Giles Crouch is a Digital Anthropologist and Marketing Consultant who produces provocative (and prolific) content on culture and technology on both Medium and Substack. Giles is a student of how culture absorbs technology, and he predicts that before long, AI will actually become boring. He talks about how earlier technologies like the telephone have gone from being bright shiny objects to just part of the woodwork of our lives. He cautions against having too many wild expectations for AI as a creative aid, and we focus on the kind of intelligence and experience that consultants like ourselves have to bring to our work. Today’s AI tools recycle a lot of previous patterns and lack understanding of context that humans have. This results in a reduction to a kind of “beigeness” that can’t support real innovation. We talk about the ideas some techno visionaries have about the idea of putting a “brain on a chip” which seems to betray a lack of understanding of intelligence and consciousness. We talk about impact on professional services consulting, but in fact the whole topic opens up huge philosophical and religious issues.
