Opening
0:45 How are you all? Excellent. Michael a minute ago was talking about disrupt number five. Yeah, we're going to be leaning heavily into number five. So, my name is Matthew Griffin. I'm the founder of the 311 Institute. It's a global futures and deep futures think tank looking up to 50 years out. Now, when we think about generative artificial intelligence, text to video, those kinds of systems we saw 10 years ago and we were publishing them in the United Kingdom. So what I'm going to do throughout this presentation is I'm going to lean on some of my experience.
1:38 And we're going to be going through a view of the future through the lens of technology. We're going to be having a look at what some companies like Google are doing and I'm going to be taking you under the hood of artificial intelligence and showing you some things you might not have considered.
Chapter 3: AI Beyond the Hype
2:02 So, let's talk about AI. Everyone's been talking about AI. It is the fastest developing technology of our time. Today we have over $2 trillion being invested in artificial intelligence. But this time last year we were talking about generative AI. The years before it would have been traditional artificial intelligence. The pace of change that you're having to deal with is significant. Next year we'll be leaning heavier not just into agentic AI but into some interesting agentic AI properties.
Chapter 4: 30 Years of Change in 3
2:44 So Satya Nadella the CEO of Microsoft has said we have seen 30 years of artificial intelligence development in just three. This is a fast-paced technology. When we have a look around the world, pretty much every venture capitalist, every entrepreneur says you will either be artificial intelligence first as individuals and as businesses or you can insert your own marketing phrase right there.
Chapter 5: Humans Versus AI: The Statistics
3:23 Now, when we think about the AI that we have today, humans beat artificial intelligence today when we think about emotional intelligence. But Sam Altman and ChatGPT-4, the latest GPT models are being trained on social intelligence. This is important for a reason we'll come to later. So AI today has an EQ of pretty much nothing. Humans, 36% of humans on the planet have a high EQ score.
4:02 When we have a think about IQ, average human IQ globally is 100. AI's IQ which is measured is 136 if you use Google Gemini 2.5. And if you use ChatGPT, ChatGPT has a verbal IQ of 155. And in the past 3 years, AI's IQ has increased by 51%. How much has your IQ increased in the past 3 years? When we have a look at AI versus humans, you can process around seven things in your short-term memory.
4:56 AI because we have an infinite context window which is big tech speak for an infinite memory can remember everything. This is also very important from a marketing and customer experience perspective that I will come to shortly. The human brain processes information at 50 bits a second. AI processes information up to 100,000 times faster. And then when we think about knowledge as individuals, you have this amount of knowledge, 1x.
5:39 If we look at things like ChatGPT and the large foundation models, they've been trained on everything on the public internet. They've been increasingly trained on private data. They have a thousand times more general knowledge with the key word being general than any human. This is why you can ask it to write a marketing plan for you, a business plan, a change management plan. You can ask it to do your taxes for you increasingly. You can get it to write and look at contracts.
6:17 So we talk about digital transformation. Digital transformation is going away. If you think about your own businesses and your clients businesses,
Chapter 6: Post Digital Transformation
6:28 As you embed increasingly intelligent, autonomous and sophisticated AI within your businesses that can take information in, analyze it and then use that information to make a decision on its own behalf in a smart way. We are now starting to undergo intelligence transformations. And increasingly over time, these technologies will move from helping you automate a marketing workflow to just being fully autonomous where they take information in, they decide the best course of action, and then they create the rest of the workflow.
Chapter 7: Clone TikTok in 30 SECONDS
7:18 Now, Eric Schmidt is probably one of the people who is closest to the future of artificial intelligence than anyone. He works with the US White House, works with Silicon Valley, obviously the ex Google CEO. He believes and we can see this already with what we call agentic software engineers that in the next one or two years you'll simply be able to say to an artificial intelligence create a TikTok clone.
7:48 The AI will understand what TikTok is. It will understand its function, its capabilities, and it will just clone the code. It'll clone the algorithms. Sam Altman is increasingly trying to develop artificial intelligences that build their own multi-billion dollar businesses. So when we think about where AI is today and where it's going, what happens when this increasingly powerful technology starts doing things by itself when it kind of makes its own decisions, kind of has its own free will and starts creating stuff at infinitum.
Chapter 8: The Age of Agentic Commerce, Disruption in Action
8:36 So when we have a look at agentic commerce for example, have you actually considered that every retailer in Germany is about to be reduced to a dumb pipe? There's a couple of ways that we do this. So Google has released its agentic commerce platform. OpenAI has released its agentic commerce platform. Amazon has released buy me now. When we think about agents today, if I want to buy a product, I go to an individual retailer's website. I look at that.
