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Revisiting Is AI a Gatekeeper? Or is it a Key? (Thinks Out Loud)

MidJourney generated image of robot standing guard outside a gate to represent the question of whether AI is a gatekeeper or the key between your business and its customers

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One of the big themes behind Thinks Out Loud over the course of its 400-plus episodes is how you can bypass gatekeepers and still grow your business. The emergence of artificial intelligence in marketing and customer acquisition introduces an entirely new way to approach that goal. Or does it? Does artificial intelligence provide you a tool kit that allows you to bypass Big Tech? Or does it allow Big Tech to place more gates between you and your customers?

In this episode of the Thinks Out Loud podcast, our company founder and president, Tim Peter, takes a look at the role artificial intelligence might play in helping you bypass gatekeepers. He also looks at how AI helps Big Tech maintain its market dominance. And, finally, this episode posits some ideas for how you can start connecting directly with your customers no matter what happens down the road.

Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you.

Revisiting Is AI a Gatekeeper? Or is it a Key? (Thinks Out Loud) — Headlines and Show Notes

Show Notes and Links

You might also enjoy this webinar Tim Peter recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here:

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Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac.

Running time: 23m 24s

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Transcript: Revisiting Is AI a Gatekeeper? Or is it a Key?

Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud, your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter, this is episode 437 of the Big Show and I think we have a really cool show for you today.

We know that gatekeepers gonna gate. You’ve heard me say this many, many times on this show. I’ve also heard a number of people proposing that artificial intelligence might bypass the gatekeepers. It might be the way that we finally get to take gatekeepers and shove them completely out of the way. You know, connect directly with our customers in every single situation.

For instance, the hospitality industry is continually looking for something that will bypass gatekeepers like Expedia or Booking.com or Google. By far, the most likely use case where that could occur in the next bunch of years is the emergence of AI agents. And I’d like to dive into that use case for a moment so you have a sense of what we’re talking about. Because this could apply beyond just travel, beyond just hospitality. This could be something you see in retail, this could be something you see in a B2B context. There’s all kinds of places where, in theory, this could take the place. This could let you connect directly with your customers.

And the premise here is that customers would have one or more agents that would search for, in this case, travel on their behalf.

For instance, I’m taking a trip to New York City in a few weeks for work. I need a hotel near the offices of the company I’m visiting. I’m also having dinner with colleagues while I’m there, so I’ll need flights and ground transportation that get me to my hotel and then back to the airport in time for the meetings that I have and in time to make my flight. I need all of the options that I choose to comply with my client’s travel policies. I need flights and hotel stays that also get me the most points in my preferred loyalty programs; if I’m traveling, I want to accrue my benefits. And of course, I want to optimize my time during the trip so I’m not out of the office or away from my family any longer than is necessary.

That is a case that I would love to outsource to an agent. Seriously. I would absolutely love to have this in my pocket or on my desktop right now. I’d love to be able to type a prompt that says, “Hey, agent, go do this. You know my preferences. You know what I need. Here’s where I’m going. Here is roughly when I need to go. Make that happen and report back to me with a couple of options I can simply say yes to or try again.” I mean, wouldn’t that be cool? And there are some interesting beta projects that I’ve seen. But an actual agent that I could give a simple prompt to and that understands my preferences does not exist today. Period.

We’re probably a couple of years away from that existing in real world terms. Probably. Maybe by the end of next year. Maybe by the end of 2026. But today, it doesn’t exist. And keep that in mind.

Another great agent use case that I’d love to see, this is my own personal one. I’d love a robust, cross device, cross platform search engine.

If you’re like me, you have conversations with customers, and with family, and with friends, across an array of devices and apps. You’ve got email. You’ve got social media, both public and DMs. You’ve got text and WhatsApp. You’ve got MS Teams and or Slack. You’ve got articles and newsletters you’ve read on Substack or LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram, and a wide array of websites.

And you probably find yourself asking from time to time, “Where did I read that? Was that in an email? Was it a text? Was it an article?” I know I do. Wouldn’t you love to have a way to search across all of those sources? Not for possible answers, not just a regular Google search, but for the actual thing you read or sent. Maybe make it time bound, like only things you’ve interacted with in the last couple of weeks. Based on conversations I’ve had with others, I don’t think I’m alone on wanting something like this.

