Welcome to the second quarter of the 21st century
The year 2000 - we crossed that barrier a quarter of a century ago. And no, the elevators did not go haywire, airplanes were not falling out of the sky, and nuclear power-plants did not go full meltdown because of the 'millennium bug'.
Now we are again approaching a watershed moment - AI - or super-intelligent AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). Are we going extinct by the hands of AI? Better watch 'The Terminator', or read 'I, Robot' again...
But more pragmatically, what are the choices we have as a business in this? Are we 'all in, or miss out'? Or should we employ a 'wait and see' approach while our competitors are increasing their lead at break-neck pace?
AI versus Automation
AI is often referred to as a natural extension to automation. It is, and at the same time, it is not. With AI agents, you will be able to automate processes to be completed - for example - have an AI agent make a call to book a hotel (it sounds as exiting and/or as terrifying as it really is). The automation parts are the making of the call, and processing the booking. In between, a lot of 'reasoning' and 'logic' is applied. Something that pure automation cannot do - it runs through scripts - if this, then do that, otherwise do something else. AI can fill in the blanks where automation simply exits the script or throws an exception. Video below is for illustration purposes only, but it does provide insight into the not-so-bright future of us, the obsolete meat-bags.
Good use
Automation is invented to (drum-roll) automate repetitive tasks. Tasks your client is not willing to pay for. This does not make you lazy, it makes you efficient. An efficiency that saves you time to spend more time with your clients. After all, your clients are people, or represented by people. People by from people.
Bad use - turns to ugly
A worrying trend is that in the continuous strive for efficiency, client interactions tend to be eliminated. Need to sell your house? Let an AI agent do it for you. Need to buy a car? Talk to the AI, the sales rep isn't interested. Need to write a blog? Join us in 2025 and let a GPT do it..
Before you know it, people at both sides of the buying agreement have been replaced by AI agents. Just like in the video shared above. Not to say AI agents cannot be efficient, or even effective... but is this really what we want?
Ask yourself this: "Do I want to receive a phone call from an AI agent?"
Personally - I think AI agents making phone calls is only good in combination with a good number blocker.
Remain unique, remain human, remain uniquely human.