I’ve been living inside an alternate reality since January 2023, and it feels like a good time to share it.
In the early weeks of ChatGPT 3.5, I would lean back in my office chair several times a day, just to take a breath – because I’d been blown away by what generative AI could already do – despite its obvious flaws and limitations.
Yet when I ventured outside, I saw the normal fabric of city life: People going about their business, chilling in cafes, no ostensible signs that anything had changed. It felt like I was living in a sci-fi movie, but no-one else around me had noticed the shift.
So I became an AI advocate. Experimenting and sharing my findings, putting forward theses on what the future might hold, guiding organisations through AI strategy, and supporting them with enablement. All the while building our own AI product in the background, with a tiny bootstrapped team, trying to keep up with the breakneck pace of the frontier model providers.
As all of this was happening, it became undeniable that the world would continue to evolve faster than ever before, and that the way we create value – and even manage business itself – would need to evolve just as quickly.
Since I’ve always thought in systems and structures, I noticed a pattern emerging. One that built on observations from my innovation work with global clients at AKQA. Generative AI didn’t cause a break with the past, but it brought in many new considerations, and demanded new perspectives.
There’s already been a lot of thinking published on AI, but I’m aiming to bring something fresh. A holistic way of looking at the set of actions we need to take, and areas we need to manage, if we are to harness the potential of generative AI strategically and intentionally.
Follow along on the journey. Hopefully there will be a book to share at some point too!