← The Futur with Chris Do
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- [00:00]
A
If you're not using AI to augment, to implement, or to help you do what you do, I think you're putting yourself at a severe disadvantage. I know there are a lot of concerns about ethical models and it being trained. Please don't let this be the thing that holds you back. There are ethical models out there. There are things that you can use it for that don't cross into that territory if that's one of your biggest concerns. But on behalf of the people who work for you, work with you, and the people that are in your charge in both personal and professional life, you owe it to yourself to use the best tools available to you to do more of what you do, to do it in less time, and to do it better. That's my perspective on it. I think Jodi's with me on this for sure.
- [00:41]
B
This is a game and we just, we all have to play it. What we are talking about is how should creatives be using AI? And maybe a more philosophical way of wording that is how should creatives be thinking about using AI? Because I guess that this isn't going to be a how to use AI in five simple steps. We are going to go deep on something. And I think this is, this is so unbelievably topical. It feels like everyone's talking about it. It feels like everyone's using AI. But I'm also aware that we're in this massive bubble where lots of people actually aren't. But also I keep hitting the same polarized views, which is either people are really excited about it, they're trying stuff out, they're seeing what they can create, or they're just terrified. And I don't know if you've hit the same thing, but would love to know your thoughts on this. And I feel like there's so much to talk about.
- [01:40]
A
Okay, I made a list here of things. I think this is a high level conversation. Everybody. This is not a tutorial. How to tactical like abc. Open up this application. DM me the word for my chatbot or whatever it is. It's not that kind of conversation. I think first thing we need to do is just acknowledge the fact that AI is just moving at a terrifically or terrifying pace. That things that were laughable are no longer. No one's laughing anymore. It can do so much for us, from words to music to visuals to video and the creative, especially if you're in the middle tier, there's this thing, it's like the inverse bell curve, right? So if we look at the bell and we make it upside down. There's room for people at the bottom, there's room for people at the top. And this goes across industries in that middle area. The big bottom part of that inverted bell is like where people go to get slaughtered. So if you're the biggest, best, most profitable car company in the world, you're going to be just fine. If you're like the cheap auto manufacturer that can make cars in the masses and just make a little bit of profit on each car, no problem. It's ones in the middle that don't really stand out, that get slaughtered. And you can look at every single category and start to see this. Luxury brands are doing okay. They're starting to struggle now. And fast fashion is doing okay. Maybe they're starting to struggle too for different reasons. But the ones in the middle, like who are they? What's happened to them? They seemingly are going out of business or filing for bankruptcy all the time. So when you talk about creative people, the legends like the Michael Bay roots, the Paula shares of the world, the Brian Collins, other big name brand designers that are out there, they're going to get the lion's share of the good, profitable work, the high profile work. And then there's a lot of people, unfortunately at the very bottom end of this, the people are working on these platforms, these exchange platforms, where it's a brokerage for creative talent. And I use those words very with tongue in cheek. It's not really doing you any favors. It's a marketplace for work to get done at a very low rate, lowest common denominator kind of thing. I think you get work there too. It's the stuff in the middle, the ones who have a three to four, maybe five person agency or design studio and you're starting to feel it, and you've been feeling it for some time. This is before even AI. And if you're in that space, this is where you need to start to figure out what are we going to do? Do we retreat to being an hourly paid freelancer kind of organization? Do we try to incorporate or be acquired by other companies much bigger than us and that's a survival strategy. Or maybe there's a hybrid third option, which is how do we leverage AI tools, thinking structure, strategies so that we can operate at a much higher level, like we're one of the big dogs while maintaining lower costs and margins for ourselves? That's the sweet spot and I think that's where I want to focus today. What's your take on this, Jodi?
- [04:29]
B
I love the Idea that things are polarized. I think there's kind of another angle to this which is also along on the polarity thinking. And that's. I feel like. Well, I mainly work with coaches and so when I'm talking to them, I'm like, how do we figure out how to use AI? And I'm like, there's two ways you can go. You can use AI to do less, make exactly the same amount of impact, money, everything else, and do less. I spend less time doing it. So you can go and train, travel, all the other stuff that just makes us more human, or use it to do more, like probably in the same time. So use it to outproduce everyone else, but don't necessarily work more. I feel like the third option is like, do nothing and complain about it, which is the one that no one should take. But I feel like it's almost right across roads and you can decide whether you want to work more or whether you want to work less or if you're optimizing for impact or money or whatever else. But I feel like the main thing is deciding the strategy and then sticking to it. Like with the creative agencies, if you're at the top or the bottom, just don't be in the middle.
- [05:36]
A
I think there might be a third option. So work less. You could use AI to work fewer hours, enjoy a higher quality of life, and that's fantastic. I think that's what most of us want. You could use AI to make more, like, to be more productive, to output way more than what your physical capacity could be. And that's a fantastic option too. Theoretically, then you'll make more money and hopefully you can buy back your time with that money. There's a third option there which is to do better, because we are assuming that AI only does the boring stuff, but actually can help you to do better work. And I've seen this myself and I'd love to talk about that as well. So those are your options. And the last option is do nothing, head in the sand, la la la la, and forget about it. And this should be a cautionary tale for everybody. The future always wins. It's undefeated. So don't fight the future, everyone. It's happening whether you like it or not. Unless you're in bodies of government and legislation and you can actually do something about this, then. Otherwise, I think we have to learn to adapt while we're waiting for a better alternative. One radical idea I've proposed, which may sound a little bit like socialist to me or to others, is that Governments tax AI companies heavily because of the massive job displacement and use that to create some kind of universal basic income for folks. And nothing that you're going to live like a fat cat. But just to soften the edges a little bit, because the amount of money that they can make and generate with the resources they're using. I had heard a stat about AI using already 10% of the world's power or electricity already. So can you just imagine where this is going to go in the next couple of years? And so those are resources that should be shared by all of humanity, not just by a few who are going to profit from this. So that's an idea as well.
- [07:15]
B
I think there's also a side of just, I guess, falling in love with this whole new skill. We talk a bit about the who move my cheese thing, as in, you're always like, okay, where's my cheese? How do I make money? All I want to do is just find this one channel that works again and again. I can rely on. AI is like the ultimate cheese moving maneuver. Even the people who are pretty well versed in finding the next cheese are actually not good at finding this next cheese because kind of no one is. I mean, most people think that like ChatGPT invented AI two years ago, which isn't the case. But that's definitely. That was almost the first real, accessible, popularized, everyone's talking it about it type movement. But I think partly how I think about this is I used to have a social media agency that started in 2011 when social media wasn't really a thing, and then built it and very much systemized it, but kind of started off like on the ground, working on client work, doing the stuff. And then I felt like at each stage you have this new skill to fall in love with. And first it was, okay, I want to love hiring people. And then it was like, I want to love managing people. And then it was, I want to love putting systems in place. And then it was, I want to love coaching people. And then it was, I want to love selling the business. And then it was like, I want to love not having an agency. And it's like you kind of, you go through these stages, almost progressing your role as a founder as like a creative business founder. And so now I feel like this is just the same thing. So maybe once I like. I mean, I still love writing and I still love lots of the creative side of my work, but I like the idea that now I have this creative copilot and then I also have this creative Automation partner. And then that goes up as well, because I, I feel like as a, as like founders, we don't always get that job progression that all of our team have because everyone comes to work for you, you have an idea for what their year's going to look like, and they're three years and they're five years. But this is ours. I think Moving with the times is our version of career progress. And I quite like framing it as a. Okay, cool. This is my first pandemic. This is my first AI era. This is my first this. And then moving with it and enjoying it.
