Horace Rackham, a lawyer whose firm drew up the incorporation papers for Henry Ford’s automobile company, visited an unnamed leading banker to get his advice. Rackham was considering investing in Ford, but he was told the following:

“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty — a fad.” 

Today, this quote sounds absurd, however, at the time it was said, the unnamed banker was hardly alone in this way of thinking. After all, horses had been the primary mode of transportation for thousands of years.

Rarely, an innovation as radical as the automobile, the internet, the lightbulb, or the printing press comes along. Each time, these radical innovations are so disruptive they uproot and alter entire industries, weed out businesses, and force adaptation. 

We’re currently at the beginning of another disruptive innovation — Artificial Intelligence (AI). While the concept of AI has been around since the 1950s, AI singularity (the hypothetical point in time when artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and capabilities) has arrived.

If you scroll through your Facebook feed at the time of my writing this, you will see mentions of AI. It's often in the context of ethical discussions and fear. As a content marketer coming from a creative writing background, many of my Facebook friends are authors, poets, and other creative types. As AI has entered into the realm of mainstream awareness, most of what I see is my Facebook friends posting about how AI is unethical, how it can’t do this or that creative task, and on and on. These concerns may be valid and the technologies in the space are relatively nascent; however, the genie is already out of the bottle.

“As many as 300 million full-time jobs around the world could be automated in some way by the newest wave of artificial intelligence that has spawned platforms like ChatGPT.” — Goldman Sachs

We’re in the middle of a moment where people have the chance to look at history and the story of the automobile. They can then react as the unnamed banker did or accept the inevitability of AI singularity.

Just as the horse had been around since ancient times, humans have been the dominant form of intelligence on earth for thousands of years (at least in the way we generally think of intelligence as the ability to apply information towards an objective and manipulate outcomes). The longer something has gone without being disrupted, the harder it is to accept or realize when that moment of disruption has arrived. 

In any case, the questions to be asked now are not philosophical but rather, pragmatic. Whether you are an artist, a designer, a writer, a lawyer, a marketer, or a business owner, much of what we are going to go over in this article will impact your life and profession. As the title of this blog suggests, we will examine what AI singularity means for your business along with 6 keys to thriving in the age of artificial intelligence, but again, even if you aren’t a business owner, we’re here to explore the bigger question: What do I do now?

Before we get into the answer, you might still believe that AI will not affect you. If so, you could be correct. However, let’s take a look at some statistics to get an idea of how meteoric an impact AI will have on individuals, industries, and the world at large.

5 Eye-Opening Artificial Intelligence Statistics:

1) The global artificial intelligence market is expected to reach $1.59 trillion by 2030. (Precedence Research)

2) More than 90% of leading businesses have investments in artificial intelligence. (NewVantage)

3) 61% of employees say AI helps improve their work productivity. (SnapLogic)

4) Nearly 1 in 4 sales teams currently use artificial intelligence in their day-to-day work. (Salesforce)

5) 54% of organizations have reported cost savings and efficiencies as a result of AI implementation. (IBM)

How Will AI Singularity Affect Your Business?

ChatGPT, a generative AI model that was trained using around half a trillion words of text scraped from the internet and a selection of books reached 1 million users after just five days. Comparatively, it took Instagram two and a half months to break the million-user mark, Facebook took ten months, Twitter took two years, and Netflix needed 41 months to cross that threshold. 

Drawing from user interactions and data they have gone over, language models like ChatGPT and Google Bard can even produce original content in response to queries, something that is akin to creativity — if it isn’t exactly that. 

I’m reminded of the scene in I, Robot where Will Smith’s character Detective Spooner asks the robot, “Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a…canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?” to which the robot replies, “Can you?”

Recently, “Heart on My Sleeve,” an A.I. generated song that mimicked the voices of Drake and the Weeknd, went viral on social media, getting millions of plays on YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, and other places before it was taken down. 

So if arenas that we had previously assumed would be the last to be affected by artificial intelligence — namely, creative realms — are indeed touchable, then how disruptive will AI be in business? Is there any industry it won’t disrupt? In short: No. 

AI can write blogs and children’s books, design landing pages and websites, write computer code, solve complex problems, clone voices, and turn text into 3-D worlds and videos, along with thousands of other uses. And this nascent space is growing exponentially, with AI that’s showing signs of self-learning, logic, and reasoning. 

The truth is, the consequences of AI singularity will be catastrophic for many people. It would be dishonest to deny that. Livelihoods will be lost. Many careers and jobs will be altogether replaced. However, even if something about the way this story is unfolding may seem a tinge dystopic, this is not a new phenomenon. We’ve survived the Industrial Revolution and revolutions before and after that. And you will survive this one — if you are willing to adapt. 

