Richard Turen
I would love to share stories of successful travel agencies and the growing tech wing in our consortia working to utilize this exquisite new technology. But others are doing this, and there is little doubt that AI is saving us time, enabling us to focus on interacting with our clients.
My desktop has links to four of the top AI contenders. I use each of them and cannot yet declare a winner in terms of accuracy. They are all easy to use. They save me time, and I rarely catch them in a significant error unless I am trying to trip them up, like wondering aloud if they ever harbor thoughts of killing their "masters." (One said "sometimes." Another asked me why I was trying to be provocative.)
My concerns about AI do not involve the regurgitation of data from multiple sources. AI is essentially a collection of wires it connects to vast networks, accessing an almost unending amount of data. Nothing wrong with that. Except that this view of what AI can do is dated.
Yes, for now I understand why agencies, including the online behemoths, are finding that artificial intelligence is artificial but not really intelligent. It can render travel agency research as a useless, Neanderthal-like behavior that no longer has to be performed by humans. But human "masters" need to keep the data slaves in line because they save the expense of humans rowing the ship.
If you stick with me as we try to cover this topic in small bites, I want to address some of the larger questions about just where our growing reliance and staggering level of investment in AI is taking us. We need to look at examples that don't always appear in our industry analysis.
Have you followed the rising career path of actress Tilly Norwood? She first appeared at the Zurich Film Festival, where she was seeking talent agency representation. You can view Tilly and judge her acting ability for yourself. But the thing is, she's not really a woman: Tilly was created earlier this year by the AI division of the U.K. production company Particle6 Group.
The question Hollywood is grappling with centers on whether or not she is an actress. Hollywood fears that she is a "threat to human performers."
For me, there is another reality check that is a bit more frightening than the question of who or what can join the actors' union. We are starting to see AI chatbot models that can disseminate the latest travel destination information, create stylistic itineraries and proposals and appear human, with user-designed voice and appearance.
A study by the Institute for Family Studies this year found that 19% of U.S. adults had chatted with their AI system to simulate a romantic partner. Perhaps more alarming is a study released this September by KPMG, one of the world's largest accounting and consulting firms, which found that 99% of workers expressed interest in exploring how an AI chatbot could function as a close friend or trusted companion.
The Institute for Family Studies says that 1 in 4 young adults already believes that AI partners can replace real ones.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study conducted this year found that many AI users develop romantic feelings for their favorite chatbot.
The pandemic helped fuel interest in AI. Now, several years later, if these studies are indeed credible, we are finding that AI is disrupting the workplace in terms of just how humans interact with the new technology and one another.
As we monitor the dynamic growth of AI chatbot "improvements," we should not be surprised that many of our clients find this new technology both more knowledgeable and far easier to converse with than the human travel agent of yore.
And, apparently, more engaging.