I heard a 1983 talk by Steve Jobs that’s relevant to the current AI panic.
Jobs talked about why people consider computers ‘magic’. He says computers aren’t magic, computers are dumb.
But what computers are is fast.
Computers do simple, dumb things much faster than we can comprehend.
A computer can do a simple, dumb task in a nanosecond. That means they can do thousands of simple dumb tasks in a second.
Put each simple, dumb task together and, at that speed, it looks like magic.
Standing on stage, Jobs gave an example:
‘If I put one foot in front of the other that’s a simple, dumb task.
If I carry on doing that until I get to the back of this hall that’s a lot of very simple, dumb tasks.
If I pick up a chair that’s also a simple, dumb task.
If I do all those simple, dumb tasks so fast that I’m back here before you can blink, it will look like magic.
You see me in front of you and suddenly, just like that, I’m holding a chair.
That has to be magic, right?
But actually it’s just a lot of very simple, dumb, tasks done incredibly fast.”
What we see is speed, but it looks like magic.
Many years earlier, Henry Ford created the automobile industry by inventing the production line, it was similar thinking.
Ford said “No job is too big if you break it down into small enough parts.”
So instead of having a few skilled men make a single car, which would take a very long time, he had many men each doing one simple, dumb job.
One man puts on the wheels, one man puts in the windscreens, one man puts on the doors, each man does one simple, dumb job really fast.
By breaking it down into many simple dumb jobs, Ford turned out cars faster and cheaper than anyone thought possible. Which was how he built, and dominated, the car market.
By 1926, Ford made HALF of all cars sold.
But Alfred P Sloan, the CEO of General Motors, spotted an opportuntity.
The Ford Model T was made as fast and as cheap as possible, but that efficiency meant every car was identical.
Sloan didn’t try to make cars faster and cheaper than Ford, he changed the game – he looked at the other end of the market: the consumer.
He saw that the fashion industry existed because fashion, by definition, changed every year. Women didn’t want one single dress that they wore forever, they wanted to be seen in this year’s fashion.
Sloan’s creativity was to transfer that thinking to car production, to do the opposite of Ford.
He didn’t try to make cars faster and cheaper, he redesigned all General Motors cars every year, so you could see immediately whether someone was driving this year’s car or last year’s car.
He introduced the concept of changing your car every year.
General Motors overtook Ford and became the biggest car manufacturer in the world by changing the game.
Because the alternative to efficiency wasn’t more efficiency, the alternative was a different idea.
Not better, different.
Which is how it is with AI. AI isn’t magic; as Steve Jobs says, it’s dumb but it’s fast. Faster than we can imagine so it seems like magic.
Just like the production line, AI’s efficiency makes it seem unbeatable.
And it is unbeatable if you play it at its own game.
Which is why you need to change the game to a game where you can beat it.
So the question is: Are you creative?