the big shifts all of us have to undertake to attract, retain and grow talent.

Here are the Seven Secrets ( which are in one way no longer secrets since Josh has published and shared them) but they are secrets in that too many companies remain oblivious of them or rather so many of us have the answers can be in front of our faces but we choose not to see or after seeing them refuse to accept them.

Teams not Hierarchy: Josh defines teams as “a highly interdependent group of people that comes together in a physical or virtual setting to plan work, solve problems, make decisions and review progress toward a specified goal”. In a world of work that needs Jazz like improvisation and agility versus Classical hierarchy and bureaucracy the team is the key to the future of work.

Work not Jobs: In a world where people work all around the world, some part time and some full time and where companies are delayering and reducing levels the future is not jobs to fill but work that needs to get done. Companies have to re-architect around skills, outcomes and work versus titles, layers and jobs.

Coach not Boss: Leaders will build and guide people helping them unleash their inner talents rather than monitor, oversee and evaluate them. These days leaders focus on zone of influence versus zone of control.

Culture not Rules: Culture is often mistaken by many companies to be about a place. So many corporate campuses particularly the tech companies were more about inculcating cult like behavior rather than cultures. Josh Bersin reminds us that while culture does include the work environment it is not just physical place, but also an environmental and a virtual experience. And in addition there are four other components of culture which include well-being, inclusion, recognition/reward and flexibility (optionality, agency and freedom). Focussing only or mainly on physical space and believing the “office” is where its at is rather outmoded, outdated and outlandish given where we are going in the future.

Growth not Promotion: Companies should find ways to grow people so they can up-skill, re-skill and adapt and learn to fill future needs instead of constantly trying to find the right skills for the job today which will change tomorrow. As companies focus on flexibility, teams and getting work done there is a significant amount of de-layering underway. Compensation aligned with levels, tenure and how many people one commands or the size of budgets one oversees is increasingly mis-aligned with being effective, efficient and evolving in an increasingly accelerating and fluid world. Talent needs to grow and re-invent so companies can grow and re-invent.

Purpose not Profits: Companies that succeed behave like good citizens and ensure well-being of employees, alignment with society and openness and inclusion. These build deeper relationships with their customers and consumers, stronger attraction and retention of talent and a more resilient eco-system of relationships with communities and suppliers. Focussing on these right things ends up building competitive advantages which lead to profits. To win a game focus on the ball and not the scoreboard.

Employee Experience not Output: Talent will grow more important in the future and not less important. AI will require not just great talent but increasingly the ability to be more human and the future will be about Human Services Companies. Great results, brands and much more will not be possible without employee joy driven by great employee experiences.

Get the book. It will make you better.

And check out the articles and resources at Josh Bersin’s site. Its filled with amazing FREE content. It is a deep masterclass to help us improve.

Welcome to the Jazz Age!

Illustration by Leon Zernitsky

To remain relevant today leaders and companies who have often been classically trained need to realize we are in a jazz age and re-invent some of the ways we conduct ourselves and business.

Classical vs Jazz.

While both Classical and Jazz are highly complex styles of music which are held in high regard there are some key differences between them.

1. Fixed Hierarchy vs Rotating Leaders.

Classical music in many cases involves an orchestra or a multi-person assemblage which has a central leader known as the conductor.  This hierarchy also cascades down into every instrument section with a first, second and third violinist or clarinetists.

Jazz ensembles sometimes have a leader but even when they do there is little hierarchy with different players often taking the lead.

2. Fidelity to a score or a“way” vs agility and improvisation .

Classical performances are traditionally based on pre-composed material, revitalizing scores from years past, whereas jazz is fresh with each performance with musicians extemporaneously re-composing in real time using improvisation.

Because most classical musicians and conductors follow a score often written hundreds of years ago there is limited flexibility to interpret in personal ways outside of playing faster/slower or quieter/ louder while accentuating certain passages.

Jazz music is often about improvisation with each rendering often very different from each other with the players having great degrees of freedom to iterate and invent on the fly as the spirit, the situation, and their fellow players move them.

3. Greater emphasis on the musician and individual in Jazz.

Since jazz tends to have fewer players who are improvising and who share leadership the talent of the individual is emphasized versus the scale of the collective in orchestras.  There is more spotlight on individual talent versus large numbers of people who can be switched out for other people in large orchestra sections.

Illustration by Leon Zernitsky

Why increasingly companies and leaders need to be less classical and more jazz like.

