Episode 12 - What's the Human Role in the AI World

Watch the YouTube video version above or listen to the podcast below!

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• The current and future role of AI in various fields

• The potential use of AI in education and problem-solving

• The potential dangers and limitations of AI

• The role of humans in an AI-driven world

• The impact of AI on creativity and innovation

Episode 12 - What's the Human Role in the AI World Video and Podcast Transcript

[Disclaimer: This transcription was written by AI using a tool called Descript, and has not been edited for content.]

Dave Dougherty: All right, and welcome to the latest episode of Enterprising Minds. Everybody is here, so we'll skip the roll call. Uh, an interesting, um, take today. We're going to tackle a single topic that Alex brought in, uh, from our three different perspectives. So a little bit of a play on the three topic idea. But, um, Alex, what, uh, what are we talking about today?

Alex Pokorny: Sure. So we've been talking a lot about AI, kind of where it's coming from, where it's going, how it plays in with marketing, SEO, but let's put ourselves in a little bit kind of a future forward mindset, how far in the future is up to you and how you want to kind of basically take the question in your future.

I'm sure it's gonna be far different than far in the future, but what is the human role in an AI world? So a few things that we could talk about. Um, kind of what skills or degrees are going to be important, like college degrees, or what does AI do versus what will humans do? And then how to prep for this future.

So any part of it, we'll just kind of go around and kind of have an open discussion. I might kind of prod you guys a little bit with some questions to kind of keep things to cover kind of variety of topics, but no, we all have a variety of backgrounds, which is part of what makes this podcast fun. And we also have different views of kind of what the future will look like, you know, glass half full half empty, or maybe it's just.

So who wants to go first?

Dave Dougherty: Uh, Ruthie, can I volunteer you since you said you had a specific, uh, specific question related to it? I mean, I definitely have a take, but it's more of a vibe.

Ruthi Corcoran: Yeah. So this is, um, Here's what I'm thinking about. First, one thing that struck me in the way you phrased that question, Alice, is, um, what is the human role in AI world?

And I always want to flip that to say, what is the AI role in the human world? Because I do think that the future is, is human. And also, you know, we can include the other potential minds that come out with AI, but I, I don't want to. I don't know. I don't I don't want to take that framing just yet. Like, I'm not there.

Um, all right. Some things I'm thinking about. Um, I've been reading Tim Harper's adapt. Um, I think it's from 2011 or something like this, but I've always enjoyed Tim Harper's writings and for whatever reason, I never picked up adapt. Um, and 1 of the quotes that struck me a couple weeks back was the size of teams.

Test listed in patent citations has been increasing steadily since, um, Benjamin Jones, uh, was started recording essentially, um, in 1975. So the age at which the inventors first produce a patent. Has been rising specialization seems sharper since loan inventors are now less likely to produce multiple patents in different technical fields.

And this need to specialize may be unavoidable, but is worrying because past breakthroughs have often depended on the inventor's sheer breadth of interest, which allowed concepts from different fields to bump together in one creative mind. Now, such cross fertilization requires a whole team of people, a more expensive and complex organizational problem.

So this sort of struck me as an aha moment, like I mentioned, adapt, I think is from 2011, maybe 2014, somewhere around there, right? AI has certainly come a long way since then. And when I read that paragraph, the 1st thing I thought of is, hey, this is an area where I can potentially add a lot of value, which is you can partner with an AI to draw quickly from other fields that you might not be as familiar with.

Um, much more quickly than it is to start a collaboration with with a person who's just not in your field. Um, and you might have access to a lot more information than which allows you to combine it in new, different, creative ways. And so, when you guys brought up this topic of human role in AI. That was one of the first things that came to mind was, oh, I remember reading this thing about how maybe that's a way we think about AI is how do we use, how can we use AI, essentially, different kinds of thinking and different knowledge to amplify our own to come up with new creative solutions to problems that either we haven't been able to solve in the past or new problems that are That are coming to the forefront,

Alex Pokorny: definitely see a piece there, especially with combining of talents.

There's a tool I was playing around with recently. It really is just kind of a really just prompts for a series of prompts. So you can type in something like, um, I need a 6 month exercise plan. And it'll come back actually with like eight different responses saying from a psychologist standpoint, here's some things that you might want to change your viewpoints or do some things to kind of modify your behavior.

