The Interpretation Era

Over a decade ago I was researching deep machine learning for a project. It got me wondering, what comes after the internet? The answer was AI, but it’s not what I expected.

The internet was a massive innovation of infrastructure, the dawn of the Information Era. It forever changed how we get our information. Now, AI is changing the meaning of that information. Welcome to the Interpretation Era.

AI may not have replaced the internet. It is quickly becoming the gatekeeper of that information with little insight from humans. And your brand is at a greater risk of being missed and misinterpreted by it.

What changed

For decades the information path on the internet was simple. A person searched, read the sources, weighed them, and decided. Human, information, human. Even the peak of social media, during the Attention Era, still followed that path.

Now, AI has changed that path. A person asks, an AI reads the sources, and what comes back is a conclusion. Human, AI, interpretation, decision. The interpretation arrives before the evidence does. The answer is given without ever clicking a link. Notice anything else missing from the decision side of the path? The human.

AI is increasingly interpreting what the information means before it reaches us. And without human insight. It’s helping people make decisions about what to buy or what service to use. It’s describing your brand without a direct way for you to control what it says.

Don’t get me wrong. Humans have always interpreted brands and have often gotten it wrong. The struggle now is that AI has industrialized interpretation by making it faster, more scalable, and increasingly consequential.

AI is getting its answers from earned media and third-party sources as well as your LinkedIn feed and website. And don’t forget Reddit. Or that old profile. Even language on an old website you thought you retired, but that was still indexed in the background for AI to find. The problem is that these sources start sounding like a bad game of telephone.

Even worse, the answers can be completely fabricated by AI.

It is more crucial than ever that you know how the world and AI see your brand and if it reflects the brand you built.

What needs to change

The Attention Era had communicators chasing the latest visibility trends, ranking, and celebrity endorsements. Those at the top of search, or who filled our social media feeds, or got named in top-tier publications were getting all the impressions.

Enter the Interpretation Era. Attention will still be lurking in the background, but focus will have to change. Organizations will have to prioritize their brand and reputation as the valuable assets they have always been. They will have to put their brand before the algorithm. I’ll be honest, this is the part I’m most excited about.

It’s time to showcase what makes your organization stand out. What earns you the reputation and attention you want. Your brand is everything that defines you to the world. Your expertise, values, promises, community, credibility, trust, authority. It’s time to stop borrowing equity from influencers or other brands.

It’s not enough to be found or to ask how to get AI to recommend your brand. You have to make sure that what AI is saying about your brand is the identity you intended. Congruence is how you know. It is the distance between the identity you intend and the one the world interprets.

How do you figure that out? Can it be measured? Those are the right next questions and I can’t wait to share with you what I’ve been building to help you watch over your brand.

And don’t forget the human

Remember that human that was part of the decision process before AI? They still need a place on the path too. Whether it’s keeping your human audience in mind when trying to figure out how to be found and cited by AI or keeping a human in the loop in your communications systems. We cannot forget that business is ultimately human.

Yes, we have moved from infrastructure to interpretation. And the scarce thing now is not access or attention. It is trusted interpretation.

So, if AI is becoming the interpreter of the internet, who interprets the AI? We do. We listen and we judge. Over and over and over.

I keep thinking of a phrase ingrained in me from my years showing horses, head up, heels down. For a rider, head up keeps your eyes on where you're going, and heels down keeps you firmly in your seat. I can’t think of a better phrase for the new era we’ve entered.

Head up. Heels down.

Beth