The AI Mindset featuring Conor Grennan

(upbeat music) - I'm Steve Gelman, and this is BrandStory, where we help you build stronger, more sustainable brands by sharing insightful conversations with brand leaders, marketers, and professional storytellers. My guest today is Connor Grennan. - Look, this feels like a digital transformation. It's actually not a digital transformation. I'm talking about just like how individuals use it for their jobs. It is insanely accessible. And I don't mean accessible like if I was like some giant ripped guy being like, you too can look like me in three weeks. That's not what I am talking about. I am talking about something that is so easy to use that you literally just have to talk to it. - Connor is the dean of MBA students at NYU Stern and the head of generative AI at Stern, where he trains MBAs, faculty, and administration and practical generative AI. He's also a New York Times bestselling author, a TEDx speaker, and his insights around AI have been featured in Business Insider, Vox, and so many other media. And he's also the cohost of the AI applied podcast and publishes what I think is the newsletter on AI, the AI mindset newsletter. Hey, Connor, welcome to Brand Story. - Thank you for that amazing introduction. I wanted to just carry you around and have that introduction done. Every time I walk in a room. - You know, we could arrange that. I think the travel schedule would be-- - That would be great, thank you. - But yeah, your resume is quite impressive. And seriously, your newsletter, I think is exactly what's needed right now in AI. Because it's a very human take on an awful lot of change. So with everything, man, it is moving so fast. Like I can barely keep up with what you put out, forget what's actually happening in AI. How do you recommend or how do you even try to keep up? - Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm so glad you asked that 'cause like we should demystify that just by saying it's impossible to keep up. And we're all grading on a scale here. So I think every day there's probably three or four things I would love to just post about just because I've read about them. But the truth is, you know, you don't actually have to keep up with everything. You just sort of have to keep up with things that probably pertain to you. And then it's sort of just a personal choice beyond that. But I would say that the way I keep up is, you know, my LinkedIn feed has a lot of AI stuff on it. So I love LinkedIn. You know, I post on LinkedIn a lot. There's some phenomenal folks that post on LinkedIn. And that's just the first great curation step of, hey, here's what's going on in AI today. You know, Twitter or Xrother, I do a little bit of just to sort of see if there's anything like huge and breaking or something like that. And then I like a few, you know, different newsletters and, you know, podcasts and things like that that I sort of just dip in because you tend to sort of see like, what's like the hot topic of the day? And a lot of it is just stuff that you don't really need to know. That's why I appreciate you mentioning the newsletter only because what I try to focus on a lot is like, how is this actually going to change your life? The rest is almost like entertainment. You know what I mean? Like, wow, look at that. Look at that whiz by, do you know what I mean? Like, but otherwise, how are you actually using it to change your life? And so just staying on top of it is only a part of that. But I tell people all the time, like when, so I train a lot of companies and the only tool I really show is chat to PT plus. That's really the only thing I show. And then I sort of also show perplexity sometimes too. But it's not like with all these AI tools, I'm showing a million of them. It's, there's just too much out there. - Yeah, there is. And I think, you know, I follow you on LinkedIn and you have incredible content on LinkedIn. It's helped me learn a ton about AI. So anyone listening to this, please follow Connor on LinkedIn. It is so worth it. I think he puts this stuff into, you know, you translate AI into human really well. And, you know, one of the cool things about that is that your point of view is really different than what I see other people talking about AI, which is why I was so happy to have you on the podcast today. In your most recent issue of the newsletter, I mean, the title of it just jumped out at me because I'm from a humanities background. I was actually a theater major and a marketing major. And your title of your newsletter was the future of AI belongs to English majors. And I think anyone that's thinking about AI that might catch them off guard. Can you talk about that a little bit? - Yeah, it's, you know, it's so funny. So Jensen Huang, who is the CEO of NVIDIA, which is now a $2 trillion company. They make all the chips that process all this kind of stuff. He came out and said something a couple of days later. So I was just like, I was claiming that Jensen had stole my take, which now I'm aware that some people took seriously. But, you know, this is something that I think people are sort of sneakily sort of saying here and there. People who really, not that I'm not that I'm the big expert on generative AI, but like, but I do study it a ton. And over and over again, and I kept trying to disprove this theory, I just kept finding that there's no actual tech involved in this. In fact, you know, one of my big problems is when people talk about prompt engineering as it relates to, you know, entering sort of something complicated into chat GPD to make it work well. I mean, like, prompt engineering is a thing. It's a, it's a technical term. But there's this sense, Steven, I don't know if you have this too, where I think a lot of people get held back because they believe that they need to understand something about technology, that they don't actually need to understand. This is a software that does not act like a software. This is a software that literally