And we’re back!

By now you should be fully recovered from your Memorial Day Weekend partying. Unless you are like me here. Drink your water, folks. Your survival against AI might depend on it.

Before we jump in further…

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While I try not to self promote too hard here, I’m excited to announce that I’ve just joined MentorPass. Book me if you’d like. Or don’t. AI is going to figure it out before you do anyway.

Deep(ish) Millennial Thought of the Week

AI is going to destroy Millennials. Maybe. Not this AI though.

This week, the Center for AI Safety, a non-profit out of San Francisco, delivered the following warning:

Yikes. Who makes up the group of individuals who issued this warning? Well, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, sits alongside some of Google and Microsoft’s top executives and over 200 academics as the world tries to figure out what to do with the AI wave that is taking over.

As NBC noted, there is reason to be alarmed by AI. We just don’t how powerful it will become. Even in this early stage of integrating AI into society, no one can deny, its ability to impact world events is already scary.

Fear of AI is nothing new for us Millennials. Already back in 2018, nearly 81% of us were worried on how AI adoption might impact work and more importantly, our salaries. Could AI do things better than us? Is AI better at telling jokes at the water cooler? It’s a scary proposition, but we’re all somewhat to blame for this and it started back in 1997.

Any Millennial who used Microsoft Office around in the late 90s had some early exposure to a working experience aided by a computer-generated friend. I highly recommend a read of Fast Company’s “Why the Ghost of Clippy Haunts Today’s AI Chatbots” to see that we were already opening our doors to strange relationships with computer companions in our youth. Don’t even get me started on this craze.

Even as Clippy tried to help us do our book reports, the Microsoft creation failed to capture our hearts and for some, set up a stage to feel powerless. The gate to an experience guided by (and eventually run by) peer-to-computer personality, one which theoretically could make our lives easier, had been opened. You can read more about Clippy in this week’s “Millennial Product Spotlight” a little later. Thanks to CYM reader Jared Pyle for the nod on Clippy.

While Microsoft somewhat forced Clippy upon us, we’re currently at a point where we can choose how we incorporate AI into our lives. For now. Personally, I’ve had fairly limited interaction with AI so far. Outside of some early queries on ChatGPT, I haven’t made it a daily part of my workflow. I luckily sat out of NFTs. I ignored (and continue to ignore) brands jumping into the metaverse. I’m holding tight on AI until I see a full year or so of traction and further mass implementation across industries. But cross-generationally, whether you are a Millennial, a Generation Z’er, a Boomer, or even a Gen X’er, the numbers are showing rapid adoption of AI into everyday life. See for yourself.

Will AI potentially replace many existing professions (copywriters, graphic designers, etc.)? I’m in the camp that it will ultimately enhance those who are already talented in their areas of expertise, so much so that my early experiments with Adobe’s new “Generative Fill” technology in its flagship Photoshop experience are coming out just swell. See for yourself below.

Am I concerned about AI? Sure, very. Unchecked, it’s going to cause chaos. But I’m already more optimistic about how we’re discussing AI collectively as a society than how we’re discussing social media’s impact on our lives.

As Millennials, it’s easy to start feeling like we are falling behind our younger generational competition. My recommendation, even to those on the fence or even worse, frightened by AI, is to give it a try for yourself. Whether it’s through learning how to communicate with the aforementioned ChatGPT or coming up with creative wizardry in Midjourney, the more you begin to understand the technology, the better shot you have at keeping your job, and better yet, surviving the potential AI incursion.

THE VERDICT: AI is not yet going to destroy us as a society. Could it? I don’t know, but make your work day a little easier by trying it out.

Less Deep(ish) Millennial Stuff of the Week

• CENSORED. Only the rise of AI and possible Millennial extinction matters this week. (CNN)

Millennial Product Spotlight

Last week, we brought back fond memories of the beloved Koosh Ball. This week, we answer to AI Supreme Commander Clippy’s wishes and shine a light on its first reign.

As highlighted fantastically by Brian Feldman in his 2016 feature for New York Magazine, Clippy debuted in Microsoft Office 97 as a way to simply help people write better. The problem (err, we mean the human misunderstanding of Clippy’s ultimate significance and impact on civilization) was Clippy was optimized for first time users of Microsoft Word. If you had never used Word before, Clippy’s popping up and adding helpful prompts to get you on your way might have been helpful. To those who knew what they were doing, the paper clip was simply annoying. Some even found Clippy’s presence to be menacing.

Not changing all that much after its debut, Clippy attempted to remain relevant with every new edition of Office to not much avail. After a ten year run, Microsoft unofficially sunsetted Clippy to a desk drawer in chatbot purgatory. Clippy’s legacy, however, helped set the stage for modern AI assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa.

Were the foolish humans acts of betrayal and premature abandonment of a digital pioneer the right decisions at the time and was Clippy’s demise greatly exaggerated? We shall see.

Millennial Commercial Spotlight

As an impressionable youth in the 80s and 90s, I was exposed to many commercials, which probably drove me into a career in Marketing, inevitably to be replaced by AI warlords.

This week, we’re highlighting this classic commercial of one of the few toys I was too afraid to ask my parents for, Teddy Ruxpin.

There were many weird commercials for Teddy Ruxpin that sent me screaming to my room. I feared this animated bear more than Chucky. But this ad is particularly effective in reminding me that WE LET AI TAKE OVER BEFORE WE EVEN KNEW IT.

The spot opens with “show and tell” time (or as we here at Curb Your Millennialism like to now refer to it, “The Preamble to Thought Leaders Bragging on Twitter”) where our protagonist is introducing what appears to be just an ordinary run-of-the-mill teddy bear. Two girls cackle at him. One boy in a mushroom haircut yawns. Things aren’t looking great for our hero when…

THE BEAR FREAKING TALKS.

As soon as Teddy opens his mouth, the children light up as he assumes mind control over the entire classroom and begins the process of making us all utterly powerless. The seed was planted to enable our AI bosses to gain control 30-40ish years later. Not to be too obvious about this whole plot, the narrator quickly cuts off the classroom feed to a standard shot and closeout highlighting the illustrated book and cassette tape that comes with Master Teddy.

This is the exact moment we bowed down to AI.

That’s all for this episode…

Before I go, a little about me:

I’ve been in omnichannel marketing, business development, sales and operations for startups and big brands alike for over 15 years now. If you’d like to talk with me about consulting, find me on LinkedIn or Twitter or reply to this email. Or you can get creative, I know you have it in you!

Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, if AI lets us proceed…