Generative AI Is Just A Wake-Up Call To What Was Always Inevitable. Including Incalculable Profit.

AI and machine learning (AI/ML) will unleash the greatest profit engine in history as expensive human-managed processes are replaced by cheaper and more efficient digital ones. What we’ve seen to date – including generative AI (like ChatGPT) – is just the beginning of how AI/ML will transform and reinvent business – which is why companies will invest whatever’s necessary in intelligent systems.

Inevitable Outcomes

Let’s start with some outcomes. AI and machine learning (AI/ML) will:

Forever change business processes and whole business models. Without a doubt replace thousands if not millions of jobs. Accelerate corruption. Make our homes and offices more efficient. Replace teachers and medical professionals, including surgeons. Steal and create more money than is imaginable today. Eliminate car salespersons, tax accountants, HR officers and lawyers. Transform – and reinvent – production, manufacturing, supply chain management and entertainment. Enable offensive and defensive warfare. Increase social, political and economic surveillance. Change transportation. Enable genetic research. Increase misinformation and disinformation. Increase, lower-cost agricultural production. Reduce – and worsen – climate change. Manage water distribution. Increase wealth and income inequality. Enable technology oligarchies. Challenge competitive advantage and so many other business strategies, models and processes.

There are more outcomes, of course, but this list makes the point. Remember that today many of the applications are in well-bounded areas – like accept/reject loans – that definitely save money and increase accuracy with simple, easily trained regression models. But tomorrow’s applications will broaden with algorithmic approaches far more adaptive and powerful, and interfaces (like chatbots) that make the algorithms accessible to everyone. Whole new industries will be created as older ones die. Disruptive “progress” for sure.

Unimaginable Profit

Let’s stop here for a moment to honor the raison d’être of all business: profit. AI will transform, replace and automate whole industries. Those who make money from online digital retail, production, manufacturing and distribution will make killings from the profit margins digital efficiencies will deliver.

AI/ML will unleash the greatest profit engine in history as expensive human-managed processes are replaced by more efficient ones. While we once believed that so-called knowledge industries would be relatively free from what AI had to offer, we now know that the real targets of AI/ML are the knowledge industries (in addition to the more industrial and operational industries).

Show Horses

Sometimes show horses are fabulous. Generative AI is fabulous show horse. I love it for that reason alone, though remain amazed at its abilities. But show horses can be wake up calls as well. ChatGPT-3 is an interface to the ever-expanding ocean of data that that responds, solves, creates and displays. It creates descriptions, explanations, predictions and prescriptions – all through access to a widening amount of data. That – along with embedded connectivity and inference-making – is the trick. But don’t think of generative AI as the “answer” or where AI was always intended to go. It’s just a step toward increasing power and influence.

Where Vs How

We’re heading toward the outcomes listed above. Generative AI will enable some of these outcomes. But there’s more under the covers that AI/ML will enable that will enable “how” all this gets done.

For example, some of the technology that AI will both create and exploit includes: Realtime data integration API generation and integration Network configurability and reconfigurability Adaptive cybersecurity and cyberwarfare Operational technology management, including cloud optimization and management Integrated sensor technology Data-as-a-service; operations-as-a-service; strategy-as-a-service Prescriptive analytics-as-a-service Automated applications development Maintenance and repair

Here too there are more examples, but these should make the point.

Food for Thought or Time for Action?

While many would disagree with the picture I’ve painted here, many would agree. Executives have a decision to make. They can assume that while “inevitable” may be true, they have a lot of time before the world changes as dramatically as I’ve described here. This is what most executives do: they punt big decisions to future leadership. They claim there’s plenty of time to think, analyze and just watch; that there’s no reason to panic. In this case, they would be wrong. It’s sort of like climate change, isn’t it? Some believe we have decades to address it, while others believe the time to act has already passed.

Executives should assume that AI/ML’s impact will not grow incrementally, but at a pace that will directly impact their business model and processes over the next 2-3 years. Which operational and strategic processes will be impacted by the full range of AI/ML methods, tools, techniques and platforms? That’s the question executives should be asking – now. (They might also spend some time addressing climate change as well.)