behaves like a human. You could be forgiven for believing that there was a human behind the thing. This is not anything where you have to learn things. I sort of sometimes get in trouble for saying this, but when I say there's no learning curve to chat GPD. And when people say, "Oh, you mean no technical learning curve." I'm like, no, there's no learning curve. I'll talk to rooms of 500 people. And I do not need to talk to the beginners and the experts differently. After about eight minutes, everybody will be on the exact same level. So when I think about, you know, the humanities and the English majors and things like that, what I find is that what this, this is a tool in terms of generative AI as a broad sort of spectrum of tools. This is a, essentially a tool that responds really, really well if you communicate really well with it. Now anybody, even if you're not a good communicator, it's going to be fine. But even open AI, when they came out with their kind of, like the prompt kind of guide finally, it was really, it read exactly as if it was talking to somebody who was trying to give instructions to a new leader, a new service, "Hey, you're managing somebody for the first time." Be clear, you know, give examples, be patient, remember to iterate if something's not working, like, you know, try to explain it in a different way. All those things are things that, you know, English majors and people who study communications like yourself can be outstanding at if we just accept the fact that that is the only skill we need. - Yeah, and I think that's like mind-blowing. You know, it doesn't sound revolutionary because it sounds so simple, but even when I first started playing with AI, I felt like I needed some sort of skill to be able to do a prompt correctly. And I think there's a ton of people out there on Instagram and other platforms, sort of selling the secrets to prompts and the secret way to do the perfect prompt. And I think it creates this atmosphere of people believing that you can get it wrong or you can't, you know, until you master a certain set of phrases, you know, this mystical set of phrases that's perfect that you're not gonna be able to interact with it. So, you know, I think you have this format that I started using after I learned it and it blew my mind because of how well it worked. And it's your HTG format. Can you talk about that? Because like, it's so human and so simple and it's not what I think people today would think we would be talking about today. - Yeah, it's so funny that you say that, right? Because it goes to, so this HTG thing actually stands for high thanks, great. And it's super simple to remember, but really importantly, I'm totally with you, like prompt libraries and figuring out how to prompt and learning the perfect prompt and copy and paste. It doesn't work for a very specific reason. It doesn't work because in the same way, like if you need to like, I don't know, if you saw a video just in passing, that was like how to build lamp posts or something like that, right? That's only handy if you're about to literally go outside and build a lamppost. Do you know what I mean? Like, and that's what happens with prompt libraries and prompts, people are like giving these things out, but I'm like, who's using that right at their very moment about how to negotiate a better deal on inventory? Like you'd have to sort of like, it would be like getting struck by lightning if that sort of like happened to be exactly what you were doing right now. So this HTG principle that I kind of came up with really, about a year, like a long time ago actually, sort of like when this stuff first came out was the realization that by saying three things to it, hi and thanks and great, it actually responded a lot better and your output was a lot better. So the sort of one by one, so hi just means that you come in there and you just say hi to it, right? Like, you know, you kind of talk to it like a human, right? I'm gonna say in a second why all these things work. And then thanks is another thing. Like just, you know, after it gives you a good answer, you just kind of say thanks. And then the great part is just about giving feedback. It gives you five different things. It's like, oh yeah, like number three is great, but I don't love number four or whatever. So why does that work? It's interesting. It doesn't work because it actually makes the output better. Right? I mean, like there's some research paper that shows that maybe it does, but that's not why it works. It works because it trains your brain to talk to it like a human. Like if you were to start, you know, Steve, if I came to you for marketing advice, right? Or branding advice or whatever it would be, I wouldn't be like, Steve, give me five, blah, blah, blah. And then I'd walk away. It doesn't work like that, right? So I would sort of like talk to you. I'd say like, hey, Steve, blah, blah, blah. And then you'd say something. I'd be like, oh, thanks. Again, saying thanks doesn't help. What it does is it's like linguistic matching, right? It sort of like forces your brain to start respecting this thing that you're interacting with as something that knows probably more than you and also is like a human. And then great is the third part of that. And that's really important 'cause I see all the time people saying, hey, give me five different ways that I could do this thing, right? And it gives you five and you're like, it's like, give me five more. But that's not how the world works, right? If you were sort of one of your boss and your boss is like, hey, give me five ideas and you give them five ideas. And then that person, you know, your boss turns to the next person like, now you give me five ideas. You'd be like, what did you like? Like what, like, where should I go on this? Do you know what I mean? Like, did you like any of them? Did you not? So it's really constant, iterative feedback is really handy. But all of this and everything that I do around AI mindset