0:05

Today, we're talking all about artificial

0:08

intelligence. Over the past decade or so,

0:10

there's been a slow build in public interest as

0:12

whispers spread about the technology finally

0:14

making massive leaps. But with

0:17

the release of ChatGPT last November,

0:20

well, the excitement and

0:22

alarm about the power of this technology

0:25

has reached something of a fever pitch. In

0:27

our new three-part series, we were interested

0:29

in the moves and maneuvers that help catapult

0:32

AI forward. We're tracking the way

0:34

the big tech companies, specifically Google,

0:36

Microsoft, and Meta, are acquiring

0:38

and developing AI technology, and we'll be getting

0:40

into the ethical quandaries they face

0:42

too. But today, we're taking a look

0:44

at the way AI has affected three industries,

0:47

climate change management, fast food,

0:50

and advertising, both the positive

0:52

and worrisome effects of letting computers

0:54

make choices for us. Here

0:56

to talk about all that and more is journalist Haya

0:59

Camps and comedian Kenny DeForest.

1:02

Stick around for the best of Business Wars

1:04

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2:40

From Wondery, I'm David Brown and this is

2:42

the best of business wars daily. We

2:44

talk about trends, controversies and how

2:46

they affect you, the consumer. And

2:49

joining us is Kenny DeForest and Haya

2:51

Camps. Thanks so much for

2:53

speaking with us on the best of business wars daily. Thanks for

2:56

having us. Yeah, of course. My pleasure to be

2:58

here. Thank you. Kenny, I understand you just released

3:00

a new comedy album in a special called Don't

3:02

You Know Who I Am? Let's take

3:04

a listen to a clip from your standup.

3:07

Basically what generalizing is,

3:10

I would say, if I could describe it,

3:12

my brain is a bad

3:14

detective. That's what it is. That's how I would explain. I

3:16

got a really confident bad cop living

3:20

in my head. And

3:21

he looks at all the correct evidence and

3:24

then just makes me wildly wrong completely.

3:28

So every day he comes in just all cocky, hot

3:30

cup of joe, just like, alright fellas, let's take a look at this

3:32

case. What do we have here? Okay. Interesting.

3:35

It appears when you enter a room, people tend

3:37

to react warmly. Alright. They're

3:40

often smiling. They say nice things about

3:42

you personally and professionally. Not

3:44

to mention there's always an outpouring of support

3:46

when times get tough. Open and shut case,

3:49

everybody hates you. Everybody

3:50

hates you. And

3:55

it's the only thing they talk about when you're not around. I

3:58

know, it's crazy.

3:59

Do you believe this? They actually get together at coffee shops

4:02

and talk about what a piece of s*** you are. And

4:05

the only way to get him to stop would be if you message

4:08

each of them individually on Facebook, preferably

4:11

at 3 in the morning, and apologize

4:13

for things that happened over 15 years ago

4:15

that only you remember. And I'm like, right on, detective.

4:19

Danny, tell us

4:21

more about this special. What's the focus? Yeah,

4:23

so it's called Don't You Know Who I Am, which

4:25

is a little bit of a play on the closing joke, which

4:27

you will get if you watch it. But

4:30

it basically, I had a friend that

4:33

passed away during COVID and

4:36

he had struggled with drugs and I grew up playing basketball with him. And

4:38

I started talking to friends and realizing

4:41

that there's this sort of post-sports

4:43

drop off that a lot of athletes experience

4:46

that no one really talks about. And

4:48

I definitely experienced it. You know, you

4:50

go from sort of this daily serotonin hit playing ball

4:53

and you don't realize that it's more than a game. It's

4:56

like it's how you deal with stress. It's so

4:59

much of your identity and

5:01

it's just gone. And I think a lot

5:03

of athletes have a dark period. And

5:06

a lot of times, you know, drugs, alcohol, things

5:08

of that nature are kind of used to fill the void. And

5:10

I felt like maybe this is an interesting thing for

5:12

me to talk about in hopes that

5:14

it'll be relatable to other people that have experienced

5:17

the same thing. So it's kind of that. The

5:19

special opens with a story of

5:22

me getting dominated on

5:24

the basketball court and it ends with a story of redemption.