Over the past decade or two the four shifts of demographic, mindset, technology and boundary shifts have re-written the business landscape. See The Four Shifts.

A) Size and Co-ordinated Movement of huge enterprises matters less as new types of technology and platforms from AI to Cloud Based Software as a Service ensure plummeting prices and access to cutting edge quality, scale of manufacturing and global marketplaces to small companies and individuals.

B) Speed and Agility has grown in importance where responsiveness and customization of products and services becomes a key differentiator. i

C) Flexible ways of working and managing grow in importance as four generations work together at the same time, work is now done at different locations, and cultural and individual differences must be incorporated into decision making.

When companies and leaders struggle to adapt it is often because they are organized or trained classically while the new landscape and expectations of the new generations are crying out for a jazz-oriented approach.

The good news is that many of the best jazz players were classically trained and some of the best classical music including Rhapsody in Blue (The United Airlines theme) or Dvorak’s 9th Symphony (New World) are infused with jazz like structures so there is nothing holding back today’s companies and leaders from adapting to tomorrow.

Illustration by Leon Zernitsky

Some Questions to Ponder

Is Hierarchy holding the company back?  Are bosses followed due to their zone of control and title or are they leading via a zone of influence and updated skills?  In some organizations such as the Armed Forces and others hierarchy is a feature and not a bug while in many others it is less relevant and so they have out of date conductors swinging a baton at an orchestra that is looking somewhere else.

Are companies re-thinking things with a blank sheet of paper versus replicating ways of operating that made sense when our companies were founded or made sense at a different time.? In this week’s What Next? podcast we hear about how productivity has been significantly improved at Shopify when CEO Toby Lutke recently had all meetings removed from everyone’s calendar and people had to decide whether they needed them and if they needed them as often, as long, with as many invitees or they could be done away with altogether.  This is just one way that companies are re-architecting from ground up rather than making small adjustments that while easy to do have little impact.

Is there significant time and budget allocated to training talent to better self-manage or to help management adapt to lead better? The future of leadership is continuous learning, coaching, empowering people and delegating to more junior employees or employees closer to Clients and the business battle front so they can improvise as the situation calls for.

Illustration by Leon Zernitsky

The 4X4 Approach to thriving in the Jazz Age.

The recipe of success of Jazz Age companies and leadership will be to focus on a 4X4 approach.

Four of these are built around Talent and four are built around Rhythm so that talent plays well and can improvise with each other to create real value and growth.

The Talent Four: a) finding and honing the best talent, b) emphasizing teams/team work, c) investing in growing skills and d) encouraging improvisation.

Increasingly a combination of AI, access to global marketplaces, and other breakthroughs will reduce most moats that companies have created leaving talent as one of the key long-term moats along with other such as Brand.

Companies that attract superior talent, enable them to lear rapidly, communicate clearly and fearlessly while collaborating flexibly are likely to be the long term winners.

The Rhythm Four: Growing talent while key to companies and leadership alone will not be enough and a significant value of firms and leadership will be to set a a) strategy/vision, b) clear deliverables, c) evaluation metrics, and d) a methodology/language to improvise around to ensure that it is music and not cacophony that results from a more flexible and fluid approach.

Welcome to the Jazz Age!

On Reading.

Photo “ The Reader” by Alex Timmermans

Today’s Large Language Models (LLM’s) which drive AI advances like GPT learn and grow through “reading”.

They ingest large data sets and then connect dots, “see” patterns and create relationships while optimizing against learning goals.

“Reading” grows their capabilities which allow them to “write” their responses. We respond with shock or awe when we read what “they” write.

Writing and therefore being able to pass on knowledge from generation to generation and accessing such knowledge via reading is what has enabled humanity to grow.

Even today in a world of multi-media such as movies and games or wonderful Broadway works like “Hamilton” the key is the script and the story.

It has been said that “stories are data with a soul”

Today, GPT reads widely and then observes our reactions to help us grow (though like any reader who switches between genres they can move from non-fiction to highly speculative fantasy disconnected from reality!)

These days we hear people saying the machine is “hallucinating” but for us humans too “reading is a form of dreaming” which takes us out of ourselves.

The Case for Reading.

Reading allows us to be other people and a good writer makes us inhabit another character.

They make us better understand others and better understand ourselves.

David Foster Wallace wrote “ Good writing should help readers be less alone.”

Often a good book will give you “you” as the writer evokes what you feel better than you have the words to express the same thing..