And despite some good work in this area, the solution I’m proposing does not exist today. One of the reasons is there’s nothing that connects all of the various data sources of the two use cases that I’ve just given you. The one thing that might is something like the operating system either on your laptop or on your phone, and we’ll come back to that in a second.

The last use case where AI could have a major impact on the way people interact with brands and businesses in the future — or at least one last use case I’m going to explore today — is extended reality. So that would include things like virtual reality and augmented reality. Some folks refer to this as the final computing platform. This is what everything will be like at some point in the future. Think things like smart glasses or other wearables. That provide data about the real world as you interact with it in real time, creating content and immersive experiences on the fly, virtual reality games and education that continually update using generative AI to deepen the experience.

There is no question in my mind that generative AI undoubtedly will provide huge benefits in these areas. They can pull content from a wide array of sources. They can generate content on the fly and narrate it or provide visual cues as needed. Today, these types of experiences are definitely limited by things like robust connectivity, which is getting better all the time, the weight of the device, And very much related to that, battery life.

We are probably — I’m going to make a guess here; I’m clearly not the expert here, but I’m basing this on what other folks have said — we’re probably 6 to 10 plus years away. We’re talking the 2030s in all likelihood before this becomes a reality. Which is not that far from now.

I go back to the Bill Gates quote that I’ve used many, many times that we always overestimate the change we will see in the next two years and underestimate the change we will see in the next 10. So what things might look like in the middle of the 2030s, which shocker, is only 10 years away, could be a dramatic difference from where we are today.

Think about where we are relative to 10 years ago. In 2014, in late 2014, if I was talking to you about artificial intelligence and how people would be using it in their day to day lives, the fact that 1 in 9 people use it every single day and 24 percent of workers are using it at least once a week. That was unthinkable 10 years ago, now we talk about it very much like a commonplace thing.

So, we’re going to have technology challenges to overcome. We, I mean, we as a society are going to have technology challenges to overcome. Battery life and weight plus the ability to stream heavy visual content quickly are likely the big barriers that have to fall.

We also know it’s true that 6G mobile connections will start rolling out commercially in 2030, which could fix at least the streaming question. If battery life and battery weight and device weight fall pretty quickly as they are doing, you know, what we’re likely to see in 2034 seems plausible. And much like I talked about with agents, I’ve seen early stage companies working towards all of these.

I want to be clear, I absolutely welcome their potential success. I’m confident that somebody will eventually succeed at all of these. I also think it’s true that these tools simply don’t exist in any real form in the real world today. It doesn’t mean they won’t.

But the thing where I think we need to be really conscious is that none of these tools seem likely to come from some unknown startup. Some of the pieces, sure, but probably not the overall experience. And there’s a major reason why this is likely to be so, in my view.

The simple fact is that, at least right now, artificial intelligence favors gatekeepers. AI is expensive as hell. You need lots of money to make these models work. You need lots of data, which is expensive as hell. You have to have significant computing power, which, say it with me, is expensive as hell. You require brilliant researchers who are expensive as hell. And you consume massive amounts of energy to make these things work, which, again, is expensive as hell. Google and Microsoft literally are signing contracts for their own nuclear power plants to meet their energy needs. That’s not a joke. That’s a true story.

These things require a ton of expensive resources in terms of money, in terms of data, in terms of compute, in terms of researchers, and in terms of actual power. That’s crazy. So it’s not super likely you’re going to see small companies come out of nowhere with these things. Probably.

If you think about who the huge big, uh, if you think about who the big AI players are, well, we’ve got Google. Obviously, they’re a big time gatekeeper. We’ve got Microsoft. Again, a big time gatekeeper. We’ve got Amazon. Ditto. Facebook. Ditto, ditto. We’ve got OpenAI. Who is the parent of ChatGPT? Well, they’re a disruptive startup, for sure, originally set up as a non profit, with massive funding from, uh, Microsoft, who’s a big time gatekeeper.

