The Power and Limitations of AI in Marketing

[00:00:00] Return of Marketers Talking AI after a Break

[00:00:00] Jess Bahr: Welcome to marketers.
[00:00:02] Jess Bahr: Talking AI.
[00:00:03] Jess Bahr: We had a short break for Workshop.
[00:00:06] Jess Bahr: Next one coming up soon.
[00:00:08] Jess Bahr: But we're back.
[00:00:09] Jess Bahr: We're back in action, excited to be here.
[00:00:11] Pavel Konoplenko: And I have a new webcam.
[00:00:13] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I got a new background.
[00:00:15] Jess Bahr: So much has changed.
[00:00:17] Pavel Konoplenko: That's the reason we took the yeah, adjust the webcams.
[00:00:21] Jess Bahr: We're still the same Pav and Jess, though.
[00:00:23] Jess Bahr: Just two weeks older than last time you saw us.
[00:00:26] Pavel Konoplenko: Well, depends when they see this.
[00:00:29] Jess Bahr: It's very true.

[00:00:30] Controversy Around AI Companies Using Undisclosed Human Labor

[00:00:30] Pavel Konoplenko: Anyways, what's been on your mind since these two weeks and this week?
[00:00:37] Jess Bahr: Okay, follow me on this one.
[00:00:39] Jess Bahr: I took a demo of a platform the other day, an AI tool.
[00:00:43] Jess Bahr: And during the demo, I realized that they only use AI for one small component, and it's actually just human labor.
[00:00:53] Jess Bahr: The promise of the platform is AI generated images, and essentially AI generated images that you can have some kind of input on and give some design direction.
[00:01:03] Jess Bahr: But really what it does is it generates one element of the image, and then it's a designer who does it.
[00:01:09] Jess Bahr: And so they say you put your stuff in, you generate your image, and then you mark it as approved, and then it'll go through and give it a little polish.
[00:01:18] Jess Bahr: Little polishing touch.
[00:01:20] Jess Bahr: And then 24 hours later, you'll get your final image.
[00:01:23] Pavel Konoplenko: But when I looked at sorry, do they disclose?
[00:01:28] Pavel Konoplenko: Was that part of the branding?
[00:01:30] Jess Bahr: No.
[00:01:31] Jess Bahr: So the platform, the website itself is like AI generated images.
[00:01:36] Jess Bahr: Essentially.
[00:01:37] Jess Bahr: I'm not going to get into too much detail because I don't want to call them out, but it's AI generated images in the pitch deck.
[00:01:43] Jess Bahr: It never, ever calls out at all that there is any human in the loop at all.
[00:01:49] Jess Bahr: And so we're going through.
[00:01:50] Jess Bahr: I said, oh, hold on.
[00:01:50] Jess Bahr: Why is it 24 hours?
[00:01:52] Jess Bahr: Well, we go and we give it a second look and add a few elements in.
[00:01:56] Jess Bahr: And then I started looking, and we walked through an example live.
[00:01:59] Jess Bahr: And so they show me the example, and this is what you then submit, and then this is what you get back.
[00:02:05] Jess Bahr: And it was night and day.
[00:02:06] Jess Bahr: So essentially, it's almost like it's two parts.
[00:02:11] Jess Bahr: So one is they're outsourcing more of the labor to you because you have to upload certain raw elements for it, for, like, a product, product images.
[00:02:18] Jess Bahr: Essentially, you have to upload it and essentially assemble it how you want.
[00:02:22] Jess Bahr: And AI is involved in helping generate some of those components of the image, but you have to still assemble it in how you want it.
[00:02:28] Jess Bahr: And then their designer takes it and makes sure that it's blended properly in their shadows and lighting and all that stuff.
[00:02:35] Jess Bahr: So it's really actually splitting the work between the consumer and their back end, imaginary designer person who's real, who they don't claim exists.
[00:02:46] Jess Bahr: Because when I call them so it's a designer doing 80% of the work, they're like, well, no, it's really like AI is?
[00:02:53] Pavel Konoplenko: No, it's a designer, because there was something recently in the news about I don't remember the name of the company, they turn 2D images into 3D images, and there was, like a big hoopla around it because it's very similar.
[00:03:09] Pavel Konoplenko: It turned out that they were using cheap labor, basically to turn these 2D images into three D.
[00:03:16] Pavel Konoplenko: And it's not actually AI generated or the process isn't AI driven.
[00:03:22] Pavel Konoplenko: And then the question is, why not disclose that?
[00:03:29] Pavel Konoplenko: Because I feel like companies would be more interested to know that, hey, there is a human in the loop.
[00:03:35] Pavel Konoplenko: There is an expert designer looking at this.
[00:03:38] Jess Bahr: We see this.
[00:03:39] Jess Bahr: You and I run into this with fill your Content calendar regularly, where when we're talking to prospects and clients about the process and during the sales conversations, it's, here's how we use AI.
[00:03:49] Jess Bahr: And then it goes to a human.
[00:03:51] Jess Bahr: And this is why there's a human involved.
[00:03:54] Jess Bahr: This is how AI is aiding the human in their work to be more efficient and I guess, cut down on time it takes to produce it.
[00:04:01] Jess Bahr: But you clearly need a human in the loop.
[00:04:03] Jess Bahr: With some of these, and I think with the one I took the demo of, if they were transparent and said, hey, we have these really super skilled designers that have 15 years of experience, x, Y and Z.
[00:04:16] Jess Bahr: They could almost elevate the value of the platform by having that person there.
[00:04:22] Jess Bahr: But instead, it feels like they want to hide it.
[00:04:25] Jess Bahr: And I don't know if it's that they don't want to admit that there's a human because they want to feel like they're 100% AI, but also say, I think a lot of these AI tools are not actually AI driven.
[00:04:36] Jess Bahr: They've just found a way to incorporate AI into some little component of the workflow.
[00:04:42] Jess Bahr: And they're calling it AI because it's a money grab for them.
[00:04:44] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:04:45] Pavel Konoplenko: So it's like a reverse imposter syndrome.
[00:04:48] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:04:48] Pavel Konoplenko: Where you're hiding the imposter.
[00:04:51] Jess Bahr: They're doing the fake it till you make it.
[00:04:53] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:04:56] Pavel Konoplenko: It's interesting because it is a matter of positioning and to your point of it being a cash grab, you want to position yourself as this innovative company that's figured this thing out.
[00:05:08] Pavel Konoplenko: And if you reveal that you have a human, then it cheapens your position.
[00:05:13] Pavel Konoplenko: But if you bring that story in the proper way, you could elevate your brand and the process.

[00:05:20] Discussion on AI Tools for Marketers

[00:05:20] Jess Bahr: Well, related, I feel like I've noticed a trend with a lot of the AI tooling coming out for marketers.
[00:05:30] Jess Bahr: And I'm not going to go on my full soapbox, but a lot of the AI tooling that's being made for marketers by developers and non marketers, I've started to notice a couple of them.
[00:05:40] Jess Bahr: Like, this looks really familiar.
[00:05:41] Jess Bahr: The site, like, the themes, the colors, like, the website theme looks familiar.
[00:05:46] Jess Bahr: And I'm starting to realize a lot of these AI tools when you go there, who made writer?
[00:05:53] Jess Bahr: Who actually built Writer.
[00:05:55] Jess Bahr: There's no About US page that lists their founder and their founding team or anyone in the company.
[00:06:01] Jess Bahr: These AI tooling, it's being built on these sites that are anonymous, that tie back to some parent company that does something not related, but maybe a little bit adjacent.
[00:06:11] Jess Bahr: So it's like they're building these tools that are really fronts for human labor and claiming it's AI and then they're also not being transparent with who they are that's building the tool and why they're building it.
[00:06:22] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:06:22] Pavel Konoplenko: So it's basically being this hidden experiment where if it fails, it fails.
[00:06:26] Pavel Konoplenko: It's not tied to the parent brand.
[00:06:28] Pavel Konoplenko: If it does well, then it's like, oh, it's some incremental revenue for us.
[00:06:32] Pavel Konoplenko: The investors are going to be happy.
[00:06:33] Pavel Konoplenko: We're doing cool, innovative stuff.
[00:06:35] Pavel Konoplenko: That's interesting.
[00:06:36] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:06:38] Pavel Konoplenko: So I use an app for sleep tracking.
[00:06:43] Pavel Konoplenko: It's called sleep cycle.
[00:06:44] Pavel Konoplenko: And they introduced Sleep GPT where you could ask questions about your sleep.
[00:06:50] Pavel Konoplenko: You can ask, how did I sleep last night?
[00:06:53] Pavel Konoplenko: And it gives me three paragraphs of how I slept when I could just look like I've always just looked at the numbers.
[00:06:58] Pavel Konoplenko: It says how many hours you slept, how many hours you were in bed.
[00:07:01] Pavel Konoplenko: And it just seems like such a convoluted, over, complexified thing where I'm sure the app was like, hey, we're going to give you access to AI and you can get insights, but it's like, we need it.
[00:07:14] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, I could just literally look at the three numbers that I need instead of you writing three paragraphs about the numbers and the trends.
[00:07:25] Pavel Konoplenko: They used to have an arrow.
[00:07:26] Pavel Konoplenko: It's like green arrow up, red arrow down.
[00:07:28] Pavel Konoplenko: It's like, that's way easier than me getting the three paragraphs.
[00:07:33] Pavel Konoplenko: So, again, on some level, it's a money grab.
[00:07:36] Pavel Konoplenko: You want to put this feature into it.
[00:07:39] Pavel Konoplenko: It doesn't need to be there.
[00:07:43] Pavel Konoplenko: I think part of it is that's what we take as innovation today.
[00:07:48] Pavel Konoplenko: It's like you just want to hop on the latest trend.
[00:07:51] Pavel Konoplenko: You want to say, hey, we have this, but the entire process isn't thought out.

[00:07:55] The Role of AI in Content Generation and its Importance in Modern Marketing

[00:07:55] Pavel Konoplenko: And then speaking of the companies that are generating text, and for us, that's a very close to home topic because that's what we're building.
[00:08:03] Pavel Konoplenko: I think there's this whole pitch of, like, generate hundreds of articles at once.
[00:08:09] Pavel Konoplenko: It's like, what are you going to do with those hundreds of articles?
[00:08:12] Pavel Konoplenko: Someone has to sit and actually then still read it and approve it and write the meta descriptions.
[00:08:18] Pavel Konoplenko: You have to get the image, you have to make sure there's a cohesiveness, a narrative to it on some level.
[00:08:23] Pavel Konoplenko: And getting 500 articles in a month is not what any founder or entrepreneur or marketing team actually wants.
[00:08:33] Pavel Konoplenko: Nightmare.
[00:08:34] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:08:34] Jess Bahr: I laugh because I've been in that seat where I've helped an engineer write a blog post or you have your PR or someone's writing blog posts for leadership.
[00:08:45] Jess Bahr: And the hard part isn't making the content, it's getting your VP of Engineering to review the blog post that you wrote in their tone of voice.
[00:08:55] Jess Bahr: That is the struggle.
[00:08:57] Jess Bahr: And I'm a huge fan of programmatic SEO, big fan of it.
[00:09:00] Jess Bahr: I think that's one use case where you're bulk creating content with a very specific purpose.
[00:09:06] Jess Bahr: But when you're taking that programmatic approach to the content on your site and it all has to be reviewed by oftentimes more than one person, you don't need more of it.
[00:09:15] Jess Bahr: You need a better way to review and process that content.
[00:09:19] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, a lot of times the bottleneck become human.
[00:09:24] Pavel Konoplenko: And this could be when we talk about engineers building products for marketing, that's the nuance.
[00:09:31] Pavel Konoplenko: The nuance is the human component and the human fallible schedules fill up.
[00:09:37] Jess Bahr: Yeah, it's like yo, yo dog, I heard you like content.
[00:09:43] Pavel Konoplenko: Here's 501,000 word articles that may or may not be the same to each other.
[00:09:49] Pavel Konoplenko: And it's literally a nightmare.
[00:09:55] Pavel Konoplenko: It gives me anxiety.
[00:09:58] Jess Bahr: Well, if you're a vendor, no one wants to keep paying for a tool that makes them feel shitty about their ability to do their job.
[00:10:08] Jess Bahr: So are you going to keep using it?
[00:10:10] Jess Bahr: Or you can use it for a month, get 500 articles, and that's your content for a year.
[00:10:14] Pavel Konoplenko: But then once you get around to reading it, you realize it's trash.
[00:10:17] Pavel Konoplenko: And it's like not offering any unique.
[00:10:20] Jess Bahr: Insights or opinions or you publish it and then someone on your board reads it and they're like, this is trash.
[00:10:27] Pavel Konoplenko: And I think from the consumer side, it's just going to lead us to having article blindness in the same way that we have banner blindness.
[00:10:37] Pavel Konoplenko: And consumers are very good at fine tuning their attention.
[00:10:43] Pavel Konoplenko: So no matter how much you can output, eventually either the consumer will control it or the algorithms themselves.
[00:10:50] Pavel Konoplenko: And I think ultimately the best tools for marketers is not going to be generating more content.
[00:10:57] Pavel Konoplenko: At the end of the day, you need better content.
[00:10:59] Pavel Konoplenko: I think the focus on quality needs to be there and the focus to quality, there's less of a shortcut there because you do need to have a deeper understanding of what the brand is trying to say, what they have tried to say in the past, understanding their unique perspectives.
[00:11:15] Pavel Konoplenko: And you can use, I think, AI to assist in that, but that's why you can't get rid of the human in the loop.
[00:11:22] Pavel Konoplenko: And for us, when we position fill your content calendar, like the human in the loop is the value add.
[00:11:28] Pavel Konoplenko: You're going to have an expert marketer and a writer who know not just how content works and how people read content, but what the purpose of it is.
[00:11:38] Jess Bahr: So related?
[00:11:39] Jess Bahr: Kind of.
[00:11:40] Jess Bahr: I'm in this Facebook group, cursed AI, and I literally like every time I open Facebook I just end up scrolling posts from the group.
[00:11:47] Jess Bahr: And so it started as people sharing AI generated photos that were just a little bit wonky a little bit off, or typically they were trying to make humans, and they have like, ten fingers, and they're just super weird.
[00:11:58] Jess Bahr: But people also share what really looked like legitimately old timey photos.
[00:12:04] Jess Bahr: A lot of the photos really look real.
[00:12:06] Jess Bahr: And so the group's now progressed a little bit where it's people also sharing screenshots of images that were shared in the group that are caught out in the wild.
[00:12:15] Jess Bahr: Like, the Giant of Kendahar is one that's been covered in a couple news stories of people talking about this giant, and it came from it's AI generated, but they can't tell the difference with it.
[00:12:27] Jess Bahr: And that goes back to, do you have the subject matter expertise to tell what's real and what's going to resonate with your audience?
[00:12:34] Jess Bahr: If using AI to generate photos of wedding dresses, eventually someone's going to notice there's six fingers on your model.
[00:12:40] Jess Bahr: And it's not that they're born that way because some people actually do have six fingers, no shade to the six fingered individuals.
[00:12:48] Jess Bahr: That genetic trait is actually dominant.
[00:12:51] Jess Bahr: So we're the mutants with five.
[00:12:54] Jess Bahr: But if you don't have expertise, you're not going to notice that the shadow is in the wrong spot.
[00:12:59] Jess Bahr: You're not always going to see those details.
[00:13:01] Jess Bahr: You still need to understand your subject at least somewhat, to know what you're doing there.
[00:13:06] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.

[00:13:06] The Impact of AI on Content Creation and Google's Response

[00:13:06] Pavel Konoplenko: Speaking of spotting something in the wild, I actually spotted and I've read news about it.
[00:13:12] Pavel Konoplenko: There's these AI generated book reviews and I was going to get an audiobook and their top review, it opened with I'm sorry, as an AI model, I can't properly give you the review, but I'll try my best and then it gives, like, the five star review.
[00:13:28] Pavel Konoplenko: I'm like, wow, I actually saw it on my phone.
[00:13:31] Pavel Konoplenko: And in the wild.
[00:13:34] Pavel Konoplenko: And I think we get better as consumers.
[00:13:38] Pavel Konoplenko: We become those experts over time.
[00:13:41] Pavel Konoplenko: Because again, for me, I guess I was an editor, but looking at so much AI content, I've just over time, have now spotted the patterns where I'm like, anytime you see the word, like revolutionize, like, okay, that's probably written by AI.
[00:13:57] Pavel Konoplenko: AI loves to end their articles within conclusion.
[00:14:01] Pavel Konoplenko: And it's fine if you do it once in a while if you're an actual writer, but if every one of your articles ends the same and I see that, I'm like, okay, that's probably AI generated.
[00:14:11] Pavel Konoplenko: And I think, again, we're very good at finding and spotting corporate speak.
[00:14:17] Pavel Konoplenko: We know when a public statement has been written by their PR agencies.
[00:14:24] Pavel Konoplenko: We know you don't speak like that.
[00:14:26] Jess Bahr: We know this went through legal.
[00:14:29] Pavel Konoplenko: We know these things.
[00:14:30] Pavel Konoplenko: And at some level, AI is just going to be another layer of legal PR and AI, and we'll get better at that, and we'll spot it.
[00:14:40] Pavel Konoplenko: And then what are those companies that have those 500 articles?
[00:14:43] Pavel Konoplenko: What are they going to do?
[00:14:46] Jess Bahr: I'm really interested to see how Google reacts to it.
[00:14:49] Jess Bahr: Too, because you're going to be having these what I think will happen is you have these websites that have 10,000 plus articles on a ton of topics, so it should rank high for at least many keywords.
[00:15:01] Jess Bahr: But the bounce rate on the site is going to be really high, and it's going to be really low traffic scores.
[00:15:07] Jess Bahr: So they're going to have really low domain authority, but you're going to have these sites with just thousands and thousands of articles that do nothing.
[00:15:16] Jess Bahr: Ultimately, at least my frame of reference is your marketing activities should be driving sales.
[00:15:22] Jess Bahr: Maybe it's not sales.
[00:15:23] Jess Bahr: And I come from an enterprise tech world, so everything's always sales, but it does something, right?
[00:15:30] Jess Bahr: Or if not, you're just writing content to write content.
[00:15:32] Jess Bahr: And why are you paying?
[00:15:33] Jess Bahr: Sorry, I'm like mirroring you unintentionally.
[00:15:36] Jess Bahr: Am I an AI?
[00:15:38] Jess Bahr: Am I a robot trying to be human?
[00:15:41] Jess Bahr: No.
[00:15:41] Pavel Konoplenko: Why are you a human trying to be a robot?
[00:15:43] Jess Bahr: Someone give me a captcha ASAP.
[00:15:47] Pavel Konoplenko: Anyways, people and it's interesting because there's also nothing wrong with content for the sake of content if that's the brand.
[00:15:55] Pavel Konoplenko: Like, you're creating interesting insights, and your.
[00:15:58] Jess Bahr: Brand is, we're thought, content to engage with.
[00:16:01] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, the bottom barrel thing becomes where it's content for the sake of content, but it's not even good content.
[00:16:11] Pavel Konoplenko: It's just forgettable content.
[00:16:13] Pavel Konoplenko: And I think what Google is going to respond with is in the same way that they responded to.
[00:16:19] Pavel Konoplenko: I remember, like, weather.
[00:16:22] Pavel Konoplenko: Know, when you Google the weather or something, it would tell you it'll send you somewhere.
[00:16:26] Pavel Konoplenko: You get the weather, you leave.
[00:16:27] Pavel Konoplenko: Eventually, Google was just like, well, here's just the weather and all of those sites.
[00:16:33] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, recipes.
[00:16:35] Jess Bahr: They do it with recipes.
[00:16:37] Pavel Konoplenko: Recipes.
[00:16:38] Jess Bahr: Pinterest does it with recipes.
[00:16:40] Jess Bahr: When Pinterest god, I'm aging myself.
[00:16:43] Jess Bahr: When Pinterest rolled out Rich Pins where it would pull the recipe off your blog and put it under the Pin, people lost their minds because their web traffic dropped.
[00:16:53] Jess Bahr: The Pins would get repinned like crazy, but their web traffic dropped completely.
[00:16:57] Jess Bahr: And a lot of bloggers would just protest, like, don't use Rich Pins.
[00:17:01] Jess Bahr: It'll ruin your site.
[00:17:03] Jess Bahr: You'll lose all your traffic from Pinterest.
[00:17:05] Jess Bahr: Only do dump because you put, like, the Rich Pin code on your site for it.
[00:17:11] Jess Bahr: Yeah, people lost their minds, but eventually people just got used to I've been.
[00:17:15] Pavel Konoplenko: I guess I got access to the Google search experiment thing.
[00:17:20] Pavel Konoplenko: I don't know how publicly available it is, but now when I Google something, I have Google give me the answer above the search fold, and I love it.
[00:17:33] Pavel Konoplenko: I very rarely go past it.
[00:17:39] Pavel Konoplenko: Whatever I'm asking, I get the answer right there.
[00:17:41] Pavel Konoplenko: And like, 95% of the time, it's exactly what I want, and I just leave.
[00:17:45] Pavel Konoplenko: And I never even look at the top ten results.
[00:17:48] Pavel Konoplenko: And I think that's the future.
[00:17:50] Pavel Konoplenko: And again, I've been loving it.
[00:17:52] Pavel Konoplenko: And for them, I think for Google's survival, they will need to do that.
[00:17:57] Jess Bahr: Well, I think Google also needs it because they are currently in an antitrust case with the government for monopolizing search, essentially.
[00:18:08] Jess Bahr: And so you're no longer a search platform.
[00:18:10] Jess Bahr: You're an AI tool to answer their ask.
[00:18:13] Jess Bahr: Jeeves, we've gone full circle, which opens.
[00:18:17] Pavel Konoplenko: Up, I guess, new opportunities in the future.

[00:18:19] The Future of AI-Generated Content and the Value of Human Creativity

[00:18:19] Pavel Konoplenko: And it goes back to, again, what's the value of content?
[00:18:22] Pavel Konoplenko: Because I don't believe content will have no value because people will continue to read.
[00:18:28] Pavel Konoplenko: People will continue to want insights.
[00:18:30] Pavel Konoplenko: I think what will shift is because 20 years ago, writing articles for the sake of writing articles didn't make sense until Google incentivized you, basically to do that.
[00:18:42] Pavel Konoplenko: So when the incentive changes, the behavior will change.
[00:18:46] Pavel Konoplenko: So at some point, there's still going to be now a demand for creative insight.
[00:18:51] Pavel Konoplenko: There's going to be a demand for strategic narratives and actual creativity that SEO writing will not give you.
[00:19:00] Jess Bahr: Yeah, well, I think some of the blogs that you and I read, they tend to cover topics that we don't see either in mainstream media or I hate saying mainstream media.
[00:19:11] Jess Bahr: I feel like conspiracists when saying it, but they have a unique approach, a unique view, or they're covering topics that aren't as easy to see.
[00:19:20] Jess Bahr: And that's not something like you can't ask Chat GPT to go right on a topic that it doesn't have data on.
[00:19:26] Pavel Konoplenko: Yes, and that's my whole thing, too, of like, I don't ever think AI content will overtake human content because it needs something to mirror at some level.
[00:19:39] Pavel Konoplenko: Human content will always have to kind of lead the way, even just incrementally, because it needs to look at something.
[00:19:46] Pavel Konoplenko: And I don't know, I guess I'm excited about AI, not just from the technological perspective.
[00:19:54] Pavel Konoplenko: I think what it does, it brings an unexpected component to our experience of the Internet.
[00:20:03] Pavel Konoplenko: Oh, yeah.
[00:20:04] Jess Bahr: That's why I'm loving the group, the curse AI group.
[00:20:08] Jess Bahr: I love it because I feel like remember back in the day when the Internet was first a thing and it felt like you could find these little hidden gems?
[00:20:21] Jess Bahr: Homestar Runner used to consume a ton of my time, but there'd be these little hidden gems.
[00:20:27] Jess Bahr: Did you ever use.
[00:20:30] Pavel Konoplenko: Stumble upon?
[00:20:31] Jess Bahr: Pavel?
[00:20:32] Jess Bahr: Let's make stumble upon again.
[00:20:33] Jess Bahr: Most people won't remember it.
[00:20:34] Jess Bahr: Let's just make stumble upon again.
[00:20:36] Pavel Konoplenko: Well, it's stumble upon, too.
[00:20:38] Jess Bahr: Yeah, but it's fun.
[00:20:39] Jess Bahr: And then you meet people who also get it, like shares.
[00:20:43] Jess Bahr: Let's go get some shares.
[00:20:45] Jess Bahr: And you have this bonding experience, and I feel like the AI art cursed AI group.
[00:20:52] Jess Bahr: I love it, but I feel like when I see it, I start to be like, oh, it's like fun.
[00:20:58] Jess Bahr: It makes me giddy.
[00:21:01] Pavel Konoplenko: So that makes me think of two examples.
[00:21:03] Pavel Konoplenko: That's a good word to kind of describe this, too.
[00:21:06] Pavel Konoplenko: It's like, you're in on this joke together, basically.
[00:21:08] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:21:08] Pavel Konoplenko: That's why I still love Tumblr, by the way, is like, my number one.
[00:21:12] Pavel Konoplenko: I can talk about Tumblr all day.
[00:21:14] Pavel Konoplenko: I love Tumblr.
[00:21:15] Jess Bahr: Tumblr survived a lot.
[00:21:17] Pavel Konoplenko: Tumblr has survived a lot.
[00:21:19] Pavel Konoplenko: And there is a very strong sense of community.
[00:21:22] Pavel Konoplenko: I've been on Tumblr for like ten years as my number one.
[00:21:24] Pavel Konoplenko: Like, I've never left, always used it.
[00:21:28] Jess Bahr: I feel like it's been more than ten years.
[00:21:31] Pavel Konoplenko: Probably actually because I started in college.
[00:21:34] Pavel Konoplenko: So again, it's been like over ten years.
[00:21:41] Pavel Konoplenko: I love it because there is a strong sense of community.
[00:21:46] Pavel Konoplenko: There is a lot of inside jokes that are site wide, which is you don't see there's no algorithm.
[00:21:53] Pavel Konoplenko: I mean, there is an algorithm, but it's chronological, that's the main thing.
[00:21:57] Pavel Konoplenko: So you reach an end of the content.
[00:22:00] Pavel Konoplenko: Sometimes you see things pop up again and there's also a sense of even mid journey.
[00:22:07] Pavel Konoplenko: So mid journey I think is a really good example where because it forces you to use discord.
[00:22:12] Pavel Konoplenko: First of all, you're in a whole other world, which is not you're not on a browser, you're like in an app that's for chatting.
[00:22:19] Pavel Konoplenko: And it has a very strong brand.
[00:22:22] Pavel Konoplenko: It's like for gamers, it's very silly, there's no other way to describe it.
[00:22:27] Pavel Konoplenko: But then as you scroll down to the chat bot where you can type your prompt in, you're just scrolling past other people's creations, which is very different than scrolling down through Instagram where people are putting out their best impression of themselves.
[00:22:44] Pavel Konoplenko: You're just scrolling down like random creativity where someone had some crazy random thought and they're like, oh, show me a unicorn on top of a hamburger.
[00:22:52] Pavel Konoplenko: And it's like they didn't mean for the world to see it, but you just saw it and you're like, wow, that's like super random and creative.
[00:23:00] Pavel Konoplenko: It gives me that experience and it makes me feel, I don't know, hopeful about the internet.
[00:23:07] Pavel Konoplenko: I remember the first time I used Napster.
[00:23:09] Pavel Konoplenko: I have a very specific tangible memory of it.
[00:23:14] Pavel Konoplenko: I don't know why, but just logging in there for the first time.
[00:23:18] Pavel Konoplenko: I remember my friend telling me about it.
[00:23:20] Pavel Konoplenko: They're like, hey, have you heard of Napster and what's kid, you're like this little kid in elementary school.
[00:23:27] Pavel Konoplenko: And they're like, yeah, you can download music.
[00:23:29] Pavel Konoplenko: And you're like, what does download mean?
[00:23:31] Jess Bahr: How do I seed stuff?
[00:23:34] Pavel Konoplenko: And you're like, in this world?
[00:23:36] Pavel Konoplenko: And you're like, is this legal?
[00:23:38] Pavel Konoplenko: And what am I doing?
[00:23:39] Pavel Konoplenko: Am I going to get a virus?
[00:23:41] Pavel Konoplenko: And there's like this sense of danger, there's this sense of rebelliousness.
[00:23:46] Jess Bahr: The FBI is going to come to your house.
[00:23:48] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah.
[00:23:49] Pavel Konoplenko: And people said that, people said like, hey, don't use Napster because you're going to get arrested or something.
[00:23:54] Jess Bahr: I use LimeWire, napster lime wire.
[00:23:57] Pavel Konoplenko: LimeWire came after but Napster was the original.
[00:24:01] Pavel Konoplenko: It was LimeWire.
[00:24:02] Pavel Konoplenko: And then there was also morpheus for a little while.
[00:24:05] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, but Napster was I don't know why I have such a I'm just remembering the logo there's bubbling up nostalgia for me.
[00:24:15] Pavel Konoplenko: But that was a time when it wasn't like the Internet wasn't centralized the way that it is now.
[00:24:21] Pavel Konoplenko: And there was some news that came out about leaked harry Styles.
[00:24:27] Pavel Konoplenko: Is that his name?
[00:24:28] Jess Bahr: Yeah, Harry Styles.
[00:24:29] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:24:30] Pavel Konoplenko: There's some snippets of some AI generated popular guy.
[00:24:33] Pavel Konoplenko: It's a popular guy.
[00:24:34] Pavel Konoplenko: He's made some songs.
[00:24:35] Pavel Konoplenko: Apparently there's some AI generated song snippets of him.
[00:24:44] Pavel Konoplenko: It's not really him.
[00:24:45] Pavel Konoplenko: Okay, but I don't know if it's, like, confirmed that it's not him.
[00:24:49] Pavel Konoplenko: But again, there's this aura of mystery.

[00:24:52] Exploring the Potential of AI in the Future

[00:24:52] Pavel Konoplenko: It's like, I don't know if this is actually from him.
[00:24:56] Pavel Konoplenko: I don't know if this is him.
[00:24:57] Pavel Konoplenko: And some people like it, some people don't.
[00:25:00] Pavel Konoplenko: But what it's doing is it's creating this sense of, again, like, chaos, chaos within the community of, you know, it's not officially sanctioned.
[00:25:11] Jess Bahr: I don't know if they call themselves Stylists, but I feel like.
[00:25:18] Pavel Konoplenko: It'S not officially sanctioned.
[00:25:19] Pavel Konoplenko: It's not on.
[00:25:20] Pavel Konoplenko: So, like, how do I trust this?
[00:25:22] Pavel Konoplenko: And it's like, I don't know, but it sounds cool.
[00:25:24] Pavel Konoplenko: And you're like, I don't know.
[00:25:27] Pavel Konoplenko: What I think AI is doing is it's bringing some of that chaos back?
[00:25:32] Pavel Konoplenko: And we're talking about, is Google going to be threatened?
[00:25:36] Pavel Konoplenko: And that's almost blasphemous to think because Google has been the monolith of the Internet for like, two decades.
[00:25:46] Pavel Konoplenko: But at some point, they can't remain the monoliths forever, whether it's because the government breaks it up or someone else disrupts them, whatever it is, we're now starting to say and think these blasphemous thoughts.
[00:26:00] Jess Bahr: Listen, back in the day when we were on Friendster and MySpace, I don't think we ever I mean, Friendster doesn't even exist anymore at all.
[00:26:09] Jess Bahr: MySpace, your old MySpace MySpace profile actually still exists.
[00:26:13] Jess Bahr: They're still up.
[00:26:16] Jess Bahr: A couple of years ago, I found my old one, but during the time when it was popular, we never thought it wouldn't be the home.
[00:26:25] Jess Bahr: It was the thing.
[00:26:26] Jess Bahr: And so I think it's hard to imagine a world without it.
[00:26:29] Jess Bahr: But really, can Google go away?
[00:26:33] Jess Bahr: My phone runs Android is Google.
[00:26:35] Jess Bahr: What's interesting is the antitrust.
[00:26:37] Jess Bahr: One of the things they cite is that Android phones come pre installed with Chrome, but Windows comes pre installed with Edge, and no one fucking uses I've been actually using Edge more often just for fun, but it's not as commonly used.
[00:26:54] Jess Bahr: I mean, I can't imagine as we talk through it, I cannot imagine more without Google, without Pixel phones.
[00:27:00] Pavel Konoplenko: I mean, it's hard to imagine a world.
[00:27:03] Pavel Konoplenko: And that's why, for me, one of my favorite genres of books is Sci-Fi, because Sci-Fi forces you to imagine different worlds that are parallel to our worlds, but that have completely different structures, and it kind of forces you to think about different possibilities.
[00:27:20] Pavel Konoplenko: There's a very also famous quote from Mark Fisher.
[00:27:26] Pavel Konoplenko: It's easier for us to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.
[00:27:33] Pavel Konoplenko: Capitalism is so infused in everything that we do, and for us, it's much easier to be like, yes, the world's going to end.
[00:27:40] Pavel Konoplenko: But it's like, it's not the world itself isn't going to end.
[00:27:44] Pavel Konoplenko: There's going to be something.
[00:27:45] Pavel Konoplenko: It'll evolve in a whole different way, as it always has, but it's just hard to imagine a different alternative from the one that we have been so seeped into.

[00:27:56] Exploring Dependence on Technology and Prospects of AI

[00:27:56] Pavel Konoplenko: And in today's world, it is like smartphones.
[00:27:58] Pavel Konoplenko: And I was just thinking about that recently too, because I believe the NYC MTA is moving away from Metro cards and to using your smartphone.
[00:28:12] Pavel Konoplenko: But what happens if you lost your phone?
[00:28:14] Pavel Konoplenko: Let's say, I don't know, you lost your phone and your phone has all your contacts.
[00:28:22] Jess Bahr: Also, how much advertising money do they make by doing like I was just thinking supreme isn't going to be able to do an MTA card drop anymore with it.
[00:28:31] Jess Bahr: But you know what's crazy?
[00:28:32] Jess Bahr: So my partner, we're very opposite.
[00:28:36] Jess Bahr: He doesn't own a computer.
[00:28:38] Jess Bahr: He'll never see this.
[00:28:39] Jess Bahr: But if he does, I don't think he'd get upset about this.
[00:28:41] Jess Bahr: But he doesn't own a computer.
[00:28:43] Jess Bahr: And when we go out sometimes to go run errands or go out for dinner, he just doesn't bring his phone.
[00:28:49] Jess Bahr: And the first time he's like, oh, I left my phone at home.
[00:28:53] Jess Bahr: And I was like, oh, do you need to go back for it?
[00:28:55] Jess Bahr: He's like, no, I intentionally left it at home and I couldn't even compute it.
[00:29:00] Jess Bahr: I was like, Why?
[00:29:01] Jess Bahr: He's like, because I don't need it.
[00:29:03] Jess Bahr: We're going to dinner and coming back home.
[00:29:04] Jess Bahr: Like, I don't need my phone.
[00:29:05] Jess Bahr: And then we went to run errands and I couldn't find him in the store and I couldn't call him because he didn't have his phone.
[00:29:10] Jess Bahr: And so I was like, oh no, I could have called you.
[00:29:12] Jess Bahr: He's like, it doesn't matter.
[00:29:13] Jess Bahr: We're both here.
[00:29:14] Jess Bahr: We're not going to leave without each other.
[00:29:15] Jess Bahr: Worst case, we meet at the car.
[00:29:17] Jess Bahr: What year is that?
[00:29:19] Jess Bahr: 1992.
[00:29:21] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, it's hard to imagine a world beyond what we have now, like after Facebook, after Google.
[00:29:29] Pavel Konoplenko: And that's not necessarily to say, like, Facebook will go away or Google will go away, which I guess statistically speaking, they will.
[00:29:36] Jess Bahr: But Twitter might.
[00:29:38] Pavel Konoplenko: Well, I guess Twitter already did go away, kind of.
[00:29:43] Pavel Konoplenko: But it's hard to imagine a world in which we are not in its stranglehold.
[00:29:49] Pavel Konoplenko: And I think about how much innovation potentially has know, killed by the stranglehold that say Google and Facebook have they've created a lot of value, which I don't disagree, like they've created a lot of value for many people, for businesses.
[00:30:05] Pavel Konoplenko: But you can't imagine an alternative in which Google didn't exist and all the other value that was created by other companies that you can't imagine being there because that's not how the world is structured.
[00:30:21] Pavel Konoplenko: So that's why I'm excited about AI.
[00:30:22] Pavel Konoplenko: I feel like every 1015 years there's this excitement of like, oh, it could shift things around and shake.
[00:30:31] Pavel Konoplenko: Things up.
[00:30:31] Jess Bahr: It's really disruptive.
[00:30:33] Jess Bahr: Like, actually disruptive, not corporate talk.
[00:30:36] Pavel Konoplenko: Yeah, but in 510 years, we'll probably have a whole new stranglehold by whoever figured out AI in the best way.
[00:30:42] Pavel Konoplenko: And we'll have the same conversation in 15 years.
[00:30:47] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:30:47] Jess Bahr: Well, let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
[00:30:51] Jess Bahr: Or if you're listening on Spotify, hit us up on LinkedIn.
[00:30:54] Jess Bahr: I think it's a great spot to end today's episode.
[00:30:57] Jess Bahr: Thank you for joining us and we'll see you next week.
[00:31:01] Pavel Konoplenko: Bye, everyone.