Sometimes really scary messages take some time to be fully understood. Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and chairman, has been hitting the tech circuit this year with a whole bunch of eye-opening
messages about your/mine/our future.
The implications of Schmidt’s future vision aren't just about new tools; they’re about a fundamental rewiring of how work gets done,
threatening widespread job displacement and forcing a radical reorganization of agencies and marketing departments as we know them.
Schmidt says the current view of AI as a language-focused
assistant like ChatGPT is dangerously shortsighted. The true revolution lies in what’s next: AI capable of planning, strategizing and running complex business processes from end to end. He
predicts that within a year, most programmers and mathematicians will be replaceable by AI.
In three to five years, AI will likely reach general intelligence. This means it can match the
smartest human minds. And in six-plus years, we will likely face superintelligence. In human words, that means AI will be smarter than all of humanity combined.
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When AI can deliver a
"30-percent increase in productivity per year," a level of growth economists have no models for, agency and marketing leaders must ask themselves: How many of our current roles will still need to be
performed by a human being? And what about my role?
For an established ad agency, holding company or corporate marketing department, the implications are enormous. Functions that currently
employ thousands, like media buying, campaign managing and data analysis, are in the crosshairs of automation. The traditional agency model, built on billable hours and large teams of human
specialists, no longer makes sense. The back-and-forth, try-this-and-that process of planning that defines much of agency work is precisely what new AI systems are designed to do, with immense
computational power and speed.
As Schmidt notes, the computational requirement for this is increasing by a factor of 100 or even 1,000 over the next few years. The result will be a dramatic
consolidation of human labor, with smaller, more agile teams of human strategists overseeing vast, autonomous AI systems.
We must come to grips with the fact that near-future AI will be a
replacement technology for a significant portion of what the marketing industry does, and most other industries do today. The jobs that remain will be those that AI cannot easily replicate, like
high-level strategy, ethical oversight, complex client relationships, and the true, pattern-breaking creativity that Schmidt says current systems cannot achieve.
So now is the time to begin
the painful but necessary process of restructuring your organizations and retraining your people.
The alternative is becoming a casualty of a revolution that, as Schmidt says, is the "most
important thing that's going to happen in about 500 years.” He adds: “My advice to you all, is ride the wave but ride it every day. Don’t view it as episodic and something you can
end, but understand it and build on it. Each and every one of you has a reason to use this technology.
"If you’re an artist, a teacher, a physician, a businessperson, a technical person,
if you’re not using this technology, you’re not going to be relevant compared to your peer groups and your competitors and the people who want to be successful. Adopt it and adopt it
fast.”