5:27

And then the middle is kind of my

5:29

struggle of putting it all to bed and moving

5:31

on. I can't wait to check it out.

5:33

That sounds really interesting. You're

5:35

a reporter at TechCrunch, but you've also launched

5:38

multiple companies. You're in a book, directed

5:41

a venture capital firm. But

5:43

I understand on the down low you

5:46

have a passion of photography.

5:48

Have you caught anything in your lens this summer?

5:52

Yeah, no, I love photography. My

5:54

favorite thing continues to be people. You

5:57

know, you can take beautiful landscapes. You can do beautiful all

5:59

sorts of things.

5:59

But people have this, like

6:02

we are trained as humans to read other

6:04

people in a way unlike anything else.

6:07

And capturing somebody's

6:08

essence or soul or beauty is,

6:12

it fills me with a joy unlike anything else.

6:15

And yet you cover technology. That

6:19

interesting life choice. Yeah. Yeah. I'm

6:23

guessing AI has been on your radar. There's

6:26

been a lot of AI stuff. Yeah, for sure. It's

6:28

a red-hot industry right now. But

6:31

actually I've been looking a lot at founders that

6:33

look unlike other founders. It

6:35

turns out that,

6:37

like I've been kind of tracking two trends.

6:39

One is that a lot of very successful

6:41

founders tend to be older than

6:43

the narrative seems to support,

6:46

right? The media loves a story about a Zuckerberg

6:49

or somebody who just like quits college

6:51

and becomes a multi-billionaire. The wonderkind,

6:53

right? That's sort of the, yeah. Exactly.

6:56

But it turns out that a lot of really good

6:58

founders have a lot of experience. And

7:00

that experience you get by being in an industry

7:03

for a long time,

7:04

right? It's like if you're a fresh journalist,

7:06

you know how to write. You have nothing to write about. You haven't

7:08

lived. You haven't been anywhere. So the

7:10

same thing for companies, right? If you have been, if

7:13

you're the guy who's been talking to everybody

7:15

in that industry for 20 years, you

7:17

know everybody, you know everybody who might buy something, you

7:19

know everybody you might hire, that's

7:21

a very different circumstance than

7:24

a fresh-faced investor.

7:27

Yeah. I guess there's something of a parallel

7:29

in that AI is considered a relatively young field,

7:32

but it's already being put to work dealing with some problems

7:34

we've been wrestling with for ages. And in

7:36

the case of something like wildfires, they

7:39

seem to be intensifying certainly over the past decade.

7:42

And up until recently, fighting wildfires

7:44

has largely relied on human observation and judgment,

7:47

but not anymore. Let's check out a clip

7:49

from a recent episode of Business Wars Daily.

7:53

A slate of companies have cropped up in recent years,

7:56

promising more efficient wildfire detection

7:58

with, you guessed it,

8:01

One of the companies is Pano AI. Last

8:04

year it raised $20 million and pulled

8:06

in an additional $17 million this year.

8:09

Pano works by mounting high-def remote

8:11

control cameras in areas at high risk

8:13

for wildfires, according to TechCrunch.

8:16

The cameras can be controlled manually or rotate

8:19

automatically, scanning the landscape around

8:21

them. The video footage is then checked

8:23

out by AI which looks for signs

8:25

of smoke or fire, and if it detects

8:28

fire, an alarm goes off. Pano's

8:30

CEO, Sonia Kastner, told

8:32

TechCrunch that humans will double-check the AI's

8:35

findings before alerting nearby fire

8:37

stations, cutting down on potential

8:39

false alarms. But Pano appears to

8:41

be doing its job. The company said it

8:43

had detected a fire in Oregon earlier

8:45

this month, a full 14 minutes before

8:48

the first 911 call. That's

8:50

valuable time saved, but of course, this

8:53

technology will cost you. A fire

8:55

station hoping to license Pano's technology

8:57

will have to pay $50,000. But

9:01

fire stations aren't the only customers Pano

9:03

is hoping to target. Power utilities

9:05

and private landowners like ski resorts

9:07

also use Pano's technology. And

9:10

of course, like any emerging market, consumers

9:13

have options here. FireScout

9:15

is another player in the game, also relying on

9:17

high-def cameras and using AI to scan

9:19

the images. FireScout says it detected

9:22

a 59-acre fire in California

9:24

at the end of June, only several minutes

9:26

after it started.

