Congratulations!  You're An AI Immigrant!  Now What?

The Era Of The Digital Native

It wasn't long ago that someone coined the phrase "Digital Native."  The premise was simple.  Computers and electronic devices had proliferated throughout society and more of our life involved interacting with those computers and devices.  People who are old enough will remember life before it went digital.  They are called "Digital Immigrants."  They weren't born into this digital world, but they immigrated there.  

The "Digital Native" is a person who was born after the proliferation of computers and electronic devices throughout society. They're used to having digital devices in almost every aspect of their life.  "The Internet Of Things" resonates with them.  It makes sense to them to connect everything together digitally, whether it's a household appliance, a phone, a lamp, a TV or their laptop.  It's just part of life.

The AI Immigrant

If you're reading this, you're officially an AI Immigrant.  Congratulations.  The AI Natives can't read yet.  While AI has been around for decades in some form it hasn't been able to really proliferate until 2023.  The current versions of AI based on large language models running on specialized chips have been transformative and now AI is seemingly everywhere in just a few years.  The question for us AI Immigrants is "what does this mean for us in the future?"

To understand that question, I think we need to look back at the Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants.  Importantly, those weren't the only two groups of people from the days of old.  There is an often-forgotten group that I call Digital Captives.  They didn't immigrate to the land of computers and devices.  They stayed in the land where things weren't digital.  They were famous for not wanting to digitize the businesses and departments they were in charge of.  Most of them have since retired but they still write checks for groceries and watch the news at 10:00 every night.  Unfortunately, their non-digital land continues to shrink and has now been entirely taken over. Everything is online.  In many cases, they don't have a computer.  Likewise, everything requires two factor authentication, but they don't have a phone that can accept text messages.  Ultimately, this leads to someone in their family becoming their "Digital Caretaker."  That person sets up their Digital World on their behalf.  Just as you may need a caretaker to help you with certain physical activities as you age, the Digital Caretaker helps with all of those Digital World activities.  

Era Of AI Empowerment

Looking at AI by comparison, I would suggest there's a striking difference.  In the world of computers and electronic devices, you had to "immigrate" and the learning curve was steep.  You have to take real world problems and convert those problems into a series of logical steps so you can navigate the digital world.  For example, if you want to check your retirement account balance, you have to know that you need to go to the website, then log in, then get the two-factor authentication, then there's likely a link somewhere to get balances, maybe you have to filter on some things, select date ranges, etc. etc.  Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives have mastered the art of solving real-world problems with a series of logical steps to be taken in the Digital World.  Digital Captives never bothered to acquire that skill. 

It can't be overstated, that the ability to convert real world problems into a series of logical steps to solve those problems using computers is a valuable skill.  For decades, it has separated those who thrive in the Digital World, from those who flounder.  It's also a fact of life that not everyone is "wired" to be good at problem solving in a Digital World by stringing things together in logical ways.  In the Digital World, that has always been a problem for a certain portion of the population and to some degree those people who are just wired differently also become Digital Captives to some extent.  Fear not!  We are now entering the Era of AI Empowerment.

In this new Era of AI Empowerment, AI is "democratizing" computers and problem solving.  The skill of converting problems to a series of logical steps to find a solution has been handed off to AI.  The sun is setting on the days where complexity of computers prevented certain people from accessing information.  Inputs are going from keyboards and clicks to spoken words.  Outputs now include natural language rather than just some curated lists of data.  

The AI Native & The Digital Captive

As AI proliferates, the AI Native and The Digital Captive are both going to have something in common.  Neither of them will bother learning how to convert problems into a string of logical steps necessary to navigate the Digital World.  The value of that skill will disappear just as handwriting has been replaced with typing.  In the Era Of AI Empowerment, those who know how to leverage AI will be quickly set apart from those who do not.  They will work fast and get better results.  They will marvel at those AI Immigrants who insist on doing things the hard way and having dashboards and reports instead of just asking for the information they need.  They will wonder why those AI Immigrants aren't relying on AI Assistants to help them with everything from baking bread and doing laundry to coding C++.  In fact, the new "coders" will code in natural language and not even bother with C++.  Computer programs will be collaborative efforts between AI and human architects.

Likewise, the Digital Captives will finally be set free!  They can finally say "show me my checking account balance" and AI will use facial recognition to confirm their identify before showing the balance on their TV or even in their glasses.  No longer must they be a skilled Digital Immigrant or Digital Native to get the information they want.

AI's Future In The Business World

Predicting the future is a fool's errand, but I'm going to do it anyway.  It's easy to see that AI will be everywhere and interconnected.  In business, it's important to start thinking about how AI can affect current processes and partnering with providers who are delivering AI capabilities in their solutions.  The pace of AI adoption and rapid improvement in solutions that leverage AI is stunning. 

For example, perhaps you have an "AP Automation" solution in place.  Is it using AI to find invoice amounts or are you still outlining regions on invoices and using templates with cryptic regex to try to locate and parse data?  AI is already reading business documents, pulling off data that's meaningful to the organization and updating background systems.  AI based document processing is making things like templates and document training a thing of the past.  With just a little hint, AI learns where to look... Yes, for real, that's not marketing hype.  It can even read handwriting!  If your AP Automation solution cannot do these things, you're already falling behind.  Contact TEAM IM.  We need to talk.

Another example is in the ubiquitous "report" or "dashboard."  Reports and Dashboards are soooooo 2022.  After all, they just aggregate information from other places.  You should just be asking your AI solutions to aggregate that information.  Don't spend your time hunting and pecking through dashboards and reports, filtering results and looking for answers, or worse yet, wading through cryptically labeled network shares that are over 40 years old looking for a document that may contain the answer you need.  If your information repository isn't talking to you and giving you the information you need, contact TEAM IM.  We need to talk.

Move Quickly And Move Now

More than any point in history, businesses need to move quickly.  Organizations that don't embrace AI technology rapidly will find themselves as AI Stragglers.  They won't be AI Captives but they will be handicapped by their lack of AI capabilities, and they will easily be outpaced by their competition. 

AI is going to have a profound and rapid change on business and humanity in general.  It will be far more impactful than the digital revolution or the Internet.  In both of those cases, it took roughly 25 years for them to emerge, grow and finally have a break-through to proliferation.  Personal computers started showing up in businesses in the mid 1980's.  They didn't proliferate into homes and the general population until the Internet started to take off in the mid 1990's.  As the Internet expanded, the proliferation of computers reached maturity.  The fledgling Internet continued to expand from a novelty where you could order a Vermont Teddy Bear or a bottle of wine from Virtual Vineyards, but it was fare from a "way of life."  People still held on to historical models of in person work, shopping, and life in general.  In 2020, COVID forced a change that would have taken another 10 years into a span of a few months.  The world rapidly shifted to doing everything online.

Now we have AI.  It is already on your phone and computer.  It's already in every Internet search.  It's returning an AI Overview or Summary in addition to the curated list of results, yet even though it seems to be everywhere, it's nowhere near proliferation.  With that said, it's coming much faster than the computer or the Internet did.  This is your opportunity to embrace AI in every single aspect of your organization.  If you can solve the tactical problems you face today using strategic AI solutions, you can ensure your organization will reap benefits that aren't obvious within your current processes.  When you take this approach, you will be stunned to learn how much capability AI has already brought to the table.  As always, I encourage you to contact TEAM IM so we can help your organization become an effective AI Immigrant and a leader in your industry.