9:17 I either buy something or I don't. I look at another retailer's website, I buy something or I don't. Increasingly, I will simply say to Google's agent, I'm looking to buy a white shirt. And it will say, "Here are some options. Would you like me to buy it?" And you buy through the agentic interface. I never ever go to your client's retail sites. In the case of Amazon, Amazon will buy whatever you want it to buy from any site.
9:55 So retailers are increasingly worried that they are about to be reduced to dumb pipes. All of the marketing and ad spend that they do today, if you're looking at unbranded ad spend, that's a dangerous place to be. So increasingly we see people leaning into branded ad spend because I don't go to the Google agent. I go directly to your website, your company, your brand, whatever it happens to be.
Chapter 9: DISRUPTING RETAIL
10:25 Now when we think about disrupting retail, everything in retail and marketing is being disrupted.
Chapter 10: Synthetic Marketing, ASMR Demo
10:35 10 years ago, I showed off the first text to video videos from Stanford University. They cost 1.5 million to make. They were the size of a postage stamp. They were 120 dpi. They were horrible, grainy quality. From a marketing perspective, we kind of have this problem that when everyone can create content, maybe not marketing content, but when everyone on the planet can create content for little or no cost, how do you get your brand seen above everybody else?
11:20 We have 4 billion people connected on the planet. If the amount of content that artificial intelligence is creating, like this one explodes, you're fighting for share. Your cost per click is going up. We've seen an increase of 74% in CPC rates in retail. So, from a marketing perspective, what really gets eyeballs in the future is the creative content. This ASMR content got 3 million views. Generic content is just going to get buried.
Chapter 11: Virtual Influencers
12:00 Increasingly, we have virtual influencers like Lil Miquela. So, as a brand, I might today go out and hire an influencer or sponsor a human influencer online. But increasingly with digital humans, virtual humans, and so on and so forth, I don't hire a human influencer. I hire a virtual influencer and I can shape that virtual influencer into anything that I like with complete control. I can do procedural influencing where every individual sees a different kind of influencer or piece of content as opposed to one piece of content being blasted to a million people. We can have a million pieces of content being blasted to a million people. So we see the rise of procedural content which is made possible with AI.
Chapter 12: 24/7/365 Digital Humans
13:06 In China, Chinese entrepreneurs, Chinese retailers and marketers are masters of manipulating the algorithm. But this is deep fake. So if you think about continuous selling, so live QVC like selling on the internet, which is an increasing trend especially in Asia and it's starting to come more into the west. These are all synthetic deep fake humans. They run 24/7. They can sell anything that you want.
Chapter 13: Disrupting Major Brands
13:42 Now when we think about disruption, the brands that disrupt the most typically either find something interesting, a new way to go to market or it's a message. If we have a look at prime a couple of years ago, if I was an entrepreneur and I went to any venture capitalist or investor on the planet and I said, "I want to create a brand new kind of drink." You all know what they'd say. It's a highly crowded market. You stand absolutely no chance of beating the big players like Pepsi, Coca-Cola, those kinds of guys.
14:22 Nice try. You know, maybe do something else. But Prime, as we all know, leaned into what we call playground marketing. They weren't advertising to you adults. They weren't advertising to you as parents. They were advertising to the kids. But they were doing it by not advertising to the kids, by creating viral content. And we saw Prime go from zero to multi-billion dollar valuations in record speed with most parents being completely wound up by it. Let's face it, when we have a look at Temu, Temu emerged basically in 2020.
15:13 Temu essentially connects very very low-cost Chinese factories and manufacturing with an integrated global supply chain. And as we all know on the one hand their route to market was via the super apps. Again if we step back 5 years ago and say I know how to disrupt Amazon people would just laugh. If you want to disrupt Amazon increasingly you go via super apps. X is becoming a super app. Mark Zuckerberg's WhatsApp, he's had a bit of a rocky road when he been trying to develop his super apps. WeChat is a super app. There are increasingly more interesting routes to market than Amazon.
16:00 But with Temu, they went from pretty much zero revenues to $54 billion in revenue in the space of four years. And then when we have a look at On, the founder of On in Switzerland went to Nike because he was a runner and he created a shoe prototype where he literally cut up pieces of garden hose, put them on the soles of his shoes and started creating a prototype around that. And as sales started growing, he went to Nike and said, "I'd like you to buy the company." You all know what Nike said. No. On created a community. By creating a community, a different kind of marketing, Nike is now looking over their shoulder.