From a personal trainer standpoint, here's a good workout routine that you should start with. And then here's an orthopedic specialist saying about like, let's Consider low impact activities like swimming versus high impact activities like running on asphalt. And it basically gave you all these other expert opinions and trying to basically act as these different experts and trying to give you those different ideas so that you get a more well rounded response back instead of just saying, go start running.

Maybe that's not right. Maybe it's, you know, your dietary habits. Maybe it's your views on what do you think about working out and exercising and stuff. So, I mean, where is it really coming from and the information that's able to pull from and, you know, those are pretty high level generic questions. I'm sure once we get to something much more specific, you'd have to have a greater AI and better expertise, better training data, basically behind it.

Um, I could definitely see that as reality. That's a really, that's a really fascinating idea too. I mean, just. Thinking about even in that particular situation, how many different specialties would have a different opinion and how unlikely they are to be in the same room.

Dave Dougherty: That's cool. Dave? Underlying that though, and I guess this is my initial thought on that. Um, you have to have so much trust in the output of the AI for that to be the case. So I know we're early days still. And you know, the fact that there've been a lot of hallucinations on, you know, it's making up sources, it's making up, uh, articles within those sources, or even authors that have never existed that have written in these reputable things.

Um, if you don't actually go and fact check the output. Or if we don't get it to a point where it's been shown to be accurate enough, I worry about how people are going to use that. Right? And maybe it doesn't have to be 100% factually accurate. You know, if you're using it for a brainstorm, great. Um, but I guess I just personally, um, I know I have the reputation as the negative one, but, um.

I just, I, the way people use technology, especially in the internet and the, you know, rules that we have for our job, it's always the get rich quick, the this is good enough, I'm just going to publish it to be first rather than, you know, doing something thoughtful and nice with it.

That was an immediate thought, please push back.

Alex Pokorny: We're talking kind of like near term current state. If you look at like the Pew research of people who have heard of ChadGBT and those who have played around with it. If you look at those who have played around with it, it's like 12% of U. S. adults. There's a like 10, 000 person survey, which if you think of like early adopters, that's 14%.

So, you know, crossing the chasm that could get to that, you know, later stage, mass adoption. We're not there yet. We're very, very much in that early adoption stage. And you're right that, I mean, the way I think of generative AI, and it's just the last couple of weeks, I started thinking of it this way. It's it's a blank page killer.

You need a picture. You need a starting point. You need a blog post. It's a blank page killer. It starts you, but it doesn't finish it. And to trust the output as being finished is incorrect. And then past that, I know you've been taking a lot of these courses and far beyond the ones that I've taken. But the free courses from Google about algorithms and generative AI, they have, I think it's a series of nine free courses, most of them are 20 long, great explanations, the little quiz at the end, you kind of move on.

And one of the main things that that's really taught me has been how large language models are not meant for all these other uses that we're starting to see news articles about. Like there was a professor who was trying to use it to check whether or not it had created this student's paper. That's not what it's meant for.

It doesn't have a database of recall. It's not meant to do fact checking. It's not meant to, it's not built like that. And the misuse due to this Oracle of truth kind of belief about it is something that needs to be brought down. And I hate to always be kind of like a hype killer, but there's so much hype going on right now, but like most.

And picture industry is going to go away because we have AI that can produce a minute and a half of video. It's like, yeah, I'm sure Disney is going to give up the intellectual property rights of Marvel sometimes seems to anybody can make their own movie trailer, I guess, like, there's. There is a lot of hype out there, but where this goes, I think it's going to be one of the most unique points.

And I think if we start kind of framing our reference a little bit further in the future, so let's say these tools are kind of built in across the board. You know, we've talked about Microsoft Copilot. It's going to be built into things. Google has theirs that's going to be built into sheets and Google Slides, their PowerPoint version and the rest.

So that technology is kind of being inserted into the normal workday life. And is also starting to produce reasonable amounts of code. And those who are early adopters are not surprisingly developers and people who are copywriters, you know, those who are basically closely attached to these fields that are being affected.

So if we put ourselves a little bit further down the line and we start seeing AI in everything, does your opinion change on that? Do you think people are going to act differently with it? Do you think we should act differently with it?

Dave Dougherty: I think like a lot of tech tools. You know, you go through the hype cycle, you know, Google Glass is going to be a game changer. Uh, no, no, people are very stuck in there and stuck in their ways. Right. And I think you, for us being in a technology, um, sector of, you know, businesses and, and our jobs are that way.

It makes sense that we're the early adopters, right. And then we're trying to figure it out and, and have an opinion on it and do that. But. But you know, like when I was in bands, I would always say like, you know, don't just do the crazy progressive jazz stuff because the average listener doesn't want to listen to that.

