Jan 5, 2023 | Customers, Management, Sales
In almost every situation I have ever seen, ‘Sales’ includes all sales, and salespeople are often rewarded via commissions on the total of all those sales.
In many categories of B2B sales, the only time a person does a ‘Sales’ job is to gain that first transaction, after which it is all about retention, a different set of skills.
Assuming the first transaction goes well, the product was delivered on time, in specification, and did the job promised, the chances of a repeat at the appropriate interval is higher, and may not require the ‘sales’ skills of the original salesperson. Rather, it requires the interaction of operational and logistics personnel to manage the relationship, and the transactions that occur within that relationship.
If that is the case, why do we habitually reward salespeople on the total of all sales?
Salespeople are as different as any other group of people. The archetypal ‘Always be Closing’ salesman of the past has now almost disappeared, replaced by a range of people covering differing tasks. This reflects the changed role of sales with the move of information from the hands of the seller to those of the buyer.
Almost every salesperson also sees customers as ‘their’ customers.
Again, if the hypothesis is that they are only necessary for the first transaction holds, this is a mistake.
The logistics and operations people should hold the relationship, assisted by an internal ‘customer service’ person, while the salesperson goes off ‘hunting’ for the next new customer, or indeed, sales in an adjacent product or market area of a current customer not currently serviced. This would be a far better use of the time available to a salesperson than running around at the factory trying to wrangle a preferred spot in the production schedule.
A business I ran as a contractor some years ago had a specialist sales force made up of highly trained technologists. When tracking their activity, it became obvious that most of their time was consumed by tasks other than ‘sales’. These involved interaction with the customers technologists, their operational, marketing and planning personnel. Significant time was also spent at their desks dealing with the complexity of our planning and operational processes in order to meet sometimes impossible delivery promises made under pressure from customers.
This blurred the line between the tasks best undertaken by a specialist technical salesperson, dealing directly with generating more sales, and the tasks that were better done by internal customer service people. The ambiguity of responsibility for specific tasks, and our very malleable processes was hamstringing the productivity of the investment in sales.
The communication tools we have today really mean that we are now able to direct the activities of sales personnel towards where their value lies, identifying and solving customer problems. They do not have to be in the office apart from training and progress sessions. The logistics of providing the products are best managed by those who are hands on in the factory, warehouse and admin functions.
After some changes, sales went up significantly, as did the margins, as the salespeople had more time to spend identifying and solving difficult challenges that naturally brought higher margins.
As you consider the structures necessary for success as the new year opens, you might give some thought to the priorities set for the salespeople, and their support functions in your business.
Header credit: Scott Adams via Dilbert
Dec 22, 2022 | Change, Leadership
This is the last StrategyAudit post of 2022. Thanks to all my readers over the last year, it has been a priviledge to be able to share a few minutes and some ideas with you over the year.
Rather than add to the tsunami of posts that are predicting what will happen in 2023, or the ‘best of’ type posts, I thought I would be different. In line with my views on accountability, I would score myself on the trend forecasts I made in a post on January 3, 2022, which is reproduced below with commentary and scores.
There are more predictions posts than you can poke a stick at written at this time of the year. This is not one of them to add to the pile.
The following is a review of the forces and trends I see at work that will impact on all businesses in Australia in the coming year, most specifically the small business sector.
So here goes, in no particular order, and use the insights as you see fit.
Technology.
We are in the early stages of a move from bits and bytes to something else that will power the green revolution, medicine, and new materials with currently unimagined characteristics, that will enable all sorts of further innovation. We are seeing early signs that quantum computing is about to blow in, and blow everything else away. It is a bit like the point in 1948 just before the transistor was invented by William Shockley et all in the Bell labs. To that point ‘computers’ had been powered by vacuum tubes that were slow and tended to burn out a lot. Suddenly the transistor led to the development of the integrated circuit that has powered us since.
