Will AI make mega changes in the field in which I’ve worked most of my “adult” life, PR? And how will it help my Planetary Lifeguard™ rescue endangered populations from increasing perils of climate change? What other changes will AI bring about? Will it make our future brighter or more dystopian?
Some believe there’s a risk AI might make many of us feel more like robots than humans. With AI, we might not have to think as much. So, do we just give AI the topic or question, then we’ll know what to pitch or ditch, then we can go fishing? Probably AI can even tell us where the best places to fish are.
No, AI won’t replace climate activists, and entrepreneurs like me, but some workers lower on the totem surely will be at risk. I’m wondering if AI will take over the thinking and creative parts of some minds as well? Just ask AI how to make your client newsworthy, or a product more climate friendly, then send out the answer and go fishing.
Humans and machines have always come together at the task level. Today, CEOs like me are unprepared for having AI agents step into their shoes and run their firms, going after media exposure they “think” their clients need to grow their businesses.
Now, as AI agents become colleagues and proxies, maybe it’s time to start reimagining how tech and AI agents interact making sure agents share our goals and values or we may wind up owning businesses we don’t recognize anymore, then instead of coming to the office, we would rather go fishing.
For industries like science and pharmaceuticals, disciplines like medicine, mathematics and un-disciplines like politics, AI will be a godsend as the ultimate inefficiencies corrector. Yes, it could be cool for advertising and marketing too but let’s outlaw AI-generated deepfake pornographic images like those of Taylor Swift that proliferated on X so embarrassingly to the pop star.
Maybe one day some ageless, never absent-minded, ever alert AI agent who never mixes up dates or names of Mexican and Egyptian presidents and is light years from memory loss and a rest home will one day be PresAIdent of the AInited States.
With AI school principals can reduce their staff, police departments won’t need as many officers on patrol and probably our military can reduce its ranks. With the help of AI, Penn and Harvard Universities can have the most eloquent, context sensitive, plagiarism innocent, erudite presidents operating flawlessly 24/7. With AI no one will fail an exam ever again, miss a day’s work, give a wrong answer and even the dullest among us will be regarded as a know-it-all genius.
For stupid people, AI is a DEI savior. For smart people, AI just made them equal to stupid people, idyllic in a country reaching for diversity, equity and inclusion and now there will be IQ freedom, equality and justice for all.
Yes, AI brings wonderful capabilities so we shouldn’t disparage or sneeze at what it can do for humanity, but please let’s not create a world in which we don’t want to live in, let alone work in.
Right now, I’m thinking how AI can be a help to my Planetary Lifeguard™, which I created to blow the whistle on climate change causing so much havoc on our planet. If you find it bothersome that with AI even morons become as clever and educated as you, you can always get out on the boat and let AI direct you to where the fish are!
Tom Madden likes to have fun with words and concepts in the many articles, books and blogs he writes for www.maddenmischief.com. He’s also the founder and CEO of TransMedia Group, a public relations firm he started when he left NBC, where he was Vice President, Assistant to the President. More recently he’s the founder of Planetary Lifeguard™, an organization whose mission is to blow the whistle on climate change, about which he says we’ll all be hearing much more thanks to AI.