Right? Like you're, you're targeting only musicians if you're playing that kind of stuff. And I like a lot of that stuff, but that's me because I'm into that. But think about the mom driving the kids to work and that's like the 30 minutes where she can, you know, blast whatever. You know, music, she feels good because the kids are in daycare, you know, like what kind of music is that that's who you, you know, find your general audience and do that.

I don't see a similar person like the grocery, grocery store cashier. Doing much with, um, chat GPT, unless it's baked into like the search engine, where it's like, they become used to it because that's an obvious place that they experience it. But do they know enough to actually push back? I don't know. Um, and I think for me with what's, what's going on, um, we're seeing the limitations of AI even, what is it now?

Seven months out from when it. You know, when it hit, um, I do think that it has automated a lot of tasks and that's great, but humans won't be replaced by it because humans are the ones that will make those connections between those disparate things, right? We've had such a focus on, um, you know, stem and our education fields that.

Many of those things and those tasks that we've been, you know, training, um, training people to, to go forward and view the world through a lot of that is handled through AI. So if we do the humanities and the arts and, and teach people how to think and how to critically evaluate things, understand implications of, of choices, um, Then AI can handle a lot of the execution and then I think we're fine.

Um, yeah, yeah. I'll stop alleviating.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah. Ruthie, do you want to just have some questions too, but. Now you go,

Ruthi Corcoran: I've got related thoughts, but it'll move us in a new direction. So go.

Alex Pokorny: Sure. Yeah. I was just trying to get outside of generative AI for a moment. Even if you think about speaking to the grocery cashier, they type in a code for bananas and it's scale weighs it.

And that's what you're charged. Why do they know that code? Why can't it be optical character recognition? You know, computer vision, basically have a scanner. You put the bananas underneath of it. It scans it and knows it can classify it as a banana. Those codes are gone. Now it's far easier to use the self checkout version as well.

I mean, you start to remove that role. Okay, what does that person do now? Like, what's their new job? And what could they do that AI can't?

Dave Dougherty: Identify a plantain versus a banana.

Alex Pokorny: Create the training data.

Dave Dougherty: So many people struggle with that already. Let alone with the AIs.

Ruthi Corcoran: I think that's one area where AIs will be better than humans putting that stake in the ground.

Alex Pokorny: Classifier machine learning. Yeah. There's a fantastic author that I'm a fan of. He's just a, he's a futurist and he created a pretty well known book, at least in the military called Ghost Fleet. And it was talking about the future of naval warfare and actually It was maybe kicked off a whole project called Ghost Fleet just to respond to it basically because they believe he's fairly correct in how things are going to play out.

Um, but he has a book out there called Burn In and I was looking that up quickly and it's chock full of sources. I mean every page has got like a dozen on it so it takes forever to read the book if you want to just go into all the sources. Um, But he was basically trying to create a fictional book and it's about this FBI agent going after this person and all the rest.

And basically, what's the world going to look like in this future? And he's got all these citations and sources of where he's kind of combining them all together to create this, this future look. And it was actually kind of fascinating because there's one point is, uh, the FBI agent's husband, uh, he's a former lawyer.

Who can't get employed anymore because AI is better at his job than he is. Um, so he's got this headset on all day, very Google Glass esque, um, and he's commonly doing like Mechanical Turk from Amazon training data, basic stuff all day long, because that's how he makes money now versus being a lawyer. So your Google Glass might get brought up again because you need someone just to create that training data of plantains versus bananas.

Who knows? Ruthie, do you have some related ones? Yeah,

Ruthi Corcoran: I think, right, we're in for a lot of change and predicting the future is hard, but I'm, you know, I tend to be a bit more optimistic, you know, I think I, I'm pretty sure I've quoted this on the podcast before, but Virgil a blow quote, I think what makes room for large opportunities.

There's new space for new dialogue. And I think, again, this is one of those scenarios. The advent of these new tech of these new technologies, or rather the advancements of these technologies that have been sort of in progress for a long time. It's sort of a big deal. And it's opening up new ways of interacting.

It's opening up new exposure to different ideas and different ways of thinkings. I think of all those mashups of like, you know. Uh, explain the constitution using Shakespearean language or various things like that, right? Different mashups that, you know, maybe we wouldn't do before because of the time it would take, but LLMs are able to do it very quickly.

