Brace for Impact: GenAI's Role in 2024
Predictions for a Complicated Future
Welcome to the Savvy AI newsletter. Three to four times a month, I explore what the AI Era means for marketing and business. In this space, I also share excerpts from my forthcoming book on Marketing with AI. If you find the insights valuable, share the newsletter with others and encourage them to subscribe. And if it's not your cup of tea, I completely understand if you choose to unsubscribe.
In the year since Generative AI (GenAI) seized our imaginations with ChatGPT's launch, a remarkable amount has transpired. The next twelve months promise even more developments. Predicting what exactly will happen and when is difficult. And I must admit, having scoured the Internet for every AI trends report, and listened to countless podcasts discussing what 2024 has in store, there appears to be more opinions than even the amount of data that GPT was trained on (45 gigabytes of training data if you’re curious)!
Nevertheless, being immersed in the artificial intelligence world, I've a perspective to offer. Here's my bold, perhaps somewhat opinionated view on what we might see in 2024. Please share what you think of these predictions. I will return to score these at the end of 2024.
1. We will witness a Creative Renaissance
Creativity will become a competitive differentiator once again, and not just in design but more broadly in how it is harnessed to drive innovation, product differentiation, global brands, cultural impact and loyalty. GenAI tools will significantly boost human creativity, enabling brands to innovate and build in unprecedented ways and at an accelerated pace. Brands that are a part of this creative renaissance will enjoy substantial benefits, while those that don't will face margin compression. Probability - High
2. Culture resets will be needed to drive change
However, to capitalize on the creative renaissance, it’s crucial to not only embrace GenAI but also to transform your organization's culture. Leaders who boldly force the shift, akin to Bill Gates steering Microsoft towards the Internet in 1995 with his influential “ The Internet Tidal Wave” memo, will reap rewards. This directive reshaped Microsoft's trajectory for decades to come. Or more recently, Meta’s “Year of Efficiency” set a standard for how companies needed to operate in 2023. In this vein, leaders must establish the tone and reset their cultures for the upcoming GenAI-influenced year. Probability - High
3. Google will not lose its $50 billion cash cow
Search is evolving towards a chat-based model, represented by technologies like GPT and Perplexity, which bypass the conventional search engine results page (SERP). But it won’t threaten Google’s $50 billion Search cash cow yet. Google’s Gemini will bring Search, GenAI and those pesky sponsored blue links together into a new, equally lucrative, user experience paradigm. Google’s $18 billion deal to remain the default search engine on the iPhone will act as a helpful moat. Meanwhile, platforms like Perplexity will learn that having the technology isn't sufficient; distribution is key. Probability - High.
Are you going to CES? I'm co-hosting an AI Trailblazers dinner with The New York Times for marketers, technologists, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs. The NYT's Chief Data Scientist & Columbia Professor, Chris Wiggins, will share his AI outlook for 2024 at the event. Email if you're interested in learning more.
4. ESG will get little more than lip service
Forget what every business leader may say on stage at their favorite conference, or what maybe highlighted in their annual reports. ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) will take a backseat to most decision making even though that will be a mistake. Sadly, the overwhelming techno-optimism in Silicon Valley largely thanks to GenAI, the continued pressures from the capital markets and the intensifying culture wars ahead of the Presidential election, will hinder progress. Tragically, with artificial general intelligence looming on the horizon and ethical, privacy, deepfake and digital divide concerns, we will urgently need ESG leadership, but it will be notably absent. Probability - High.
5. Gender Equality in the AI World will get better
Just last month, a conference controversially featured fake AI-generated women speakers on its conference agenda web page. Gender bias in AI, recognized in both Large Language Models (LLMs) and in how the industry behaves, is an issue, so much so that the HeforShe UN Summit specifically called it out as a problem. Surprisingly, the recent restructuring of the OpenAI board overlooked several qualified women leaders too. Women leaders in the AI Era aren’t getting the attention they deserve. More than deserving, leaders like Fei Fei Li, Diona Precup, Joy Buolamwini and Daphne Koller will get that attention in 2024. Probability - Medium.