It makes us less lonely and lets us live simultaneously in yesterday, today and tomorrow, and inhabit places here and there, becoming people that are free from our physical constraints.

“Writers have not taken us anywhere but they have taken us everywhere”

George Martin wrote “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.”

Reading also changes us.

“The best books are like surgeons. They change you but you do not remember them and they do not leave an external mark.” but even then “A great piece of writing is one that you feel on your skin.”

“A story is simply a sequence of language that produces a chemical reaction in our bodies.”

But they have a unique long last effect because while “Drugs get flushed from our system but not the best stories.”

The Case for Books.

Today due to the Internet and enabling platforms from Substack to Wordpress everyone can access more voices from more places with more diverse backgrounds than ever before.

Some of the best reading is self-published and can be obtained far from the big publishing houses of the West.

Short form or long form. Listened to or in the reflected glow of a Kindle. Words by themselves or a piece of writing encrusted with links and multi-media can all transform.

But one great way but clearly not the only way to read is through an ancient “ interface” of a physical soft cover or hard cover book.

While it cannot illuminate itself allowing you to read under starlight or allow one to hold a thousand books in the palm of your hand there is something tangible, mystical and spiritual about a physical bound book.

The utter simplicity.

Black symbols on a white background which create an alchemy of feeling, unleash our imagination and spur growth in their own unique way distinct to each reader. Personalized magic that all modern tech seeks to replicate but has not yet.

They might one day if they learn from reading.

Less is more.

Life is infused with meaning because of the reality it ends.

Data is not wisdom.

Humans are unpredictable, inexhaustible and illogical .

One could do no better than watch Chip Kidd speak about the “thinginess of books” to make you newly appreciate these objects in which knowledge has passed down the centuries to intersect with us sometimes so powerfully that a book can leave us thinking “I must change my life!”

Many are lucky to own hundreds of books often decades old. Many yellowing. Most marked up with exclamation marks reinforcing the writer or quarrels with the author in angry scribbles in the margin.

Some tattooed with stains of spilled food or some mishap on a plane or train or other accelerating or braking vehicle from a journey in the misty past.

Artifacts encrusted with meaning.

Citadels to memories.

When we revisit them like many readers we wonder why we underlined the lines we did.

The book did not change.

We did.

“Life is a river and we cannot step into the same book twice”

Lots of things in life change us. Memorable experiences. Transformative relationships. Amazing people.

But the books we read impact us deeply too.

As a reader wrote “ Its only reading. By which I mean it’s everything”.

Is it Human or is it AI?

12 Months of Progress of AI responding to the same prompt for an image on Mid-Journey.

Remember the Memorex Cassette tape ad with Ella Fitzgerald where Ella recorded on Memorex still shattered the wine glass? When one heard her voice was it live Ella or was it taped Ella?

Today we cannot tell whether AI generated images are real or not.

See above for the AI generated image using the same prompt one year apart.

These are not photographs but machine generated images created by mixing and merging data using text prompts

See below for another example.

If Force is equal to Mass x Acceleration with AI we are seeing Mass in hundreds of billions of dollars of investment globally and acceleration of doubling capabilities sometimes within three months. For instance Chat GPT which is GPT 3.5 scored on the 10th Percentile in the Law School Test. Six months later GPT 4 scored in the 90th percentile! Moore’s law of the processor age of doubling capability every 18 months is so snail like slow compared to what we are seeing.

AI is a Force that appears to me to be more impactful than the World Wide Web and the iPhone multiplied by 2.

Three years ago Sinead Bovell a model wrote an article in Vogue predicting that AI would take her job. That time she believes is here.

Earlier this week she was on the a16z podcast along with Danny Postma and if you are in any part of the marketing, creative, production, e-commerce or media business take a listen.

In this episode, Sinead Bovell and Danny Postma discuss the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on the world of modeling, online creation, and self-representation.

From the rise of AI-generated photos to the democratization of creativity, they discuss the potential of AI in shaping the future of digital expression.

If you want to try these tools click below for Danny Postma’s projects.

https://www.postcrafts.com/

Below is just one of more than two dozen projects and tools

The economics of these new tools and the ultra- reality and speed of the output will unleash some of the biggest tsunami’s in the creative and production industries starting now. This is not the future. The future is here.

Every leading firm is already incorporating these tools into their workflow to build upon and add value.

Deepfake Videos driven by AI.