That type of thing is exposure to a lot of new ideas and it's new ideas that spur on growth and, and inventions and problem solving. And so I think Well, I can see certainly that there are likely or potential pitfalls with this technology and things we're going to run into. I think that the opportunity for problem solving is so vast that.

We're going to overcome them and, or we're going to find new problems to have to solve. I think, I think at this point, we're still so early. It's a little hard to see what exactly are going to be the downfalls or, or the real problems. And so I just say like, let's let us, keep, keep engaging, keep. You know, figuring out Oh, what couldn't I do?

How can I work with these different barred? How can I work with chat GPT? What different things can I do now that I couldn't do yesterday? And really leaning into those because some of the problems may solve themselves and some of the problems that matter. We can't even see yet. And so I guess I just don't I can't worry about those as

Alex Pokorny: much.

Right? I'm not from the future.

Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Yeah, I'm just, I'm not trying to be negative to be a jerk. I think my experience in crisis communications automatically makes me go, Oh, it could blow up this way. This is how we need to cover for that, right? It's just, it's just a habit because of that. Um, it can be useful, but it can also get in the way, right?

Um, I am, you know, we talk about the, some of the positive things I have to agree with, um, you know, Robert Rose and a point that he brought up on, um, one of the more recent, uh, this old marketing episodes, and I'll put a link in the show notes where he's, He said he's more interested in, like, the Alex Bikorni LLM, the, you know, Ruthie LLM, and really training the data to go in your voice, using your sources, um, Using, you know, your examples, uh, and all the documents that you've created for your particular thing, that is more interesting, right?

Um, I am more interested in that because then it's, then it's an enabler of, I have something to say, I want to be able to get it out. This will help me get it out more quickly. To your point, Alex, with, you know, the blank page killer for a lot of people, that is a, that is a hurdle. Um, you know, for me, one way I get around that is I've found, um, starting a camp because I'm so used to doing video meetings now, just starting the camera and hitting record and talking is a really good first draft.

Right. Cause you have the AIs that will just transcribe it for you. It gets you like 90% of the way there. And then you can go through the process of, Oh my God, I sound like that. And then you edit yourself. Um, that's been a really nice way of doing that. Um, and then you have it. For, you know, content repurposing too, if it's good enough that you'd want to, you know, put it out there, right?

Cause you could do the tick tock videos based on your recording or, or whatever else. Um, the, the one thing that is assumed there, and we've talked about this before, but it, I think it worth is worth saying again, we talk about all the productivity piece. Like we can do more social posts, we can do more blogs, we can do more emails.

We can do more, more, more, more, more, more, more. That's assuming you have something to say. If you don't know your opinion on a particular topic, or you don't know that you have a particular skill set or you're not confident enough to share your perspective on a given topic, then the tool is lost on you.

Right? Because the only way that those tools work for you and benefit you in those ways is if you are comfortable enough in your own ideas to be able to put them out in the world and put up with all the BS you get on Twitter for sharing your ideas. Hmm.

Ruthi Corcoran: Maybe disagree. And here's why, if, if these, this branch of tools is just about productivity and getting your voice out and creating lots of stuff and putting it out in the world, then yes, agreed.

I think there's another avenue in which these tools are helpful. And this kind of goes back to my initial comments is maybe they're good for helping you refine your ideas. Maybe they're good for helping you pressure test your ideas so that if you're not sure, you can go, you know, tell me 3 reasons why this argument is wrong.

Like, that might be a, even if, even if we don't necessarily trust it, you're at least getting exposed to immediate different perspectives to pressure test. I hadn't thought of that until just now.

Alex Pokorny: That's a really interesting idea. So Dave, I've done something similar. I just, I like to walk and talk to work through ideas.

So I have a pair of headphones that have a microphone into them. And then I just basically look like one of the idiots walking around with Bluetooth all the time, talking to themselves. But I look like one of them when I do this admittedly, but I walk around the neighborhood and basically talk to Gmail as a draft.

And it transcribes my thoughts into that, which then I'm able to kind of sit down afterwards after talking for 15 minutes or something like that to read through it again and kind of reevaluate at that point allows me to kind of break down big ideas without kind of whiteboarding it out when I'm just trying to like deal with it, kind of still understanding like the emotional impact of, you know, particular changes or something like that, trying to just work through it.

That helps to kind of talk through it as well. But I really like Ruthie's idea of then. Turning that into basically asking like chat GBT or something else to summarize it for one because my gosh, those things get long and it'd be nice. Um, pull out like the salient bullet points because that'd be nice because a lot of these things do turn eventually into some email to create some action.

