Last week, I gave two talks on the impact of artificial intelligence in the travel and hospitality sectors at Hospitality Day and TTG Travel Experience. What follows is a more or less literal but faithful transcript of what I presented. Enjoy reading, Simone.
Introduction and background
Welcome everyone. For those who don’t know me, I’m Simone. I’ve worked in the hospitality industry for a quarter of a century. The second half of my career has been almost exclusively dedicated to researching and implementing new technologies in hospitality.
Today, we’ll take a brief journey through artificial intelligence: what it means and its applications. Let’s start by trying to understand what artificial intelligence actually means.
The meaning of artificial intelligence
What is artificial intelligence? We’ve heard a lot, perhaps too much, about it over the last year and a half. I’ve been talking about AI and its applications for about fifteen years. One of the central issues when discussing AI is the name itself, which is somewhat misleading. When we say artificial intelligence, we make two mistakes.
The first mistake is calling it "intelligence" because, for over 2,000 years, we’ve been asking ourselves what intelligence is without ever reaching a shared definition. The second mistake is the adjective "artificial" because it has connotations that often lead to negative judgment. I always quote Marcus Aurelius, who said: It is not necessary to have an opinion on everything. However, we humans tend to classify everything.
Think of an event like a wine tasting. When a wine is described as artificial, it is immediately judged negatively. Furthermore, the term "artificial" has a semantic issue: it means made by humans, but the reality is that AI is following dynamics that are no longer entirely under our control. This could open problematic scenarios.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, himself said that it’s not always clear why ChatGPT makes certain decisions. This suggests that AI is slipping out of human control. I align more with Yuval Noah Harari, who speaks of alien intelligence, meaning something other than us—not necessarily malevolent, but still foreign.
The three phases of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence has three historical moments. What we’re experiencing today, and have been since the 1950s, is narrow or weak AI, capable of surpassing humans only in specific tasks. For instance, AI is better than us at playing chess, as we’ve known at least since IBM defeated Kasparov thirty years ago. But if we asked the same AI to tie its shoes, it wouldn’t know how to do it.
The second step is general intelligence, which will have abilities equal to those of humans. This milestone, initially projected for 2040 or 2050, is now, according to some, anticipated as early as 2027. After general intelligence comes superintelligence, which will surpass human capabilities and, in the best-case scenario, will be compassionate towards us. This evolution, which I hope will be the final one, I call ACI or compassionate artificial intelligence.
The exponential acceleration of technology
Another issue is that we tend to think of technology in linear terms: VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray, etc. In reality, technology follows an exponential trend. From primitive tools to the invention of the printing press, it took millions of years. From the first computer to the birth of ChatGPT, however, only a few decades have passed. This dramatically accelerates our possibilities but makes predicting the future complex.
A recent example is o1 from OpenAI, which has already surpassed the average human IQ by 20 points. This type of intelligence opens up new scenarios, somewhere between utopia and dystopia. Just a few days ago, a project on Minecraft was launched, where AI agents created a Constitution and a religion within a few hours. This type of automation opens new possibilities but also raises ethical and philosophical questions, partly lending more credibility to the simulation theory I’ve been discussing for years and which is the central idea of my latest book, We Are the Glitch.
The evolution of generative models
Generative models have also made great strides. A personal example: two years ago, a client asked me to create images of some cocktails for their mixology bar using MidJourney, and the results were terrible. I tried the same prompt yesterday, and the results were radically different despite the same input.
This shows how AI is impacting our sector, even in terms of how our guests use the web. We’re moving from the classic web, made of clickable links, to the "post-search" web, where results are generated and presented automatically, as is already happening in the United States with Google’s SGE. Google has also started integrating ads into generative results, and these trends will radically change our SEO and advertising strategies.
Humans as luxury
The concept of "humans as luxury" is another aspect I often talk about: at some point, the human element will be seen as a luxury because AI can create everything, from text to video. I’ve written several articles about how models like OpenAI’s Sora might even lead to a future where Netflix no longer offers us pre-existing content but allows us to create our own movie or series based on a prompt. The gaming world is undergoing a similar transformation. Google has released a system enabling you to make video games simply by describing what you want. You think it, prompt it, and play it, all without human intervention.
The impact of AI on reporting
Finally, artificial intelligence also has the potential to change reporting profoundly. Today, instead of reading reports in Excel or PDF, we can have a conversational system that responds to us directly. This will change how we analyze data and make decisions based on conversational information.
Conclusion: A paradigm shift
In conclusion, we are experiencing a true paradigm shift. This will impact not only marketing but also web agencies, SEO agencies, and advertising agencies. Therefore, We must completely rethink howay we work and prepare for a rapidly evolving future.
If you want to dive deeper into these topics, I invite you to interact with my digital twin, trained on all my articles and lectures. Thank you very much for your attention, and see you next year!
Simone Puorto
Travel Singularity
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