9:29

Hi, I heard you got a demo

9:31

from Pano AI. What was that like? It's

9:34

really interesting, right? As a consumer,

9:37

you're used to very slick software. Like if

9:39

you use Nest or anything like that, everything

9:41

is slick, everything is easy. And

9:43

the demo, at first I was like, is this

9:45

it? Really, honestly, is this it?

9:48

I was not super impressed. And

9:50

I thought about it for a moment. And I was like, actually, the

9:53

alternative to this is somebody sitting high

9:56

up in a tower and being on a lookout, right?

9:58

I've done fire lookouts in the past. like just

10:00

helping out a friend. And it's kind

10:02

of wild how

10:05

even relatively simple technology, like the actual

10:07

camera technology is off the shelf and super

10:09

simple. The thing that is advanced is

10:11

the AI that actually can look at this

10:14

and say, hey, that that change in

10:16

the landscape since I scanned a minute ago, what

10:18

is that? Is that a cloud? Or is

10:20

that something sinister? And the actual

10:23

cool thing is because they have most of the area covered

10:25

by more than one camera, they can do extremely

10:27

exact triangulation. So they see it

10:29

from one camera, they see it from another. That

10:31

means you can calculate the exact GPS coordinates.

10:34

Like if I'm up in a tower, I can say, well, it's kind

10:36

of to the east, right? And somebody else can go,

10:38

oh, yeah, it's kind of to my north.

10:41

But that means you have an enormous area where this fire

10:43

could be. And you still don't know if it's a real

10:46

fire or not. So you have to send somebody out there. And

10:48

by the time you've done that, you know, half an hour

10:50

has gone by, maybe an hour has gone by. So

10:52

by having much more accurate cameras

10:54

that can zoom much further than you can with a pair of binoculars

10:58

and accurate triangulation, it

11:00

means that you actually get a little bit of a technology edge.

11:02

And this is a world where, you know, a small

11:04

fire, one helicopter can put out a big fire

11:07

that is

11:08

potentially lots and lots of lives lost in

11:10

a huge resource drain.

11:12

Yeah, I certainly see

11:14

the advantages there. On the

11:16

other hand, you were talking a lot about cameras

11:19

and zooming in. I can

11:22

imagine other things getting caught in the crosshairs

11:24

of those cameras. Any concern about

11:26

AI? I don't

11:28

want to say being too good here, but

11:30

maybe even going rogue.

11:32

Yeah, it depends a little bit what you mean

11:34

by going rogue. So these cameras, like any sort

11:36

of buildings and any places

11:38

where people are pixelated out. So

11:40

even as an operator, you can't look there, essentially.

11:43

So if that happens to catch on fire, that's a different

11:45

problem. Well, let's just pull back

11:47

for just a moment. Kenny, I think I have

11:49

to ask, do you have any kind of video

11:52

security, for example? No,

11:54

I live in an apartment in New York City. So it's

11:57

beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful.

11:59

what's going on out there. It's

12:02

a beautiful thing about a one bedroom, not a lot of ground to cover.

12:05

But I have had a ring system before. I had

12:07

an ex that had a ring system at her place

12:10

and I liked it, but

12:13

at the same time, the alerts

12:17

became too much. And so what ended up happening is I

12:19

would mute the alerts and then I would basically just not

12:21

check the ring because it would

12:23

alert me if a squirrel ran by. And

12:26

at some point I was like, I don't want to look

12:28

at my phone more. So I'm going

12:30

to mute these and then I just ended up basically not

12:32

having a ring system. You know what I mean? Yeah, well, too

12:34

many false alarms certainly get that. But also,

12:36

I think there are a lot of people who are really

12:39

uncomfortable about the ubiquity of

12:42

cameras. I mean, you never really know

12:44

where one might be and the

12:46

lenses can be made so tiny that

12:49

I mean, what is off limits, what

12:51

isn't. And the flip side of that,

12:53

it seems to me, Kenny, is it

12:55

we become sort of inured. We become

12:57

sort of used to this

12:59

level of constant surveillance.

