The term digital disruption has been around for decades now, but it really came to prominence with the mass adoption of the internet in the 2000s. It is one of those terms that is simple to understand yet not always easy to anticipate. For instance, one of the most commonly-cited examples of digital disruption is Netflix. It seemed like the streaming service became ubiquitous, and the disruption it caused signaled the end for physical video rental stores like Blockbuster.
Today, the closure of Blockbuster stores seems obvious in hindsight, but at the time it wasn’t just as clear. And lest we forget, Netflix itself started out as a physical DVD postal service. Nonetheless, the point is that – as cited above – digital disruption isn’t always easy to anticipate. But what then do we say about the next-generation of technology? Who or what will be the next disruptor? And who will be the ‘loser’ like Blockbuster?
One of the biggest stories in 2022 was the remarkable advances in AI (artificial intelligence) by the OpenAI organization. Broadly, there were two product breakthroughs. The first was the roll-out of Dalle-2, a text-to-image generator that creates art. Effectively, it can ‘paint’ anything that you want, leading to the most incredible images. All you need to do is type a few words. Immediately, there were alarm calls among artists’ communities over how this could impact their livelihoods.
The second innovation was ChatGPT, a kind of AI assistant that works on a text-to-text basis. You could, for example, ask it to produce a humorous poem on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and it would create an objectively decent poem. You could ask it to explain the political situation on the Pakistan-India Border, and it will provide an answer learned enough to impress a scholar. People might talk about Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover or the launch of iPhone 14 – but ChatGPT is arguably the technology story of the year.
With the arrival of ChatGPT, the tech industry started talking about use cases, and possible sectors that would be disrupted. For instance, there is speculation that ChatGPT, or similar Ais, could be used to write books, stories, news reports, and so on, putting writers out of work. As with the artist communities, there is a sense of alarm among groups of writers, copywriters, and even editors of written content. ChatGPT is only a few weeks old, but there is even a suggestion that such technology – when it evolves – could replace lawyers and legal experts.
Perhaps even more shockingly, there were those that predicted ChatGPT would lead to the demise of Google. We all know the saying “just google it” or “google is your friend” when looking for a piece of information. But we must be clear in that Google does not tell you the answer to your question – it provides links to the information that might provide the answer, and you can make up your own mind. ChatGPT provides the answer directly and without sources. This is equally worrying and fascinating.
So, should businesses be preparing for a future with AI? Well, again we must go back to the question of digital disruption and how we sometimes fail to anticipate it. A case in point can be made when we look at the internet of the 1990s. Back then, the first internet casinos arrived, making games like online slot machines, roulette, and blackjack available anywhere there was an internet connection, something further enhanced by the arrival of smartphones in the 2000s. But physical casinos never went the way of Blockbuster video stores. In fact, despite the online competition, physical casinos are – by and large – still thriving.
The point about the casinos is to illustrate we sometimes get it wrong about digital disruption. To give another example, in the early 1980s, there was a lot of talk about mass unemployment among typewritists – those who worked on typewriters in office blocks in cities all over the world – due to the arrival of computers in the modern workspace. But the mass unemployment never happened – job roles evolved.
Businesses should always try to adapt to new technologies. For instance, can you consider how myopic it would be today for a restaurant not to have, at the very least, a social media page or some kind of website? But going headfirst into technology without consideration can be a misstep. For instance, we have seen criticisms of restaurants that no longer take telephone bookings or won’t accept cash.
Perhaps the main takeaway we’d like to illustrate is that it’s not quite clear what impact AI will have on business, and it’s best not to panic. It’s clear that over the next few years we are going to see new advances in machine learning. It could have simple, practical uses, like sending out automated emails to your business clients, or it could be more complex, such as replacing your HR team. However, digital disruption doesn’t always turn out the way we expect. Netflix ended Blockbuster, but we were also told that it would destroy cinema. It didn’t, and movie theaters are – despite the challenges thrown up by restrictions in 2020 and 2021 – busier than ever.