6. Experimentation won’t be enough. GenAI gets serious
If 2023 was a year of experimentation, with marketers and business leaders urged to learn through hands-on experience, 2024 will focus on taking that experimentation further with tangible use cases that deliver results. Leaders will face pressure to incorporate GenAI into their business functions and to show financial benefits from the investments made in providing access to these technologies. In fact, according to IDC, investments in GenAI are set to double next year. Merely showcasing experiments will no longer suffice; they must demonstrate real business advantages, whether in customer acquisition and service or in enhancing internal efficiencies. Probability - Medium
7. Autonomous agents take off in earnest
If you think autonomous agents are still years away, think again and then read Bill Gate’s piece on the topic. In 2024, expect to witness autonomous agents increasingly taking over tasks for and alongside us even if it’ll still take a few years to get to scale as BCG predicts. They'll start managing and responding to emails, reconciling complex digital media reports, automating entire workflows in some instances (as I discussed in my last book) and will also begin handling a variety of other skilled yet routine tasks that we typically find tedious. These agents will not only liberate our time for higher-value work but also enable more opportunities for meaningful human interactions. Probability - Medium.
8. AI Tsars will have a short shelf life. Committees will guide
Rather than Chief AI Officers or Chief AI Marketing Officers developing as a new role in most companies, the ones that exist will slowly fade away. Companies will discover that it is more critical to establish cross-functional AI committees so that the marketers, technologists, lawyers, operators and sales teams move forward into the AI Era with the arms locked together. Last week The Wall Street Journal ran a story, An Anticipated Wave of AI Specialist Jobs Has Yet to Arrive, quoting me and capturing my sentiments perfectly. Probability - Medium.
9. Jobs will be lost however much we may hate it
While I sincerely hope this prediction doesn't materialize, I believe it might. The advancements in GenAI and its capacity to perform tasks faster and sometimes more effectively than humans, suggest greater automation and some inevitable job losses, especially in certain disciplines like marketing. Recent rumors about Google's Performance Max product being so effective that it might reduce the need for some Google account managers could be just the beginning. This trend will impact platforms and agencies significantly, and even brands, though to a lesser extent, may need to reassign employees or make cutbacks. Probability - Medium.
Recent Savvy AI Articles
Fighting Harsh Corporate Realities (December 2023)
Elon Musk Criticizes Marketers (December 2023)
Research in the AI Era. Evolution or Extinction (November 2023)
Thriving Professionally in the AI Era (November 2023)
The Dual Horizon of AI's Promise and Peril (October 2023)
What I’m reading
An Anticipated Wave of AI Specialist Jobs Have Yet to Arrive (WSJ)
Google debuts Imagen 2 with text and logo generation (Techcrunch)
Apple Explores A.I. Deals With News Publishers (The New York Times)
Generative AI will go mainstream in 2024 (The Economist)
Where I’m going and where I’ve been
Are you going to CES? I’m co-hosting an AI Trailblazers dinner with The New York Times at the Wynn, Las Vegas for marketers, technologists, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs. The NYT's Chief Data Scientist & Columbia Professor, Chris Wiggins, will share his AI outlook for 2024 at the event. Email if you want to learn more.
Interviews for the book continue as I amp up the pace of my writing. If you’re deep in the AI space as a marketer, technologist or business leader, I’d like to interview you. Ping me offline if you’re open to it. These interviews are strictly off the record.
I would welcome the opportunity to speak at your event. Email me to discuss further.
What I’m writing about this week
I'm in the process of writing my third book, centered on artificial intelligence in the realms of business and marketing. This week, I’m writing a chapter on do’s and don’ts when using GenAI to find new customers. Stay tuned to this newsletter for further updates and insights from my forthcoming book.