The rapid development of Covid vaccines is a direct result of technology, and will change the face of medical care. The Pfizer vaccine is the result of decades of perfecting the processes developed with the smallpox vaccine in the mid 1700’s first in the Ottoman empire, then in western Europe via the well-known story of the milkmaids and Edward Jenner. The mRNA Covid vaccine of Moderna is another story. It is a combination of proof of concept originally conceived by Francis Crik , one of the identifiers of DNA in the early 50’s, and CRISPR technology developed by two scientists, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in 2007, for which they shared a Nobel prize in chemistry in 2020. Since the initial breakthrough, gene editing technology has advanced at a compounding rate. It is now at a point where a scientist friend of mine described it a few months ago as ‘almost as routine as editing a document in word.’ This technology will not only offer protection against Covid, but will be extended to any virus and parasitic driven affliction. In a short time, it will deliver the vaccine for killers such as malaria.
Score: 7/10. A bit hard to score this, but the trend is right. During the year, my wife was diagnosed with Lymphoma, just a short time ago a death sentence. In this case, she is now clear after chemo that was tailored to attack the specific characteristics of her situation. While it was not pleasant, she did not spend 6 months nauseous, did not lose her hair, and life was for the most part almost normal. To my mind, a graphic example of the speed of the advances made in medical science.
Politics.
There will be an election this year, and lots of pork will be promised, but for SME’s who cannot assemble a block vote that will change the outcome in an electorate, there will not be much beyond reassuring words about how well the economy is bouncing back. I do not think it will matter who wins, unless there is a hung parliament, in which case, there might be some sensible debate and actions that will benefit small business.
We desperately need a federal ICAC with teeth. However, it seems unlikely we will get one, even if the current opposition wins government, the version they install will be a vanilla version, rather than the robust body we need. They, like the current incumbents know how much they may lose personally from installing such a body, and to heck with the electors.
Score: 7/10. It was not hard to accurately predict that there would be an election, but the rest I only got partly right. The economy has bounced back, but is now being slammed with the duo of inflation and wage suppression, not considered possible in classic economic theory.
We did get a federal ICAC, yet to be operational, but the legislation is in, and it seems to be a model with teeth, so I got that bit wrong. Perhaps cynicism overtook me at the prospect of another election campaign.
Regulation of social platforms.
This is coming, but I suspect not in this coming year. Besides, the major platforms are the biggest bullies in town with huge lobbying resources, and politicians will not want to annoy them. Facebook made the point by closing access for a day, February 17, causing chaos, before acceding to the governments Mandatory bargaining code passed in early 2021. Assuming a government does have a go, chances are it will be another fenced dog, good only for barking. The argument that a platform ‘smart’ enough to direct an ad to a highly specified audience in a geographic location cannot equally train algorithms to tell the difference between a fake account, set up in a post factory in Ukraine, and one owned by a kid in Blacktown is utter nonsense.
Voluntarily, Facebook and Google are retiring third party cookies, trying to build ‘social responsibility’ credentials with regulators. This means you may not be chased around the net quite as much by so called ‘remarketing,’ but given the profitability at stake, of Facebook particularly, it would be naive to believe that the changes will be too aggressive. Some added work will be required by SME’s to productively invest in digital ads.
Score: 5/10. Regulation of social platforms is coming, sometime. It is probably further off than I anticipated, and to some extent market forces will drive change, as is happening with Twitter currently.
Digital security.
This will become a major pain in the arse for small business. The big end of town has made the investment in security, and while they are still vulnerable, most SME’s by contrast are an easy target. The crims are very smart, way smarter than almost every small business operator, so it becomes a matter of time before you are targeted. Taking basic measures of security has become an essential cost of being in business, so ignore it at your peril.
Score: 10/10. Look no further than the massive breeches of Medibank and Optus, and the tsunami of scams hitting your inbox every day.
Supply chain sovereignty.
Supply chains have been heavily disrupted over the last two years and will not go back to ‘normal’ any time soon. The opportunity for SME’s to step in and deliver quality product and services reliably to a timetable will increase as a result.
If the various governments decided that domestic procurement was a real priority rather than a press release, and took steps to make it so, there would be a substantial and instant increase in business. This new business will not just arrive on the doorstep, small business must invest in marketing to secure it, a skill set missing in most SME’s.
