Show Me.

Not many people today think about Manichaeism, the ancient and defunct religion that saw in the world an ongoing struggle between light and good and darkness and evil. 

Before the spread of Islam, Manichaeism was the chief rival to Christianity. There were churches and scriptures that had spread from China through the Roman empire and Mani was revered as the final prophet, after Zoroaster, Buddha, Moses and Jesus. (The religious figure, not my doorman.)

However, bygone it is today, it seems to me that much of our world is caught in a sort of modern-day Manichaeism. 

Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Authoritarian, Red or Blue, we see the world as the struggle between major irreconcilable forces. Most often, this is a nuance-free world. Like a serious marital spat there's no going back. Middle-ground and compromise seem to be missing. As Beckett wrote in "Godot," "There is no lack of void."

Beckett was funny that way.

In advertising, I see a Manichaean struggle happening as we speak, or as I write, which I do more often than speaking.

There are those who are buying the AI thing whole hog. And there are those who are resisting. Cascading from that position, the AI-ers believe in something I call advertising inundation: Messaging doesn't have to be impactful to be effective. It just has to be so persistent, that sooner or later it wears you down. That's why I have four ads pop up if I order take-out and three ads on my metrocard.

The Manichaen counter-point to inundation is impact. That's where you create something that may be short on ubiquity, but is long on stopping power.

A metaphor might be the difference between carpet-bombing and a targeted strike. They'll both, the thinking goes, eventually take out the enemy. There's a stylistic and philosophical difference in which is the most effective.

I will say, I am not in the inundation camp. 

In fact, the glut of advertising in the world today has turned me even more Wordsworthian than I've always been. My solution for feeling like "the world is too much with me," is to turn off the TV, block the ads, and ignore if not boycott most everything I see from every brand that's forced on me. 

I realize I am old, but inundation advertising (which is inherently non-consensual) has turned me post-consumer. I don't buy anything anymore, save gasoline, lox, pastrami and toys for my grandchildren.

What strikes me as odd about all this is how rapidly the inundation side of the dichotomy has gained precedence over the impact side.

Especially since I've yet to see a scintilla of proof that inundation works. (Agency case-study videos claiming "billions of impressions" are heinously fictional.)

Not too many weeks ago, the world saw evidence of the power of AI. 

Ukraine, out-spent, out-manned and out-gunned in fighting the Faux-viet Union, used AI-enabled drones to destroy or damage an estimated 41 Russian air-craft, including their version of the amerikan AWACs system, which is way up in the Pantheon of technological sophistication. They launched drones from trucks. Their AI eluded all the Russian's defensive systems.

These AI advances I can see with my own eyes. And when someone in The Economist (even if he's selling something) says something like "the Digital Targeting Web” can make the army ten times more lethal," I listen. Especially because I've read a thing or two about what defense contractors like Palantir and Anduril are already selling to the (dis)United States. (It's scary.)

I would rather a defense infrastructure run by the engineers at either of those companies than one run by people at  Lockheed or Boeing or Raytheon. You don't want a billion dollar aircraft carrier if it can be destroyed by five-hundred $100 drones.

Mind you, there's a runaway "Wehrmacht" quality to these companies, and they scare the crap out of me. But that's not the point.

The point is this:

They are showing proof that AI works. As are the battlefields in Lebanon, Ukraine and Gaza. (And probably LA, too.)

Advertising agencies are claiming AI works too.

The difference is in the real world I see reports like this. They talk about advances and things that couldn't be done before to give someone, some organization or some nation-state an advantage:

In the advertising world I see reports on how cheap and fast something was done. Never in how it moved people. There's nothing to recommend the AI-generated commercial below except that it's as genuinely human as plastic vomit.

I've yet to see any evidence of AI communication efficacy. (Evidence of parsimony doesn't count.)

To my slightly informed technologically-aware eyes, I'm not even sure why we'd think AI would work for creative endeavors. It seems fine for sizing up a battlefield or collecting high-way tolls or routing UPS trucks through a busy city. But, making people feel something? Show me.

Show me AI that:

reaches people.
resolves a problem.
comforts the afflicted.
makes a bad day better.
makes someone laugh.
does something unexpected.
can actually anticipate.
brings joy.

Because it allows the moguls in the advertising industry to fire literally thousands of people, they're flogging it as hard as the Dutch flogged tulips five-hundred years ago.

The Dutch got pretty flowers.

We're getting nothing more than twelve men with perennial golden parachutes.