and all that kind of stuff is, it's all about training our brains. It's not about working with chat GBT in some way that's technical. - Yeah, I think that's fascinating. And you had said something in an interview. I watched with you that so many people approach chat GBT like it's super Google. And I think I did that when I first started because I'm sitting in front of a screen. I have a place to enter a command and I'm like, I'm used to Google. That's my mindset. And that's the way that I'm going to relate to this thing. And it doesn't seem like it would be a world of difference when you do it in the format that you just described, but it really is. - It's a world of difference. And it's really funny because, you know, and I've done a deep dive on this. Like the way I used to train on chat GBT was like a three-part framework where it was like more basic to more advanced. But I started to figure out that while that worked for companies, it wasn't like transforming companies. And I'm like, and Steve, you know, it's like this thing is actually really transformative. So I'm like, what are we actually missing? And I work a ton with big digital marketing teams and things like that. And because the challenge is really like, if you just do it like that, they'll understand a little bit more, but they're not going to really integrate this into their way of thinking and using it all the time. And that's where I think this notion of the super Google comes in, right? Because the way your brain works, I started studying sort of how the brain worked, the brain automates things very quickly. And so because chat GBT, I would argue, doesn't really have a precedent. Like it's not really replacing anything. And people are like, well, maybe to replace this Google. Why do they say that? 'Cause it kind of looks like Google. It kind of feels like a search engine. You're putting in a question, getting something back, that's how search engines work. So your brain automatically just sort of like automates, this is Google, this is just a better version of Google. So you can frame your question differently, but it's just like Google command, response, command, response. And that's because it physically also looks like Google. And so Steve, you're doing the same thing that I did that everybody did, I think everybody did, which is this looks like a fancier version of Google. And when you use it like that, it's actually a very poor way to use it, unfortunately, but people get stuck in that mindset. It's really interesting that just the way we frame it for ourselves changes how we use it. And I think when you don't have that sort of linguistic framework or that mindset of how you're approaching this tool, it starts to feel really limited. And what it gives you back isn't as useful because what you're not doing is actually having an iterative conversation like if you and I were batting an idea back and forth. And that's actually what it's good at. So if it gives you five things and you say, hey, number three is interesting, let's explore it. You're not used to doing that to Google. That's not what Google does at all. So it takes the thing that I started to realize as I was doing this and kind of following you and learning from you was it takes a lot of empathy to be able to work with this machine, which is really unusual. So how do you think that ties into like who, what we study and who fits best in the future of how we integrate this? - Gosh, you know, it's such a good question. So I'm working with our kids' school right now. I'm in Connecticut and it's fine. They were asking, so do you feel like, you know, because genovia is going to be everywhere, do you feel like we have to become more of like stem focused because there's parents obviously that will push back and be like, you know, arts and humanities are still important. And I'm like, I'm not sure it's not the opposite. Do you know what I mean? Like where we're going to have to sort of like go way more into humanities and into arts and things like that. And again, I'm not the only one saying this at this point. And I've even sort of seen you, I'm in the university world and I've seen universities that with incoming freshmen are saying, look, don't just study STEM, don't just study engineering. Also make sure that you are understanding communications, you know, branding, marketing, English, whatever it is, because those are the skills in this natural language world of generative AI that are really going to be very, very valuable. I mean, coding is, I don't want to say coding is coming less and less important, but it's, it's, it's, it's needed less. Like you're going to need fewer coders because are essentially like what ChatGbt and other tools do is they code just from your natural background. So what I would say is that, you know, young people kind of like thinking about their careers and where to go next around this and all that kind of stuff really need to be thinking like, how do they communicate? So when we say like, oh, this is the death of writing, I'm like, maybe in the same way, calculators were the death of math, but they weren't really the death of math. You know what I mean? Like they just sped up mathematical processes and this will speed up writing processes for sure. I don't know if it will improve the quality of writing in a meaningful way, but it does point to what kids should be sort of studying. It's not to say, don't study STEM. I think that engineering is just great for, you know, the brain and how to understand the world and everything else. It's just that if you're not focused on how to communicate, these things are going to be communicating devices and the better communicators, just like the better leaders are the ones that are going to get ahead. - That's super interesting. And I think, you know, when you think about tools and you think about change, which I think this brings up a lot in that realm of like, how do we cope? How do we deal with this rapid change? You know, everyone