Score: 6/10. The concern over supply chain sovereignty has been widely discussed, hand on heart, by governments and institutions. However, action is not following. Public sector procurement has not shifted one bit it would seem, despite the well-meaning press releases, and SME’s under financial pressure have not ramped up their marketing efforts sufficiently.
Labour
Finding and keeping skilled labour is a huge problem for most SME’s. In the midst of unemployment, we have pockets of extreme demand that must be met if the economy is to grow. This is not about imported labour doing the menial jobs Aussies frown on, it is the high value technically skilled jobs required for manufacturing and the digital transformation happening around us. The tight market taken as the average will increase rates, increasing pressure to digitise, or go out of business.
Score 6/10. Finding and keeping skilled labour is a key hurdle for every SME I have interacted with over the last year. However, the pressure to address the challenge by increased digitisation has been dampened by shortages of cash, and affordable management capability.
Retail’s last mile
The retail ‘last mile’ has been comprehensively disrupted over the last 2 years. While we have been locked up, we also looked increasingly to ‘instant gratification’ in everything from the routine purchase of groceries to major purchases, investments, and entertainment.
The metaphorical ‘last mile’ typically the most expensive part of the logistics chain, as well as being subject to all sorts of dead ends and side paths, is being completely rebuilt by technology and VC investment.
The number of start-ups around the world, but particularly the US that have market valuations in the billions and revenue numbers akin to a kid’s pocket money is enormous. Gorillas, Jokr, Gopuff, Getir, Zapp, and a host of similar all looking to knock the king of logistics, Amazon, off their perch. It is beginning to look like the dot.com boom/bust of 1999 all over again.
Score: 8/10. The difficulty of the last mile remains, and Amazon remains king, although the number of businesses now using on line channels as a normal part of their commercial development has increased.
Climate change.
Irrespective of individual views, climate change is a scientific reality. Argue if you like about the extent, but the sources are indisputable: humans have screwed the pooch, and are continuing to do so. In the absence of change, our great grandchildren will not enjoy life as we have. Even though we can reasonably expect technology to continue to accelerate and deliver benefits, without a place to live those be benefits will be claytons benefits.
Despite the determined effort by the current government to deny this reality, and double down on fossil fuels, they will continue to look like King Canute keeping the tides at bay. There will be a tsunami of change happening in areas from vehicles to devices that capture and store power, science will not be denied. There will be huge opening for SME’s who identify a niche in the sustainable/renewable energy supply chain, and fill it.
Will the pace of global warming continue, the story of the last couple of years, fires, drought, flood, cyclonic activity, all indicate not just a continuation, but an uptick on the rate. A natural barometer of this is the rate at which coral reefs are bleaching. Numerous studies of the great barrier reef, and others around the world over the last 20 years clearly indicate the warming of the waters.
Space has become a tourist destination. Captain Kirk, alias William Shatner became the oldest person to go into space, courtesy of Jeff Bezos.
Score: 8/10. Not much to see here, although things have not progresses as fast as I anticipated. The new government seems determined to take positive action, encouraged by the infusion of independents into the parliament whose platform included very specifically action on antidotes to climate change. The new opposition has faded into almost total irrelevance on most issues, and in relation to climate change policy, are an absolute joke.
Non-Fungible Tokens. NFT’s.
The definition of ‘Fungible’ is that it can be replaced by an identical item, there is absolute interchangeability. Therefore, a Non-Fungible item is irreplaceable, there is no substitute. The token part of ‘NFT’ is the proof of ownership held on a blockchain. NFT’s have created a new way to create value. The essential characteristic of a buy/sell relationship is that the seller has the right to sell, and that the buyer is not just buying the original item, they are also buying the right to resell it. Blockchain, on which NFT’s are stored, and ownership tracked, has created a way to make this determination for the original of a digital product. JP Morgan recently put the current market value at 7 $billion, from nowhere a year ago.
