Last week on X/Twitter, a quick little re-post caught my eye. The re-post itself wasn’t huge (it was only one line), but the story behind it and the trends it revealed certainly was huge.
@lizrhoffman
For context, Liz Hoffman is not a no-one. She’s a respected author, and a writer for The Wall Street Journal and Semafor. In short, she deeply understands technology and business.
What happened here?
Car Dealership Guy, himself no slouch on X with over 400,000 followers, asked his audience (car dealers) how their businesses were going so far that month. He received nearly 200 responses – a treasure trove of real-time market sentiment.
While that feedback was valuable in itself, what happened next showcases the incredible power of generative AI.
One of Car Dealership Guy’s followers scraped all of the responses from the X thread and used ChatGPT to analyse them in detail. Within seconds, he produced a comprehensive market analysis that in Liz Hoffman’s words, threatens “literally thousands of people’s jobs at McKinsey etc.”
What are the ramifications of this?
Those who understand how to leverage generative AI tools are now unlocking insights and performing work tasks at a pace and quality that was previously unimaginable.
Let’s look again at the two key players in the story, and how they interpreted the exact same data (and business opportunity):
- Car Dealership Guy: Unearthed a rich trove of data that revealed the real-time market sentiment of his industry. He then processed that data using his natural intuition, and domain expertise.
- His ChatGPT-using follower: Discovered a rich trove of data that revealed the real-time market sentiment of his industry. He then processed that data using generative AI, to reveal deep trends and themes that rival the output of some of the best business consulting groups in the world, such as McKinsey.
I see this story as a wake-up call for business leaders. The message is that AI disruption isn't coming – it's already here.
Those who are embracing generative AI are positioning themselves for incredible growth opportunities.
Understanding AI's impact on your business
I believe that AI isn't primarily about replacing jobs, but about redefining the way we work.
Unfortunately at the time of writing, generative AI isn’t adequately understood by business leaders, which means the opportunities and potential of the technology is passing many of them by.
To simplify; an easy way to think of generative AI is to consider it as a powerful set of analytical tools, that dramatically augments your existing domain knowledge, skills, experience, and intuition.
It helps you accomplish tasks faster, spot trends that might have otherwise been missed, and generate new ideas.
Even if your industry doesn't seem particularly "high tech," I believe every business leader in New Zealand needs to understand generative AI's disruptive potential.
The car dealership industry isn’t high tech at all. But as this story shows us; the massive upgrade that generative AI gives to business analysis (and the potential to capitalise on business opportunities) is staggering.
Harnessing disruption: Building your AI skills for success
Technology in and of itself is no longer a competitive advantage.
Bill Gates, with all of his financial might, can’t buy more powerful technology than I can, for $20/month. In ChatGPT and Gemini Advanced (currently the most powerful tools on the market), access to the most powerful tech in the world has been democratised.
Therefore, if technology itself isn’t the competitive advantage, what is?
Mastering the AI tools themselves.
It's the difference between collecting data, and transforming it into a powerhouse of insights, as shown in our car dealership example.
To be clear; building your AI knowledge isn't about learning to code.
Using most generative AI tools is as easy as knowing how to type in plain English. And the learning curve is proving to be approximately 10 hours.
10 hours of tinkering, experimenting and playing with generative AI tools like ChatGPT seems to be about the threshold when people start to really understand them, and start to derive the full benefits they possess.
10 hours. The difference between being The Car Dealership Guy or his ChatGPT enabled follower.
I think it’s worth the investment.
The imperative of action
The pace of AI change is relentless, and waiting on the sidelines while competitors embrace AI is becoming a riskier path with each passing month.
It’s my belief that the potential advantages of AI are too significant to ignore – better decision-making, innovative problem-solving, and the ability to spot business opportunities far ahead of the curve.
Start experimenting, even just in small ways, to understand the possibilities this technology offers.
Embracing the AI shift might feel a bit overwhelming at first. But remember, Car Dealership Guy was focused on the task of collecting information, just like many of us do each day in our work.
And that’s only one of a mountain of work-task capabilities that can be amplified by generative AI.
Understanding the power of generative AI allows you to see beyond how you and your employees have traditionally worked, and transform those processes and practices into AI-augmented strategic advantages for your business.
Those who understand and leverage generative AI will not be replaced by it; they'll be the ones shaping the future.
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