And then also, yeah, pressure testing is a really great idea. Like here's three arguments against this crazy new idea of this new direction that I'm thinking about. So. Again, I guess we're kind of running back to the idea of AI as a partner in some areas and AI as a tool in some areas. So AI is a tool as in it's able to transcribe things and kind of give you some arguments, summarization, which is what LLMs are actually meant for.

Um, but then also kind of as a partner to kind of brainstorm with. I'm starting to see a quiet future. We're all going to be stuck in our home offices talking to our AI agents.

I

Ruthi Corcoran: just had that same thought.

Alex Pokorny: We're going to have some coworkers still.

Dave Dougherty: Well, you're going on a walk. You're in good company with your walking strategy.

You know, Immanuel Kant and Charles Dickens did that. Famous for it. They would walk forever and write their drafts in their heads before they would come back and Yeah. So,

Alex Pokorny: I

Ruthi Corcoran: wonder how many times they went, shoot, I don't have a pen. I guess it

Alex Pokorny: was a good idea. I'll think about it a second time and their classics were lost.

Dave Dougherty: Yeah, it's probably where the phrase, it was the best of times, the worst of times came in because he couldn't remember what he wanted to say, but it was a good feeling.

God, no, I do think, you know, I, I kind of limit my thinking at least to, um, well, at least in particular for this show for kind of the marketing perspective of, um, generative AI, I think there, there is a ton of things that could be really cool with, um, manufacturing processes, you know, to your point with the checkouts, um, There's a lot of really cool uses.

Some of the uses that do make me a little scared are what you're hearing. Some people doing with, um, stock picking and chat GPT. Um, why, um, but that just goes to show at least for me that they didn't read the fine print, right? The, the data is two years old. Uh, you um,

maybe, maybe that's a good idea. Who knows? We'll see how their portfolios. Work out. Um,

I don't know. Clearly, it's something that we're thinking about, but, um, Yeah,

Ruthi Corcoran: that's where my mind is going is what is collaboration with other people and AI looks like because a lot to your point. Now, it's a lot of the conversation. And the things we've talked about are how I, I just me can use AI in different ways.

Not how we can use AI. Although, you know, I think about a recent example that the 3 of us did where we're like, okay, we have to submit a proposal. Let's all. To grab 30 minutes time box. It will each use AI or we didn't say this, but we ended up doing it. We'll each use AI to help us respond to the proposal.

We brought it back together and potentially we made a better one than we would have come up with if just one of us had done it or the three of us had slogged it out without the use of AI. So that maybe was a really cool example and bonus. The reason that we are used to doing that is because once upon a time, Alex, you found Article about how Nike does these, does these things about innovation?

Well, we call them innovation hours. I don't remember what they called them. Um, but the basic idea is you have a challenge, everyone in the team goes off and so, you know, comes up with their response to the challenge, then you bring it back as a team, You see which ideas are the best or how you can mash them up and then you move forward and it allows you to do rapid iteration with different perspectives of a team.

And then you add the AI is different perspective and all of a sudden that gets amplified. And that's, that's kind of a cool way of working.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah, that

Dave Dougherty: was

a

Alex Pokorny: fun example. Yeah, I'll give a little longer story on it just because I want to emphasize it for the listeners as well. It's the issue, I think it was back to the future's anniversary or something was coming up.

So they want to do the Marty McFly shoes and they realized that they don't have enough time to go through their usual as a team, create a prototype and then kind of tear it apart and see, you know, what doesn't work and create another prototype and tear it apart. They didn't have that timeline. So they said each individual come up with your best idea.

And then the combination that came back and then said, okay, let's pick the best parts of all of these. And then just run with that, which allowed them to hit that timeline. I, I, I think those are really cool ideas. Um, but again, getting to the point of collaboration is that last piece that I think is always the most important of being in the room together or however together is to talk about what are the best pieces to have the team culture to a point of.

Not everybody's trying to like promote their own idea. Instead, they're really looking for that, the ideal future for the product or for the company or for the team, not for themselves. And to facilitate a meeting like that is actually pretty difficult. I mean, I've tried that with other teams too, and it's hard because especially the first time through, they're not used to working that way.

And. The come back together and let's hash through it feels very personal. Like, we're personally attacking saying like, oh, but we don't like this part of this idea. This is the only good part that while this other person also had the same idea. So let's pull that idea. It's like, they lose credits or those, you know, ego or pride,

Ruthi Corcoran: maybe help in that dimension too.