Those who can claim ownership now have a new way to monetise that ownership. Consider the Mona Lisa. There is just one Mona Lisa painting, housed in the Louvre, but there are millions of reproductions, from photos people have taken on their phones to professional reproductions. The original painting is non-fungible, there is only one irreplaceable painting. That great photo you took of your new product prototype before it sold millions, or that sporting moment when your 6-year-old, who ended up playing for Australia scored his first try, may suddenly have value as an NFT. If I was the marketing manager of Soccer worldwide, I would be creating a store of NFT’s of the great stars of soccer in the form of photos and gifs, of their great moments. This is a new asset class that will only grow as we come to grips with it.
Score 1/10. How wrong can you be? Despite my best efforts to be immune to the new shiny thing syndrome, I fell for this one hook line and sinker. NFT’s came and went with the spectacular speed and light of Haleys comet, matched only by the recent implosion of crypto currency ‘bankers’.
The Cloud.
Cloud infrastructure is a race for the dominant position currently held by Amazon, spending massively to retain that position, but being chased by Meta (Facebook) Microsoft, currently in second place, and Alphabet (google). Between these 4, they spent $40 billion in the year to September 2021
What the internet did to music and newspapers is being repeated everywhere else.
TV viewing and advertising has been remarkably resilient in the face of digital ads and streaming, but the advent of net connected smart TV and streaming will kill TV as we knew it quickly. The attraction is the 4 billion ad dollars currently going into live TV in Australia. We are followers, the impetus will come from the US, where the ad pool prize is massive.
Some bets here, Netflix, the current market leader will be taken over by one of Amazon, or Disney, who have multiple revenue streams to pump out content, and Disney has many other brands, like Marvel, 20th century, Pixar, national geographic, and an unparalleled back catalogue. HBO is currently owned by AT&T, so will probably be sold, and then there is the Chinese platforms, Tencent and Baidu, Huge in China and Asia generally, who will be looking towards the US and Europe with acquisitive eyes. It will be interesting.
Many small businesses have migrated to cloud accounting software, and a specialist application or two, without making a real commitment. The pace of development means that you are either on the cloud, leveraging the tools to scale productively, or being left behind. For most SME’s it is a big capability gap, and again, most have been bitten by salespeople making big promises, but delivering little, but it is time to go again. Find a person or firm you are comfortable with, and have them beside you for the journey.
Score: 5/10. I got the timing wrong, but am prepared to stick it out, and say there is a shake-out in streaming services coming, perhaps 2023? SME’s still must move to the cloud, although it is now almost automatic as many of the emerging applications are cloud only.
Demography.
The developed world is getting older, and more demanding of governments, while there are increasingly less people to pay for the demands. The currently developing world is on the other end of the continuum, they want what we have, but are lacking the resources to get it, so are migrating, jumping the stages of technical development we older developed economies went through, such as going straight to mobile in Africa, jumping the infrastructure costs of fixed line. Human beings have migrated since the beginning of our evolution. Just because there are now national boundaries in place, that migratory drive will not go away in a flood of nationalism and self-preservation, it is exactly self-preservation that will drive it.
Score: 6/10. again, not much to say other than the trend remains, and the demands for structural reform have not been met, anywhere.
Resource access.
We can live with all sorts of shortages, except those of food, shelter and water. Specifically water, without which, we humans die in a few days depending on temperatures. Beyond those three necessities, we need a whole range of other resources to maintain a standard of living. Those with the access will be the owners of the world in the future.
The huge challenge is how do we allocate our limited financial resources against the various demand for spending? The inclination is to spend it to address the short-term irritations and public demands, tactical stuff, but unfortunately they win elections. It is the long-term stuff we need to really consider, as they are expensive, risky, but important, despite not biting us on the arse today. Broken down is it driven by the simple fact that some have it, and most do not, and the forces to equalise will, over time, play a key role in the shape of the world.
Score: 6/10. As above. The trend remains.
The economy.