16:55 So, there's a huge amount of disruption, but there's a huge amount of opportunity. But as humans, we still tie into those stories, those communities, those interesting, quirky things that get our attention.
Chapter 14: AI: Creating New Markets and Products
17:10 Now from an artificial intelligence perspective when we have a look at the entire vertical stack of retail increasingly you can use any AI. I know ChatGPT has been mentioned a lot today but you can use any artificial intelligence to do new market analysis. You can use AI to increasingly create products for you. Here in Germany, there is an artificial intelligence company called Hyperganic. Hyperganic used artificial intelligence to create a fundamentally new kind of rocket engine in 6 hours.
17:53 When we think about Adidas, Adidas are increasingly using artificial intelligence to design their clothes, their apparel, their trainers. So AI can help you find new markets. For example, neurodivergent laundry care. So when we think about laundry care, when we think about detergents, it turns out that if you have particular neuro conditions, neurological conditions like autism and so on and so forth, you don't like the scratchy feel of clothes. You don't like the smell of particular detergents.
18:46 So AI has been creating brand new kinds of neurodivergent detergents. That is a $10 billion market and all of this is increasingly being discovered by AI. How you use these new tools matters.
Chapter 15: The Future of Choice
19:09 Now when we think about our world, we kind of live in this sort of oxymoron. We have more choice than ever before. You see this wherever you go. You go to the German supermarket, you see all the choice. You go to the clothes stores, you see all the choice. So we live in a world where actually we almost have too much choice. Choosing is a hassle.
Chapter 16: Disrupting the Consumer Experience and Journey
19:40 Now this is the traditional consumer experience. I would have a need. I would go and do a search. I would discover something. So maybe I want a new shirt. So I'd search for a new shirt. I'd discover a set of new shirts. I'd then go to individual shops, try on the different shirts. Then I'd choose one and I'd buy it. Straightforward customer journey, right? All of this is being disrupted completely.
Chapter 17: Google: The ANSWER Engine
20:20 So firstly, as humans, you no longer search for information. Google is increasingly not a search engine. Thanks to AI and AI mode, Google is increasingly an answer engine. You can use it now. What's I'm looking for a white shirt. What's the best one? No discovery. When we have a look at click-through rates, we're seeing click-through rates to websites decline by 34%. A customer that does come to your site through an AI search, a large language model search, is typically worth 4.4 times more than a customer that came to your website from organic search.
21:14 So search as we know it is dying. Anyone that does any form of SEO, it's getting harder. If you're not in the AI summaries, your brand is much harder to discover.
Chapter 18: OpenAI: "AI Will Remember your ENTIRE Life."
21:32 Now Sam Altman about two months ago. So you remember I said earlier that AI is learning to be emotional. We have $2 trillion worth of investment going into artificial intelligence development and infrastructure big massive hyperscale data centers. Sam Altman, thanks to AI's infinite memory, says that very soon AI will start remembering your entire life. Now, think about that. What is the benefit from a marketing and retail perspective of having access to a tool that remembers your entire life?
22:23 Let's talk hyperpersonalization, shall we?
Chapter 19: 165,000 Data Points, How Big Tech and AI Collect Data on Users
22:28 Now, when we look at the artificial intelligences today, Facebook traditionally has access to 5,000 data points on individual consumers. The AIs that we have today across lots of different categories and companies and so on and so forth have access to 165,000 data points on you and you can see them. They're sort of broken down here. So demographic data, you know, where do you live, what kind of car do you drive, what's your income, what's your age, that sort of stuff. But if we actually have a look at things like content consumption, we know this. There are 10,000 data points related to content consumption. I can kind of tell the kind of person you are from what you're watching, what you're engaging with, the speed that you're scrolling, how you're typing in the comments, what you're saying in the comments, all this kind of stuff. Long-term traits, you
23:28 Looked at you looked at this car, then you started looking at red cars. So, I think you probably like red cars. So this kind of long-term view as well, which AI has been very bad at up until recently. Health and wellness, this is a smartwatch. Increasingly, these will say what you eat, where you're going, what you're doing, how active you are. Behavioural, the way that you are interacting, not just online, but also offline.
