Richard Turen
Consider this one in an ongoing series of columns that will eventually be written by AI, I'm sure.
I was not anxious to open the door to this subject. Perhaps articles about AI's potential impact on our industry should best be written by those who study and design AI in the tech sector or at universities.
Many travel advisors I speak to say they will embrace AI when it can do more. Some think it is a threat in terms of eliminating the need for professional, human advisors. Why, after all, rely on the travel knowledge and experience stored in one single brain when you can more quickly access the collective wisdom of tens of thousands?
In our time together, I have not addressed in depth the potential impact of AI. I do not want to try to predict where it/we are headed. I do not want to pretend that I have any scientific expertise in the field. But I thought it might be helpful to devote some space to just talking through some of my observations over the past several years regarding the impact of amateur or, if you prefer, "artificial" intelligence on our industry.
I have been keeping files on the progress of AI over the years, knowing I would write about it at some point when I felt I had a handle on the subject. Any objective observer would look back and marvel at the progress that has been made in technology in a few years and, all too often, in just a few months.
Should we be worried? Should we be unusually proactive? Or should we do the one thing we as a profession never do: Should we actively communicate to our clients that AI is a potentially destructive way to enable a machine to plan the best moments of one's life?
In wondering what the future might hold for our little shops that sell the world, I decided to start with the source:
"While AI is gaining ground in the tourism sector, this does not mean that travel agents will disappear. On the contrary, their role is evolving. Rather than focusing on flight and hotel research, they can now focus on their true expertise: advising, guiding and offering unique experiences."
That is not an altogether reassuring statement. If we lose the ability to compete with AI in flight planning and accommodations, does that mean that we all need to convert to the highest level of personal FIT planning? And will that be profitable? Do we want to engage in a profession where we are no longer trusted to do 75% of what most of us do for a living?
I did not write the statement. Google AI wrote it in response to my question. It is the only part of this column I did not write. And it is interesting in terms of Google AI's confidence that it will soon be taking over several of the most critical functions we fulfill.
And there is a question left unanswered: If our "true expertise" is offering "unique experiences," how will we compete with a technology that can scan tens of thousands of unique experiences at any destination in the world within moments.?
A comment from respected Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li illustrates the major goal of AI and its immediate focus. She said there was a phrase from the 1970s that AI "is a machine that can make a perfect chess move while the room is on fire."
Machines lack contextual understanding. Travel industry skeptics, and I am not one of them, claim that the lack of conceptual understanding is the reason that AI will never replace the home-based IC or the office-based corporate agent.
Let's continue this conversation next time -- there may, after all, be a new AI breakthrough to report.