Because if you're drawing more from. From a brainstorming session you did with your AI, you're less tied because it's not your idea. It's, it's an idea, you know, that came out of, of another interaction.

Dave Dougherty: It would be interesting as a test. If anybody has done this, please email us, uh, let us know. But if you the AI do the transcript, summarize the transcript, pull out the, pull out the points.

As a test there, meanwhile, asking everybody else to, you know, do the kind of user experience survey of, you know, how did you find this brainstorm? What were the, what were your takeaways? See how the different perspectives came from, you know, and how they, they line up and see where you can blend them. That would be, that would be an interesting, really interesting perspective there.

Um, you were, while you were explaining it though, it, for me, that was just the, yes, this is where the humans, um, It's all the intangible pieces, right? It's not just putting out ideas for a brainstorm, um, of similarly related things. It's... Facilitating the workshop, understanding the room, having, creating the culture where people feel comfortable enough to share their ideas without fear, right?

All of these things that the robots can't do, you know, being able to read a room like that, um, or You know, if somebody does start crossing the line into like putting down the idea too much or attacking a little too much, how do you reroute that? How do you, you know, uh, refocus it to actually a productive conversation, all of those soft skills and the intangible pieces.

Can't be done with, with the AI. So that's where, you know, like I said, it's really good for that tactical execution. If you look at all the prompts, I need social media, five social media posts with this tone of voice targeting this audience, and they need to be for these channels. Okay. Yeah. Well, if you have that level of a content brief, sure, go have it executed.

Right? Because you've, you've already had those thoughts, but if you're at ground zero and it's, how do we design the product? How do we promote it? How do we get it out there? What pieces of things do we need that, you know, those are the different, totally different things.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah, as far as there's been that joke kind of going around, there's so many variations now that I swear I've seen a bit, which is the same thing of basically taking in technical requirements of like, oh no, AI can write code.

Yeah, but my gosh, the number of people have said, you know, I need more white space on this page, or this needs to be different. This button needs to be different. Like that is not useful feedback. That is not something you can just pump into an AI and be like, here, give me code that. Make something happen, you know, makes it more clicky or viral or something, like, you know, it's just all these kind of, you know, made up words when people don't have the correct phrase for what they're trying to convey and how they're kind of convey it to a way where it can actually become actionable and that's always the expert in the room who then takes that and says, okay.

What about these ideas? Like, let's push this in a positive kind of actionable direction. Let's get some, you know, tech specs that say, let's make the button. Okay. You want it to be red and a square and larger fonts have to click here, you know, a couple of exclamation points. Is that what you were looking for?

Absolutely. Like there's so much more to it. And yes, then AI can give you the button code, but you have to be pretty darn specific at that point with that.

Dave Dougherty: Well, and as a, as an ad agency alum, uh, like myself, how many of your clients? Had a very specific detailed brief when they came to you,

Alex Pokorny: if they did, we wanted to throw it away, but next to none,

I mean, usually it was, I had some random experience with some random, like, you know, bake sale one. So I made flyers. So now I know how to design web pages and it's like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, you are stretching if you think this is going to play out. Well, how was your, how was your funnel? How's your user path going through this?

No accessibility. No. Oh, okay. We need to change like 95% of this stuff. You like the idea where you pay us. We'll take that 5%. The rest of it. No.

Dave Dougherty: Well, but not only that, you know, like AI is not going to play the office politics for you either. Right. Like, I mean, so you're going to have to double down on the soft skill stuff.

And

Ruthi Corcoran: I wish it would.

Dave Dougherty: Yeah.

Alex Pokorny: Oh, my gosh. Because

Dave Dougherty: one of one of my favorite war stories, I forget if I told this on on this particular podcast or a different one, but I had this one client. He was kind of a jerk. It was a great company, but you know, I mean, he was a nice enough guy when you when he wasn't on a war path towards something and It was clear, like I shut down the, the conversation about what they wanted, how they want to do it.

I said, look, man, it's clear you don't believe in this project. So here's the thing. If you're hiring us just to be the fall guy, then you're going to do it my way. Because then if. If it fails, then, well, that agency sucks, I'm a brilliant guy, I found a new agency, we're going to go with them to execute my vision, right?

If it goes really, really well, then you can go to your boss and say, hey, I was smart enough to hire this agency, look at these results. So, what do you want to do? Because either way, it's going to be my way. And he just had a smirk and I knew I had him and then it ended up being a great relationship after that, you know, but it was just one of those things where it's the like, yeah, you don't know what you want, you're probably being forced to sit into this meeting, which doesn't feel good, so you're just going to stonewall us.