Who really knows what will happen? Certainly, the politicians do not, and economists can only make a best guess based on what has happened before, and current theories about how the past will impact the future. There are many diabolically difficult decisions to be made on the allocation of shrinking resources against increasing demand, with voter and lobby groups opposed to the changes in the tax regime required to increase the tax base. The fundamental mismatch between the short-term focus of government and the necessity to invest for the long term, with the increased risk profile such long term decisions require will remain an intractable problem in the absence of a sense of common purpose amongst all Australians. Clearly the current political leadership is across the body politic, incapable of meeting this challenge.
Closer to home, inflation will kick along which may prick the housing bubble in Sydney and Melbourne, or not, depending to some extend on the truth to the claims that prices are supported by international tax money seeking refuge in our lax regulatory environment.
The frenetic building activity of the past few years will probably cool off as demand slackens, which might see the cost of trade skills soften. The continued absence of migrant agriculture workers due to Covid will see the cost of produce increase significantly, leading to many smaller farming enterprises to merge to fund automation.
Then, you have the uncertainty of the trading relationship with China feeding into our economy in all sorts of ways over which we have no control at all. It seems unlikely any fences will be mended soon. We are being both taught a tough lesson, and being held up as an example to others, and the collective impact on our economy is substantial, and likely to increase. Currently China imports about 60% of its iron ore from Australia, and 20% from Brazil. Imagine the impact as that equation switches, as it will, as China diversifies its supply away from Australia. They have demonstrated that a bit of domestic pain is irrelevant by squeezing imports of Australian metallurgical coal, switching to supply from elsewhere, and simply using less. The bans imposed on wine, barley, meat, and lobsters will be pocket money by comparison.
Having said all of that, look forward to 2022 with optimism. Australia is still the best place in the world to be despite the challenges.
Score: 7/10. Again, not much to see, as little has changed, in any direction. Australia remains the best place in the world, but the structural changes necessary to ensure that remains the case seem a long way off, although the new government does seem more inclined to action that the previous lot. Not a high bar!!
Header photo credit: The photo is of ‘Black Jack’ crossing the line first in the 2021 Sydney Hobart. I have reproduced this photo accredited to the ABC, but somebody owns the original. It can transfer onto an NFT platform, and traded. Meanwhile, I can reproduce it, but never own it.
I again used the photo of ‘Black Jack’, adjusted, as there is good money on them again taking line honours in about 14 days from now.
Dec 19, 2022 | Change, Innovation
It has been a busy year, the pace of change keeps accelerating, the need to run always faster just to keep up is absolute. Therefore, the pace of failure is also accelerating, the lives of businesses getting progressively shorter, from the corner store to massive multinationals. They emerge, flower, then disappear, either by being taken over in some way, or just doing an ‘FTX‘ and exploding in spectacular fashion after a life counted in months.
In November, the newest, shiniest thing ever, hit the spotlight.
ChatGPT.
The all singing, all dancing AI system that like all previous new shiny things will change everything. The hype is enormous, and if only some of the promises made are fulfilled, it is truly a step-change, but we have heard it all before.
For those not tuned in, ChatGPT is to the ‘chatbot’ we seem to be meeting whenever we want to communicate with an insurance company, bank, or internet provider, as a go-cart is to a formula 1 car. A sailing dinghy to a 12 meter foil catamaran.
This thing can keep an every-day conversation going, write books, code, explain quantum mechanics to Einstein, beat a line-up of Go grandmasters while sleeping, and the scribblers of blog posts like me, are now utterly redundant. In short, it communicates in natural language, with natural and personalised nuances, backed up by the resources of the web, integrated into a conversation in real time.
Absolutely liberating, or absolutely scary, take your pick.
HAL (Heuristically programmed Algorithmic computer) the product of Arthur C. Clarke’s vivid and futuristic imagination, and star of the 1968 film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, is here.
Maybe.
Assuming at least some of the hype is real, and it certainly seems to be, we have another round of introspection about the role of humans in our commercial and creative world about to become a serious conversation. Get ready for it in 2023.
UPdate Dec 27th.
The hype is real. HAL has come home, and seems to be taking charge.