13:02

Do you ever

13:02

get that feeling that you're being watched? I

13:05

mean, yeah, it's everywhere. And the part that's

13:07

scary for me about this, and I was saying this to

13:09

Haya before we started, I'm excited to hear somebody

13:11

who has enthusiasm for the technology because all

13:14

I feel is fear. It's just 100% fear. I grew up watching, I'm like,

13:18

have you people not seen Robocop? Have we not

13:20

watched Minority Report? We're just marching

13:23

towards this, to me,

13:25

this end that's been prophesied since before

13:28

the technology even was close to

13:30

existing. You know what I mean? Philip K. Dick was in the 50s being

13:32

like, this is probably going to be bad. And

13:35

here we go because we're just, we're

13:37

humans. We can't help ourselves. We're little lemmings marching

13:39

towards the cliff. And that's how I feel. And

13:43

it's kind of that old idea, like

13:45

how much privacy or liberty

13:47

do you give up for security? And that's kind

13:49

of the paradigm that we're messing with

13:52

right now. And the facial

13:55

recognition stuff scares me. It's like

13:57

the idea of going cashless. I'm like, what done

14:00

anything illegal before? Don't you want to be able to peel off

14:02

a 20 and not have anyone know why you did it? I

14:04

mean, what are we doing? You know what I'm saying? I don't

14:06

need everyone to know where I am all the time. I

14:08

think that's what the blockchain is for now. Yeah, yeah, there

14:10

you go. Great. That's right. Yeah. Well,

14:14

I was thinking about, you know, you add AI

14:17

to that mix. And it's one thing if somebody can

14:19

see something or make out something through a

14:22

sophisticated camera in Zoom. But

14:24

once you enter data and you're,

14:26

you know, and you're

14:29

able to make the kinds of correlations

14:31

that most human beings wouldn't

14:33

bother to do,

14:35

I wonder, and

14:36

that seems

14:37

to get to the problem, right? That we,

14:39

in a sense, don't know

14:42

what

14:43

to be afraid of. But we have this

14:45

looming sense that the power here

14:48

could really turn on us. Kenny,

14:51

do you think that's fair, Kenny?

14:53

Yeah, well, oh, without a doubt. I mean,

14:55

I had the same thing with the ring. What

14:57

I know, I think it makes us more afraid.

15:00

Like, I don't know if you've heard of the Citizen

15:02

app, but somebody when I was, you know, in New

15:04

York was like, you should download the Citizen app. And I was like,

15:06

man, here's what I learned. If I

15:08

know what's going on outside of New York City, I'm never going

15:10

to go outside because it's insane. Like,

15:13

there's almost like too much information. Now, obviously,

15:16

you know, ignorance is bliss, whatever,

15:18

but you also want to protect yourself. I get it. But

15:21

like, when I would scroll the ring thing, like looking

15:23

through the neighborhood, it just made me feel

15:25

like I lived amongst a bunch of paranoid,

15:27

terrified people. And it would be like,

15:30

is this a package thief? And then you look at the video

15:32

and it's clearly just like a teenage kid

15:34

walking by, you know, and everybody's just

15:36

now everybody's like a potential criminal.

15:39

And I was just like, it was infecting my

15:42

brain in a way where I was like, this doesn't feel worth it, man.

15:44

I don't know. Like, lock your

15:46

doors, have

15:48

a floodlight or, you know, one

15:50

of the alarm systems that just makes a lot of noise.

15:52

I mean, that's more of a deterrent anyway. And

15:55

what are we gaining by putting cameras everywhere?

15:58

Is it really a safer society? I mean, it's... I

16:00

don't know.

16:01

Hayao, what do you think for Pano AI?

16:03

Do you think that there's something of a backlash

16:05

that's sort of pushing against the development

16:07

of this technology, or what

16:09

do you see as a future for the company?

16:11

Honestly,

16:14

I hear everything everybody

16:16

says as scary about

16:18

AI, but at the same time, you can't

16:21

slow the tide of the oceans, right? And

16:24

I think it's one of those things where if somebody says to

16:26

a fire department, hey, for $50,000

16:28

a year, instead of people who are in watchtowers,

16:31

maybe six hours every now and again, you have

16:34

24-hour alerts if something goes

16:36

on. But no

16:38

fire chief in their right mind is going to say no to that.

