• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, January 11, 2023

2023 will be the year artificial intelligence becomes enabled for everyday life.

I assume you’ve been reading about generative AI and the applications for things like ChatGPT, Open AI, Dall-e and more these last few weeks.  If not, then you really need to get out more.  AI is everywhere, and I think this year we will finally see these types of applications gain widespread adoption.  In fact, they are already doing so in ways that boggle your mind.

AI has been a topic of conversation for years.  For much of that time, the conversation was on how it could potentially threaten jobs and that could be bad for the workforce.  Or we made jokes about the “Terminator” movies.

Prior to the pandemic, there were AI applications creeping into the workforce in a number of ways.  I worked with a team that had created an application for an AI note-taking tool; we sold that company before the pandemic began.

Fast-forward through the pandemic to the very end of 2022, and we were seeing AI used to create artwork, or illustrate our faces in comical ways. Then comes 2023, in like an artificially intelligent lion. ChatGPT goes broad and shows every college kid how to write an essay on The Revitalization of European Art Post-Renaissance in four minutes, and with no typos.

All of a sudden, the jobs of every copywriter or screenwriter are immediately in jeopardy.  It’s only a matter of weeks before some Madison Avenue agency launches with a fully-AI-enabled services team or someone pitches Dreamworks with a movie entirely written by a bot.

Copywriting is only the tip of the iceberg.  I did some searches and found so many interesting tools that are AI-enabled, and now I’m even more fascinated with the endless opportunities.  Just spend a few minutes with Soundraw.io and watch it create music through an algorithm, making it simple to craft and license music for ads, videos and more.

These applications of AI are applicable for anyone, and they require no understanding of how it works. Look at the world today -- there are too many jobs and not enough people to fill them.  Unemployment is low, no matter how many tech layoffs there are.

Retraining to fit a need is a viable option right now, because there are lots of employers looking for people who know how to do what needs to be done. In the meantime, AI can fill those other roles. 

AI can be used in restaurants enable ordering and service to continue without wait staff.  It can be used to do notetaking, edit content, hire contractors, and do more in a workplace.

AI is here to help solve the day-to-day challenges that may not have employees to handle them anymore.  There will also be roles for people to leverage AI in the workforce, implementing and managing the system to perform these tasks.

Even more exciting, there will be roles to connect AI to problems that need solving.  This last space is one filled with promise.  For entrepreneurial people, playing matchmaker and orchestrating ways to stitch together AI to solve complex problems will have a massive outcome.

It starts with a whisper, but ends with a bang.

Please note -- none of this column was written by an AI.  There’s no AI in Cory.