Yesterday afternoon, accompanies by a few post Xmas sherbets, a couple of us (me a business strategist, a scientist, a specialist doctor, and a writer), did some Chat-wrangling to test out the system. Across a range of domains, we were blown away with the capabilities. It is clear that teaching institutions suddenly have a huge challenge to face, as this thing can produce in a few minutes a highly credible response to complex challenges, including references used. That is only the start to the downsides, and while the eminent group of post Xmas testers did begin to see a few upsides, on balance, ChatGPT has opened a door previously locked tightly shut.
Post script January 10, 2023. Chat GPT is only one of the AI tools coming at us. The speed of innovation is way beyoind the capability of regulators to even understand this stuff, let alone regulate the output. This is an informed conversation on ‘Regenerative AI’ and what it is bringing to the table. If you are tbinking about the implications, it is worth a look.
Second Post script January 15, 2023. Commentators everywhere are waking up to the challenge suddenly in front of our education system and educators. ChatGPT has removed the easy ‘tick and flick’ essay marking, from primary school to post graduate levels. As with all technology, it will only become more sophisticated. A final exam in my degree, 50 years ago, was a Q&A exercise. I had plenty of notice of the format, conducted in the home of the professor where he had a wide ‘Gone in the Wind’ type staircase. He started with some questions, and we had a conversation, all the time him indicating I should back up the staircase, or come down. To pass, I had to get to the floor, to fail, I only had to reach the top of the stairs. Eventually, after a nerve wracking 40 minutes or so I reached the floor, and he gave me a congratulatory whack on the back, and a sherry. (hate sherry). The knowledge that this was the format had forced me to think deeply about the subject, and read widely, as well as engaging the Professor several time during the semester to clarify the ambiguities present. At the time I recognised the value, but it was unusual to say the least, and an entirely different approach to teaching. This post from Seth Godin on the way forward for teaching, implies my professor was only 50 years ahead of his time, and me, a guinea pig.
Third Post script Jan 18, 2023. it just keep ‘getting better’ as more is understood about this tool. This article from a medical journal has ChatGPT passing the exams to become a doctor. This has implications both good and bad. For example, the ability to access data base records of bone trauma, malignant growth, could make diagnosis logarithmically more accurate, but I am not so sure about that rectal exam.
These tools have also created a greater opportunity for cybercriminals to get into our collective pockets. This is a truly scary development.
Fourth Post script. Feb 19, 2023. ‘Where to from here’ is the question everyone is asking themselves, and others. I am sure it is keeping Google executives up at night as they see their Golden Goose cash machine strangled by a Chatbot enabled Bing, and probably others finding a crack in the fortress wall.
This post ‘when the internet becomes Chat- People vs Algorithms’ takes the best shot at answering that question I have seen. Hat tip to Mitch Joel who pointed it out to me.
This second post I found, also on Feb 19 explains the workings of ChatGPT, and presumbaly its emerging competiotors. We need to understand this, as the technology is being integrated into our lives at a rate logarithmically faster than anything I have never seen before. How ChatGPT Works: The Model Behind The Bot – Towards Data Science
Fifth Post script Feb 26, 2023. This article courtesy of Stephen Wolfram is a long, but detailed laymans descciption of the workings of ChatGPT, and all other ‘Large Language Models’ that are around, and in development. It is well worth your time, assuming you are one of those who is motivated to understand how stuff works. I am sure there will be many more, between them we digital novices (*like me) might gather enough understanding to make sense when we pontificate.
Sixth Post script March 19, 2023. ChatGPT4 was released to the world on Monday (March 13, 2023). The blurb tells us it is a step change ahead of the previous version, which we are only just starting to come to grips with.
Open AI is as the name implies, open source. Therefore there has been a tsunami of apps coming at us that do stuff that was impossible a year ago, and that tsunami is a ripple compared to what is coming.
Take for example the ability to generate an AI video during a coffee break with no more skill than most of us have already. Synthesia.io can do it for us. The utility of this capability is enormous. It offers the opportunity to save time and money while delivering everything from a public presentation to internal training and induction videos, email list ‘welcomes’, and product demos, better than anything possible until now.
In this short video Seth Godin displays an AI capability that enables characters in a movie to say what you want them to say, and have their lips and movements be exactly synchronised. I understand this is currently available to ‘Hollywood’ producers for bags of money, but inevitably will be open to the rest of us for a few dollars in coming weeks.
The list goes on, and will only grow exponentially as some of the most creative people in the world set their minds to leveraging this stuff of Arthur C. Clarkes imagination.
Seventh Post script. March 25, 2023. The ‘Chatbot’ war is joined. OpenAI has launched ChatGPT4 as a subscription service, and Google has re-released ‘Bard’ after the clusterf**k that was the first try a few weeks ago. This article examines the differances between ChatGPT3 and 4, as well as having some very useful links that give answers to other question in this space that you may have.
Frankly, If you are not thinking about the exponentially accelerating rate of change being driven by this technology, and the ways you can use it, you will become increasingly unable to compete. Like any investment, it takes an ‘upfront’ payment and some risk to put yourself in a position where you can reap a return.
8Th Post script March 29, 2023. This world of AI is regenerating itself at a compounding speed. Scary stuff, or as exciting as anything that has ever happened? depends on your point of view. This video which summarises the latest AI developments is instructive. Hat-tip to Steve Aspey for pointing me to it.
9th post script. April 4, 2023. A further very useful explanation of how ChatGPT works from Stephen Wolfram. It is becoming clearer by the day that we have reached an inflection point, and there is no going back. Currently there is a debate in the US sponsored by several digital luminaries, calling for a 6 month halt in development, concerned that the tech is running too far ahead of the moral understanding we have. Great idea if everyone (Russia, China, north Korea, et al) agreed, but in the absence of that agreement, not a good idea. Why give them a head start in the race of the decade? A YouTube addition to this PS. Howard Weiner pointed out to me that I missed the Youtube explanations of the way this technology works. I learn visually, so the videos have been remarkably helpful in building understanding. Long way to go yet!
10th Post Script April 6, 2023. This space is evolving with lightning speed as we figure out how large language Models (LLM’s) will impact our lives. What about ‘Knowledge Graphs?. Here is an ;interview researcher Kurt Cagle conducted with Chat GPT4. It is not dystopian, but getting there. It is well worth a read, if nothing else, it should spark some thoughts about how you might be affected.
11th Post Script. April 9, 2023. ‘What is next? seems to be a fair question. Who knows should be a fair answer. One of those who thinks deeply about these things then published his thoughts is Christopher Penn. In this piece, after offering a bit of history, he forecasts that LLM’s will actually get smaller, after reaching a gargantuan size, too big for any but the largest installations to process. This makes sense and happens every time in any evolutionary environment. Things get big, then they progressively get smaller and more focussed, the specialist outperforming the generalist at domain specific tasks.
I think he is right, what do you think?
12th Post script. April 20, 2023 AI comes to imagery. You might expect Canva, and other established players to rapidly incorporate AI into their offerings, and this is happening. In addition, there has been a rash of start-ups and SME’s that have led the goldrush. This twitter thread I stumbled across has some mind-boggling examples of AI driven imagery. I sent it to a mate who is a professional photographer, and he just shook his head, and wondered where the next arrow in his back was going to come from.
13th Post script. April 26, 2023. This is getting really interesting!! The pace of innovation is just astonishing. Two things this morning, the first a finished ad, made entirely with AI. https://tinyurl.com/39nftyvaWhatever you think of the ad, making it entirely from AI opens up extraordinary budget productivity increases for marketers seeking ‘Activation’ ads. Then Steve Aspey sent me this video, which is an A-Z on how to make such an ad.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3AhYJ8YVss.
14th Post script May 1, 2023
Academics are inclined to moan, and set out to ban AI tools in exams, thus protecting their territory. This post from Visual Capitalist shows exactly why exams as we all knew them to date, are now utterly redundant.
My brain is hurting.
15th Post script May 10, 2023.
It is fair to be wondering where this is all headed. Clearly, at least to me, AI will impact every person, and every job on the planet more quickly than most would forecast. This in one path, probably one of many, from someone in a position to know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ
16th Post script May 18, 2023
Some may have seen references to Geoffrey Hinton stepping down from his role at Google in order to more freely discuss the nature and role of AI in our lives. Hinton is widely known as the ‘father of AI’. His views are not the noisy, superficial opinions that have sprouted like mushrooms after rain since ChatGPT was launched on the world in November last year. They are the views of a polymath who has been researching this area for 30 years, and who trained one of the founders of OpenAI, the ‘startup’ that created ChatGPT.
This article from ‘The Conversation’ examines Hinton’s view that we should not think about AI as a substitute to our own cognitive ability, but as a different sort of intelligence that should be complementary to our own, seeking solutions to problems from a different perspective than we humans bring.
17th Post script. May 25, 2003.
The creative and productivity upsides of regenerative AI are emerging, about as fast as the downsides. The potential for identity theft enabled by this technology is truly scary. I have been following the path of the AI revolution since I first stumbled across ChatGPT in early December last year. I first asked myself the obvious question for us all: ‘Will this take my job’. Clearly the answer in many cases is Yes. This TED talk conversation shows just how easy it will become to be someone else.
Truly scary stuff, evolving at lightening speed. Our regulators have not got their heads around social media platforms despite the evidence of the necessity in the 15 years since they became ubiquitous. We cannot expect anything different this time, which means the world as we know it has changed into a ‘hunger games’ type competition, with us as the prize.
18th Post script June 10, 2023.
I continue to hear, in almost equal measure, those who give almost spiritual power to AI, and those who catastrophise it as the coming end of the world. I sit firmly on the fence, seeing huge benefit to us all, as well as the downsides when (not if) bad people are able to harness the power of AI for their purposes at the expense of the rest of us. balance is required. This post by Marc Andreesson who has some credibility in the field, is firmly in the ‘Pro AI’ team. it is a cogent argument for AI, and worth your time to read.
On the ‘Con AI’ team is a bunch of equally qualified experts who hold the view that the machines will ‘evolve’ to such a point where they do get us. The dystopian movies are just simple forecasts. Firmly in this camp is Mo Gawdat, the former boss cocky at Google X. In this podcast, he paints a picture that might stop millennials having children.
During the week just past, Industry Minister Ed Husic released a discussion paper for ‘Safe and responsible AI’. I am very glad the government has twigged that there is something going on here, and we need to be discussing it, but the reality is that Australia is just a flea on the dogs tail. The US and China will set the rules of the game, and there is no way in my view that they will be compatible. The US is engaged in a huge new grab for position in an industry that will determine the future, and the cash that goes with it. China is all about control, they will exercise it irrespective of what anyone else thinks. Strap in!!
19th Post script August 16, 2023
Into my inbox comes this long post from Ben Evans, which answers the question I first asked way back in December last year when ChatGPT3 burst onto the scene: Will AI take your job? The answer is ‘Yes, it might, but there will be many more jobs created as a result.
The post details the history of labour saving devices from the introduction of coal powered steam through to this current AI revolution. Every time, the introduction of new technology results in an improvement in living standards and the number and type of jobs that emerge. There is no reason to believe this time it will be any different, it is just that we have great trouble doing the forecasting of where those jobs will be. That job requires hindsight.
20th and last Post script. November 7, 2023.
It is two weeks short of a year since ChatGPT was launched on November 30, 2022. It seems appropriate to mark that anniversary with a final PS on this post. Yesterday Chat announced the launch of GPT’s a set of tools that will enable development of bots without any code. To me, it is the first step in the logical sequence of development of AI into tools that car customised to meet the needs of individual use cases. I am sure others will follow, indeed they may be already there, and i have just not stumbled across them.
In any event, the explosion of AI, and we are only in its early stages, the ‘Model T’ era of AI, has already changed lives, and that pace will only accelerate. Good luck managing that!!
Post Script. January 14, 2024.
I had not meant to add to this post, now over a year old. However, the question of the degree to which AI is just another digital bubble has to be asked, and to ask it, who better than Cory Doctorow?
Cory Doctorow: What Kind of Bubble is AI?