But we're here to do good work, you know, so let us do good work. Um,

Ruthi Corcoran: that good work piece. Okay. So earlier when you guys are talking about pushing out and creating content and things, um, one of the thoughts that came to mind is, you know, the speed of, of information and dialogue is going to be increasing because everybody can create things so quickly.

Um, and I think maybe another, another thing that goes along with that speed. Is because you have a faster speed to market potentially in new content and new ideas, maybe new inventions, new products, because now all of a sudden you have this, this set of tools which amplifies. Let's just say it could amplify creativity through any number of means, whether that's production, or that's the input process.

It sort of amplifies it. Maybe another thing you have is a crowding out of the organizations or processes that slow down. Speed to market

that could be that could be another shift that comes is just things move so much faster now because the tools enable it to go faster. And so, in order to keep up, some of the old ways will sort of

Alex Pokorny: go away like the idea of, like. You know, being listed in the local phone book and having flyers around versus being on the internet and how many people are you reaching now?

And that was one of the main things that kind of really pulled small businesses online was the idea that you can reach this much larger audience that you're already trying to reach, but you're doing it through kind of ineffective means.

Dave Dougherty: As I've been trying to make sense of. Um, marketing, you know, generative AI for, you know, marketing things. One of the things that I immediately thought of was what, um, what pop music has become, and I feel like, you know, the music industry has been like 10, 15 years ahead of a lot of places, um, just in terms of technological, technological disruption, um, adapting to new forms of distribution, uh, and, and the fallouts from that, but.

It hit me while I was, you know, listening to my, my little, like, you know, workout mix. The rise of EDM totally coincides with, um, not being able to afford bands anymore, or not having that kind of like R& D for, um, For that more traditional stuff. So if you look at what pop music is or, or EDM, you have a lot of those electronic beats that could be a single producer creating the, the kind of framework around the song.

And then they go pitch that to the artist that they, um, That they want to sing on top of it, or, you know, maybe they got contracted specifically because of their reputation to write a song for, uh, a new album coming out. Um, and all of the technology is amazing and unlocking that creativity is amazing. Um, and certain producers definitely have a certain sound, so you can, you know, differentiate between them just because of their approach and, and everything else.

But, um, Go put on, you know, the pop music radio stuff and see how many real in the quote unquote, real instruments are playing. It's not many, it's not many at all, you know, so it is distilled down to the very elements that are needed for a successful song. You have the lyrics, you have the artist that is a marketable asset, and you have.

a really danceable beat. That's about it. Everything else becomes this sort of niche genre, artisanal creation, you know? So if you're, you know, if you're not into the pop stuff, then, you know, you could go to your, your local jazz guys, but you have to go seek it out, right? You have to go find those little pockets of, you know, who's still doing the stuff that you want to listen to.

Um, so I'll be interested to see how. Kind of that model, if that plays out in in our world, or if that is, um, is untrue. We'll see.

Ruthi Corcoran: Yeah, the example that.

Alex Pokorny: No, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Ruthi Corcoran: The example that comes to mind when you talk about that is, um, what Ryan Reynolds is doing in the marketing space he is. Essentially buying, you know, decent products. I imagine they're good products, but then putting his marketing spin on them and then selling them off for big bucks and what he's sort of recognized.

It seems like, and he spoke at the adobe summit. This I think last year or something traditional companies, the big guys, the enterprise, maybe even medium size, right? They might do their marketing planning for an entire year and it takes forever to produce any sort of. Content be that video, a web page, anything right there is sort of, it takes a long, long time and here he comes in, turns over a video that's relevant in 24 hours and then is out because the technology enables it.

So you can get something on YouTube immediately. You put it out on Twitter, you hit the moment and then you're done. That's all right. You're hitting that moment. And I think that that was the example that came to mind as you were describing the, um, The phenomena in pop music, it's not the same phenomena, but it's sort of a similar situation in which the technology and the speed to market shifts the way in which, um, the content is created in the output of it.

Alex Pokorny: The collaboration aspect of it to, um, from being AI history, just because it's kind of a fun story of talking through like. how this is going to play out. And I think a lot about like, you know, CD sales, mp3 sales, Napster, kind of where a very old fashioned music industry had to pivot and change. And eventually now kind of has, it was streaming music.

