For The First Time – “Oh My”

It was a beautiful, crisp September morning at Palisades (aka: Squaw Valley USA). I was putting the final polish on my Fireside Chat content at The Compass Tahoe Economic Summit with Kevin Patsel, Regional Vice President. One of my topics to discuss was how AI is emerging in our lives.

I did my fair share of research. Reading writings from Stanford University, McKinsey, Bain, Deloitte and others. I asked ChatGPT to summarize the writings and translate where we are in the AI wave as if the cycle was a nine-inning baseball game.

The summary was as follows:

• On investment in AI infrastructure the reports reflected we were mature in the wave as if in the 7th inning.
• On consumers using AI the reports reflected we are in the 4th inning; however, the main activity for consumers is research vs. innovation. 
• On businesses using AI the reports reflected we are in the 3rd inning; however, we are completing legacy tasks/routines faster vs innovating new ways of doing business. 
• On residential real estate using AI we are just getting started in the 2nd inning of the game. 

Candidly, the above summary did not surprise me. 

I thought to myself, what would Brian Solis, Digital Anthropologist, say about the same questions? Brian is a renowned AI subject matter expert. I had the following text exchange with Brian. It did not take him but a few minutes to respond. He knew the answers to the questions!

My response was “Oh my,” as until September 10th in my mind Brian was the global AI evangelist, inspiring innovation not iteration. The advancement of AI to agentic AI with recursive self-improving intimidates even Brian.

A few days later Bloomberg published this article. In 72 hours, our exposure to AI as generational innovation was focused on how it could also be a destructive power that needs guard rails and maybe even governance.

It was a revealing week for me. The audience at the Fireside chat was as surprised as I was with Brian’s response – I read it to them. Our industry does not enjoy change. We are generally slow on technology adoption, second inning, but never has technology surfaced a threat to us, only to our comfort zone.

This time it’s different! This is not news to any of you as it’s been the story in all media outlets since Saturday, September 12th. What is news, is the pace at which AI is moving and how it intimidates the people that inspired AI.

I am betting on the smartest minds to source the solution to prevent a potentially destructive path. I was never a fan of sci-fi movies and certainly don’t want to experience the same in real-life.

This is Where We Are Now!