Is ChatGPT a Medium? (& a palate cleanser)
And is the Medium Still the Message?
Another day in AI news, another disruption. Such a heady time.
Even though it feels like some new AI tool pops up every two minutes, and forecasters are warning about an AI bubble in the markets, it’s still incredibly early in the AI era. Yes, the technology is accelerating, and yes, we’re about to hit the hockey stick part of the exponential growth curve. But, the impact of tech on culture and society lags pretty far behind the leading edge of tech.
I’m working on a keynote for a great group of marketers and I feel a duty to take a stab at some predictions at some point. I have been pretty hit and miss on my long term predictions1 but I have to take a shot at what is coming next as part of the fast rise of generative AI tools, with a specific focus on ChatGPT.
Before we can make too many predictions, though, it helps attempt a categorization if for no other reason that to enable easy analogues (e.g. they were “horseless carriages” before they became “cars”).
What is ChatGPT?
However, I’ve been wrestling with what generative AI is, categorically. When I use it, I feel like I’m seeing a world-changing breakthrough in real life. After years of speculation and promises and debates about whether something like ChatGPT could exist, it now does exist and it’s becoming a daily tool for a lot of folks I know. I’m amazed every day what I can get done with it, how well it appears to work, and the surface quality of the output I see. It’s like magic that you can actually use. It’s a marvel.
It’s too lazy to just call it “tech”. Is it a component of other apps? Yes. Can it be a service that is at the core of a great product? Sure. “Generative” AI is broad enough that it can be all those things and then some.
It is, to me, a new category, something different. Maybe the categorization will emerge later, like what happened with computers and laptops.
What I will argue is that ChatGPT (and the other imitators to come) should be viewed and evaluated as a new communication medium. Newspapers were new at one point. Or, like Radio was a new medium. Or the web. Or, TV, books.
Calling it a medium gives me the chance to look at both what humans can do with it AND what it (the medium) will do to us.
As Mcluhan suggested, a medium conveys meaning in at least two ways: 1) the content itself and 2) the way the content is experienced in the medium. But, the nature of the medium itself - the form of the content, how its accessed, how its produced and by whom - is its own message. And, to go all the way through the looking glass, just using the medium imparts a layer of meaning on its own. For example, reading a summary of “the Medium is the Message” on Wikipedia (vs. reading the book) conveys your intent to get the gist, but not the whole meaning of the work.
The internet is a medium that has, broadly speaking, changed the way we think, our cognition is changing because of the tools, the medium we use. A lot of us are in the shallows. Are we all suffering from a bit of digital dementia?
If you are a very online person, or even just a heavy internet user your language has changed as new words, expressions and perspectives have seeped into your brain. Your brain wiring has changed as you’ve done more passive “browsing” or scrolling or swiping and less deep, reason-based, thoughtful, reflective writing: You know, the generative and creative work that comes out of our own brains and is the unique differentiator of humanity and the end product of millions of years of evolution.
So, if ChatGPT is a new kind of medium, how will our brains change when we have to do even less work to get the info we want from it? How will human discourse change when the AI brain in our phone is smarter than the entire history of humanity and can both answer any question AND deliver some intensely distracting “content”. Will we ever have to know anything when we can turn to things like ChatGPT?
For business folks who lead large teams, the impulse will be to lean into AI and ChatGPT has been the main entry point for most. ChatGPT as a medium will communicate implicitly, at a sub-conscious level that the content is accurate, trustworthy, and the well-synthesized answer that is better than humans could do. At its worst, it will do the thinking for us. It will stop analysis, it will negate reflection.
Business leaders can’t (or shouldn’t) outsource their discernment, their judgement, their creative analysis of the competitive and consumer landscape. But, as AI gets better, as the capabilities of ChatGPT (and similar products) increase, business leaders will naturally just trust the GPTs. In the pursuit of efficiencies or effectiveness or some competitive edge, we’ll rely on tech like we have since the invention of the lever. Our human brains will naturally, unknowingly adapt and the message will be implicit in the medium: Trust this content humans, and let the GPT do the thinking.
I’m still an AI optimist. I do believe AI as a broad technology category will deliver a net positive. But, i’m more worried about what will happen to our human brains as we adjust to a world where ALL the mediums are powered by intelligence that’s more powerful than ours.
We’ve seen what Google has done to our memories. Has knowledge exchange gotten better or worse as a result of new social mediums like Twitter and Facebook and instagram? We can only imagine what might be lost as we rely on generative tools more and more. I’m afraid of the DEVO future.
Our job as business leaders is to introduce the new tools and tech and, yes, mediums in a thoughtful, pragmatic way. To NOT rush into the adoption of new stuff, to be conscious and strategic when we use tools like ChatGPT to automate or avoid daily work. Let’s be clear and mindful and honest about what we’ll lose and what we’ll gain as new mediums like ChatGPT become core to our work.
Postscript:
You knew I’d ask ChatGPT about this. ChatGPT refers to itself as a platform:
“ChatGPT is a conversational AI model developed by OpenAI. It is best described as a platform, as it provides a framework or environment where users can interact with an AI to ask questions, get assistance, and engage in various types of conversations. While the term "medium" typically refers to a channel or means of communication, "platform" is more appropriate for ChatGPT, as it encompasses the technology and infrastructure that support these interactions.
Want a palate cleanser?
Sometimes you just want to get up from the computer, go outside and kick off the shoes and walk around in the grass and listen to the wind. Or, listen to music made by humans in a room, together, at the same time, looking each other in the eye.
Waxahatchee released Tigers Blood a couple months ago and it’s easily one of my favorite records of the last couple years. It’s country adjacent, but you can feel the punk poet energy inside the songs. Katie Crutchfield is one of those rare artists that has the talent to deliver deeply moving art inside the familiar structures of Americana. It’s really well recorded, too and, with headphones on, you can sort of go deep into the audio field. I will be listening to this record forever, and this song has been on loop in my brain.
I remember saying confidently to my boss in 2012 that Twitter would recede from importance in the next few years. Wrong. The blockchain would change the world. Wrong.