In a moment, we’ll look at how to adapt and future-proof your business and yourself, but first, let’s take a quick look at some potential ways AI singularity could affect businesses:

1) Automation: The AI singularity has the potential to greatly improve industrial automation by automating tasks and processes. This should make things more efficient, cost-effective and allow people to focus on more complex and creative pursuits.

2) Customer personalization: Advanced AI can help businesses provide customized experiences to their customers by analyzing customer data, preferences, and behavior. This can lead to tailored products, services, and marketing campaigns that satisfy individual needs, promoting customer satisfaction and loyalty.

3) Enhanced decision-making: Businesses could benefit from highly accurate and data-driven decision-making capabilities provided by AI systems with superhuman intelligence. This could result in improved strategic planning, optimized resource allocation, and more effective problem-solving.

4) Industry disruption: The rise of AI singularity can cause major changes in different industries, leading to some jobs becoming outdated and new ones emerging. Businesses that do not adjust to this change and take advantage of AI may encounter difficulties, whereas those that adopt AI technologies may enjoy a better competitive position.

5) Innovation and product development: The AI singularity could speed up innovation by allowing AI systems to come up with new and unique ideas, designs, and solutions much faster and in larger quantities than humans could. This may result in the creation of completely unprecedented products and services that were once thought impossible.

6) Supply chain optimization: The use of AI-powered systems has the potential to drastically improve supply chain management. By optimizing logistics, inventory management, demand forecasting, and route optimization, cost savings and improved efficiency can be achieved while reducing waste throughout the supply chain.

7) Cybersecurity challenges: Malicious actors may use the advanced capabilities of AI systems to carry out sophisticated cyber attacks, which poses a new cybersecurity risk. To safeguard sensitive data and infrastructure, businesses will need to invest in strong cybersecurity measures.

Different factors like the speed of AI progress, regulations, and how society perceives AI technologies will all play a role in determining these effects, but it’s important to be aware of what’s arrived and what’s coming. It’s also vital to understand that these are just a few of the many other ways AI will impact businesses.

Benefits of Artificial Intelligence for Businesses

Businesses are injecting AI into nearly every part of their processes. Some of these integrations are more obvious and recognizable than others, but it’s happening and the leading businesses are taking advantage of artificial intelligence. 

I recently read an article in The Atlantic, where the author Charlie Warzel said:

“In a world where the cost of producing content, correspondence, research, and code approaches zero, it stands to reason that the forces of capitalism would respond by demanding as much of it as possible.”

First of all, he’s right. But again, the genie is already out of the bottle. Pandora’s Box has been opened. Insert whatever metaphor ChatGPT could give you. So now, we’re back to what’s next? Considering none of us can stop the AI takeover, it seems the only thing to do is to understand it, embrace it, and leverage it. 

To quote Littlefinger from Game of Thrones,

“Chaos is a ladder.”

As a business owner, AI represents opportunity. Some of the benefits of artificial intelligence for businesses include, but are not limited to: 

• Improved productivity and efficiency: Many human tasks can be automated by AI, giving employees more time to concentrate on creative and strategic work, which can enhance efficiency and productivity.

• Increased customer satisfaction: The use of AI can enhance customer experiences by personalizing services, improving customer support, and predicting customer requirements. This, in turn, can result in higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• New product and service development: By utilizing AI, businesses can create fresh and creative products and services that cater to the customers' requirements. This enables such businesses to remain ahead of their competitors, thus expanding their market share.

• Reduced costs: Businesses can use AI to lower costs by automating tasks, enhancing efficiency, and decreasing errors.

More specifically, AI is being used for: 

• Marketing: Marketing campaigns are now using AI to better target customers. By analyzing customer data, AI algorithms can identify potential customers and deliver personalized marketing messages through social media and sales content that includes text, video, and images.

• Fraud detection: Artificial Intelligence is currently being employed for fraud detection in financial transactions. Through AI-based algorithms, copious amounts of data can be interpreted to detect patterns that suggest the presence of fraud.

• Risk management: The use of AI to handle risk is prevalent in several industries like finance, healthcare, and insurance. AI algorithms can examine data and recognize potential risks while also developing plans to lessen them.

Today, businesses are utilizing AI in various ways as illustrated above. With the development of AI, we can anticipate more creative and revolutionary applications of this technology in the future.

6 Keys to Thriving After AI Singularity

Artificial intelligence represents the pinnacle of the information age. In many ways, the perfect representation of this era, a sort of Frankenstein’s monster formed from the collective consciousness of our cyber world. Similarly, Frankenstein’s monster was a metaphor for the Industrial Revolution, as ChatGPT and these language models mark their own era — the age of curation. 

