We are not ready for the future of Chatbots. Even if Bing isn’t Sydney anymore, there is no doubt other AI bots will come along, and may already be deployed (I assume governments have, or soon will have, LLMs at the level of Bing but with less guardrails). People will absolutely be fooled by AIs into thinking they are talking to other people. They already fell for Bing’s illusion of sentience. Can people be manipulated by AIs? Can AIs run sophisticated scams? I think we are about to find out. And we need to consider what that means.
We are not ready for the future of Analytic Engines. I think every organization that has a substantial analysis or writing component to their work will need to figure out how to incorporate these new tools fast, because the competitive advantage gain is potentially enormous. If highly-skilled writers and analysts can save 30-80% of their time by using AI to assist with basic writing and analysis, what does that mean? How do we adopt these technologies into our work and lives? What happens when the web is flooded with convincing but wrong content from these tools? Again, I don’t think anyone has a clear idea. Maybe the productivity gains will be illusory, but, based on my experience and conversations with other users, I don’t think so.