back when the internet came out said it was going to end everything and change everything and put everyone out of work. They said that about social media. They're saying that about AI. I think it's going to change, obviously, the nature of work and how we do things, you know? But I don't think fear is a great mindset to go into this with. - So what do you say to the people who are sort of sitting on the sidelines? I think there are legitimate concerns. We'll get to that in a minute, of course. You know, there's some legitimate concerns around, you know, how it could be used in a bad way. But for the people sitting on the sidelines, which I think there are a ton, you know, there are a ton of people, leadership and companies or individuals being like, I just don't know what to do with this thing or what's the right approach. What would you say to them? - Yeah, so I love this question because so again, I get to go out and I get to do a lot of talking and I get to do a lot of, you know, training for companies and things like that. And Steve, this is, I like that you brought it up 'cause this is almost the first thing that I go to, which is, look, this feels like a digital transformation. It's actually not a digital transformation. Like don't feel like, oh my gosh, is everything in place? And yes, there's of course, tech stack questions, things like that. But I'm talking about just like how individuals use it for their jobs. It is insanely accessible. And I don't mean accessible like if I was like some giant ripped guy being like, you too can look like me in three weeks. That's not what I am talking about. I am talking about something that is so easy to use that you literally just have to talk to it. And so I literally have a post-it note on my screen, I have it right now that says, did you ask chat GBT? Because we're so used to not doing that. And what I tell people is like, forget it. Like when people say, just practice on it, something like that, I'm like, that's not that helpful in the same way that, you know, eat less than exercise is helpful. Like we already know, we know that, but practice what? And so I tell people like, break your job down into just tasks. Like what's that you walk into the office, you sit down, like what's the first thing you do? Like, ask chat GBT if it can help. Now it might be ridiculous. Maybe you're trying to get coffee like, hey, chat GBT, can you give me a coffee? Immediately we see the limitations of chat GBT. But the next thing you might do is like, hey, well I'm drafting this email or hey, I have to figure out this thing or hey, I have to write a job description or hey, you know, actually we're trying to come up with a new lesson plan for whatever it is, just ask. You'll find out for yourself, but the really fun thing with, for people sitting on the sidelines, is that once that dopamine hit starts coming, and it doesn't require, dopamine comes from exercise too, but it first requires you to get through all the pain and suffering of starting to run for, you know, for the first time. But the dopamine hits will come fast and furious. And I just really encourage people to do that. And I encourage people to, again, that doesn't have to be for me or anything like that, but like get training on this. Like find people you trust who you can talk to about this form and AI task force. Do these things that really move companies and individuals forward. - Yeah, I think that's excellent advice. And you know, if you're sitting by yourself and you're a worker, you're listening to this, whatever industry you're in, you know, I honestly think a great first step is follow you on LinkedIn and get your newsletter because of the way you're coming at this, you know, it's very human. I think it's very helpful. And you also don't just have, you know, unbridled enthusiasm without a little bit of caution or a little bit of like, well, now what isms, you know, 'cause I think we are faced with those now at a pace that is really difficult to even process. So, you know, I thought, what was it? Eight, nine days ago, Sora, we suddenly saw Sora. And I don't know about you, but that gave me pause and was exciting and confusing and concerning all at the same time. So what do you say to the people that just scares the crap out of them? - Yeah, I mean, look, first of all, you know, that means that, you know, you are, you know, you're biologically built correctly because this should scare us a little bit, right? I mean, so you're not, you know, you're not sociopath, right? And look, I mean, first of all, my wife does AI risk, you know, AI responsibility, AI ethics for a living. So I get sort of a front row seat to that she's at McKinsey and I, so I'm fascinated by this. And it's funny, we were just talking about how you get people on board, but maybe the third slide I do or something like that when I'm doing these kinds of, you know, talks or workshops or whatever is like, let's talk about the risks, you know, real and perceived and what they are. So I think SOAR is a great example, you know, video, text to video generation, text to AI, like image generation, like you see these. So I think number one is just deep fakes, right? Of course, it's a huge problem, you know, that huge, huge problem for a lot of different reasons. Now, I think people are gonna tend to believe what they believe anyway. So I'm not sure it's as big a problem as we think, like, you know, we already have fake news and we already have everything else, you know, like, but these things are so wildly realistic that when people don't understand that this technology exists, like you see somebody's SOAR thing, Steve, you saw him too, right? Like, holy, like it looks like humans for like, you know, multiple seconds. And so that's totally bizarre. So that's, you know, fear number one, but that's kind of like this big existential thing, which we just have to figure out on our own, right? That's more about us than the technology. I would say the second thing is like