What does the future look like?
Normal? Weird? Fake? All of the above?
I doubt there’s a single reader of this newsletter who isn’t feeling uncomfortable right now.
The number of AI-powered tools and platforms keeps expanding exponentially, as do their capabilities. Agents promise to turn hours-long tasks into seconds. AI-generated content is virtually indistinguishable from real audio and video footage.
Yet Sam Altman posted a thought-provoking piece this week on ‘The Gentle Singularity’.
It’s worth reading in full, but he echoes a lot of the foundational beliefs of this newsletter and indeed my thinking for the last 15 years when it comes to change.
Change will be profound, but also profoundly normal.
Some choice quotes:
Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far, it's much less weird than it seems like it should be.
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In the most important ways, the 2030s may not be wildly different. People will still love their families, express their creativity, play games, and swim in lakes.
But in still-very-important-ways, the 2030s are likely going to be wildly different from any time that has come before. We do not know how far beyond human-level intelligence we can go, but we are about to find out.
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Already we live with incredible digital intelligence, and after some initial shock, most of us are pretty used to it. Very quickly we go from being amazed that AI can generate a beautifully-written paragraph to wondering when it can generate a beautifully-written novel; or from being amazed that it can make live-saving medical diagnoses to wondering when it can develop the cures; or from being amazed it can create a small computer program to wondering when it can create an entire new company. This is how the singularity goes: wonders become routine and then table stakes.
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Looking forward, this sounds hard to wrap our heads around. But probably living through it will feel impressive but manageable. From a relativistic perspective, the singularity happens bit by bit, and the merge happens slowly. We are climbing the long arc of exponential technological progress; it always looks vertical looking forward and flat going backwards, but it’s one smooth curve.
Note: my emphasis added.
But I’m going to be using this line a lot – “living through it will feel impressive but manageable”.
Three big, non-obvious implications of AI-generated ads
One glimpse of the future normal was Kalshi’s AI-generated ad, which aired during the NBA finals. Its creator, PJ Accetturo, created the ad using Google’s new Veo 3 video model in 2 days, for $400.
Beyond the tweets proclaiming ‘the death of the advertising industry’, here are a few non-obvious insights about what this means for creativity and culture:
Economics will define culture. I remember reading a theory that EDM became popular as much due to economics as taste. Put simply – it's far cheaper to book a DJ who can just turn up with a USB stick and plug in, rather than a 5-piece band traveling with big, bulky instruments.
Quick, cheap AI-generated ads will be hard for brands to resist, and this will change visual culture.The AI aesthetic divide. Accetturo believes that "high-dopamine Veo 3 videos will be the ad trend of 2025." He's right, for a brief moment. But one powerful truth when it comes to trends is that there's always a counter-trend.
Humans are hardwired to value scarcity and devalue abundance. As these AI-generated ads take over our feeds, they'll quickly lose their impact. Which is why you'll also see many brands head in the opposite direction. Long, slow, unmistakably 'real' shots; single character narratives that AI finds hard to replicate.
Defining which side you're on will be obvious to some brands, and challenging for others. Mix in a fragmented consumer landscape and the picture can get very complex, very quickly.Creators will get even more ‘spiky’. I've written extensively about the democratisation of creativity. But let's be honest – 99.999999% of AI-generated content will be basic, generic, bland, slop. It won't cut through.
Which is why the non-obvious paradox of crowd-powered creativity is that we'll see ads & customer-facing media embrace far bolder visions, as brash & opinionated individuals do the work of teams (less design-by-committee). It’s not surprising that Accetturo is a well-established film maker with 15+ years of experience.
The AI video era will birth new stars, but these will still be creative professionals with taste, humour and the ability to grab people’s attention. There will also be a big increase in inequality between creators, thanks to the winner-take-all algorithms that help audiences filter through infinite content.One further implication – creator collabs & remix culture will get turned up to 11 as the cost of collaboration falls and the benefits of doing so increase.
The future will be… in-person?
Alongside the Kalshi AI-generated ad, my feed was filled with images of this tweet from Mark Cuban.
It’s a great observation, with some profound implications. Here are three further non-obvious provocations around what this might mean:
More meaning & happiness? Most workers are deeply disengaged. Gallup estimates that only 21% of the global workforce are engaged with their jobs. Often this because they’re performing what David Graeber famously called “bullshit jobs”. Their work is middle and back office tasks – moving information from one system to another, and keeping people informed (via documents that never get read). In-person experiences are, as Mark Cuban said, real. Human connection gives people meaning.
Let’s not fear what we’ll lose (especially not things that that, if we’re honest, aren’t working well for us today). Let’s embrace what we’ll gain.Different skillsets? Office work is often more about information processing and cognitive intelligence. Face-to-face and physical experiences will help accelerate the shift back towards a) tangible, physical skills like craftsmanship; and b) interpersonal skills. EQ > IQ.
Is your organisation's talent pipeline reflective of this? Will every business need a team of "experience architects" to craft impactful and memorable in-person experiences?Even more urban clustering? The obvious implication of more people doing work ‘in the field’ is a booming travel sector (with all its knock-on effects). But not everyone is able or wants to travel frequently.
What if the non-obvious implication is a renewed surge in demand to live in cities, where density makes in-person experiences more accessible? Will this be the hidden factor behind a future rise in AI-driven inequality?
On the subject of events, last week was a big one – I was at SXSW London to launch the next version of my VisuAIse Futures interactive keynote experience.
We now generate a personalised “Deep Innovation” report for each participant – turning a room full of quick napkin sketches into 100s of memorable visuals & reports.
Your team gets a visceral experience of how AI can augment & accelerate their creativity. They feel engaged, while your organisation gets a wealth of useful insights into the collective vision of a room.
All done live, in less than 2 minutes.
You can watch a short clip below, or the full talk here.
🚨 If you’re lining up your next all hands strategy session, or customer conference and want an accessible, fun, and useful creative AI experience then let’s talk 🚨
Reach out to Renee Strom at renee [at] ideapress-speakers [dot] com or reply to this email.
Next: Inspire your team to thrive in the future normal
In the last 12 months I’ve delivered 30+ sessions, both live and virtually – from Baku to Brazil, Las Vegas to London.
My regular trend & innovation keynotes bring fresh, cross-industry, people-first perspectives to your audience.
VisuAIse Futures takes it one step further, turning a keynote into an interactive, ‘multiplayer’ creative experience that gets your team excited at how they can use AI to accelerate your innovation culture.
Here’s what people are saying about it:
“It was so refreshing to hear how AI can be used to power human imagination, rather than replace it. And then it was even better to actually experience it”
“Fantastic session! Hugely insightful and fun, too!”
“Brilliant. The feeling in the room was positively intense whilst the images were coming through!
Feel the optimistic vibes it will bring to your event in the 2-minute video below (or watch it here).
If you’d like to discuss bringing me to your next meeting or event then please do reach out directly to Renee Strom or check out my speaking site.
Thanks for reading,