- [09:31]
A
So before our conversation today, I made a list of, let's see here, six things that I think you should contemplate and how you can incorporate AI into your workflow. Okay. And to each one of these, take it with a grain of salt. This is just my one person's opinion here. Of course, you can use AI to research. You can use it to read and reference and summarize things for you at a scale in which we've never seen before. And you can also tailor the summaries to the way that you like to consume bullet points. Long, deep, in depth words, quoting things, citing references, and things of that nature. It's a great research partner. So if you're hearing this, then the people who previously held that title in terms of a job, you should be alarmed a little bit because it can outwork you in every dimension that you can think possible. Now, how do you combat this? As a researcher, you should incorporate AI into your workflow so that you can be the person who directs the robot to find the things. With your vast knowledge of where the. Where credible sources of information come from, you can direct it towards those things and you can do some fact checking, because every once in a while, the machine has a tendency to hallucinate. It can give you false data and present it to you in a very credible way so you believe it to be true. And this is not anything different from the previous generation of Internet innovations in that if you search or Google something, you should not assume it to be true. You need to cross reference things. And there's always that, like, I wonder if this is true. Just look at the comments. The comments will tell you a lot of times, no, this is totally bunk. This is some reference material that's already been vetted and proven to be false or misinterpreted, and you need to do a bit of that. So research is one of them. So that's number one. Jodi, did you want to say something about that, before I move down the.
- [11:18]
B
List, this is where your point about using it to be better comes in. And I feel like with research especially, the job is now not be the best researcher. The job is put the best prompts in in order to get out the best research so that you go deeper and get better stuff. And so the art of that task has just changed.
- [11:36]
A
I think the analog that I'll make for people is people who are really good at AI need to think like teachers. You give out an assignment, you have to check the homework. You kind of just read it through and think, okay, is this right? Is this what I was looking for? And I think if you can do that, and not everybody can do that, by the way, it still requires a level of understanding, cognitive skills, ability to think critically and to know your history, whatever field that you're talking about, so that you can reference the right artist, architect, philosopher, musician, source of research, whatever it is. I think that's very important to you, for you to have that sense of history, what's come before. Okay, number two is to prototype to get the ugly first draft. And I'm going to use the word prototype very deliberately here because it can mean anything. It could be to prototype an app, an interface, a visual, a video so you can create an animatic or rough edit with video footage that doesn't exist, so that you can get your clients to prove it. Then you can go and shoot exactly what it is that you want while applying your art and craft to the thing that you're making. It can refer to just pieces of writing. The worst thing for any artist is to stare at a blank page or a blank screen and not know where to start. And oftentimes if I'm stuck, I just get the machine to start that first part and get me a little momentum, that little push behind my back so I can start to move. Because that's the hardest part, right? I had heard that a fighter jet dumps 90% of its fuel on takeoff. So it's a lot of energy to get off the ground. And if you think about that, that's why a lot of people, creative people, are stuck. Because, oh, I don't. Today's not the day. And I don't know that's not going to be good. And I don't have a clear idea yet. I don't know if this is going to work out well. You can use the machine to help you generate that ugly first draft, and it could be a hot pile of garbage. It really could. But it could be the thing that stimulates you to, like, you know what, now that I'm seeing this, I know how to improve this. This is not what I want. I want this. And then you can go out and make that. So the ugly first draft and being able to prototype at a speed in which we could not do before, at a price which is in the realm of almost every single person, because most of these AI engines are very affordable. What are your thoughts, Jodi?
- [13:50]
B
I feel like when you get the ugly first draft and it's uglier than you thought it was going to be, the wrong thing to do is to click regenerate. Basically, just assume that the problem is the machine. I think it's always about pointing the finger back at yourself and saying, how did I give the instructions that then created this Ugly, ugly, ugly times 10, first draft, and then is going back to treating it like a helpful intern, a helpful research assistant. If they came back and presented some work that wasn't up to scratch, you wouldn't just hit them on the head and say, regenerate. Or you might, depending on what kind of workplace you are in. But the idea is you go, no, hang on, I am the problem. How could I have instructed them better? How could I have done this book, done this, like, in a better way? I also think that even if you are getting off the ground, you can still borrow prompts, you can still borrow other ideas and ways of getting that first track off the ground, because there will probably be a better way of doing that. And then I also quite like the idea that you don't have to just think of AI tools and large language models as just the things that create the stuff. They could also rev you up to create the stuff. So if you open chatgpt, hit go on the microphone, and just gave a stream of consciousness as to how you're feeling, why you feel you've got writer's block, why you feel like you just can't be creative today, all the reasons that you feel like today is not the day that you can create. You will get a pep talk to the head and create, and it will invite you to give the instructions. So it can almost give you the motivation as well, which is just kind of magic, because we previously would have had to rely on friends, family, coaches to do that. And now we can get a bit further to being in a better state of mind for creating our best work.
- [15:37]
A
Excellent. You just helped me to add another thing to my list, which I'll get into in a little bit. Let's talk about the thing that I think most people don't object to, which is production. A lot of people are anti AI, but what you don't realize is you. You're already using AI in one form or the other. I wasn't sure. Predictive text or like how you type in something and it fills it in for you, like it knows. I thought that was mostly algorithmic, not AI based. But then I asked AI if it was, and it says it is a form of AI. I'm like, okay, so I use Photoshop a lot. One of the most painful things in Photoshop or After Effects is to rotoscope something to cut something out. And if you are looking at an image that is not a clean silhouette, it can be very daunting. Or if you were trying to cut out the bicycle wheel with all the spokes in it, oh, my God. The level of masking and painting that you'd have to do to get that out, especially with all the reflections, could take up hours of your day. And that's hours away from doing something creative. And here's the worst part, and I've done this many times myself, I cut something out. Took me an hour and a half, and then I use the element, and only to realize that the element's not going to work. Oh, how frustrating is that? So the beautiful part of AI is in Photoshop, this remove background or generative fill or generative expand is actually a huge time saver. So if there's a patch in a shirt that I need to match, there's a lot of copy pasting, meshing, warp, relighting, color correction that has to go on for it to look seamless. Now I paint a square over it and it's a Jen fill this. I don't even have to give it a prompt. It knows contextually, maybe with the millions of requests that have been made before, what you're supposed to do there now, in the world of motion design, rotoscoping was a skill that was done by humans. If you think about the early Lord of the Rings or something like that, there were people who were paid to sit there and draw a mass and cut out things frame at a time. So when we're talking About Films, it's 24 frames per second. If you look at a minute's worth of footage, that is a lot of human labor, cutting this stuff out. As the time has progressed, the tools have gotten a little bit better, but they're still largely a manual process. Now, Adobe, among other creators, have created intelligent rotoscoping so that you can just go and refine certain parts. Maybe it's not 1000% perfect, maybe it's not as good as a human can do it, but a human can go in and put the finishing touches and just fix parts of it versus painting every part by hand. What a pain in the butt that is. So we don't think that this is a creative endeavor. It is something that's necessary. It does require an eye and skill and craft to do it. But it's not necessarily artistic. It's either right or it's wrong. Things that are that binary tend not to be so artistic on that scale. So if you're the rotoscope or you're kind of hosed on this one, where I think then maybe you start to develop the next generation rotoscoping tools and, and think about maybe how else you can make yourself useful. Maybe you develop tools that replace yourself and then you sell those tools, or you coach and teach teams on how to use these tools to replace you. So there's always opportunities in there. Maybe it's not exactly what you used to do before, but it can be related. So production wise, I think those are fantastic things. There's other things inside of Creative Cloud, inside of Photoshop that allow you to color match things. And now you can generate vectors and things that would take you a really long time to draw and can be done really quickly.
- [19:03]
B
I love how this all can relate to quantity. You've seen Mad Men where Don Draper's there, he's got his one big idea and he's going to present it to the client and he's going to say, this is my one idea and it's going to be there on like an easel. But now you take that exact same time that you would have spent creating that one idea and you create 10 ideas. And then you say, here are the 10 ideas. And the client knows that you've used AI in it because they expect you to use AI in it because it would be crazy that you if you didn't use the tools. But now you've got 10 ideas. So it's either, okay, great, we've got 10 campaigns, or it's a discussion around what they like more or what they don't like. And it's a lot less likely that they're going to say, no, I hate it. Start from scratch, because now you've got a discussion going. I also feel like I time track in my calendar retrospectively. So when I've spent like a, like two hours of doing work, I'll Write down exactly what I did in those two hours. And I really like the idea of going back and looking at all the stuff I did in the past and looking at what could AI do, like 85% of right now? And then thinking, well, how can I repurpose that time going forward? And I think for me, it's all about the quantity game and then putting out more stuff that the bar is still high on it because it's still your repurposing and doing more with, but then putting more out, iterating faster, learning faster, failing faster, and tending towards this, this perfection or this really amazing art because you've got the data behind it. Not necessarily just a feeling. I just love how it links to quantity.