hallucinations, right? People are fearful that, oh, it's gonna give me the wrong answer back. Look, if you're looking for a precise piece of information, you should double check it. No matter who you are, where you are, any tool you're using, chat to BT, things like that tend to be a great reasoning tool. They tend to be a pretty good knowledge tool, but always check. That's why I use perplexity, right? Perplexity is like the search, for me, the thing that's replaced Google search. Perplexity AI, go check that out, it's free. And then the third thing is around, you know, uploading proprietary data. There's a big, you know, fear around like, well, if I upload something, if I upload my, you know, if I'm talking to it like a therapist, which by the way, I really encourage actually, I know that I'm not giving medical advice. I'm just saying that, you know, it's a great sounding board like, hey, I'm Connor, I'm kind of feeling down today, blah, blah, blah. Nobody can take that out. Or if you upload a spreadsheet of your client list, nobody can, it's not a lending library. It gets the, it gets all taken apart. You have to just be really careful if you're in a regulated industry, something like that. If you're violating third party agreements, but it doesn't work where you upload a spreadsheet and somebody can pull that back out as if it was a lending library. It just doesn't work like that. And so that's why I would kind of try to put people at ease a little bit. - Yeah, I think that's fascinating. And, you know, the, the, I think the risks and the possibilities and like you said, the existential, I don't know, reasoning slash dread of like, where are we and what is reality? I think those are big questions. I would love to talk to you about it some day. I feel like we could talk about that for an hour and a half. Something you said that I want to pull out that I think is really important. As you said, ChatGPT is more of a reasoning tool and less of a factual, like go find me this fact. Can you talk about that just a little bit? Cause I think most people are really stuck in the paradigm of this is super Google. - Yeah, it's, it's one of the hardest things because it's, it's pretty good at both. But, you know, and that's a quote that I took from Sam Altman back in last March, I think. I remember he was on the Lex Friedman podcast and he said, it's a much better reasoning tool than knowledge tool. And that's because, you know, it can still hallucinate. And when we talk about hallucinations, we're talking about ChatGPT giving you or any LL and large language model, giving you incorrect information, but extremely convincingly, right? That's kind of the problem too. It doesn't say like, I think it might be this. No, no, it's like, nope, this is when the Brooklyn bridge, you know, was flown to China for the third time. Do you know what I mean? Like it's like, wait. - Yeah, very confidently. - And so, yeah, it's super confidently, right? So what I would say is a couple of things. First of all, any reasoning, any brainstorming, anytime you're like, hey, I'm trying to really think about this or how would I do this? Any knowledge that's really deeply in the public domain, you can feel pretty safe. Like, hey, tell me about George Washington's life and things like that. Or even, you know, tell me about, you know, what happened three years ago and what, it's pretty good about that. I would sort of say, I get a little more cautious when I'm saying, hey, I'm about to go meet the chief financial officer of Morgan Stanley and tell me three things that, you know, he or she is interested in. Something like, I would be careful about that because the stakes are higher, right? But I do think that it is getting a lot better, especially if you have a ChatGPT plus account. It does connect to the internet. But even then, I would just, if you need precision in your answer and not just, hey, give me some facts about whatever, if you really need to know, is this this or is this this? Then I would definitely double check it. And by the way, we still have Google. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like Google's gone away. Like, Google's great. You don't need a different Google. So still use that. But just in terms of sort of like, imagine this is like a brilliant, you know, sort of coworker that you have or something like that. They might tell you something. You know, and you're like, I think that's right, but I'm not sure, even if they sound super confident. Just, again, if you need precision, just double check it because it can still hallucinate. But those hallucinations have really been reduced. - They have, I've even noticed that. And I like what you said about, it's like a really brilliant to really helpful coworker. It's not like we haven't gotten confident answers from other human beings that weren't right, you know? We've been dealing, I've been dealing with that my whole life where I'm like, wow, you sound like you are absolutely sure. But I don't know. So I go check it and it's kind of right. So I think we're used to that. And you mentioned another tool that because of you, I started using. And I think, you know, a few people I've told about it and their reaction is the same 'cause everyone's afraid of like, or wary of the fact that, you know, you don't know where the sources are coming from. So am I using someone else's work in this answer and all the things, tons of concerns. The perplexity.ai as a search engine, I started using that, you know, I still use Google, but I now use perplexity.ai. And I love how it's a combination of here's the sources of what I'm telling you and here are some suggestions of follow-up questions. That's an incredible tool. - It's an incredible tool. It's, and I can't remember how I found it. Somebody must have told me about it a while ago and I was like, oh, let's just see. I can't imagine anything replacing Google search. That's like the OG motherload of, and this is so much better. And I don't mean, and