As AI overwhelms humans with speed and ubiquity, personal AI will rise.
The usage of
AI outside of the tech world will determine its longevity. During the dot-com
days it wasn’t the early adopters who defined how the Internet eventually took
shape and became viable.
A real-world
metaphor was needed to help those outside the tech world to grasp at least one
use-case of a newly created SaaS product. I had led a training session for
procurement personnel at a major retailer in their basement computer training
room in Texas. They ordered pizza for everyone - sticky fingers for a sticky
product. After much hand-holding, users in major corporations began embracing
and enjoying the SaaS tool.
About three
years after the dot-com bust, at a home-showing with a realtor, she arrived
carrying printed materials from her MLS listing while I knew about comparable
properties she hadn’t yet researched. She got visibly upset with the “darned
Internet”. Car dealerships, similarly, didn’t appreciate prospective customers
walking in knowing the price they will pay.
Software
efficiencies are harder to communicate as one moves away from the epicenter of
software innovation and venture financing. Where incentives are misaligned or
perceived as misaligned, it’s a harder sell. Then change gets imposed on
consumers as investors in new technologies run out of patience. Rarely is there
an outside event like Covid to be the catalyst for a technology to mature in
its lifecycle overnight and be embraced far and wide. Artificial intelligence
in corporate sales and support processes is being imposed on unsuspecting
consumers.
The manner
in which artificially intelligent agents were first introduced to the world
outside of the technology labs and research centers tells us what to expect
about the rate of adoption. The release of the familiar chat interface made AI
approachable.
Among
working professionals in not-so-technical operations, I hear of haphazard usage
of Chat making emails longer, reports more copious, and writing flawless, but
information flows are now data gushers breaching the banks of an organization’s
time-tested workflows.
Unlike
processes being snapped into place by an ERP system, companies risk ‘clauded
judgment’ by mandating companywide ‘AI transformations’ without a clear
purpose, prioritization or care for customers. Outside of the corporate world,
I ran a straw poll of retired but active over-achievers. Of the few
respondents, 57% use AI as a search engine on steroids, 21% as a friend,
philosopher and guide, 14% use it for coding, and 7% have shunned it. The vast
majority ignored my poll and I assume, ignore AI. There’s still a long way to
go for its adoption.
The
frustration caused by AI voice-agents becoming pervasive in corporate customer
support could be a Covid-moment, forcing mass AI-adoption through a demand for
special-purpose personal AI assistants: haggling with healthcare billing
departments, chasing insurance and refund claims, booking tickets for events,
or making appointments. A new kind of personal assistant will arise, but not a
human. It might be an app on our phones.
[Picture credit: Photo by Marissa Grootes on Unsplash]
