It seems that every time we turn around, there’s another “revolutionary” new tool on the market that’s going to change the way we do digital marketing and advertising forever. The newest hotness has been and continues to be AI, whether you’re talking about ChatGPT for copy, DALL·E 2 for creative, or whatever other robotic entity that’s supposedly hurling us closer to the singularity.
It feels like the only two options are to worship at the feet of AI or completely cower in fear of its digital hands taking your lunch, but I’m here to offer a third stance: meh.
I’m not here to say the advancements of AI aren’t important, impressive or historic, but I’m just not that worried about it – yet.
ChatGPT is a cool toy, DALL·E 2 consistently makes me laugh, and Ameca’s only mildly horrifying. But I don’t believe for one second that my livelihood is being threatened by the rise of the robots, because they just aren’t creative enough.
AI for Creativity
The truth is, I’m not that creative myself. Where I shine is fixing someone else’s bad or boring idea. When I hear something I don’t like, my mind is off to the races with wordplay fixes, puns and new opportunities. To me, THAT is the true value of AI at the moment: I see it miss the mark, and it sparks all kinds of new ideas for me. I see the current state of AI as a wonderful tool to prompt more creative humans – a launch pad to blast you up and over obstacles in your creative process.
Boring People Get Boring Results
One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed since the whole world began sharing their ChatGPT conversations: boring people are getting boring results. That’s not really a huge surprise when you think about it, though – how is a boring person going to come up with creative or interesting enough questions to really unlock whatever a chatbot’s true capabilities are?
The problem for them: they are the ones who are most likely to be replaced by AI.
Optimizers vs Automation
What’s more interesting to me is how blown away these people are with the boring results they’re getting. They can’t believe the capabilities they’ve “unlocked” through ChatGPT, and are in turn terrified by how easily they could be replaced by the machine. The problem for them: they are the ones who are most likely to be replaced by AI.
At the end of the day, optimizers will continue to do their thing, coaxing the best results out of the tools they’re given to work with. They are the real risk for boring people, because they can use AI to streamline their workflow and further bury the boring folks. But it’s going to be a long time coming before the optimizers are affected by the robots.
Here’s my advice to those of you who are afraid of being replaced: become more interesting as soon as possible. Don’t know how? Why don’t you ask ChatGPT?
