Beginning of things... daydreaming with AI!
“How many miles to Babylon?
Three score miles and ten —
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again —
If your feet are nimble and light
You can get there by candlelight.”
In the words of Joan Didion, “It’s easy to see beginning of things, and harder to see the ends.” I very clearly remember the day I got my college admission letter. I can vividly recall the steps I climbed to our second floor apartment to let my Mom know. The train ride to my college, first day at campus. Yet, there was no way to tell that after college, after many many stops, I will end up in California. The two are only about 8,000 miles away. My social and professional life today would be impossible to predict.
The new AI is full of possibilities. Human creativity with intelligent machines can truly create new frontiers. When I think of the world 5-10 years out, I believe we will be able to hear new songs created for us with music we like, afford personalized art we want, and even solve the hardest challenge of adult life - what’s for dinner tonight. I am not sure if this will make us happier or add more time to be bored, but it is going to be possible.
What we do at work, and how we do it, as well as what’s core to a company will all need new definitions. If I had to design a new work ecosystem, I would have an assistant for everything. Let’s start with a typical day.
7:00 AM: My AI assistant would have prioritized and summarized the 200 emails/messages, deleted all the spam, replied to most of the ones that are basic yes and no, and have suggested answers for all the ones that need attention. They would have reminded me of all the birthdays, anniversaries, suggested gifts to buy, and before I forget, organized my calendar with biographies of everyone I was going to meet today. And if I had the paid version, even the names of their children and pet who happened to join the call last time.
8:00AM: My personalized news, with for and against perspectives on every topic I care about. Yeah, this already happens but it’s one sided. Write a blog post to capture my real thoughts in parallel.
Rest of the day: I can just chat with a variety of assistants through my “omni” assistant:
Figure out days of vacation left, apply for leave, book me a flight, hotel, massage; generate my travel itinerary, and inform everyone including my wife, and mother in law, and find a babysitter for two nights with dinner reservations.
Find out what are the key compliance considerations for the new market/product we want to enter/launch.
Tell me termination costs of our contract with our cloud provider.
Get me results of my last marketing campaign and suggest and show me concepts for next two campaigns.
Tell me of key areas my competitors are investing in, and startups that are a threat for my next strategy meeting.
Get me names and LinkedIn bios of most suitable candidates for my three most critical job openings.
Tell my meeting attendees I am running 5 mins late.
Show me revenue numbers from last quarter per segment of our various businesses, and overlay percentage growth of our closest competitors.
Suggest based on my emails, the 5 most urgent matters for my staff meeting, and for the upcoming board meeting.
Create (yes create) presentation agenda and then create the presentation and write a memo to make sure we have every possible format humans like to communicate in ready. Drop graphs with pro forma projections on our key KPIs.
Tell me how to best inform my boss of my accomplishments without having to take credit for or steal someone else’s great work.
And if one of the above does not work, connect me to Sanjiv in India for IT support.
In the meanwhile, I hope Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak are able to get some sensible regulation in place. I dare not think about how many people it will need to make this all work. Humans are indeed in demand. I am also confident that in a few weeks AI will replace at least 80 percent of me in my current role. My boss’ job I suspect is to figure out my useful life as a working human!