Um, but I was just thinking about like, there's a couple of AI songs that have been out there. There was Drake and The Weekend, which was completely AI driven. Neither artist, you know, proved that, um, And some of the responses to it, and there's 3 that I just wanted to highlight because there's 1st 1, I think it was Grimes was the 1st where she came out saying I support it as long as I get a 50% cut of compensation, because that's what I do with all my collaboration collaborations with other artists anyways.

So feel free to use my, um. Sound and my lyrics and everything else, but I want my collaborative cut. And I was like that, but from a business standpoint, very smart. Plus she wants to be able to, she mentioned about kind of owning some rights over it as well, in terms of not making her say things that she doesn't believe in and some elements of her brand, but then there's two others.

So I think she was the first, I want to give her credit there. Um, there was universal music group. Who says AI music is a fraud and that eventually they will be on the right side of history. Which I don't think anyone who has ever said the word eventually, we will be on the right. People will see us in the right side of history has ever been right.

I think they've always been proven wrong. And that's 1 of the dumbest statements to ever make to say that history will prove us right. Oh, good, good God. No, no, don't ever try that statement. And then Warner music comes out in the opposite way saying that framing as a threat is a stupid idea. Instead, we need to embrace it.

And that they started talking about the same kind of idea of a 50% compensation model and basically how to make that work. So small artist and then two big brands, one definitely trying to play an old school message of refusing the change. The other one trying to play along with the idea of, okay, let's embrace this, but also let's make sure we, you know, Get our cut out of it as well.

So I don't know, I keep thinking back to like the Napster days of how music companies refused to change. And I think of streaming, um, Netflix and or the top television and how that's changing to a cord cutting and how those companies have been so resistant. And these shifts have been sometimes, I mean, they're clawing, trying to claw their way back into the past.

So we're kind of pushing things into the future

Ruthi Corcoran: and I love this, this statement about, like, this is just a, this is a variation on a collaboration and that I think is a really good direction in which to think. And it's something that Dave, you've sort of introduced me to over the years of, like, 1 of the ways.

That musicians are thriving and sort of building their businesses now is through collaboration by being producers by, you know, I don't being featured on another. I don't know the language. Right. But, you know, featuring Rihanna or whatever it is, like, that's the way you have ideas and businesses and proliferate.

And that seems like a positive direction to take this.

Dave Dougherty: I think the best example of the collaboration stuff, uh, is Sir Elton John, actually. Because he has a role that he says yes to almost anybody who says they want to collaborate with him. Which is why he's been on country records, singer songwriter things, Lil Nas X, um, Queens of the Stone Age.

Um, who else? Oh, he was with Ozzy on a recent record. Um, and you get these really cool, unique settings where they're definitely one off things, but it's a way for him to continue to do what he likes to do without having to produce a whole new record and go tour for three years and, you know, still enjoy the process and the creative process while, um,

Ruthi Corcoran: yeah.

I mean, the Lockdown album was fantastic. Right there. And he was in the Kingsman. I mean, why would you, I mean, if you just say yes, and you end up in movies like that, I mean, why not? Okay, the second one wasn't as good,

Alex Pokorny: but.

Dave Dougherty: And nobody looks better in sequence, let's be honest. That's right.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah, I've had an analogy of AI of. It's a raging bull. You can throw a lasso on it and you will be dragged in the dirt. So that's a dumb idea. You can't slow it down. If you try to ride on top, it's going to be bumpy as heck. So trying to stay on top of it is difficult, but if you get far enough ahead of it, then you have a nice time.

And that's what I always keep thinking of is. Where are they in this basically three stages? Are they trying to dig their heels in, but failing and getting dragged through the dirt as a result? Are they just trying to stay just on top, which is a rather precarious position, or are they trying to put themselves ahead of it and see it as a threat, see it as a benefit, see it as whatever you want.

But I keep trying to like frame companies of. Pick one of the three. What are you trying to do here?

Dave Dougherty: Cue Rage Against the Machine Bulls on Parade, which we will not be playing because we don't have money for licensing.

Ruthi Corcoran: Google it.

Alex Pokorny: Um,

Dave Dougherty: yeah, perfect. All right. Well, thank you everybody. Clearly we're continuing to wrestle with this. Let us know what you think. What are your thoughts on this? Where have you fallen on that? Um, email link is in the show notes. Uh, links to our socials are, are there as well. So hit us up. Uh, there and, um, you know, like, subscribe, help the, help the show out.

Uh, so we can get more ideas, more voices and take care and we will see you in the next episode.