Insights from the AI Ninja: Democratized power to the public

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We’re in the middle of an AI news blizzard that shows no signs of slowing. In fact, this storm is so ubiquitous, it’s uniting folks from every single industry to band together to track the oncoming changes. And yes – drastic change is around the corner for all of us.

I promised more AI content would be coming your way, but seeing as I’m no expert in the space, I wanted to connect with someone who’s not only knowledgeable in AI, but has been a leader in the field for some time.

I was lucky enough to connect with the founder of TetraNoodle Technologies Manuj Aggarawl for a bonus episode of The Business of Tech. During Aggarawl’s nearly two decades in the field, he’s earned four patents, grown TetraNoodle in an elite tech consulting counted among the world’s top AI leaders, and landed coveted clients like Microsoft, IBM, Pearson Education, and more.

We had an excellent conversation surrounding both the big-picture impact of AI and on-the-ground use cases we should all be paying attention to. Let’s get into it:

Forget the Future: AI’s Already Changed the World

AI feels so futuristic, it’s easy to focus on what it might one day achieve. But right out the gate, Aggarawl argues that it’s already changed the world. He specifically cited 13 years ago as the marker for when AI really started to drive change:

“We have these devices in our pockets, which are pretty much running on AI algorithms. The news that we consume has been not only sort of curated for us by AI, but also generated for us by AI for the past several years… the elections across the world today are being one and lost using data and AI. Public opinion is being formed. The way that we interact with each other is informed by what we see online, and these are basically just algorithms pushing content that other people seem to like.”

Of course, there’s no denying that we’re living in a particularly monumental moment. ChatGPT’s release had one of the fastest adoptions in user history, with a litany of new products already coming out to follow it.

Aggarwal shared that for a good chunk of his career in AI, the industry consensus was that it would take another 30-50 years to get to where we are today. We’re not only ahead of schedule, but Aggarwal believes we’re witnessing a singular event where AI has evolved past the human mind. The rate of progression is so exponential, powerful players like Bezos and Zuckerberg are no longer the only people benefiting from this technology. In his words:

“Now with ChatGPT, the power is in the hands of the public. It has been democratized. And that is the reason why you have seen such high adoption because people realize how powerful this technology is.”

The Shifting Balance of Power

Who owns the real value in all of this? Who has the power in this new world? I posed these bigger questions to Aggarawl, and he has an optimistic take. He believes that because intellectual power – which has always been of value to humans – will now be churned out by AI, creativity will become more valuable than ever.

“If intellectual power is commoditized, I think the personality, the creative side, our ability to connect with other humans, the emotional side of empathy and understanding of our clients better serve them in a way that’s sort of more personalized – I think that will take precedence over figuring out solutions, because the solutions can be figured out easily and quickly now. But how do we apply it in a creative way that will be more powerful?”

That last question there is key; Aggarawl believes that people who excel at creative application will be the ones to hold the power.

Simultaneously, Aggarawl concedes that there’s going to be a fair amount of disruption on the ‘AI is taking away jobs’ front. He noted that the main victims will be any job that relies on pattern recognition, which includes roles in just about every field. But like other AI optimists, Aggarawl points to past disruptions as evidence that we’ll survive this transition – specifically, the invention of the car and how it displaced horse and cart workers.

Aggarwal even mentioned the U word: utopia. He believes that with the ability to offload mundane work, people “will be able to enjoy better and more fruitful lives.” As a student of history, the U word here admittedly makes me uncomfortable; the industrial revolution had a similar conversation at the time, and though society did indeed transform, it’s hard to argue that workers didn’t get badly churned (and that life got tangibly better for them). He conceded on this front.

Guidance For the Transition

I was curious about what advice he has to help folks transition to this new world, both individually and at a societal level. His main piece of guidance is to take personal responsibility to upskill, get to know the technology, analyze what it means for your business, and start to play around with how it can help – and not hurt – you.

“Most importantly, you have to realize AI is a continuum of human minds. So, it starts to learn us, and then that symbiotic relationship starts to develop where now you can start to see, ‘Oh, I used to spend 10 hours a week doing this repetitive task, and now how I can incorporate AI to take over that part of my job, so that I can devote 10 hours to something else.’”

This reminded me of a metaphor from Brian McCullough and Chris Messina over at The Techmeme Ride Home: various models are the grapes, the resulting AI products are the wine, and those who know how to pair their capacities with specific tasks will become AI sommeliers.

Aggarwal very much agrees with this premise, and even took it a step further by adding that human creativity can also be the grape, the raw material, that builds the final solution.

To become that AI sommelier, Aggarwal says that the first step is to understand a person or organization’s goals and motivations. From there, you can start to work backward to identify the steps needed to get to that destination fastest. Then, when you zoom in on those micro steps, you can look for optimization opportunities to lean on AI to achieve higher efficiency.

I personally like thinking of this through the ‘copilot’ language we’ve discussed before. In my opinion, it’s much more effective to think of these AI tools as assistants rather than replacements. This calls back to Aggarwal’s earlier comment on creativity. He added:

“There is no technology that has actually replaced humans. They have always enhanced humans. So, people who are willing to work with these technologies, they’ll be able to do more things, they will be able to come up with better ideas, and they will be able to come up with new solutions that we have not thought of… the tool is only going to help us enhance our abilities if we choose to.”

Despite the worst-case scenarios floating around the AI conversation, it’s nice to know that those at the top still seem to value human creativity above all else (at least on the surface). If you’d like to learn more about Aggarwal’s work and optimistic outlook, head to ManujAggarwal.com.

How have your own feelings and predictions about AI evolved? What’s on your mind as of late? We’ll keep this conversation going, but I’d love to hear where you’re at. As usual, send any lingering thoughts to [email protected].

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