These are the keys to thriving in the age of curation and AI singularity: 

1) Curation

As you could have guessed, curation is as vital a skill as any heading into this time. AI has democratized many skills, enabling people to bypass years of training and create something passable — for example, in graphic design, copywriting, music production, and the list goes on. 

So if the value of many skills is diminished by AI (which they aren’t exactly, in my opinion, but we’ll get to that in key #2), what we are really saying is that the value of taste will increase. Yes, the skill of curation will fetch a premium price. Rick Rubin is a perfect example of this. While I’m sure he understands music theory far better than he lets on, Rubin has said many times that he doesn’t know music, he’s simply refined his taste — his ability to curate. 

Vast amounts of information require people who have the eye and the pattern recognition to extract value or combine elements in a fashion that’s exponentially greater than the raw data and information. Long before AI, the best artists, creatives, and businesspeople all shared this ability; Steve Jobs had it. Love him or hate him, it appears Elon Musk has it. Vision and taste, the ability to recognize value — transcend even skill. 

2) Becoming the top 1%

The most challenging but perhaps best path to future-proofing yourself and your business from artificial intelligence is to become a top one-percenter in your field. Being mildly skilled or even well-skilled may not be enough. 

If you're a novelist, write something AI can’t write. Become positively obsessed. Do whatever it takes to survive, but devote yourself to going deeper and further into your craft than AI can. Take the book writing example, it may be possible that someday you could train a language model to write like George R.R. Martin. But the real value behind what George R.R. Martin does is not his style or just his voice alone. George R.R. Martin borrowed beautifully from historical events such as the War of The Roses and curated and embellished these tales. He did this in such a manner that by the time he finished adding his unique elements he had created original stories and worlds that are simply inspired by true events. 

Fall madly in love with the process of becoming whatever it is you want to become — the greatest photographer, a wildly successful entrepreneur, a graphic designer — and more often than not, you’ll end up with bankable skills and your own unique recipe. This key is closely connected to key #1, developing taste, because to be a one-percenter, a true outlier, you have to have taste. To have taste, you have to cultivate it through practice, experimentation, and the obsession of the archetypal mad scientist, who locks himself in the lab. 

3) Master processes and systems

If we live in a world where artificial intelligence can reduce tasks that used to take hours to minutes and tasks that used to take minutes to seconds, how can we continue to create value? Automation is designed to eliminate friction from production — from working on spreadsheets, from writing SEO-friendly articles, from designing graphics, etc. — so in this frictionless market where robots and AI can do many tasks better than humans, how do we avoid being made obsolete by a thing we created?

As advanced as AI is and as close to creativity as some models appear to have come, true creativity, the ability to think entirely independently of the information they have ingested, has remained elusive. Artificial intelligence can be trained on data and information, but true creativity, one could argue, is a byproduct of emotion. Emotion spurs the desire to think outside the box, the longing needed to break our own protocol, our own instincts. The ego strives for legacy and to create things that will outlast us. The lust to succeed. The will to survive. This is how we cross oceans on rafts and canoes, land on the moon, and build pyramids. Emotions are a context AI can only be trained to understand, yet it cannot experience them. That missing context or layer is what gives us the ability to think through unique ways of converting AI products and tools into systems and processes. We fit them into the context of our desires.

The closest example I can give you at the moment is in an arena I’m familiar with: content marketing. But take what I’m about to tell you and think about how you will apply it to whatever business or craft you are in. 

Content marketing requires research, strategy, content creation, testing and feedback, optimization, promotion, and marketing. Each part of the content creation process is made up of tasks. In this particular example, AI is already at the point where it can assist with competitive and keyword research. The strategy is still the part where humans fit best. Then AI can help fill in the content creation gap. It can generate headlines, blog posts, and videos, recognize clippable moments from long-form videos and turn them into YouTube Shorts and TikTok-friendly short-form videos, churn out LinkedIn bro poetry; execute hundreds of other content use cases; and create infinite amounts of synthetic media. AI is excellent at optimization, and perhaps the best AI tools can be leveraged for that final step of promotion and marketing. The point is that in my field, AI can and is being used to create content factories. But a content factory still requires a content manager, a human to oversee the process. 

What is your version of a content factory in your industry? What parts of your processes and tasks can be automated? The most vital part of thinking this way is to realize that automation alone is not enough. The crucial idea behind this is to use some of your newfound bandwidth to tap into your emotional context and creativity. Set up processes and systems so you can innovate. 

4) Build relationships and community

While AI can make calls and mimic elements of interpersonal interactions, humans still want to speak to and deal with humans. We crave connection. How we seek connection and find it, changes with new technologies, but that underlying desire never goes away. Even in something as technologically-driven as online gaming, players still look to play with their friends, watch other humans and streamers play their favorite video games, and engage on gaming forums. 