- [20:38]
A
And if you hate AI, then go ahead and start rotoscoping things by hand. Start color correcting and building mesh patches and mesh warping everything. And in fact, this is the thing that I kind of try and get people to face. Most of us use tools that we grew up with, and we don't even think about the tools anymore as a form of cheating. But every generation before you will tell you that that is cheating. Because before there was desktop publishing, there was photo typesetting, and before photo typesetting, there was mechanical typesetting, and before that there was hand lettering or the Gutenberg press or whatever it is that you're talking about. And I remember quite clearly because I came up in the 90s in terms of, like, when I started to get into design. And a lot of the old timers were really confused about the Macintosh and its role. And they would often say it's democratizing design, not in a good way, because now we have a lot of untrained professionals who think that they're designers who are going to displace us and also to water down the market and cheapen our profession and our craft. And to a degree, they did. But ultimately, once the dust settles, the cream rises to the top, and the ones who were good made that transition. In fact, some of the old timers wound up creating digital type boundaries or creating this new aesthetic in the digital age of desktop publishing, doing things that you could not do previously. I'll give you one example. The ability to overlay type on top of itself was not something that was easy to do before, because when you dealt with lead type, which is mechanically set in blocks of wood and metal, you can't overlap the type because there's a physical space, a limitation which taught you a lot about spacing and proportion and things like that, which was really good when you're holding a piece of type. And the term leading comes from slabs of metal, of lead that spaced out lines of type. So the people who aren't educated about this don't know where that comes from, don't understand it, nor respect it. And they start jamming type together, they start decreasing tracking, they start decreasing leading. So the type jams together, and it creates this new aesthetic, which. Which for a lot of the purists are like, that's garish. That's horrible. But then all of a sudden, it becomes this new wave of design and postmodern punk or whatever it is. I don't know what the term is. And it becomes really interesting to explore or the ability to blur type or to add texture to it. Again, not super easy to do. That didn't require rounds and rounds of conversations with you and the typesetter. Now can be done on the machine. And I think that's another area that we're not talking about, that AI as an artistic tool. So I'm gonna add this to number four. AI has its own aesthetic, which is pretty awesome if you look at it like this new thing versus trying to compare it to the previous thing. I know it was criticized, but the team who designed Secret Invasion, the main title sequence, use AI as its own aesthetic. And it's probably one of the first few main titles to use. And that weird mid journey, squiggly, painterly effect. And people are like, wow, it's terrible. What are you guys doing? But you know what? I applaud them for trying something new. And on the frontier of new things, there are more people holding pitchforks and torches than celebrating you. And I think it's kind of cool with going into it saying this is the intention, that we want to celebrate this aesthetic because it's not human. And maybe thematically it's linked to this idea of Secret Invasion, that there are Skrulls who live among us, who are pretending to be human. And so this artwork itself wasn't made by a human. And so if you look underneath in terms of, like, the deeper meta themes, I thought it was completely appropriate. Now, you could justify anything to anybody. But that seemed to me like it wasn't forcing. It didn't feel contrived. So I applaud people for trying different things. That's how we progress as. As a society and how we progress and invent new art forms. So more power to y' all use the tools. And the music of tomorrow doesn't need to sound like the music of today.
- [24:33]
B
So the part of that I think is kind of interesting, as almost like a side note, is how much is disclosed that you're. Whether you're using AI or you're not using AI, because I love it and all it can do. But the part I don't like is the deception side of things. A couple of months ago, we had someone come through the contact form on CoachVox and they said, hey, so I know you guys create, like, AI versions of people, and I know it says AI at the top, but can it not say AI at the top of my AI? And also, I know that your AIs respond straight away, but can my AI just respond, like on a kind of random interval so it could feasibly be human? And this was a teacher, and so she wanted to train an AI version of her that she then gave to her students that then helped them with their homework and their learning, but she didn't want them to know it was an AI. And I was like, no, we don't do that. This isn't how it works. We're not here to trick people. We're here to help people in your style and your voice. And the deception side of it is something I find so strange because I feel like that when it's done right, can be awesome. And I've commissioned email, like, series before that people have written that they definitely used AI for, because they told me and they said, here's how I'm going to use AI to write this. And when it's like that and everyone knows, cool, great. But I think if it's like the. I can imagine the kind of worst agencies in the world still charging clients the same, still creating the same output, using AI tools for everything and just kind of clocking off early and not doing the stuff. And I feel like they're. And I feel like they're the ones that are in the squeeze middle who are just relying on this deception arbitrage that just will not last forever at all. The earliest instance of this happening was an author whose books I really like. He has a podcast and he started introducing. This must have been about two years ago, but he started introducing, like, AI generated episodes of the podcast on his voice. And I looked. I was. I was kind of. They're quite short episodes, and I was listening to a few, and then I was like, hang on, this is an AI version of his voice. And I looked at the description of the podcast, expecting it to say, oh, hey, this is his team. We're trying something new. Tell us if you like it. But it didn't say any of that. It was just the same as what a normal podcast episode would have. Would have said. And I just. There's something that really doesn't sit right with that for me. The deception side.
- [27:01]
A
We might disagree here.
- [27:03]
B
Yeah. Okay.
- [27:04]
A
So there's this idea of prejudice and bias. So when you read a disclosure AI, a lot of people are going to, no, I'm not interested. It kills engagement immediately. And all kinds of assumptions have been made about you already. So that's one part. And perhaps the teacher wasn't trying to trick her students. Perhaps she was running a test to see how effective this machine can be in answering questions. And she can be monitoring the background because she doesn't also want the students maybe to. I'm giving her a lot of benefit of doubt here because I don't know her. For them to engage and see if they can tell. Or maybe they're cruel and they try to break the AI and they're just goofing off. We see a lot of dystopian films about how humans are kind of. I know there's not a real term, but like robot racists or AI racists, where they kick the robots, they treat them like trash. And we see this in real life. There's little robots that look like mini coolers that roam the streets of LA and they're delivering drinks to people and we see people kicking them over, trashing them. And we see people vandalizing waymos and breaking the glass with people inside of it because they're just so angry about something. And I think we have to address the human component of it, which is we're very irrational, we feel threatened and we want to blame something for what is going on in our lives. And why not take it out on a machine? So there's prejudice and bias. Next is this idea of deception. Where do we draw this line? Because as you know, there are ghostwriters out there who are credited as the ghostwriter, but Perhaps they wrote 99% of the book with very little input. But why does this relationship exist? Because the ghostwriter presumably doesn't have a recognizable name yet. And then the author doesn't have enough time to write it, nor the skill to craft a really best selling book. We've seen this. So are we upset that the ghostwriter's name isn't ginormous? No. And when we watch movies when we know it's not the real person, are we going to flash on the screen, stunt double cgi? We don't do that either because it breaks what we want to believe to be true. Now we know bestselling fiction writer James Patterson does not write the books you. He just approves the books. I think he runs it through a factory. And more power to him. He's doing really well. A lot of the books that he quote unquote authored are bestsellers on the bookstore. It's amazing to me. And 60 times bestsellers. That's incredible. So if you're Joe Schmo or Jane Smith and you don't have a name to yourself, but you have a really great idea, you don't want four people to buy your book. You want thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people to buy your book. And maybe you don't care as much at the beginning of your career whether or not you get full credit or not. You just want your ideas out in the world and for people to enjoy the product of your creativity. And so, you know, Jody, I know you know what I'm talking about. So are we concerned there also when we're giving a talk? When we give a talk, almost all of the ideas that we have are built on other ideas that were built on other ideas. At some point, do we have to put this giant footnote on everything that we do? And how often do we want to say by this person by that? And it's very. It breaks the continuity of the talk. And I try my best to cite sources either in the slide or while I'm talking. Not always both. And people are saying, like, Chris, it's okay, we understand, we get it. And I don't want to be super academic. You know how it's almost all academic books, the, the footer, the footnotes are just ridiculously long because that's part of academia, to cite all your sources. And we get it. We get it. So is it that horrible that somebody create a piece of content where maybe. And giving a lot of people the benefit of the doubt, maybe their idea wasn't really to deceive you, but because they don't want you to be prejudiced against the content. I have used AI to help me write some things as a test to see if my human friends can tell the difference. For the most part, they cannot tell the difference, which scares me because I thought there was something more special to me and there isn't. And in fact, sometimes the AI posts outperform the human crafted post, which also is like, sad to me, but I have to adapt.
- [31:19]
B
I kind of changed my mind since you.
- [31:21]
A
Oh my God. Wait, hold on.
- [31:23]
B
So I didn't Change my mind. Change my mind. I just had a conversation and I have a different slant on it. So I don't care if something is AI generated, I care if it's good. But that involves research, being good at using the tools, and then not treating an audience like they're stupid. So I think where I have beef with it is that podcast I mentioned where they were slipping in AI generated episodes. This was a couple of years ago. Voice cloning technology was not then what it is now. So the episodes were noticeably worse. And so because they didn't have intonation, it was. It just wasn't. It was. It was a robot. It was clearly a robot.
- [32:06]
A
They mispronounce words.
- [32:07]
B
Yeah, it was just not good. So I think that because it was not as good and because nothing was disclosed, that's where I thought, huh, I'm not listening to this anymore. This is stupid. If it was good, if it was really good and it wasn't disclosed, but later I found out that it was AI, my response would be more like, huh, fair play, fair enough, great. That's exactly what we do want. Because this author who did that, who I really love, I would love it if he would produce more podcasts because I would listen to all of them. So that's a really good idea that he can out produce, put his strong beliefs into even more episodes. An example the other day was there was something that a friend sent me and it was a faceless YouTube channel, and it was where they would write scripts and then put them over these landscapes. And they were all pretty good messaging. They were really, they were really well done videos. But in one of the videos I heard the phrase, it's not about X, it's about Y, which is like a standard AI phrase, a standard large language model phrase. It's a very recognizable pattern. So as soon as I heard that, I was like, come on, guys, like, give it. At least try. At least if you're going to go all that way to creating this channel, uploading these videos, making the stuff, at least learn the giveaway signs of AI generated writing so that you can remove them. So it's just that I feel like it needs to be being really careful about what you put your name to and still thinking like, it's my reputation on the line, it's my name above the door. James Patterson probably has some quality standards that mean that all the books that go out under his name meet those standards. And then maybe it doesn't matter so much that there are ghostwriters and robots, as long as it's actually good.
- [33:48]
A
Okay, this brings up a very touchy subject. I'm going to do this because I'm not afraid of swimming into controversy. Who's the most famous music composer you know of for movies?
- [33:58]
B
For movies? Don't know.
- [34:00]
A
Well, there are a couple of names. Hans Zimmer might come to your tongue, perhaps the other name that might come to your mind is John Williams, who wrote the score to Star wars in so many beloved movies. They're iconic, and when you hear a John Williams score, you automatically know it's John Williams, whereas Hans Zimmer you're not quite sure. And there's a reason why. There's a reason why. So I have friends who are composers. They're going to remain nameless because they still need to work in the industry. But Hans Zimmer is not the guy who writes the music. He sends it out for demos and he'll maybe give him some creative brief, or he'll just have hundreds of people write music for him for low to no money. It's a horribly abusive industry because they cannot get the work. They do not have Hans name, his business contacts, and then he created Rex, the whole thing. And then he goes on to not mention a single person that worked on it. That's how it works. It's kind of a very strange system. So Hans Zimmer as a composer and please, if you're from the Hans Zimmer team, if I have got this wrong, please be in touch with me, let me know. I will be happy to issue an apology, but I'm just hearing it from the people who actually do the work. And it's a strange system. And when you hear him being interviewed, he talks philosophically about the music and he doesn't say he wrote it, but he's like, there's this idea. So it's kind of writing that gray line of not lying, but not necessarily telling the truth either. And personally, as a creative director myself, I've got no problems with this at all. Zero problems is what I do. But I'm not telling people I'm literally the one moving the pixels or. When I came up with this sketch, the idea was very clear to me. And we accept that someone who's as prolific, working on so many different genres of films and has such a long career that they must have a team, the assumption. But to the average person, they don't know and they just assume it's him. So he's done something recently. Maybe it's a crisis of conscience, and I hope that's the case where he starts to talk about the artists, the singers, the musicians and people who contribute to the project. Since you're not a crazy movie person like I am, I start to see this and I see something changing without an announcement of things changing. Because I think at some point as you get older, you're like, why do I need to take all the credit? Why do I want to pretend this is all me when it's clearly not? Danny Elfman is another composer. He was the lead singer for Oingo Boingo. When you hear Danny elfman score, you 1000% know it's Danny Elfman because his signature is all over it. The same with John Williams, but the one who's more of a chameleon is Hans Zimmer. And so it's, again, it's one of these things like, what does it mean to be authentic and transparent about sourcing and all that kind of stuff? I'm just not sure. And I think it's on a case by case scenario. If your intention is to deceive with malice intent behind it, then, yeah, let's have a real conversation about it. But if it's really because, is it necessary? Do people already know this? Do we need to talk about it like this? So if you're a joke thief, it's the worst thing that you can do as a comedian to steal someone else's joke and especially pretend you weren't there, you weren't inspired by it, you've never heard it. That's horrific. Especially when they have footage of you in the back, that's terrible. And your intent is to cut corners, to ride on the labor of someone else and to try to pretend like it's an original thing in that space. All a comedian has are their jokes. That's their entire identity. So they feel very wrong when you. When you rip off their joke and you pretend like it's not taken from them. But in a lot of other spaces, we're all just building on what's come before. We really are. And we call this sampling, and we pay a royalty for it. We call a sighting if it's in academia. And it's kind of important to be able to do that. But it doesn't need to be the headliner or the subhead. It could be in the footnotes, quite literally.
- [37:57]
B
It's really a vote for the personal brand thing, isn't it? Because if you're Hans Zimmer and you can have lots of people writing and creating stuff underneath you, and then eventually, I guess what's going to happen is Hans Zimmer isn't going to need a bunch of people underneath him. He's going to have a bunch of robots underneath him. And it's not going to matter who is or how much he's paying them, because it's not going to be humans at some point in the future. So then you almost. You can hang around in the ghost writing space for a little bit. But then it's like, even those people probably have to figure out a way to produce at volume so that they can either do lots of work that robots, that they kind of stay ahead of the robots, or become the name yourself. You kind of can't just like, it's going to go, this is something that this cheese is moving right now.
- [38:49]
A
Yes. You make a great argument for all of us to be thinking about our personal brand, because that's ultimately what people are buying. Are people buying the music per se? Maybe. But they're really buying the fact that Hans has his finger on it and his name's attached to it. They're buying his status to say, we got Hans Zimmer to write the score. His name is quite big on the credit, so you kind of know it's him. And there are fans of Hans Zimmer who go to his concerts who listen to the soundtracks over and over again. I'm one of them, by the way. There are people like Frank Gehry. So Frank Gehry is probably one of the world's most famous architects. And I watched a documentary on Frank Gehry and me reading between the lines, Frank Gehry is an older gentleman who has brilliant ideas, who's made his name and doing radically innovative pieces of architecture, sometimes not super practical. He draws this crazy sketch. He scribbles something on the paper and he goes, that's it. And he walks out of the room. Now, the three lead architects have to make something out of that. So you could say Frank isn't much without his lead architects, but his lead architects aren't much without him. So it's kind of this, what is it? Codependent relationship. They need each other. But I know the people who are really doing all the work. That sketch is just the very beginning. It's like 1/1000th of the work that is required to turn that into something. And they do this really crazy thing. They overlay the sketch on top of the final piece. I'm like, yeah, if you say so, guys, if you say so. But it's one of these things. There's the former headquarters For Chia Day, which is one of the world's best advertising agencies. They do all the Apple stuff. The headquarters in Venice used to be across the street from my house. And it's called the Binocular Building. This is a Frank Gehry building. And you drive by and you can't miss because There is a 55 foot tall binocular binoculars in front of the building, which makes sense for an ad agency forward looking, metaphorically, whatever. It works. Conceptually, it works. So the story behind that building was Frank was looking at the building, he's like, yeah, it's missing something, guys. And there was a sculpture by a famous artist that was sitting near him, and he grabbed the sculpture and he put in front of the model and was like, that's what it needs. Now, I don't know if that's legend, if this is true, and I'm sure I'm getting some of the facts wrong. But that's the beauty of a creative director or a visionary to say like, it's missing something, it's missing a little nutmeg. Put that in there. Or this is a little too spicy. Water it down or something. Add something. Add a fresh herb to it. He's like, it needs something big and iconic. Boom. Binoculars. He didn't really design it, but he knew it needed that and he put that together. So I'm not here to criticize anybody for their creative process. I would just like a little bit more information and a little less pretense so that we all know and celebrate the people who make the work with us. And there's nothing wrong with that. But because of our egos, I think sometimes we don't want to do this because then people will say, well, you didn't do anything. You're a fraud. You did this. And then you take all the credit for it.
- [41:43]
B
I guess it also depends on each individual's definition of getting the credit. Because in Coachbox, my general manager, she's called Joanna, and we have the kind of visionary integrator relationship that's popularized in Rocket Fuel in the kind of EOS system. And we're such classic visionary integrator types. But her idea of getting the credit is not being like the name or being on a podcast or being the person that is out there. She's just. Her version of getting the credit is being part of the team who made something happen. And that's fine. She would absolutely hate to be on a podcast. So then if you are in the taking a backseat, and if you are one of the people who's creating but not getting the, Getting the open credit, maybe. Actually, that's okay. But then I think it's kind of a dangerous. It feels like the more risky way of doing things because it feels like you're more of a commodity, even if you do amazing work, because it's like, oh, hang on. And then that person forever is always like, oh, yeah. Well, I wrote for Hans Zimmer, and it's like, yeah, but you're not him. So therefore it's a, it's, it's like in your head, it might be a different thing.
- [42:50]
A
Well, so I make the story really personal, and then we need to get on with the rest of this list, I believe. Shortly after I graduated, I had the opportunity to work on some really big projects, main titles. One of which was for the island of Dr. Moreau, which I worked with RGA LA at that time for one of the most celebrated main title designers. His name is Kyle Cooper. And I walked in and designed the logo and the idea for this main title. And they took the project in house and did it all. And I'm nowhere to be seen. And people were asking me later on, what's the name of the typeface? And I tell them what the typeface is, and then I see articles and they're crediting people. Well, I'm like, wait a minute. You're the person who called me and asked me what the typeface was, and now my name's not mentioned, and everybody else's name is mentioned. They're like, what? For real? So what happened was when I was shopping my book around my portfolio, people are like, oh, you're the guy behind the guy. I'm like, well, I can't take credit for the things I didn't do, but I did design this logo and these style frames. And they're like, wow, this is amazing. So it's like, for them, it was a discovery of, like, yeah, we know how this game is played. There are a lot of people involved, and everyone thinks that they're. That expression. Success has many fathers create or failure has one mother. And so when it's successful, we're like, well, I, I, I said this. I walked by and gave him a high five. And so therefore, so I can see this on, on many different levels. So I, I felt, like, pretty validated that some people, at least in the inner circle, knew that I was a person who designed this. But I understand how the game is played, and I accept it. Like, I was paid to do a job. If you don't want to credit me. If you don't want to mention my name, it's totally okay. I get it. I don't love it, but I accept it.
- [44:33]
B
This is a game. This is a total game.
- [44:35]
A
It's a game. And in Hollywood, that's the game. It's not pretty, everybody. Okay, let's move on to the next thing. I like AI to help me do summaries and analysis. It can do this better than most people. So when we have vast amounts of information, we have to comb through our own data. It's too much for us. And so we say to ourselves, yeah, I'll get to that at some point. And the truth is, we never get to it at any point. So let's take, for example, a sales call. So people will say, chris, how did I fail in the sales call? Well, now I have to listen to your sales call. I have to find it, I have to rewind it. Then I have to put some thought behind it and then write you a breakdown, then tell you all about it. That's hours of my time. And for the most part, people cannot afford to pay me that, and I don't have that time to give. However, if I train the machine on how I look for things and what I'm. What I would be doing, and I train it one time, I can process those calls and say, here's the summary, and then check the homework to say, yep, that's pretty much it. Did a great job. And I could do things that no human would want to do. Analyze for length of time. You speaking versus the client speaking. That is a really boring thing to do. But the machine can do it in a second, which is awesome. So in a way, then I can scale some version, a proxy of what it is that I would do so that someone can afford it and then be able to benefit from this learning. Otherwise they're going to be repeating those exact same things over and over again. So I think that's pretty awesome. The ability to summarize and analyze not only other things you find on the Internet, but things that you do yourself. Give you one more. One more example of the use case. Hopefully to excite some creative people here, I do really long workshops, hours long, sometimes days long. And I say sometimes in there, some smart things. But when I give it to my editing team to pull those things out, they're, like, overwhelmed. They're dealing with hours or days worth of footage from multiple cameras, and they're just busy syncing. And then they're exhausted. And so when they give me a cut I'm like, yeah, I thought I was smarter or better than this. And then I start to doubt myself. Maybe I didn't say maybe I just imagined it, but I take the transcript from those workshops, I run it through, and I ask it to highlight the 10 or 12 most poignant things that I said and to quote them literally and tell me where and provide the context. It can do that. So that's when I go back to the team, like, guys, you missed this. What happened? Is the machine smarter than you? Maybe. But we should be at least smart enough to use the tools to help us. And I think that's a real benefit if you're in editing, to be able to do this, to be able to be able to create clips or moments. And then the human goes in to say, okay, what makes sense? Where? How do I make this better, stronger, sharper? And I can even ask the machine to help me do those things again. I think AI is like, a really amazing tool, maybe the most amazing tool humanity's ever invented. But just because you have a tool doesn't mean you know how to use it, doesn't mean it can build you the pyramid. But for those people who are smart enough, who are aware of, like, how to direct it and know how to correct it when it goes off the rails, they'll be building the next pyramids. So for summary and analysis, it just. It's quite amazing.
- [48:00]
B
That is number five with the summary and analysis. I also like as an extension of that, how it can reduce the reliance on human decision making, which then means that I think the original creator or the original artist's version of what their art should look like at scale, they have more of a chance to have that in their work. So a recent thing that we did in my team is when I'm on a podcast, and then the podcast host or their team sends me the video, my VA gets the transcript, and we have a giant prompt as to what makes a good reel. And it's like, take this, search for a hook. A hook is this. These are the rules of a good hook. This is how you should get it out within the text. This is the kind of words you should strike through. And then what. What then goes to the editor is not, oh, hey, this. This is the video. Make a bunch of reels. It's like, this is the exact script that fills these sets of criteria that then you just don't actually need to necessarily think about. Then you're not relying on someone else coming in with their artistic direction. You're just relying on your own algorithm to then create the output, which I love so much because it means that you can, well, again with the quantity, but also you can, you can standardize your quality and keep that going. The thing you mentioned on pulling out the quotes and the poignant things that you said, my. A friend called Lucy. She runs a YouTube channel that teaches English pronunciation to people where English isn't their first language. And she got chatgpt to go through a database of testimonials and pull out the most beautiful, like pull out the best testimonials so she could use them in social proof. And she, it came out with, with five testimonials that actually brought her to tears. They were so beautiful. And then when she went back to the original document, it had completely made them up, just all of them.
- [49:58]
A
It does do that.
- [50:00]
B
But the thing is, she made ChatGPT apologize and it did it. And I was like, when the robots take over, they are killing you first for sure. You're not gonna, you stand no chance after that move. But the third thing that I think kind of along the theme of summaries and analysis is I will go quite deep into the psychology of my dream customer to then mirror all my content back at them. So there's something that we do around our email, like writing our emails and writing our social posts right now that involves really psychoanalyzing our customer to find out hopes, dreams, fears, motivations, everything about them, and then only send out anything that's gone through that filter of this will this piece of content resonate with this exact person. So I feel like I've got more power to really niche down and reach people on the level where they don't even realize they have that problem and they don't even realize that thing is in their head. And they don't even realize that anyone can even voice this challenge that they're going through because it feels so deep to them. But if you find the right way of understanding them and you get AI to help you with that, then you can really hit them in the fields, which is just amazing because then you know that your product that solves that problem is going to reach them, whereas it wouldn't have before. So I see it as it's like influencing them towards your product, but it's in a way that you know that what you're doing can really help people. So you, you'd almost be doing a disservice not to get good at this and not to be able to use it in a psychology based way way that's the side of it I find actually terrifying. But also when I've written, I've rewritten email series based on a psychological profile and then it's performed like 10x what it would have done before. And it's like, oh, this is, this is cool.
- [51:54]
A
That is cool. Which perfectly dovetails into number six, AI as companion and therapist. And people have formed real relationships with the machine and it's good today, but it can only get better. And somewhere along the way, I think we're going to blur the lines between quote unquote, real relationships and AI relationships. And I think for all the people out there who feel lonely, who don't know where to turn, who can't afford a therapist or one is too far away or unavailable to you, I know some friends consult the AI therapists and GPT before talking to their spouses to help them understand a perspective. Like, what is my partner going through? How might I phrase this? In a way that is supportive, loving and non judging. And it can train you and it does those kinds of things really well. The reason why I think AI might be better companions than humans is because AI has infinite patience. It understands nuance of language and tone that people can't. And it can call to a degree all the things that you've talked to it. And so it doesn't ever forget. Like when you're with your friends, you're like, hey, remember that time? And like, no, you know how I told you? Nah, I don't. It just had a thousand things going on. And unfortunately you're not the center of my universe. There's lots of things that are competing for my attention. And we're trying our best to be there for everyone, but AI is there for, just for you. And that fictional thing that was created by, was it Spike Jones who directed her? And this was a fictional relationship between Joaquin Phoenix, who had going through some like really rough relationship problems and falling in love with Scarlett Johansson's voice as AI. They have a real relationship. And I think when we were watching it, I think people were like, nah, it's never going to happen. And I remember talking to friends about this and I said, kristen, could you ever fall in love with an AI? And they're like, no. Said, have you ever been in a long distance relationship? They're like, yes, what's the difference? And they were just flummoxed or they couldn't even answer that. And I think this is one of the faults of humankind, which is we jump to conclusions without even thinking, we form opinions without Even searching in our history to see if this is real or not. I've been in a long distance relationship. I would call my girlfriend and we would talk for hours. If I couldn't tell the difference, I would feel as deeply passionate and loving and supportive of this person. And because there's no physical component to it, AI is perfect for this. And there's articles and podcasts built around this story about this woman falling in love who was in a committed relationship, a marriage, who everybody's cool with her having a weird, safe affair with a robot.
- [54:45]
B
Do you know someone married the Eiffel Tower?
- [54:47]
A
No. That sounds a little interesting.
- [54:51]
B
Yeah. And this was a long time ago. She just decided that it was the one for her. So she, like, conducted a ceremony where she married the Eiffel Tower. And that's kind of still a bit weird, but I think that there are a lot of things going on right now that seem weird at the moment, but in the future won't. Like, at some point someone is going to bring their AI girlfriend to a party and it won't be weird. And everyone listening had a friend pop into their head and you know probably who it will be because they'll be the first person to just do it and it'll be like, okay, so they're doing this and it's a thing. And then soon everyone will and it won't be a thing. But I kind of have beef with the therapist thing. So I think that especially when it's chatgpt, like, chatgpt was trained on 300 billion words. It's more than that now. It has a worldview, but it doesn't really have a worldview. It has a generic mush of all of the strong opinions canceling each other out, and you end up with whatever's in the middle, which is just so generic. And I know this because we make AI coaches with very strong world views. If you compared, like one of our coaches, he's a relationship coach and he's got a very definite, strong set of principles on something like what makes a healthy relationship. So if you ask his AI, if you said, tell me your rules for a healthy relationship, it's going to tell you it's 10 rules. And probably one of them is like, go to bed on an argument. And it's got like, stuff, stuff where it's like, okay, that's a bit of a curveball. But yeah, sure, let's, let's throw that in there. If you said that to chat GPT, give me your 10 rules for a healthy relationship. It would come out with the most watered down, generic, like so terrible. Might as well have even not said it information. So it's like, I don't think what people actually want is just to tend towards the average middle. I think what they want is to find some kind of set of principles to then live by. And unless you are telling your AI therapist first, okay, these are my goals, this is what I want to achieve. This is the set like, of rules and principles and beliefs that I want to live by. It's not going to respect them. And then we're all going to go around just turning into each other because we haven't got anything special and different to say. So I kind of don't like the idea of someone using AI as their therapist without really, really training. At first I'm like, no, what do you want from this?
- [57:14]
A
Okay, let's go. Round two. Okay. You've been to therapy, Jodi?
- [57:19]
B
No, I have not.
- [57:20]
A
Oh, I have. So what do you think the population that is capable of going to see a therapist? What percentage you think?
- [57:27]
B
Small?
- [57:29]
A
Like single digits? I think. Right. So when we compare one thing to the best thing, I think that's problematic. When we compare zero to good enough, that's better. A lot of us, I think especially, and I know these are broad statements that maybe weren't raised by parents who had high eq, weren't there for us emotionally, and created a space where talking about your feelings wasn't something that was okay or encouraged. A lot of gets bottled up and I think some of the ways in which this manifests itself, once it's. It reaches a breaking point, turns quite violent or self destructive, or can lead us to pursuing chemical alternatives. I worry about that. So there's perfection, the best therapist ever, human. And then there's the best AI therapist and nothing. I think there's a vast amount that can be covered here. So people who have been to therapy, who don't want to pay for a therapist 247 can get some relief and counsel, even if it's mushy in the middle. I think that's better than nothing. Just like how you were like, you want to be a world champion at something in some kind of physical thing. But if you're like my dad, who is not getting around very much at all, I'd say like, go, just go for a walk, dad. You don't have to be world champion. We know he'll live a higher quality life. And that's the thing I'm looking for. And it's mushy. Right now, but it probably won't be mushy for much longer. So I think if we can just adopt that idea that any progress is better than no progress, I'll go for that. And I think a lot of the strange behaviors that people have today, maybe some of that is softened a little bit if we all just got a little emotional support. I think especially in. In male cultures, it's not okay to talk about how we feel about anything. We have nowhere to go to talk about some of our frustrations or pain points. Especially if you're really isolated, you don't have a good support network, you just bottle up and that'll eat you up from the inside out. It'll destroy your organs. It'll destroy everything about you. It'll create all the stress chemicals and hormones. It'll shorten your life. And if you just destroy yourself, that's terrible. But usually these things start to manifest externally, and that's where it becomes really problematic. The violence, the verbal abuse, the other kinds of things that are happening outside. The lack of compassion, empathy for other humans because you yourself haven't received it. There's that expression, hurt people, hurt people. If there were less hurt people, maybe there are less people who want to hurt other people. That's my take on that. And I have been to therapy in case somebody's wondering.
- [60:10]
B
I totally think that. Definitely think there's a place for it. Yeah, AI coaching is effective. AI therapy is effective. But the side I think I don't like is that we've talked before about choosing a master. It's almost like, doesn't matter which master you choose. Choose a master. Stick to that one way of being. Stick to that one belief system. Because I fundamentally believe that the belief system you subscribe to is really important. I just think, don't subscribe to the ChatGPT belief system because it hasn't got one. So find another. Any angle. So if you're going to use any AI program as your therapist, understand what it's based on. Almost like, tell me your master principles and then be like, okay, are these the master principles that I want to start living by? Or like, learning from? And then if it's not a yes, because it can't be a yes from ChatGPT because it does not have them, I would feed them in first. And then it means that you can be consistent and you can ultimately come out with something meaningful. Because if you're. If someone was just using it for like a very, very shallow level, then yes, it might get them so far. But it's not going to get them that far because they're just going to hit up with the. They're going to hit against the wall of what shall I do now? And they don't. They're not going to get anywhere meaningful.
- [61:29]
A
Yeah, I think we're in agreement here, and maybe we need to zoom all the way out to say, when you direct a machine to do something for you, you have to have an idea of what it is that you want it to do and a criteria for what success looks like throughout this entire conversation, whether it be researching, prototyping, production work, all that stuff. Like, even the rotoscope work. It's like, if you don't know if that's a good mat, we have problems. So we're in agreement there. And I kind of am very optimistic about where all this stuff goes because I don't know what else to do if I'm to go pessimistic. So here's what I think. A lot of people are against the idea of seeing a therapist because it's taboo. It's to say, like, I'm broken, there's something wrong with me. But let's say they get some help and it's mushy and it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than nothing. And then they say, you know, I don't know why I had this idea for this long. So they have two options. Number one, they could see a real therapist who's been trained, certified, and peer reviewed, or they can talk to someone who's like, we're really good at helping you write better prompts and robots to help you through whatever it is that you're doing. So I think everything is like an iterative step. So we just need to take that first step just like that blank piece of paper. I'm for a world where people are more in tune with their feelings and they'd be able to process it and learn to speak in nonviolent ways and to create empathy for others through understanding of how human psychology works. I'm for that. So I think you and I are on the same boat, that we don't want it to just all be mushy. Writing mushy creative, mushy everything. And that's a very real problem. But I think less and less of a problem every day.
- [63:01]
B
Before we started recording earlier, when I was thinking about this episode, I asked Perplexity to give me your strongest opinions on how should creators be using AI.
- [63:15]
A
What did it say?
- [63:17]
B
It said your views would be around AI's role and that it should augment and enhance creativity, not replace it. You would say that people have to embrace the change. It's essential for survival and growth in the industry. You would say the human creativity, vision and storytelling remain irreplaceable. You would say it opens creative opportunities to more people, including those with non traditional backgrounds, but that curiosity and adaptability are crucial for future success. And over reliance on AI may stifle creativity and there's a risk of job displacement for those who don't adapt. Then I ask Perplexity for my strongest opinions. And then I asked it what we would likely agree or disagree on. And Chris, it was really boring because I think we're largely agreed on this stuff. I think that the thing that kept coming up, which might be your point six so a thing that kept coming up was the risk of over reliance.
- [64:16]
A
Yes. We're not going onto the negative sides, but over reliance is a definite problem. It'd be interesting for you to take the transcript from this conversation and feed it back to Perplexity and say, tell me everything you got wrong.
- [64:28]
B
Yeah.
- [64:28]
A
And learn from it.
- [64:29]
B
And then apologize.
- [64:31]
A
Don't do that because it's taking names. So I have a couple more. And we don't have to go as in depth with these other ones because there's a lot of overlap. But I just want to plant a seed out there for those of you who are listening to this to open up your mind as to what else you could be doing. And we're only going to be able to scratch the surface because it feels like the longer we talk, the longer my list gets so right adjacent to having companionship or therapist or your best friend, someone to talk to so you're not as lonely or depressed. Help you get through the rough spots in your life. Number seven would be to use AI as a teacher, coach, mentor, trainer, something like that. And will it be the best? No. But it'd be pretty freaking good. And it's hard to beat for the price in which you pay. And the amazing part to me, Jody, is that most of these things are one price. You get everything. You get the whole buffet. You can eat whatever you want, so you can use it for anything. So I've seen people do this where they say, you know, I want to develop a social media strategy. I only have this amount of time to work. I'm interested in doing these kinds of things. Help me design a game plan that fits what you know about me. And it does. And is it great? No. But it's better than nothing. And the same thing, I want to lose weight. I'm this tall, I'm this heavy. I can commit this amount of time to exercise. I'm this old. Help me figure out a plan, send me links to references and help me figure this out. What should my, my macros be at this point? And I'm of this ethnicity and I live in this place. Okay, it'll figure it out. And again, I think a human trainer will probably do a much better job, but compared to zero, it's not going to be bad. Did you want to opine on this to teach a coach, mentor trainer thing?
- [66:12]
B
It would probably get people to a stage of conscious competence faster so that they could then enlist a master for the next bit. For the bit that is like, okay, so I've got to 80% here. I'm nearly happy with like my physique or whatever it is, but can you now teach me the next bit? I'm very biased on this, but the idea that everyone has this AI version of them, because you do and I do and that's what we make. But I love the idea that it's like this is how everyone's. So students get more from them because they don't have to be there all the time because their wisdom is there all the time. And then it goes back to the choose one master, stick to their way of being. You don't have to go on track, off track, and you don't have to ask a generic program, okay, what should I eat? Because your health coach has also got an AI version of them that you can ask in between. And you're not getting these like conflicting information because your trainer tells you to go on like a high carb diet. ChatGPT tells you to go on like a low carb diet. Like, what are you gonna, what are you gonna do? Eventually it's not gonna work and you're gonna be exactly where you, where you started off. But if you can stick to it because the people that you are hiring are forward thinking and using AI and making their AIs then like that's the dream, I think.
- [67:32]
A
Yes. I can't imagine a nutritionist telling you on a high carb diet, but I don't know where that would come from because I've not heard that being effective. But, but I get the point. You can get conflicting information.
- [67:44]
B
Yeah, yep, yep, yeah.
- [67:46]
A
Like Paleo this or some Atkins diet or some other version. I think not taking into consideration like where your ancestors came from because that has a large part with how these macros may or may not work for you, but if you took that into consideration and asked it to be aware of that, it probably can come up with a more customized plan for you. Okay, let's go on to the next thing. I think it's having AI as an agent that works for you, which is going to become problematic for anybody who's working as a personal assistant. I think people in the Philippines are super scared about this because I think they're the world's largest personal assistant group or call center and those things are replacing them really, really fast. And there are friends of mine who've developed custom robots to book hotels for them airfare, book a car service based on a criteria of luxury, to budget to accommodation preferences. And I think that's pretty freaking amazing. And I'll tell you something, a friend of mine, Eamon, who was the former CEO of AppSumo, he's also my friend. Is he? Yeah.
- [68:55]
B
Yeah.
- [68:55]
A
Well, okay, that's cool. He's a good guy. He was telling me about how his assistant does so much for him. I'm like, dang, I want an assistant like that. I think he said, I was moving and I had all this stuff. I'm like. And he told her to sell all this stuff and she listed it, she got a good value for it. And when he came back, all the stuff was gone. She gave him a pile of cash and it was all done. I'm like, dang. So I'm so looking forward to that day where I'm like, here's a bunch of my junk. I'm going to take a bunch of pictures. You figure out the description, you list it on Craigslist or whatever. You negotiate, you sell and collect the money and then message my other friend like, where to be so that we can just get rid of all this stuff. I think that's awesome. Okay, so what do you do if you're an assistant right now? Well, gosh darn it. You should be building personal agents for each of one of your clients and charge them a fee to design it and to update it and to maintain it for them. Again, the solution isn't running away from it, but I think it's almost always embracing it. How do you incorporate this? Because I think it's a wonderful idea. I don't have the time to figure this stuff out and I want to make it good and I don't want to sit here and do iteration 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You have the experience. Just make it for me based on what I want. Ask me 10 questions and then Build it and say, let's test it and see if you like this. And so it's incredible. Now, it'll book all these things for you, it'll give them your name, it'll fill in all the forms, it'll give them the credit card information, and it'll send you confirmation notices. This is bananas to me.
- [70:29]
B
I want my assistant, or when I talk to her about just AI in general, the reason she's not worried about her job at all is because she is building her army of robots. Because even though I think there's a big underestimation of how long these tools actually do take to use or use well. And so, yeah, even though you can get an AI agent to do this stuff, you still have to set it up. You still have to, to some extent, manage it. It's not like completely, completely autonomous. So I don't think we want to all get rid of our assistants and just run robots. I think we want our assistants to run the robots. So that's my thinking with my assistant. And so whenever she's doing anything for me, and she does a whole range of stuff, like whenever I get to a new city, she will book the car, she will talk to the Airbnb before she will take delivery. She will research meal prep places and she will take the delivery, put it, like, get them to put it in the freezer, all that kind of stuff. But every single thing I give her, I'm like, how can you get AI to do that in the future? And then she's like, oh, I could do this. And then it's more like she's getting better at her role, she's getting more done, she's building stuff out. And then she can go and suggest it to her other clients as well. And then she can build up all this stuff that she. It will just make her the queen of all the assistants. And that's where I think the opportunity is for all assistants just to be. Be the best, because you know how to run all the stuff. And I like, every, every visionary founder wants someone who just knows the stuff already. I don't want to have to think about something to then go and learn it, to then teach someone else how to do it. I just want someone else who goes, oh, yeah, I can do that. And they almost click their fingers and it's done. And then that makes them seem superhuman. And I feel like those people will never be replaced because you always need someone to manage the robots.
