Buzz Buzz

In his brilliant piece "I'm a Modern Man," the great George Carlin riffs on what defines a man of the millennium. Every line is a keeper, so much so that it's impossible to excerpt any single one as the best. There's "I interface with my database, and my database is in cyberspace, so I'm interactive, I'm hyperactive, and from time to time, I'm radioactive." Or "You can't shut me up, you can't dumb me down, 'cause I'm tireless, and I'm wireless." Or "I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading, I'm a high-tech lowlife, a state-of-the-art bi-coastal multitasker, and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond."  No one else has ever come close to capturing that many buzzwords so eloquently in one go, and making sense at the same time.

But it's not just people that like to consider themselves "drivin' and movin', sailin' and spinnin', jivin' and groovin', wailin' and winnin'." Businesses like to occupy whatever space that they think points to them being on the leading edge, regardless of what their base activity is. And so whatever the "buzz du jour" is is how they self-identify. General Motors isn't a car company, they are a tech enterprise focusing on innovations that just happens to make vehicles. American Express isn't a card company, they are a customer experience firm that deals with clearing purchases and transactions. And Starbucks doesn't make drinks, they are a digital platform that uses data to enhance your beverage buying experience. 

This has happened for each of the major tech advances of the past several years. When smartphones became the way we used computers, every company became mobile. When Instagram and Tik-Tok became the preferred way to connect, all became social. And when data moved from being on your desktop to being uploaded and downloaded, all became cloud-based. And it's no different with the latest advancement, generative artificial intelligence, or just AI.

By itself AI has been around for a while, going back to 1950. That's when Claude Shannon of Bell Lads demonstrated a life-sized magnetic mouse called Theseus that could learn its way around a maze. Since then it has progressed mostly as a backend technology, good at detecting patterns, generating insights, automation, and prediction. What changed it from back to front was the advance where it could be prompted by natural language, and create a response in kind, which is what adds the adjective "generative" to the name. So instead of needing an army of programmers to code a system that cues up Al Green and Curtis Mayfield after you listen to Silk Sonic, now you can ask it yourself and get a similar response as if you're talking to a friend. 

Very obviously the companies that develop this and have their roots in tech can indeed say they are riding the AI wave. Amazon and Meta are joining OpenAI and Google in developing systems like ChatGPT and Bard that place them squarely in the lead. But other companies are also racing to, if not claim the mantle, at least add an AI accessory or two so that they don't look so old school. 

That means you see supermarket chain Kroger talking about how "Our rich history as a technology leader gives us confidence that we will continue to effectively use AI, including more recent innovations." Or Tyson Foods, the second largest global producer of chicken, beef and pork, mentioning how they will "continue to build on our digital capabilities, operating at scale with digitally-enabled standard operating procedures and utilizing data, automation, and AI tech for decision-making." Or Coca-Cola piloting a "Create Real Magic" marketing program to let consumers access both the text based ChatGPT-4 and its sister DALL-E program for images to create crowd-sourced AI-powered content for future campaigns. Don't you dare call them a grocery, a butcher or a beverage company: that is so 20th century.

There will always be a hip catchphrase, a new marker, some chic jargon which indicates you are riding the wave. And the cool kids want all to know that they have a rightful place at that lunch table. We've cycled through a bunch: dotcom, blockchain, quantum, metaverse, and the list goes on. But at least this week, if you are a company that wants users to think it is the place to be, AI is table stakes, or more correctly, the new black.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is still figuring out when to use ChatGPT. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.