16:41

And so the technology exists. And at that point, it's like, well,

16:44

we can't shove this toothpaste

16:46

back in the tube. And now I think we're into

16:48

mitigation. How do we make this less harmful

16:50

to people? If you

16:52

like to do naughty things in the forest, how do you make sure

16:55

that that doesn't get caught on camera? That kind of thing,

16:57

right? Right, right, right. But that's a different conversation,

16:59

I think.

17:01

Well, and to jump on what you just

17:03

said, I've been obviously so far

17:05

on this episode sort of more anti, but here's

17:08

the truth too. We are entering

17:10

a part of our development as a society

17:12

where we have some really big challenges and we have

17:15

a massive population and dwindling

17:18

resources. And obviously,

17:20

these are powerful tools. I mean, I lived in California

17:22

for five years. I mean, yeah,

17:25

if you could put out a fire before

17:27

it gets you, I mean, the amount that

17:29

that saves, the environmental impact of

17:31

that, you know, is massive. So

17:34

obviously, we are entering a

17:36

part of human history where we need help. We got

17:38

to figure some stuff out. And so

17:41

if we can have these technologies help

17:43

us, and as long as we can do it in a way that's safe,

17:45

like, obviously, we have to explore

17:47

it. And like you said, the toothpaste is out of the tubes. So at

17:49

this point, let's, I guess,

17:51

try to embrace it and make sure that we're regulating it

17:53

in a way that we can still be naughty in the

17:55

woods. You know what I'm saying? Right.

17:58

Yeah, this can seem some serious. I mean, this is...

17:59

pretty heavy-duty stuff and we're

18:02

about to shift to some lighter fare, I promise.

18:04

Stay tuned as we talk about how AI is shaking

18:07

up the fast food industry as

18:09

the best of Business Wars Daily continues.

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out how much at Airbnb.com Hey,

20:06

welcome

20:11

back to the best of business wars daily. Joining

20:13

us is journalist Haya camps and comedian

20:15

Kenny DeForest. We're talking about AI

20:18

today and how it's being used in some interesting

20:21

ways, including in the drive-through

20:24

of your favorite fast food restaurant. Let's

20:26

hear a little more about drive-through AI and a clip

20:29

from business wars daily. Many

20:33

chains see it as a great deal according

20:35

to CNN. They say it can ease burdens

20:37

for overworked employees, improve

20:39

order accuracy, and here's the kicker, upsell

20:42

customers better than any old human can.

20:45

Yep, because sometimes a human asking,

20:47

would you like fries with that just doesn't do the trick.

20:51

Presto Automation is one company that's

20:53

established itself in this burgeoning industry

20:55

and upselling happens to be one of its selling

20:58

points. Presto's CEO

21:00

told analysts on a call last month that

21:02

Presto's AI automatically upsells

21:05

every order and those can be tailored

21:07

to the weather, the time of day, the order itself,

21:10

or even the customer's order history according

21:12

to CNN. Restaurant

21:15

operators sure like the sound of that. Last month,

21:17

CKE restaurants, as the

21:19

name behind Hardee's and Carl's Jr., announced

21:21

that it was partnering with Presto to bring AI to

21:24

its drive-throughs. Meanwhile rival

21:27

AI company, High Auto, has

21:29

become another major player in the drive-through

21:32

industry. High Auto's biggest brag? Its order

21:34

accuracy rate, human cash technology.

21:38

That's a jump that could result in more satisfied

21:40

customers and a higher rate of repeat visits.

