2022 amazing AI Tidal Wave cartoon – Marketoonist On May 26, 1995, Bill Gates wrote the famous “
Internet Tidal Wave” internal memo at Microsoft. This is a large wake-up call for the desktop software company during the time. It immediately shifted priorities and resources for Microsoft to go following the nascent Around The Globe Web.I looked at this “Internet Tidal Wave” moment once I came across a helpful
analogy
from Hubspot CTO Dharmesh Shah 2-3 weeks ago:
“Netscape would be to the online world what ChatGPT would be to Artificial Intelligence.
“The Internet existed before Netscape. However the browser helped an incredible number of mere mortals connect the dots on which could possibly be done, and dream of what could possibly be.”We’re in an “AI Tidal Wave” moment now. In most the hype and hyperbole after the debut of ChatGPT, no body really knows the effect on work, business, creativity, and our lives. But we’re all now attempting to connect the dots on which could possibly be done and dreaming of what could possibly be.Ironically, it is Microsoft again (albeit three decades older) that is helping drive this AI Tidal Wave, as a principle backer of OpenAI, the business behind ChatGPT. Reports published this week
reveal that ChatGPT may be incorporated into Microsoft’s Bing, potentially giving Google Search its first meaningful competition in two decades.Another analogy I find beneficial in this moment originates from former US Treasury Secretary (and Aaron Sorkin’s Winkelvii nemesis) Larry Summers. In a Bloomberg interview last month, he
described
the potential of AI as:“some sort of caddie which will augment our creativity, augment our capacities to create knowledge to bear on which we do, augment our accuracy.”I think the “caddie” analogy is a helpful option to think of AI, especially in the short-term. The caddie does not take the shot; the caddie helps the golfer take the shot. Plenty of experimentation in AI will treat the caddie whilst the golfer. However in situations where we have all use of the exact same AI, treating the caddie whilst the golfer may result in a sea of sameness — what P&G CMO Marc Pritchard
described whilst the “content crap trap.”Larry Summers’ overall
prediction
for the impact of AI is both exciting and frightening:
“in the same way the printing press or electricity was a large change as it was an over-all purpose technology, this may be the main general purpose technology because the wheel or fire. And that’s something most of us will be changed by.”
here are some related cartoons I’ve drawn over time:
– Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs