Selling AI: How I Sleep at Night

As a business management consultant specializing in working with entrepreneurs, I spend a lot of my time helping them bring new products to market. These often involve new or emerging technologies and AI-driven platforms are now the rage. I’ve done business development for a number of these products and every time I do my research, the chief concern I hear is the unemployment of humans because of implementing AI. I’ve been around long enough to see the introduction of many new technologies. Contrary to my children’s beliefs, I did not see the introduction of steam, but I have seen the arc of computerization nearly in its entirety. I have heard many apocalyptic tales of how the latest breakthrough would eliminate entire industries and create widespread unemployment, but I have yet to see it actually happen. I hope my experience and perspective can help you see this latest monumental advancement in context.

A few years ago, an AI data scientist asked me to help them create a channel sales program for an AI-driven recruiting platform they introduced. This platform was focused on taking someone’s resume and converting it into a list of common experience types, then comparing them to a job’s requirements and returning a score. You no longer had to rewrite someone’s resume into a standard format or decipher the candidate’s word choice with the hiring manager’s word choice. In cases where someone could receive hundreds of resumes for a single position, this tool would filter out the best candidates based on the criteria provided, reducing the resumes down to a manageable amount in seconds rather than days or weeks.

Just recently I was working with an enterprise data solutions company that created a conversational AI agent for querying ERP data called askme360 (askme360.ai). You ask it a business question and it gathers the data from the various enterprise sources and silos and creates reports, data visualizations, and even suggests follow up queries. What could take a data team days, weeks, or even months could be done nearly instantly. Now executives can get actionable data early enough to use it. They don’t need help finding or formatting data, they just ask the computer questions like in Star Trek.

Currently, I’m working with one of the most impactful and possibly controversial AI solutions I’ve worked with to date. YouCube (youcube.ai) is an AI video and content creation platform. You tell it what you want and it creates a video, graphic, slideshow, avatars, webinars, captions, voiceovers or whatever output you need. Not in weeks or days or even hours, but in minutes you have professional level content — even video — to boost your marketing in whatever target platform you are working on. When compared to say traditional video production, the cost savings in time and money are astronomical.

If you think AI is taking our jobs, this looks like a bloodbath. All the clerical positions managing resumes, eliminating entire data intelligence departments, and what about all the artists — Videographers, photographers, graphic designers, and illustrators? Considering I’m an artist myself and have represented artists, this seems blasphemous.

To better explain, let’s go back in time. Mid 20th-century Hartford, Connecticut. The insurance companies are staffed in large buildings, floors filled with rows of desks with typewriters generating reams of correspondence from a deafening cacophony of clacks, rings, and the slide of carriage returns. In the basement they’re clearing space — a lot of space. They are making room for the creature that spelled the doom of the typewriter: a mainframe computer. Now executives write a letter which is entered into the computer and generates personalized versions for all the customers from the data center. All those typists? Were they thrown out on the street? No. They became data entry clerks and word processors. Seems the ease and reduced cost of sending correspondence increased the amount of correspondence being sent (this was the age of junk mail). Those typewriters were replaced with green screen terminals. And later, with the advent of the PC, they were moved out of typing/word processing pools and moved into business units to provide admin support. They went from a nameless drone to a beloved team member. I know, I taught them Windows 3.11.

This little history lesson perfectly illustrates the shortsightedness of latest technology fears and confusing eliminating jobs with the reduction of time on task and what impact that truly has. With the recruiting platform, you still had to determine the requirements for the job and the make up of the candidate to be a good fit, there were interviews and tests and other process steps helped by automation, but needing a human hand. With askme360, you have to ensure the databases are clean, that all data is available, and usually, someone has to interpret the results for the less data savvy. What these solutions eliminate is the overwhelming time needed to manage large tasks. Could this eliminate jobs where they only did these tasks? Yes, but only in massive organizations that throw bodies at time intensive tasks. What about organizations who don’t have those resources? These large organizations may employ a lot of people in terms of density, but the small, micro, and even solopreneurs make up the vast majority of employment in the US. These AI solutions allow smaller organizations to be incredibly more competitive, enabling them to do things they never could before. Those who lost their job can take their skills, embrace the AI that eliminated them, and move to smaller organizations. Small recruiting firms can now take on huge cattle call positions. Small IT departments can now offer data visualization and intelligence that they never had the time to work on in the past.

Which brings me back to YouCube. What of the elimination of artists’ work? Well here’s the thing, AI doesn’t make you an artist nor does it make content “good.” The YouCube team knows that. Working with AI, but powered by artists makes much better content. The platform promotes the use of artists either via an open marketplace of AI artists or by accessing YouCube’s creative team directly. AI reduces the time to create content, but real artists make it good content. YouCube doesn’t eliminate artists’ work but force multiplies it by reducing the costs and time for iterations and bringing in more clients via the platform. Meanwhile, small businesses suddenly have affordable access to the quality content they need to compete against larger entrenched companies.

Those corporate drone jobs that are cut, are replaced by new opportunities in smaller businesses where there are no drones and employees tend to see better work environments, increased pay, and improved job satisfaction. They go from a cog in a machine to a vital contributor to the business. Hardly seems like a step back, does it? I’m not eliminating drone corporate jobs, but creating opportunities in the SMB sector. I’m supporting entrepreneurs expanding their businesses and creating competition which improves the entire US business landscape. I sleep fine.