21:43

High Auto also partnered with the king of fast

21:45

food, McDonald's, to test AI in some of

21:48

its drive-throughs. AI

21:50

can be great for restaurant owners, that

21:52

appears clear, but customers, workers,

21:55

that may be another story according to CNN. The

21:58

technology can be glitchy. allowed

22:00

drive-through isn't the best place for AI to

22:02

pick up on voice cues after all and

22:05

out of 10 AI orders placed at a White

22:07

Castle in Indiana three folks asked

22:09

to speak with a real live human either

22:11

to correct a mistake or because well simply

22:14

wanted that human interaction because

22:17

that's another thing this AI technology lacks

22:19

at least for now warm and

22:21

the ability to have a quick chit chat

22:23

with another person we

22:26

got White Castle Wendy's McDonald's

22:28

Hardee's all serving up

22:31

AI at their drive-throughs what do you make

22:33

of this I'm not sure we need something

22:36

more impersonal when we're getting our food but

22:39

I mean what say you I mean I don't

22:41

know where you go through your drive throughs where where I

22:44

go order accuracy isn't what

22:46

what they're known for to be perfectly honest I was just

22:48

before we started recording I was complimenting Kenny

22:50

on his radio voice and I drove through my

22:52

phones the other day and this this this clearly

22:54

an AI came on was like hello

22:56

are you do you want to order

22:58

blah blah blah today and then he got cut

23:00

off and instead what we met was with like

23:08

right and I was like okay I'm not being funny I'll

23:10

take Kenny taking my order as a robot

23:12

any day of the week over the alternative

23:15

I'm I don't see a downside to

23:17

be perfectly honest if I want to go talk to someone

23:19

to drive through ain't it just

23:22

saying well

23:24

said Kenny have you come into

23:26

contact with AI at the drive through or

23:28

would you prefer face-to-face interaction I

23:32

don't know if this counts as a drive-through but

23:34

I did recently see the robot barista

23:37

in Green Point Brooklyn and

23:40

boy did I not like that I I

23:43

mean here's the thing I get it but here's

23:45

what I think about who is this good for

23:48

people that are already incredibly

23:50

wealthy you're just automating a workforce

23:52

these are jobs when these are jobs

23:55

for people that probably don't have

23:57

a ton of other options and you're just gonna automate

24:00

that. But

24:02

so then what happens eventually? Like,

24:05

so all the farmers are then at some point

24:07

automated. So then the CEO

24:09

of Burger King is just the only one raking

24:12

in money and every everyone else is robot

24:14

staff. And then what they just give us like,

24:16

just enough money every month so that we can continue

24:18

to buy Burger King like I don't see how the

24:21

future and to be honest with you, I

24:23

guess, you know, maybe not the

24:25

comedic relief role that I'm probably here for. But,

24:28

you know, as someone who advocates for

24:30

mental health and for speaking, you know,

24:32

there are a lot of stories out there of people that

24:34

were like,

24:35

you know, I was suicidal and a

24:38

cashier showed me a simple kindness, and

24:40

it made me rethink. And

24:42

that's what I worry about. I mean, the world is already

24:44

getting more and more impersonal. We're getting more

24:46

and more online. And we

24:48

need human interaction. I mean, if there's one thing COVID

24:51

showed us, we are social creatures,

24:53

we are tribal creatures, we need

24:55

to be a amongst our tribe and we need to have

24:58

interactions and not to be isolated. And

25:00

that's what worries me about it. And I mean, who's

25:02

really messing up the order at White Castle?

25:05

It's sliders and fries. That's what they ordered.

25:09

But the big thing here, and this gets to sort

25:11

of part of the business model, it's not just

25:13

that you lay off a lot of workers, it's upselling.

25:16

And apparently robots, we

25:19

are told, are better at it than humans.

25:21

Although I have to say, Kenny, I would

25:23

have a tougher time saying no to

25:26

an upsell from a robot than a real

25:28

human being. So does

25:31

that sound right to you? No.

25:33

I look a robot right in the eyes and

25:35

say, you don't affect me, sir. Yeah, shove it up your

25:40

tin can pal. But I say, take

25:43

those fries. Hya,

25:47

what are you hearing about this business approach?

25:49

Or is everyone sold on the idea that this

25:51

is really going to be good for business?

25:53

Well, the truth is, you know, every

25:56

drive through employee now

25:58

is trained to do upselling anyway, right? And

26:00

most of the time they don't, they just want to get the job done.

26:03

And so I think there's this interesting thing. I think what they're

26:05

trying to do is trading the

26:07

amount of extra time it takes to try and do an upsell

26:10

with, and then they trade that off with order accuracy.

26:12

And so hopefully it takes the same amount of time, but

26:14

they make more money. I think that's the sell. But

26:17

to Kenny's point, and I think this is actually a really, really important

26:20

one, like whose jobs are getting replaced.

26:22

There's so many people I know who had their first job

26:25

in fast food. I worked in retail as my first

26:27

job, right? But the really scary ones

26:29

to

26:29

me is trucking. Like self-driving

26:32

cars and trucking is

26:34

going to completely change the

26:37

landscape. Almost 6% of every

26:39

working adult in the US works in trucking,

26:42

and all of those jobs are about to go away. Now,

26:45

is it safer to have a self-driving truck?

26:48

Maybe. Is it more efficient for the truck

26:50

operators? Probably. But what

26:52

are you going to do with that 6% of workforce? And

26:55

so you're seeing a massive shift of wealth from

26:57

people who already had a lot of money, away

26:59

from people who didn't have a lot of money, combined

27:02

with a lack of safety net, no

27:04

mental health care. And if you lose your job, you have

27:06

no normal health care either. Like I know

27:08

I'm meant to be the pro side of this argument,

27:10

but it's looking pretty bleak over here.

27:13

Well, nobody's in any corners

27:15

here. Feel free to just sound off as

27:17

y'all are doing. I love it, because this is,

27:20

I think, bringing to the surface a lot of these issues

27:22

that we haven't had a moment to sort

27:24

of pause and think about. But

27:26

I also think that maybe this deserves just a

27:28

wee bit more scrutiny, Hyah, because if

27:31

we're talking accuracy, chat

27:33

GPT itself, that was the introduction

27:38

for a lot of folks, the introduction to

27:40

AI. Well, it certainly

27:42

is not the most accurate source.

27:44

And in fact, if you go on and ask

27:48

chat GPT as I did today, a fairly

27:50

basic question that I figured it would have no trouble

27:53

handling, you get bogus answers.

27:56

Is accuracy really a thing?

27:58

I mean, can you... Can we rely

28:01

on accuracy as a hallmark

28:03

of AI as it stands?

28:05

So actually I think for

28:08

ordering in drive-throughs, AI is kind of

28:10

the perfect use case. And the reason is that you have

28:12

a very small, very predictable

28:14

set of activities, right? If you ask

28:17

chat GPT the lyrics for

28:19

a song or something else, like you expect

28:21

chat GPT to know everything. You don't

28:23

necessarily go through the drive-through and say, hey, what's

28:26

the population of Nepal? They don't have to know that.

28:28

You don't expect that. And so because

28:30

the question space is much smaller,

28:32

the accuracy goes up dramatically.

28:35

You can still ask them what the population of Nepal is, but they can

28:37

just tell you to bugger

28:38

off because they're not expected to

28:40

know. And I think because of that, you

28:42

end up with much higher

28:44

accuracy because you know, like there's

28:47

probably maybe 300 interactions

28:50

in total that you might possibly have with

28:53

an ordering chat bot.

28:55

Now the accuracy thing is true, right? The

28:58

accuracy for chat GPT 4.0, which

29:00

is like the newest one, isn't

29:02

super great. So I think the thing

29:04

about chat GPT 4 that's interesting is that

29:07

we're currently arguing about

29:10

a malfunctioning toddler. Toddlers

29:14

aren't meant to be fully functioning human beings yet,

29:16

right? Chat GPT 4 has been out

29:18

for less than a year and it's learning

29:20

at an incredible rate. Like a year ago, it basically

29:23

didn't exist. But I think there

29:25

is something there. The accuracy will go up and

29:27

there are like different degrees of accuracy.

29:30

What's important if they said, Hey, chat GPT

29:32

is going to be running 911. I'd be like, Hey, that's a really

29:34

bad idea. But if the worst case scenario

29:36

is that they give me a strawberry milkshake instead

29:38

of a chocolate milkshake, I'm like, okay, fine.

29:40

That's a like the error rate

29:42

there and the impact of an error I'm willing to live

29:45

with. Or maybe I'm not, and I'm going to shout as manager,

29:47

but either way, kind of the problem space

29:49

is limited enough that it seems safe enough

29:51

to try.

29:53

Yeah. Kenny, you, you raised some really

29:55

serious concerns here. I'm curious though, have you

29:57

actually tried chat GPT or any of these?

30:00

AI services yet?

30:03

I Mess with it a very

30:05

little bit, but I'm just like there's

30:07

just part of me That's like I don't want to participate

30:09

in this at all I'm just kind of

30:11

waiting and seeing I did mess with it a little bit.