23:59 Think about the information that you're putting into these AIs. When you used to use Google or search or Facebook, you'd use it in kind of a basic way. The number three use case for AI today is people trying to use AI to help them improve their lives. The information you are putting into these artificial intelligences is fundamentally different to the kind of information that you would have put into any other system a year, two, three years ago.
24:33 So, I have 165,000 data points on you. I can do a lot with that.
Chapter 20: AI: Your Personal Agent
24:41 Now, from a discovery perspective, remember that Google is no longer a search engine. It's increasingly an agentic retail engine or Amazon. Take your pick. Visa. Visa is increasingly an agentic retail payments provider. So, I'm looking for a shirt. I go online. Maybe I use Google and it knows me so well. It just says, "Here's a shirt." So, I have all the choice in the world when it comes to shirts. But Google says, "Here's a shirt. Contrast colors, short sleeved from your local provider."
Chapter 21: Innovations Behind the Screen, Virtual Try Ons and More
25:27 Now when we think about experience, the experience is changing as well. It used to be the case that if I was shopping for fashion, I might go to the store. But now, because we have ultra high definition rendering engines, not necessarily augmented reality, I can go to a fashion e-commerce site, and I can do a virtual try on of the shirt that I want to buy. And as I move, as the camera watches me, there is enough computing power on your devices to make sure that the shirt wrinkles in the right way, flows in the right way.
Chapter 22: The ILLUSION of Choice
26:10 And eventually we kind of get to the point where these systems say you have on the planet there are 500 million white shirts. To give you the illusion of choice, I'm going to present you with two. Pick one. So, you pick one. And recently there was a report out by Brookings. Do you know 52% of people now will let an AI just choose for them?
26:51 Because when it comes to making a choice, when it comes to looking through all of these different options, how many of us actually just tune out, get bored, just think, I don't want to walk around the shops for 3 hours. I just want a shirt. And these systems increasingly know you so well, they just go, "There's a shirt there." And I go, "Well, I've saved myself 3 hours of walking around. I've saved myself 5 hours of looking at different websites." As humans, we lean into convenience.
27:23 So what happens when these AIs know you so well that in the vast majority of cases, they say, "I think this is the one for you." And they get it right. Oh, and there's a special offer. Buy it now.
Chapter 23: Automated AI Purchasing Systems
27:41 And from a buy perspective, you buy it. Now when we think about the process of buying today, we have to click the buy button. But when we have a look at Coinbase in America, Coinbase have something called a deferred authorization network. Increasingly, we are building the systems out to give artificial intelligence access to your wallet, but also your crypto wallet. And so now when I say I'm looking for a shirt, AI says, "Matt, I've got 165,000 data points on you.
28:23 This is the shirt for you. By the way, I've bought it for you. At some point, you're going to click the button that says automatically buy these things for me." Whether it's groceries, groceries are a good place to start.
Chapter 24: Humans Are NOT the Future Customers
28:42 Which really when you think about it from a marketing perspective, what we're ultimately trying to do is we're trying to get the attention of humans so that you could go to a branded site or a branded company to go and buy something. But if artificial intelligence is increasingly doing the search and discovery for you, if it is increasingly taking over the process of choice for you, then increasingly are you not the customer? If I'm a brand, is my real customer the Amazon or the Google algorithm?
29:29 Because if I sponsor Google as a shirt manufacturer, then at what point does Google say there's a choice of 100 shirts, but I'm going to show you these two because these are from people who sponsor us and run ads with us. So increasingly when we think about the different points of control, when we think about disintermediation in retail, when we think where we need to lean in, where we think there are opportunities and challenges, as Michael said earlier, the only thing that is being disrupted is absolutely everything.
30:13 And if you understand these changes, if you get a point of view on these changes, then you can get ahead of them. And as for my company, I started pivoting our marketing strategy two to three years ago. We go all in on YouTube for a whole variety of reasons. Because I have branded content on YouTube and if you want to see me, if you want to see the 311 Institute, you go to YouTube because everything else is getting drowned out.
Chapter 25: SUMMARY AND CLOSE
30:43 But that's it from me. So, thank you for your attention. I hope you enjoyed that. Well, when we have a look at all of the changes going on, if you can't see these changes, you can't get a point of view on these changes. If you can see these changes, then the next thing to do is discuss them, experiment with them, get uncomfortable, as we said earlier, because increasingly these changes are coming whether you like it or not. You can already see them here.
31:40 But the skill is increasingly understanding what's changing and how you need to change and adapt as well.
