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Why Intention Will Be Central To The AI Economy
When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was asked about how artificial intelligence will affect the marketing industry, he said, “It will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI.”
Anybody who’s used an AI service can see what he means. With a simple prompt, we can use AI to generate ideas, produce creative images and videos, even to test the ideas against real or synthetic focus groups, exactly as Altman says. What he misses is that those things make up comparatively little of what marketing professionals do.
The truth is that creative work has been highly automated for some time, but, statistically, we’re not working any less. The problem is that, while machines can do much of our work for us, they can’t decide what work we want done. That’s why high-level jobs, both now and in the future, will center on identifying, communicating, coordinating, and executing intent.
Identifying Intent
In a military conflict, leaders determine where to concentrate their efforts by formulating the commander’s intent, or the desired end state, based on intelligence about the terrain and the enemy’s disposition on that terrain. Business leaders need to weigh similar factors…