by the way, you know, this is not just me and Steve saying this, right? I mean, like Jeff Bezos has invested in this, like huge people have invested in it. It's now, I think the number like three app or something. It's really, really big. And so I use a paid version, but you don't need the paid version. But here's the great thing about perplexity. Is that first of all, you can ask the question as if you were asking, you know, if you wanted to, usually if you ask Google, you sort of like frame it like, hey, what are the best places, best things to do in Costa Rica? I don't know, something like that, right? And it'll give you an answer, but like, but something like, or it'll give you like a blog from 2019 or something. But perplexity, other things, what it'll do is, it'll show you all the sources that it's pulling from. So you can see that right up front. It's gonna be like 16 sources. And then it'll answer you in natural language. And it'll say like, well, you know, here's some great things and it will cite along the way. So here's what I use it for. I tend to use it for like, hey, give me the big like, hey, I saw in the video just did something with this company. Can you tell me like what that was all about? And we'll answer in natural language in a way that's gonna be way easier for me to read. It's gonna cite the sources and things like that. But really interestingly, like let's say you're teaching, you know, eighth grade class, you could say, hey, you know, give me the latest news on, you know, Google and robotics, but put it in the form of an eighth grade curriculum. And it will, the output is the thing that's also incredibly powerful. So it's not just that it's pulling from a lot of different sources. Google sort of like ranks, you know, one source at a time and then you go in and you have to process it. What this does is it processes from 20 different websites and comes back to you. It's like what an intern would do in an hour and come back to be like, okay, here's everything. And here's the sort of, you know, cite the sources, but you can't tell an intern, okay, now give me, you know, the output in, you know, you know, French romantic poetry. I mean, not that you need to do that, but the out, you can control the output as well. Put this in bullet points, give me a LinkedIn post, give me a blah, blah, blah. Like that's what I love about perplexity. - Yeah, I agree. And, you know, one of the things that's done for me is I'm a researcher, like just a natural researcher. And forever, if I'm curious about a topic, I just have taken a deep dive into Google, done everything you just described for myself, find the sources, decide if they're relevant, how old are they, sort all this stuff. It's just sped that up. Because if I'm about to meet with a new client or it's an industry that I'm learning about, man, what a great learning tool that is, you know, 'cause I can see different perspectives from different timeframes and different points of view. It's pretty cool. - 100%, I know, I love it, I love it. - Yeah, so anybody listening, please go pick up that one. I have the paid version too, it's so worth it. So here's a deep question for you. What are your thoughts on like the future of coexistence? We're in a creative field, you know, we're making media for people, we're making content. What about, oh, how do you see the coexistence between these incredibly powerful AI tools and like human creativity? - Yeah, and Steve, I'm gonna answer this and then I'm gonna hold you to answering it too. So, you know, I hear a lot that, you know, AI can't be creative and things like that. And so first, I think that's kind of ridiculous just because people are like, well, I can't, you know, it's just taking sort of like a ton of information and putting it together. I'm like, that's what creativity is, right? I mean, like creativity is literally taking different ideas and fusing them in a new way. That's like, we're not inventing new colors here or something like that. And look, I hear very deeply about this stuff as you do too, Steve, right? About creativity and everything like that, right? So, I'm not sort of like, I'm not dismissing how important the humans are in creativity. We're, it's critical. But I think, you know, for example, like when I'm trying to like write my, you know, newsletter or write anything really, I have a very specific style of voice. And at this moment, Genitivate, I can't recreate that. Steve, same with you, right? Like you have a very specific style of voice. So, Genitivate, I can probably get you most of the way there, but it's not gonna, it's not gonna sound like Steve, right? And so, so for me, when people are afraid of like, oh, this is gonna take creativity, I don't think so. I think that what you do is you just, you ride this wave and you use this as a tool. You don't get sort of like, you know, swamped over it. Like, don't let the waves sort of like swamp over you. Get in there and start using it. So the way that I do it is like, hey, give me like five new ways that I could pitch this same idea. Or I might say, hey, I know you're sort of like, this is my idea, but give me an honest answer. What do you think, should it be pitched in exactly the mirror image of this or something like that? So I find that creativity is just gonna be enhanced by this, but I don't think it's gonna replace human creativity only because I think that what, what, why we always say, kind of keep a human in a loop is that humans tend to understand what good quality looks like better than chat GBT. That's the one thing that I think humans continue to do better than chat GBT, but I don't know, what's, what's your take on the creativity question? - Yeah, I think, you know, coming out of a few different ways. One, I think fear is always a liar unless you're being chased by a tiger, you know? Like usually it's just trying to keep you down a little bit. And I go back to like, you know, I knew a lot of old school graphic designers before, you know, Adobe started putting out their tools. And, you know, it's not that long ago, really, when you think about the pace of change where graphic designers were doing in a certain way, they just learned new tools and still it's their ideas. And I kind of feel like these tools are a little like a colleague that's never busy, you know? Like I have friends and colleagues, like if I wanted to get you on the phone or I wanted to talk to my VP who's brilliant, sometimes she's in a meeting or she's super busy. And now I have another being, quote unquote, just to bounce things off of, but it's up to me what I do with it. - By the way, I love this idea of a brilliant colleague that's never busy is brilliant, I just love that idea. - 'Cause there's times, I mean, you know, I'm in my pajamas having a coffee. I'm not gonna call you up or call up, you know, Lindsay or another friend and be like, hey, I have this weird thought and can I bounce us off you and give me three reactions so I can think about it more? - Well, let me up the ante on that and say, Steve, like if I was gonna, you know, if like, oh gosh, I know Steve knows a lot about this thing, let me call him up. I'll tell you what I'm not gonna do, is I'm not gonna be like at two o'clock in the morning, I'll call you and be like, hey, now can you quiz me on that? And, but recreate the analogy that you gave me, but do it in terms of, you know, autumn leaves, do it in terms of autumn leaves for me. Do you know what I mean? - Yeah. - Hang up and never enter my call again, right? - Right. - That's never busy, it's brilliant. - Yeah, and then also like, you know, I talk to an awful lot of people and all of them come from different points of view and experience, like, so to be able to interview you, you know, I do a ton of research and I really love it because that's who I am. I watch videos, like, in just writing that you've done, and I do this for every single guest. But what's so cool is you were one of the first guests that I was like, wait a minute, I'm interviewing you, I have to have AI help me and bounce off some ideas for great questions, so I asked Connor Grinnon. So I did that, and honestly, I didn't just take them verbatim, but there were some pretty cool ideas, you know? And I was like, oh, that was helpful, that made me think about this differently. - I know, and that's the thing, like, it just spurs you in new directions, it sort of like takes care of busy work, things like that. It does all these things that everybody can benefit from. - And I think that's super cool. So one more question about something that's in your, you know, in your teachings and what you share with people online and newsletter, just so that people get a little flavor for why they should be following you and staying up with what you're doing. You know, I think people are always concerned, like, what does this mean to me? You know, what do I, what can I do to this? And I think it's your most recent newsletter. You talked about how to future prove your career with AI, and I think that's really resonates with people 'cause I don't know, I generally, when I talk to this, get the feeling that people are a little freaked out by it. So you talked about embrace and personify, can you just hit on those? I know you can't go through all of it, but can you talk about that just a little? - No, I appreciate it, because I think when we talk about AI-proofing, people are like, well, we can't AI-proof because it's here. I'm like, yeah, it's here. I'm not talking about keeping it out. I'm talking about, like, using it, right? So the idea behind essentially this notion of AI-proofing your career is the first thing that you have to understand is that you can do this. And I don't mean like, you too can climb Kilimanjaro. No, I mean that like, you too can speak like a human does 'cause you already know how to do it. So it's first, the first thing to do is getting rid of this notion that you're not able to do it. You are able to do it as well as anybody that's been doing this for like any machine learning PhD from MIT who helped create this thing. You will be, you can, I truly believe you can use this as effectively as they can, truly. So that's number one. The second thing I tell people this gets me in trouble is to personify it. And the reason is a little kind of kind of goes to what we were talking about before. I think when people see this box and they see Google, like their brain just goes to this idea that this is what this is. It's, you know, it's essentially Google or something like that, but it's not. It's much more like Jarvis from Iron Man or C-3PO or data from Star Trek or something like that. When you see people in the movies, they're not saying, hey, you know, whatever, you know, animatronic thing, like what's the weather in Des Moines today? No, they're like, hey, listen, I'm going to Des Moines. Like what do you think, like they talk to it like a human. So we have that paradigm out there. So I do crazy things like I tell people like, look, put a photo of whatever AI bot you think is the most useful, put it there and pretend you are talking to this personify. Again, we know it's not human guys. Don't let's not be idiots about it. The third thing is to really sort of like dive in and innovate and create your own use cases. This is why I say don't take other people's use cases because you're just going to get stuck on them. Start putting that post-it note on your desk saying, did you use chatGBT, did you use chatGBT? And start doing that so that you can sort of like, just make sure that you're using it for every task that you have. And you will start to figure out your own use cases really fast. And then when I talk about AI-proofing your career, I take it one step further, which is then you have to impress other people with it. Okay, like it can't just be that you're doing your job better. Like you have to start showing your boss, showing your teams, showing your team leader, teaching other people how