Nobody is telling this truth

Open your Instagram, click on any AI ad, and voila: your life will change.

Seriously! You'll soon discover that everyone knows everything about AI, and besides sharing it out of pure love for knowledge, you'll revolutionize your business with a tool that can even predict the weather in São Paulo.

Lie? Yes and no. As I've said, AI is completely disruptive. So far, it's only demonstrated some of its available tools. But the business goes much deeper. Let me give you an example: you have a great e-commerce site? Congratulations. Does this e-commerce site sell through AI? Don't know? Let me explain: people create or start using AI agents, and these agents perform tasks for them. Let's say your e-commerce site sells electronics. And you're well-ranked on Google, but you don't talk to any AI. When someone uses an agent to search for something you sell, will your product appear? We're not talking about Google search and the entire ecosystem built by it. We're talking about a world that uses 4, 5, or 6 AI engines.

I'll go deeper: every Internet browser (in Portuguese it has this poetic name, but in English it's called a browser) is an agent created by Netscape, which later lost its position to Microsoft, which later lost its position to Google and Firefox (except for Mac users). It's an agent that uses complex algorithms to do what you ask it: who won the 1954 World Cup, where can I buy guinea fowl, who's playing today, how much is a plane ticket to New York, etc. It's a personal assistant that, over the years, has tried to become increasingly personal, knowing more about you. All because Google, at the beginning of the 21st century, created a search algorithm that used existing browsers and returned what you requested with a high accuracy rate.

Because browsers are a thing of the past, and that's the game. Because browsers concentrate the majority of Internet traffic and make it easier or harder for people to reach your store. There are many standards, but different browsers are very similar, and what you need to perform well in organic search is standard.

If search engines disappear, searches disappear, right? More or less. If you can have a customized search engine for your team's games, another customized for your travel destinations, another for your favorite sports, and another for your favorite music, you'll start accessing AI applications that don't go through browsers, or that go through without you noticing.

Let me make a comparison. Netscape Navigator's greatest achievement was bringing easy browsing to personal computers at the time. Before it, you needed to know how to access your favorite service: there was no cartographic map of the Internet. This map was drawn by Navigator, improved by subsequent browsers, and cataloged by Google, as if it were a guide to where to access it. Google's website rating system is still the best system for ranking search results. Imagine searching for the price of Coca-Cola and the browser returns US sites before Brazilian ones. This is what we don't realize, but it brings a certain predictability to our navigation in a world of billions of websites.

Now, imagine that the territory has changed: it's no longer about algorithms or geolocation-based and contextual indexing, but rather about a sophisticated profile of parameters learned every day. Not only does the search hierarchy change, but the players displayed do too. In other words, it's a new territory, paved but unmarked. Worse: where you can walk, run, and even fly. Which path will you choose? Which vehicle? Who will be your co-pilot?

What I mean is: in this new reality, which evolves by the day, you need to immerse yourself deeply. You must discuss all the business premises, because, deep down, that's what matters. If you don't know how your business works, why it works, and what it can offer in the future, you'll be just another person in a world so vast and so full of possibilities that it's difficult to see. Navigating this new world requires much more than a good compass: it requires wisdom.

Fernando Pessoa said that sailing is necessary, living is not. I add: in the future, living may continue to be necessary, but sailing is no longer necessary. So, buckle up, because the pilot is something called Generative AI.