Okay, so what about Anthropic, the makers of Claude? They’re another disruptive startup, featuring a bunch of ChatGPT alumni, and they got massive funding from, oh wait, Amazon and Google. Huh.

You’ve got Perplexity. Perplexity is another disruptive service, and it features founders from Meta and OpenAI, and they’ve had significant investments from, among others, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the late YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean.
Huh.

That’s kind of interesting, right? And if VR, AR, and extended reality, XR, come along at scale in the next 5 to 10 years, well, who do you think is going to provide that? I mean, let’s see, the current VR devices come from Facebook and Apple. Augmented reality on mobile phones mostly comes from Apple, Google, and Samsung, the last of which runs on Google’s Android OS. Smartwatches, which are another potential AR delivery mechanism, come from Apple and Google and Samsung. Again, more or less running Google software. And the most popular smart hearing devices, another potential AR or XR delivery mechanism, come from Apple and Google. Are you beginning to notice a pattern here?

The reality is, big tech is working to remain a gatekeeper. They’re trying to close off all the avenues by which someone else could come in and shove them out of the way. Even the startups are deeply connected to big tech players. In addition to their own efforts, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have invested in organizations like Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity that are most likely to shove them out of their membership in Big Tech.

Almost all of these folks, plus the other players in AI, are also using either Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud to run their servers. Again, Big Tech still collects a toll in those cases. And remember how expensive it is to run a real, robust, and relevant artificial intelligence.

Even if OpenAI, Perplexity, or Anthropic wins, they’re still going to need to fund their ongoing operations. I also don’t think Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and their other investors Put all this money into these startups without expecting a return on that investment. They’re going to want some payback here.

In other words, if OpenAI, Perplexity, or Anthropic wins, do you think it’s likely you’re going to be any better off than you are today? In short, there isn’t a white knight coming to rescue you from big tech with artificial intelligence. AI isn’t a key to unlock the gatekeeper’s gates. It’s just another way gatekeeper’s gonna gate, even if it turns out to be a different gatekeeper.

It’s unrealistic to expect some new technology to suddenly disrupt and completely bypass Big Tech. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Big Tech has a lot at stake. They’re gatekeepers. They’re not going away without a fight.

If you want to bypass Big Tech, you’re going to have to take a lesson from Jose Serrano, a character in the classic baseball comedy Major League. And to paraphrase his famous line, “do it yourself.” It’s up to you to create a direct relationship with your customers. It’s up to you to create memorable experiences that will bring your customers back to you again and again and again. It’s up to you to create a brand that customers will seek out by name.

Think about it. I regularly quote Jeff Bezos famous question, “What won’t change as we go forward?” Even if the platforms and technologies and tools that your customers use change, They’re still going to seek out businesses and brands that they trust… or not. You’re still going to need to separate yourself from your competition… or not. You’re still going to need to find a way to get customers to connect with you directly… or not. You get the picture.

AI isn’t a key. It’s another lock if you’re not continually looking to build direct relationships with your customers. You’re helping the gatekeepers keep their gates in place. You’re helping them build those locks. Your job is to get customers to connect with you directly. That’s the key to unlocking gatekeepers’ gates. I’m going to link to a couple of episodes in the show notes where we talked about how you can do that. And yes, you can and should use AI to help you do that more efficiently and more effectively. I’m going to link in the show notes to a few episodes on how you can do that too.

The last thing that I would encourage you to do is to keep listening for more ways you can build those connections with customers. Because the other big key to bypassing big tech is to keep learning.

I’m confident you can do it. I’m confident you can bypass Big Tech. And I’m looking forward to seeing how well you do it. The thing you have to remind yourself is AI is just one more place the gatekeepers gonna gate. If you want to unlock those gates. You’re going to have to do it by connecting with customers directly.

Show Wrap-Up and Credits

Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week.

And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode. As well as an archive of all past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast. Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast. Just look for episode 437.

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Show Outro

Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week.

So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep hitting me up on Twitter, sending things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business.

So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody.

Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about our company's strategy and digital marketing consulting services here or about Tim here.

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