An amazingly fun (and disturbing since it looks and sounds so real) video of Satya Nadella putting Gates, Balmer as well as other Indian tech CEO’s in their place and ending with the following rap was released a few hours ago:

“Because this fella,

Satya Nadela,

the rocket propella,

will take Microsoft Interstella.”

Click below or here to watch….you will both be amazed, terrified and possibly pass out laughing…

MSFT CEO Satya Nadella : I am the superior Indian tech CEO

AI Clones

The WSJ tech reporter cloned her voice and image and sent her avatar into interviews to confirm her security to JP Morgan Chase and into meetings.

The Avatar succeeded some times and failed at other times.

Watch the video above or click this link:

But as we saw with the AI imagery advancements in the past year, the speed of enhancement and improvement is such that it will be less than a year before we may ask:

Is it live or is it AI?

AI and the Creative Arts

The New York Time had an incredibly interesting article ( also read the comments in the comments section) that must be read in its entirety to understand how AI is not just going to impact finance, tech, accounting and other left brained, quantitative, mechanical and mathematical industries but the very heart of creativity and storytelling!

Here are four paragraphs from the article that snapped me to attention:

“It is not out of the realm of possibility that before 2026, which is the next time we will negotiate with these companies, they might just go, ‘you know what, we’re good,’” said Mike Schur, the creator of “The Good Place” and co-creator of “Parks and Recreation.” “We don’t need you,” he imagines hearing from the other side. “We have a bunch of A.I.s that are creating a bunch of entertainment that people are kind of OK with.”

In December, Apple introduced a service allowing book publishers to use human-sounding A.I. narrators, an innovation that could displace hundreds of voice actors who make a living performing audiobooks. The company’s website says the service will benefit independent authors and small publishers. Other actors fear that studios will use A.I. to replicate their voices while cutting them out of the process. “We’ve seen this happening — there are websites that have popped up with databases of characters’ voices from video games and animation,” said Linsay Rousseau, an actress who makes her living doing voice work.

SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, says more of its members are flagging contracts for individual jobs in which studios appear to claim the right to use their voices to generate new performances. A recent Netflix contract sought to grant the company free use of a simulation of an actor’s voice “by all technologies and processes now known or hereafter developed, throughout the universe and in perpetuity.”

On-camera actors point out that studios already use motion capture or performance capture to replicate artists’ movements or facial expressions. The 2018 blockbuster “Black Panther” relied on this technology for scenes that depicted hundreds of tribespeople on cliffs, mimicking the movements of dancers hired to perform for the film. Some actors worry that newer versions of the technology will allow studios to effectively steal their movements, “creating new performance in the style of a wushu master or karate master and using that person’s style without consent,”

There is a lot more in the article including a strident defense of the superiority of emotion and the unique ability of humans to have ideas in the article.

But we ain’t seen anything yet….watch for text to video and much more

Prompt to Text is GPT. Prompt to Image is Mid-Journey/Dall-E2 and more. Now Prompt to Video!

Runway ML is a company that is a pioneer in this area. Click on the video above and you will not believe your eyes as to what is now possible with AI.

The ability of individuals to produce pretty high quality video’s with current technology is just a start. The tools are getting far better, far easier to use and far cheaper to access.

But wait that video of Gen 1 was 2 months ago which is a lifetime in AI time. Gen 2 is out and here an example from earlier this week of video completely made from text prompts except for one shot.

For an example of the rate of change and quality of what is possible read this tweet:

It is called The Great Catspy!

Click here for the video or the link below:

https://twitter.com/ChristianF369/status/1651607149804498946?s=20

The Future is Human Plus AI.

Everything I have shared is what I read or discovered in my “learning hour” this morning ( as people know I believe if you are not spending an hour a day learning it is game over for most of us regardless of our experience, status or seniority.)

I am convinced that AI is moving faster and deeper across more industries than we can imagine and it will impact everybody’s job in some way small or medium in 2023 and will begin to have a significant impact in 2024.

History suggests that every advance in technology places a premium on superior ability and talent will matter. However what talent does will shift as technology changes the nature of jobs and industries. There clearly will be a lot of creative destruction and many wonder if it will only be creative destruction versus new industries, new jobs and new opportunities.

While the future is hard to predict there is no doubt that AI can make all of us more productive by 10% or more right away and unleash break throughs in medicine and several sciences. It also will provide more people with more tools and canvases to tell more stories in new ways.

It will help us grow as long as we grow our learning alongside these advancements.