Five Highlights From My New Speech on AI

My speech on AI

First, allow me to say humbly and honestly that I’m no expert in AI.

But who is?

I can say with authority, however, that I am a student of AI, and I’m good at distilling complex ideas like artificial intelligence into the essential issues that matter to a business. While I might be the last marketer on LinkedIn who hasn’t added “AI Expert” to his title, I can still connect the dots in an informed manner!

So, I relished the opportunity to prepare a new speech — “Harnessing the Power of AI” — for my friends at The Waitapu Group. I will be premiering this new speech at a series of events in their lovely home country of New Zealand, and I wanted to give you a sneak preview.

If you need to make sense of the profound change that is happening and rationally envision an approach to AI for your company, this speech — tailored to your needs — makes sense. I would be glad to speak to your company or organization.

Here are five (out of 10) highlights from my new presentation:

1. The rate of change is more important than the change

While the new capabilities of AI are magical, the bigger organizational challenge will be keeping up with the pace of change.

No human being and no bureaucratic structure is built to process the rate of change we are about to experience. The moment it takes to read this sentence is the slowest moment of technological change you will ever experience.

In my speech, I suggest a new organizational mindset for dealing with this startling new reality.

2. AI will come to us

In the frenzied early days of the internet, the conventional advice was that we would need to learn how to code to survive in our careers. My smartest, most ambitious friends became coding experts and created unique, rudimentary applications that provided some short-term value.

However, I did perfectly OK by not coding at all, because the internet came to me. Everybody did the work for me so I could enjoy media streaming, eCommerce, social media connections, and all the wonderful advantages of the modern web.

So, I don’t think “prompt engineering” will be a long-term career choice. AI will come to us as it becomes integrated into every aspect of our lives. AI will surround us like the air we breathe. It is surrounding me in this very moment, making corrections on the fly to my terrible typing.

3. Surviving the chaos

Projections vary about job loss associated with AI, but every analyst agrees there will be a profound impact on many white-collar, knowledge worker careers … like sales and marketing.

How will you be relevant in the AI future? Of course you need to keep adapting and learning. You need to dabble in everything and understand enough about AI to survive. But you also need to work on your personal brand. In a world of misinformation and chaos, we will turn to trusted thought leaders, always.

If you’re not already working on your personal brand, I implore you to start now. As far as I know, this is the only strategy we have to remain relevant in the middle of the AI hurricane.

4. Innovation means applying layers of AI

We’re not going to wake up one day and declare, “Oh WOW! The world has become artificially intelligent!”

No, it’s going to sneak up on us and make everything we do a little faster, easier, and more personal.

Innovation means we’ll be applying a layer of AI to everything we do in our companies. This means leveraging technology to be more of who we are at our best.

If you pride yourself in having the fastest service, you can be faster. If you have the most creative art department, you’ll be more creative. If you have the most delicious food, you can use AI to find recipes that are even more delicious.

And so on.

To best activate AI in your strategy, first focus on your core competencies and then make it your priority to find AI applications that can help drive more success and efficiency.

5. You matter

The process of writing a book nearly kills me. Not joking. I put so much time and effort into my books that I drive myself to the point of physical and mental exhaustion.

So I was determined to find a healthier path forward by trying to write a book using all the AI tools available to me. Let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting for once!

Didn’t work. Nearly a total flop.

I plan on writing much more about this in the near future, but the bottom line is this: AI works by searching everything that has happened in the past to come up with an “average” answer to serve your query best. Creating a new work from the “best average answer based on what happened in the past” is a lousy premise for a book.

If you just want information based on the past, use Google, don’t buy a book.

To me, a book must contain insights and stories and quirky ideas that come from the unique perspective of the writer. ChatGPT failed miserably when it came to unique insights needed to create something unique and bold.

This discovery was validating. I still have a place in this world. At least for now.

I still matter. And so do you.

This is a small glimpse of my new speech on AI, and I’d love to come to your company, organization, or association to deliver the entire presentation. My talks are educational, inspirational, and fun. Click here to make a connection!

There are aspects of AI that are undeniably scary. We’ll be reading about that every day in the news. But we are also on the cusp of the most miraculous explosion of creativity and beauty. I want to help people find that for their companies and for themselves.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.