I was privileged to host a private event for global ABM programme leaders last week looking at how GenAI can help to scale ABM in the months and years ahead. We were joined by the Tech Whisperer – the wonderful Jaspreet Bindra – a leader in digital transformation, AI and Web3, an author, an educator at various prestigious institutions and a life-long learner, currently doing his second masters degree, in AI, Ethics and Society at Cambridge University.
Jaspreet gave us a grounding in GenAI, sharing five fundamentals with us, which I’d like to share with you.
This is generative AI. Use it to generate.
AI was born in the 1950’s and originally called applied statistics. Renamed to make it sound more interesting, Andrew Ng suggests “AI is the new electricity” and is already everywhere. Large language models (the basis of GenAI) started in 2014. They are neural networks that have been trained on massive bodies of text to process and, in particular, generate language. Effectively the world’s most powerful autocomplete, they ‘make stuff up’, so use them to generate, not to search. For ABM-ers, this means generating briefs, ideas, copy, and even websites, for example.
It will not replace you. A person using it will.
A good copywriter will become a better copywriter using GenAI. Jaspreet quotes Kent Beck saying, “I’ve been reluctant to try ChatGPT. Today I got over that reluctance. Now I understand why I was reluctant. The value of 90% of my skills just dropped to $0. The leverage for the remaining 10% went up 1000x. I need to recalibrate.” Learning how to create the right prompts and converse with machines – our new co-workers – will be important for us as ABM-ers if we’re going to be the replacer not the replacee.
The horizontals are interesting. The verticals will be useful.
Think of AI as the new cloud. As AI platforms have opened up their APIs, vertical solutions are emerging fast. These are where we need to look for value, not ChatGPT. Don’t use the generic, but look for AI tech that is being created for us as marketers (see the generative AI landscape).
GenAI will be as transformative as search, email, social networking. It will reshape Big Tech.
Jaspreet quotes Alexandr Wang here, “the next 2-3 years of AI are definitively going to define the coming 2-3 decades of the world for those in technology: you live a lifetime for a moment like this – don’t waste it; don’t be lazy there are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen.”
GenAI is not AGI (artificial general intelligence).
The worries circulating around GenAI are overhyped. Society has bigger threats to resolve, such as climate change. But there are issues to reflect on, such as alignment. AI is aligned with human values, but are human values themselves aligned across society? Issues around bias and discrimination are human issues, not just about AI.
Read more from Jaspreet at www.jaspreetbindra.com.
