I recently attended IBM's Think Digital Event Experience online, where Arvind Krishna (CEO) stated that "Every company will become an AI company, not because they can but because they must." (online, 2020). It is increasingly clear that advances in technology disrupt established business practices, and that those in leadership positions need to keep abreast of developments in industries unrelated to their own.

David Roberts, founder of GEDI Training and a global ambassador for Singularity University, recently talked to South African businesspeople about disruption and illustrated how it can come seemingly out of nowhere: "in the case of the spice industry, once one of the largest in the world, it was disrupted by a man who invented the insulated warehouse: Frederic Tudor." (Rawlins, 2017).

How will artificial intelligence disrupt creative industries? I am a video editor and have in the past smirked at the idea of a "make good movie" button that will automate me out of a job. If artificial intelligence (AI) can be trained to recognise human faces it won't be long until it can recognise good performances. Theorists liken filmmaking to language, and since rule-based AI learnt to play chess it could just as likely learn to edit movies. What would keep the producer of the near future from enlisting the services of an algorithm as opposed to that of a flesh and blood film editor? I don't know.

Perhaps it's not all doom and gloom. Valter Adao, Deloitte Africa's Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, speaking at the 2019 Singularity University Nordic Summit said that for every job lost to technological disruption, 1.7 new jobs will be created.

While one anticipates that it will be some time before creative industries become automated, I look forward to how my job role may change in future. I know next to nothing about search engine optimisation, but have recently started contracting on a project related to Facebook's Discover feature, and if replacing the video editor with the "make good movie" button is inevitable, maybe I will have carved out a niche as moving picture AI trainer by then!