Of course, you should never think of relationship-building and community-building in a transactional-first manner. However, as the impact of AI spreads, the value of genuine human connection, community, and human networks will only increase. People need people. 

5) Build brands

A brand is much more than a company. A company can be a brand, but branding transcends basic business. What separates the two is connection and community. Apple overtook IBM because it used storytelling to become a brand, while IBM remained a corporation whose offerings remained ungarnished. Steve Jobs’ famous 1984 presentation created frenzy and fandom by positioning the up-and-coming computer company as David going up against Goliath, an archetypal role consumers could connect with emotionally. The business world is filled with countless stories like this where brands have used storytelling to create communities and loyal followings that trust their products and services through the hits, the misses, and the in-betweens. While there are industries where branding is secondary to product (for instance, with an internet provider — a consumer wants reliable internet, not the story behind it), oftentimes the best story wins. As previously mentioned, this is because humans like to connect with humans as opposed to faceless entities. Consider this as well: As AI makes it possible to essentially build companies from the ground up overnight, competition and saturation will increase exponentially in nearly every industry. To stand out, companies have to use storytelling to transform into a brand that can stand out to consumers in a sea of competitors. This also applies to individual creators, which is the value of a well-developed personal brand will increase, too. 

Building a strong brand can future-proof businesses and creators from the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in several ways:

• Differentiation: In a competitive market, brands that have a clear identity, purpose, and unique value proposition are more likely to stand out. 

• Emotional connection: Focus on building emotional connections with your customers. That means prioritizing things like storytelling, branding, and customer experiences to create loyalty and trust that even AI can't replicate. 

• Trust and credibility: Companies that consistently deliver quality products, follow ethical practices, and prioritize customers can develop greater resilience against AI-powered competitors who may find it difficult to build similar levels of trust.

• Creativity and innovation: Although AI can be helpful in generating ideas and supporting creative tasks, it has limitations when it comes to producing authentic creativity and innovation. Companies that encourage a creative culture and consistently push the limits of innovation can stay ahead of AI-powered solutions, which may find it difficult to generate truly unique and groundbreaking ideas.

• Human touch: Emphasizing genuine human connection can give businesses an advantage over AI-driven solutions if they prioritize human interaction, personalized experiences, and exceptional customer service.

6) Adapt your skills

For individuals and businesses alike, AI singularity is forcing each of us to adapt our skills. What that looks like for you and your business versus another is a matter of judgment and differences in industry, along with several other factors. 

If you have a clothing business or are a fashion designer, I’m not entirely sure what adjustments you will need to make, but I can explain some of the ways I’m preparing (as well as our content marketing agency) for AI singularity.

The first five keys I’ve mentioned above are mostly a bit more general in the sense that they can be applied to any industry. This key, however, requires nuanced thinking and a judgment call on the specific cause and effect of AI in your space. From that cause and effect, you can try to anticipate the skills you need to develop or enhance. 

For example, in the SEO content writing aspect of what we do, generative search is going to disrupt traditional search in a massive way. Generative search uses artificial intelligence to generate answers to questions. Instead of returning a list of websites, generative search engines, such as Google’s Project Magi, will provide a summary of relevant information in response to the query. 

The reason this shift towards natural language processing is happening is to provide smarter, more accurate, relevant, and helpful answers to users. In the case of Project Magi, generative search is also supposed to personalize results based on user interests and preferences and provide a more conversational interface. 

While search engine optimization is not going anywhere, these changes mean that business owners and content marketers have to know how to drive traffic in a variety of ways. If users find exactly what they are looking for instantly due to the accuracy of generative search, they won’t have nearly as much reason to browse around as they have in traditional search. 

At Publish Profitably, we anticipate that focusing more on paid advertising, email marketing, and social media marketing are keys to our own adaptation. In fact, consumer behavior has already been changing to reflect this before AI with younger generations using social media as search engines.

“40% of Gen-Z prefers searching on TikTok or Instagram over Google.” — Google

For content writers and bloggers, learning how to evolve into more of a content manager, a content strategist, or another similar role where your value is measured by higher-level thinking rather than direct output, will be vital. 

Whatever you do as an individual or business, leverage AI in your own processes (as long as you do not sacrifice the quality of the product or service), think critically about the skills and areas that AI cannot replicate, and find a way to use AI singularity to gain leverage over your time and allow you to work on your business, rather than working in your business. 

If you would like to discuss how we can help you future-proof your business as we enter the age of hyper-intelligence and curation, or if you’d like to learn more about this topic, contact us today and subscribe to our newsletter.