Beckman is a senior fellow of emerging technology and an adjunct professor in luxury marketing in the Stern School of Business at New York University, and he hosts the podcast Some Future Day, where he focuses on technology, culture, and law. He also is co-chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Crypto Currency and Digital Assets and CEO of the advertising agency DMA United. He has executed campaigns for the NBA, Pepsi, Sony, and Warner Bros., among others, employing AI technologies, spatial computing, and blockchain technology to augment advertising campaigns.

His role as an entrepreneur forms the conceptual foundation for his book. His theme of the Age of Imagination is fueled by what he sees as the entrepreneurial opportunities now and in the near future emerging from the increasing deployment of ever more powerful AI technologies. He is especially interested in large-language models (LLMs) in commercial usage across industries, applications, and professions.

Shape of AI to Come

Beckman focuses on specific industries and areas of AI technologies applications. He is both insightful and creative in this. In the business environment, he predicts that AI will couple with blockchain technology—a digital public record that ensures the accuracy of data—and shift the economic power from centralized production ventures to individual creators. In healthcare, he examines existing and potential medical applications of AI technologies that he argues will improve both physical health (to assist physicians by providing increased diagnostic accuracy and speed in the examining room) and mental health (by helping mental health practitioners to better diagnose issues like depression and anxiety by evaluating DNA and family data to look for inherited conditions like chronic depression). In national defense, he foresees enhanced AI technologies quickly correlating data for battlefield situations. He believes it will be an invaluable tool for American military leaders attempting to make decisions about where and how to engage an enemy, suggesting new strategies in real-time and giving those leaders additional opportunities and options.

For artists and creatives, the Age of Imagination is opening up all sorts of creative possibilities. For example, AI technologies can create music, and artists can use it to brainstorm and provide inspiration. Voice artists will be able to sell or license their digital voice to other creators, with secondary creators creating “digital duets” with the original singer and the secondary singer collecting royalties, thus creating new revenue streams. From the perspective of social media, emerging AI technologies will encourage content engine pipelines to converge, making it easier for American consumers to access, deploy, and be creative with AI technologies while using blockchain technology to verify the authenticity of both content and imagery. This development will give greater power to people getting their message out to their fellow citizens, and more people will retain their money in a currency—crypto in nature—that is not subject to the capricious decision making of government.

Concerning individual financial security, Beckman predicts an Age of Imagination where people can see in real-time exactly how secure their money is, because we now have increasing options to move wealth to stable cryptocurrencies that are minted to the blockchain. In education, Beckman notes that, while AI technologies will never fully replace human teachers, they can augment traditional instruction and help students learn in new ways (including with the use of AI tutors). AI will empower students everywhere by letting them learn from anywhere. College students will not need to attend physical locations to acquire their knowledge (and credentials), instead using an accessible, cost-effective digital/​AI educational platform.

As we move into the Age of Imagination, Beckman does not believe that AI “Luddites” will be able to stand in the way of technological change. Yet, he explicitly recognizes a need for strong human oversight of AI technologies, as illustrated by Elon Musk’s AI assistant xAI (Grok) recently experiencing disturbing “hallucinations,” including branding itself “MechaHitler” and producing antisemitic responses to conspiracy theories about Jewish people as well as naming Donald Trump “the most notorious criminal” in Washington, DC. While there are many options available for the AI technological path forward, Beckman argues that “going backward” is not one of them. He is generally effective in arguing that the benefits of AI technologies far outstrip the potential negative costs—or regulatory challenges—of embracing it.

Regulatory Approaches

Beckman favors “a free, open [AI] marketplace devoid of over-regulation and government intrusion.” What he means by “over-regulation” is not explicitly defined, but it can be inferred from his philosophy on “public” regulation of AI technologies.

He is an advocate of business communities in Western nations establishing ethical guidelines for AI developers to follow. Two of these that are currently in place are the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and the European Union’s Guidelines for Trustworthy AI. Beckman considers both of these to be foundational frameworks for further development of industry-wide safeguards. The author recommends that we ensure that the development of ethical AI technologies is incentivized through thoughtfully designed public funding, grant awards, and investment capital that require recipients to state explicitly how their work will be developed within accepted ethical guidelines. He recommends that societal practices and safeguards can be designed that allow users to identify and report ethical problems with AI products so they can be remedied. In short, Beckman is a skeptic about the ability of government and the legal system to regulate AI technologies, and he argues that—when proof of an unethical system is made public through traditional and social media—an “educated,” critical-thinking American citizenry will demand that companies self-correct and repair any ethical lapses related to AI technologies development.

Beckman is making the case for industry self-regulation, with a healthy dependency on market forces rapidly correcting any company violations of industry AI ethical guidelines. His views on market forces as a regulating force on AI development appear to follow the idea of “permissionless innovation,” meaning that unless a compelling case can be argued that a new invention will bring serious harm to society, technological innovation should be allowed to continue without government permission. This raises the question: What is “technological harm” to society? Would Beckman recognize a socially constructed consensus definition of AI “technological harm”—that is, a safety-related issue for consumers or businesses—as not being “over-regulation” or unnecessary “government intrusion”?

Applications vs. Policy Challenges

I am of two minds about Some Future Day. As an introduction to the potential opportunities that AI offers the American consumer who is still questioning the efficacy of this new technology and to entrepreneurs wondering how AI technologies will be of value in their future endeavors, Beckman succeeds in his efforts. He delivers a well-written and insightful review of what AI technologies are providing us today and what opportunities lie ahead. He also offers a valuable appendix of resources at the end of the book, including a compendium of the most influential businesses in AI, 20 key analytical tools, 39 performance marketing tools, and 60 blockchain and cryptocurrency tools, among others.

From a regulatory policy perspective, however, I am less sanguine. Granted, while Beckman did not write this book from a policy perspective, the US regulatory environment surrounding the deployment of AI technologies is in a state of flux, with regulatory actions being legislatively imposed at both the federal and state levels. This is troublesome for many entrepreneurs interested in applying AI in their business and should have been addressed by the author. He also does not explain how existing artificial narrow intelligence (AI focused on specific tasks) differs from proposed artificial general intelligence (AI that can apply to many different tasks) and how this evolution will likely affect society over the next five to 10 years. Moreover, while he is optimistic about how copyright ownership and royalties will be negotiated in the marketplace between creators/​owners and AI users, the evidence appears to be that this situation is far from legally or socially (voluntarily) resolved.

One last criticism: A major peeve of mine is Beckman’s lack of citations and references. While some identifying information is included in his narrative examples, it falls short of my expectations as a writer and policy researcher. I am convinced he has these information sources, and they should have been included in the book to support his often-interesting arguments and ideas.

In conclusion, the book is an interesting read for the inquiring entrepreneur or novice to AI, but it is of limited usefulness for the regulatory policy scholar.