to do it. Because then your use cases probably are relevant to the person working at the desk right next to you. And that's when, because I'm telling you, I'm in boardrooms, I'm in management teams all the time and I'm telling you, and you know this Steve, everybody's saying, where are the people in our company who are going to drive this forward? We need people to drive it forward because it's not like a tool like Salesforce that you layer on top and you burn down the old model and show people training videos. What you do is you get people excited about it. And so that's what I talk about a lot. - Yeah, I think that's so fundamental and really human. And I think, you know, because I know a little bit about it, I'll talk to people about it and, you know, they won't know anything and they're afraid. And honestly, I point them to that because, you know, it's, if it's going to help our jobs, you know, from the point of view, if we can do them better or be more efficient or add some value, add the value and talk about it. Don't add the value and hide, you know, we're not using a tool and going to get in trouble. It's like if you used Photoshop, but then wanted to like make pretend you didn't adjust the photo, like it's okay, you know? Like it's just a tool, it's how we use it. And I think that's, so I think that's really, really powerful. So yeah, I really, for like, I think the third or fourth time, everyone just please get Connor's newsletter. It's so great. So few final questions. So I know you have a plane to catch and a life to live. But what would you name this chapter of your life? 'Cause you are just right in the deep end of the pool with this stuff, man. - Yeah, I mean, that's such a good question. It's, it really is, I would probably call it, you know, 19th century San Francisco. And it's because like, I literally feel like I kind of like walked out one day and there's a gold rush in the creek in my backyard. And I'm like, hey, everybody come get some gold. And people are like, man, that's fine. I'm like, are you sure? Because this is gold, dude. And people are like, that's all right. Yeah, maybe I have stuff over here. I'm like, okay. But so it just felt like that. It felt like we all woke up and there's a gold rush there. And the people who are sort of like being like, hey, let's set up camp here are the ones who are really gonna sort of like teach us the way. - Yeah, that's so cool. I love that. I absolutely love that, man. So here's just a couple more questions. So what's something that you've changed your mind about that you thought you were wrong about and now you think something different? - Yeah, I think that when it comes to all of this, I think that what I used to think was that it was that ChatGBT and everything else should be taught in the same way we teach everything else. Do you know what I mean? Like it should be taught sort of like, you know, basic to advanced. And here's how we do it because that's how we teach everything. Right? I mean, like it's the basis of school, basic to advanced. And I realized sort of, it took me months, months and months and months to realize this. But I'm like, that's not what this is. It's much more like, hey, how do you, you know, make somebody feel cared for? It's not, there's not a basic to advanced thing there. It's just like understanding what this thing is and then using your judgment and instinct and understanding that you have everything you need. You just have to understand what it means to do that. Do you know what I'm saying? So it's not like, step one is this and step 10 is this. So I realized that it's not this linear progression. It's really like, guys, we are already in the deep end and but guess what? Like we have like a jet ski, we're all good. We're fine. Like just here, just spin the throttle on it. That's great. It's like you're standing by that creek, that gold rush creek. And instead of like handing pickaxes to everyone, you're just offering the tool of empathy. - 100%. - Like please go use this. - Yes, please. - You know? So last question, and I'll let you go. If you could give your younger self any advice at this moment, what would it be? - Yeah, you know, I think that I would just tell my younger self, you know, just keep going through. Like don't, and this is gonna sound very cliche, but I really mean it. Don't let any failure sort of like define you. Like just think of every failure as, you have to collect 10 of them for every success. And just think of it like that and just run at them. Like when I do writing and things like that, sometimes I'll just like literally put at the top of the page, like here's the five worst ideas I can possibly think of, just 'cause it takes the pressure off, you know? Like I think that, you know, too often sort of like we hit a failure and we're like, maybe this isn't for me. But you have to collect failures. You have to build on top of failures. Like 10 failures, like make that raft into this. And then ultimately you're gonna have this like super yacht. But that's the only way forward to success is through failure. It has to be. Otherwise, like somebody has like some crystal ball and they know exactly where to invest and all that kind of stuff, but nobody does. Keep building on those failures. Remember, each failure is actually really, really worth something so it, you know, appreciate them. - I love that concept and I couldn't agree more, you know? You fail forward, just keep failing and great things happen. So, man, I can't tell you, you're a super interesting person. I am so grateful that we got this time to talk today. Man, this was awesome. - Thanks, if you had no, I was really looking forward to it. So thanks for having me on, I really appreciate it. - Want to hear more inspiring stories? Subscribe on your preferred podcast app so you don't miss an episode. And if you like what we're doing, please rate, review, and share. It's the best way to support us. Thank you for listening to Brand Story. (upbeat music)