Prepare to pioneer: the AI (r)evolution is here

Artificial intelligence (AI) will drive the fifth industrial revolution. As Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive at Nvidia, has said, “We are at the iPhone moment of AI. Startups are racing to build disruptive products and business models, and incumbents are looking to respond.”

Recently, ChatGPT launched AI back into mainstream culture. The technology hasn’t been stagnating but rather evolving subtly in the background. AI is embedded in our pockets, powering our favorite applications like Google Maps, Uber and TikTok. ChatGPT is just the interface that helped people understand how far we’ve come.

AI’s transformations

We now have AI tools that can turn sketches into websites, can take notes in a meeting faster than any typist, and can role-play as a target audience to predict customer needs. They have greater accuracy, speed, stamina, and knowledge than any human. They can come up with ideas and take on board feedback to get better. And that makes people nervous.

Tools including Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Co-Pilot, and Otter.ai have taken the power of AI from the hands of highly skilled developers and made it accessible to everyone. The result is an abundance of content generation. An abundance of content is fine, but to make it truly useful, it also needs the very human elements of creativity and curiosity. So, while AI won't replace jobs, people who use (and use it well) will. To maximize AI’s opportunities, companies should put AI at the center of their products and services, embed it into their culture, and develop the human skills needed to optimize its potential.

Underpinning this is the ‘T’ in GPT: Generative Pretrained Transformers. Transformers allow us to leapfrog 20 years of technological progress. With the power of AI, you can now be as good as your next-best competitor who has been building their own models for two decades. But this isn’t a technological challenge. The tech, as we’ve seen, is there. This is a human challenge.

The new pioneers

To help navigate the complexity of emerging tech and marketing trends, we at global digital agency Dept have launched Prepare to Pioneer: an AI-fueled digital wayfinder that enables users to discover their unique pioneering profile.

DEPT® - Prepare to Pioneer from DEPT® on Vimeo.

The experience takes users on a journey that offers a unique twist on the traditional process of content curation. Hosted by an abstract, genderless face called 'Entity’, made up of AI-generated particles that represent the ever-changing face of technology, it produces an immersive storytelling experience that delivers uniquely curated content. Users can choose either to browse expert-curated content independently or to be guided through a Chat GPT-3-powered experience that builds a bespoke pioneer profile based on the user’s personal interests and preferences.

This use of AI is a testament to my agency’s commitment to innovation and disruption. It offers users a unique twist on the traditional process of content curation, combining it with an innovative storytelling experience. It shows that by leveraging AI, we can all deliver engaging, personalized experiences that are tailored to every user’s interests and preferences.

‘Prepare to Pioneer’ is Dept’s rallying cry for all of those who are perpetually curious and hungry for innovation. I welcome you to give it a try.