Editorial: AI Can Help Us All Be Lions

A world-class basketball arena on a warm August morning in New York may be an odd choice of venue for a philosophy lesson, but when you're talking about AI, sometimes it's best to reference a 19th century approach to spiritual transformation. Trust me, it worked.

This year's AV/IT Summit , which was held on Aug. 1 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, started with a keynote address from Julian Phillips. You may remember him as our "Blueprint for Success" columnist from last year. He also has a regular gig, serving as managing director of XTG, the experimental technology division of AVI-SPL. His talk was about the synergistic relationship between AV and AI—but in typical Phillips fashion, his presentation was about much more than that.

Phillips had his own take on the 90/10 Principle, variations of which have been discussed by everyone from 19th century Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People author Stephen Covey. He argued that most organizations spend about 90% of their resources focused on maintaining the status quo. That leaves only 10% to innovate or transform operations.

[Editorial: 'Intelligence' Can Be Artificially Overrated]

In other words, most of us are way too busy keeping busy. I'm guilty as charged, how about you? Do you have dedicated time in your work week to consider new ideas, new areas of opportunity, new anything?

Phillips challenged attendees to flip that ratio around and dedicate the larger share of our time and energy to exploration and innovation. Sounds great on paper, but how will the work get done?

AI can help.

Phillips had three major takeaways that we should all consider. First, whether you like it or not, AI is here and you can't opt out. Second, AI technology that is available now, if applied properly, can help with much of the busy work that fills our calendars and limits our ability to be innovative. Finally, he encouraged each of us—yes, you too—to become lions, at least as described by Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th century German philosopher.

Nietzsche saw spiritual transformation as a process of three stages. (I'll be brief here; you can read Thus Spoke Zarathustra at your leisure.) We all start as camels, dutiful beasts of burden conditioned to do our work and conform to society's rules and expectations. If we recognize those burdens, we transform into lions (aka rulers), embracing self-purpose and freedom while rejecting external controls. The final transformation is the child, which celebrates creativity and creating purpose, but that's a whole other discussion. The point Phillips made was that we need to challenge industry norms and consider new ways to conduct business.

Flipping workplace percentages from 90/10 to 10/90 is not something that's going to happen overnight—and some of us may never be able to achieve that kind of work/innovation ratio. But he believes companies in the Pro AV industry need to change their organizational structures and make the most of AI tools or risk being left behind.

[Integrators and AI]

In the short term, I'm guessing Phillips would be at least somewhat satisfied if we acknowledged that maintaining the status quo is the 100% wrong strategy for our industry. It's a start. Now, let's hear that roar.