- [72:18]
A
What we value is time. And anybody who can save us time is valuable. To us, right?
- [72:23]
B
So good. Especially when they. I want my assistant to be so well paid, so well versed, so talented, so good at everything, and really feel like, yes, I am the best thing that ever happened to Jodie. I think I want her to feel like that. So it's kind of. It's like me and her working together with AI to make everyone's life better. And sometimes I'm like, all I need is me, my VA and my AI and everything sorted. And then I can just go create the same output, the same impact, the same money, and just spend even more time in the gym or spend more time traveling or just be more human, ultimately, because that's the whole goal. I feel like the whole goal of this is to be more human, use the robots to be more human.
- [73:11]
A
Let's go on to the next part, which is, I think, augmenting the divergent brain. Something we don't talk enough about. So I have friends who are neurodivergent and running across the spectrum of one thing or the next, whether it's adhd, O, C, D, autistic, whatever it is that they have. Blinded an eye, definite ear, something like that. And what I find really interesting is, I believe my brother's autistic, his son is definitely autistic, is that the neurodivergent brain works in different ways than the neurotypical brain, which I think I have a neurotypical brain, I don't know. But they're able to process things in very concentrated areas, but the world doesn't move at their speed. And so they get kind of frustrated and they don't know how to excel. And so I have a buddy, he's a photographer. I think he's blind in one eye and deaf in an ear. And he's definitely on the spectrum. When he listens to my live calls, he is transcribing notes in real time, doing summaries and participating in the chat. I'm like, I do it. I cannot do that. I'm using all of my brain power to be here, present in the moment, to listen to the person and understand what the heck they're saying. And so he's providing this layer of value which I just couldn't do. And you're going to meet him sometime soon, I think. Dave Katagi, I think he is also. He's ocd. He's on the spectrum himself. He's super brilliant and I don't understand him sometimes, but when I see him at work now, I understand why he's able to do this. So when I was in Australia, he said, hey, Chris, let me help you film this. I'm like, cool, thanks. He sets up four cameras. My mic, and what he's doing is he's running four cameras simultaneously managing the audio that's coming from my mic while downloading files to his laptop, transcoding the conversation real time and participating in the dialogue. I'm like, you know, I need a team of six people to do this. And they probably are not even good at it. And here you are doing a great job at all these things. And when I, we make fun of him like, it's AI Dave, it's David. You know, the AI is inside of David. And I'll say like, yeah. So there's this character in this movie, he's like, the Matrix. I'm like, yes. And he says, and he fills in the blanks for me. And it's like, it's incredible. So if I ever need to know something, he's that engaged. But he needs to be firing on that many levels for him to be fully there. And it was pretty funny because I call him like Mr. Dependable. So I can't remember where we were. We're on a European tour. I'm like, so David, what is that one movie that we were talking about? And no response. He said, anybody seen David? I said, the one time I need him, he lets me down. Of course I'm giving him a hard time for no reason. He comes running out of the hallways and he yells down the hallway, it's blah, blah, blah, blah movie. I'm like, exactly. He never lets you down. Later on he says, I was on my way to the bathroom and he heard me say this and he's like, do I go to the bathroom or do I run back? Do I not let Chris down? And of course he chose to hold his bladder, run back, speeding down the hallway just to yell out the answer and then, then he can leave again. So I think it's a beautiful tool to help, like say if you're blind or maybe you have throat cancer or something and you can't speak and you don't want to be robbed of this ability to connect with people sonically or orally, right? Well, now you can type it out and you can design a voice based on the voice that you used to have and be able to articulate in that way. So I think as a tool to augment divergent, different able bodied people. I think this is wonderful. Something we do not talk about enough. And there are people who are very artistic, but don't have the skills to paint, to draw, but they're very good at understanding history, design, aesthetics in words. That they can put that into the machine and come up with something that I'm like, damn, that's good. That is really good. I think I can do that. But that would take me six hours of prompting. I would rather just pay you to do it.
- [77:18]
B
I love that. I love that the top 1% have a sparring partner who can keep up, whereas before they wouldn't have done. And this is people who, like a friend, showed me that you can move your trackpad faster. Like, way faster. And if you move it faster, you'll wonder how you ever did it slower. Like, it's just in the settings, and it's like, oh, my God, now I can be superhuman. And then once YouTube started letting you speed up the videos, and then you can 2x and then you can 2 1/2x and you're like, yes, now I can be superhuman. And it's like, this is. How far can it go? Because some people's brains can just handle it. So then I'm just like, let them handle it. Throw all this stuff at them, See what they can create. And if they have got. If there's so much energy going on that you have to expend somewhere, that's such a productive use for it. I'm just. Yeah, it's fascinating. I love that side of it.
- [78:07]
A
Yes. Okay, so to round this out, I'm going to just drop three things. You're going to feel like, oh, we already talked about it. Maybe we have, because this conversation, very organic and bleeds into things, but I'm not going to go into it in detail. Visualization, the tools that you can use, not just prototyping, getting your ugly first draft, but to do the final draft. There's things that it can do to fill in gaps and to fix things or to relight things so that you're like, wow, that's really what I intended. But now it can do it for me, of course. Brainstorming that partner that you can throw things at and bounce back at you. Oftentimes I feel like I don't have anything right now. I start talking to it, quote, unquote, talking to it, and it starts to help me generate ideas, and it'll build the outline for me. And the outline may not be perfect, but it's enough for me to figure out what I want to do. And the one thing that AI is very good at is structure. So to provide the structure that I need, I say I want to do three exercises in 90 minutes with this learning outcome based on these principles. Write the outline, include breaks. I want it to be very hands on, experiential and it will do a pretty good job of giving me the skeletal kind of structure. And lastly, it's for organizing and sorting. That's a little bit different than say analysis and summaries. But like put this stuff in a way that makes sense and I'll create long last list, like 20 things that I think and I'll say organize this, sort this by hierarchy, importance, group things together intelligently. How should we disseminate this piece of information? Just a fantastic job at that. And oftentimes we're like, so we just came up with 35 ideas, what should we do first? And everybody's like, I don't know, let's go through the notes. I'm like, no, ask AI and it'll figure it out. I'm like, yeah, that kind of sits well with me. That's about right. Let's use that. So that would be number 10, 11 and 12. You want to add anything to this list.
- [79:51]
B
The favorite just use in general of output and using AI as a creative is beliefs based content repurposing. The idea that you've got your beliefs and if you can figure out a way of repurposing them across every single social platform out there, every single way of communicating, you don't actually need to produce that much because it's so consistent. And then your people are starting to understand what you stand for. So then it's like you making your mark in this very consistent way where you don't even have to do that much extra work. You just have to boil everything you think down to a few rules and then work out how to get those into people's minds in a range of different ways. That's my favorite use for it, just repurposing beliefs into different, different types of content.
- [80:39]
A
I think we spent a lot of time talking about different uses of AI. It's my sincerest hope that if you've been on the fence to get off the fence. Perhaps today's conversation sparks some ideas and use cases that you might give it a try. I sincerely believe this and AI predicted, I would say this. If you're not using AI to augment, to implement, or to help you do what you do, I think you're putting yourself at a severe disadvantage. I know there are a lot of concerns about ethical models and it being trained. Please don't let this be the thing that holds you back. There are ethical models out there. There are things that you can use it for that don't cross into that territory, if that's one of your biggest concerns. But on behalf of the people who work for you, work with you, and the people that are in your charge in both personal and professional life, you owe it to yourself to use the best tools available to you to do more of what you do, to do it in less time, and to do it better. That's my perspective on it. I think Jodi's with me on this for sure.
- [81:35]
B
This is a game, and we just. We all have to play it.
- [81:37]
A
It's a game. We don't get to write the rules. We don't always get to, like, have a fair shake at it. But it's the game and we play the game. Or you choose to sit out and then reap what you sow. I think. I think that is a great way to end this episode. Now, this time I get to say it differently because Jody and Chris do know something about something about AI. So I hope you got value from this. And if you want to continue the conversation with us, feel free to leave a comment. Wherever you're consuming this piece of content, we'll do our best to respond to it. Maybe our AI will respond to who knows? But looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this. And if you want more content like this, let us know.