30:14

It is fun I have a

30:16

couple friends, you know that are writers and

30:19

they they had they made some interesting points They were like, yeah,

30:21

Chet Che GPT is not gonna be able to you know

30:23

bang out a pilot for you or whatever But

30:25

it's actually can be a good writing partner and

30:27

a friend of mine was telling me this he was working on a short film

30:30

And he'll feed jet chat GPT like okay

30:33

two people want to date one's a germaphobe

30:36

and one is really messy Give

30:38

me six examples of something

30:40

that could happen at the dinner and like for

30:42

those kinds of prompts It seems

30:44

to be really helpful It's kind of like a writing

30:47

partner that you can bounce ideas off of so,

30:49

you know I think where I'm trying to land with

30:51

this stuff is

30:53

It's here

30:55

Learn to be responsible with it. Don't be Don't

30:58

just shut it out and pretend it's not there because it's not going

31:00

anywhere so I think

31:02

at some point I will sort of test the waters

31:04

a little bit more and Open

31:06

myself up to it, you know, but it

31:09

is hard because I think about it, you know with the drive-through

31:11

thing It's like a cost-benefit analysis, right?

31:14

So the benefit is what more accurate fast

31:16

food orders and the cost is

31:18

Tons of jobs and even more

31:20

economic inequality

31:22

Like I don't know man. I don't really care if

31:24

a human gives me the wrong milkshake it's fine at least

31:26

that person other job and So

31:30

to me it's like the cop but like again with

31:32

the wildfires That's a great application for

31:34

it that clearly benefits society I

31:36

just don't think more accurate Wendy's orders

31:38

is I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze When

31:41

it when it when it comes to that, you know, yeah

31:44

Comedian Kenny DeForest is talking

31:46

with us as well as journalist hiya camps

31:49

of tech crunch You're listening the best of business

31:51

wars daily and coming up We'll be talking

31:53

more about how AI is disrupting industries

31:55

from firefighting to advertise

31:58

stay with it

32:03

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33:10

Hey, welcome back. We're talking with journalist Haya

33:12

Camps and comedian Kenny DeForest

33:14

about AI. Just

33:17

do it. Because you're worth it. Diamonds

33:19

are forever. Where's the beef? I

33:21

bet you can name the companies that go along with those

33:24

iconic slogans, right? They were the

33:26

product of lots of late nights and work shopping.

33:28

In other words, human creativity. But

33:31

that may not be the case much longer. Artificial

33:34

intelligence is already changing advertising.

33:36

And, well, rather than trying to fight it, ad

33:38

agencies are embracing AI. Let's

33:41

hear a bit more about that with a clip from Business Wars

33:43

Daily. Last

33:46

week, WPP, the world's largest advertising

33:48

agency, announced it was going, quote,

33:51

all in on AI, CNN

33:53

reports. The agency is teaming up

33:55

with NVIDIA, which is one of the leading suppliers

33:58

of AI hardware and software. The

34:00

two companies are creating a platform that

34:02

allows clients to create ads and other content

34:05

simply by typing in a description

34:07

of what they want. Oh

34:09

boy, watch out Draper. This

34:11

new platform will allow brands to create

34:14

two-dimensional images and videos and

34:16

three-dimensional simulations for advertising

34:18

purposes, Ad Age reports. It'll

34:20

connect generative AI tools from places

34:23

like Adobe and Getty Images, giving

34:25

clients access to sweeping libraries

34:27

of images and graphics. WPP's

34:30

project will launch soon, although the

34:32

company has not yet said when.

34:35

WPP isn't the only agency giant

34:37

embracing generative AI. Ogilvy,

34:40

which reps clients like BMW and

34:42

Burger King, has launched its AI

34:44

lab in Paris. The goal,

34:47

the company said in a statement, is to harness

34:49

and build on its expertise in using AI

34:51

and give brands access to AI art

34:53

generators so clients can use

34:55

the platform to create their own ads

34:58

and videos for various purposes. All

35:00

of this access to creative materials

35:03

on demand raises questions about the future

35:05

of the agency model. After

35:07

all, when an AI can show a luxury

35:09

car or a designer ensemble on

35:11

a London street or any desert in the world

35:13

by typing a few words, the

35:16

need for pricey shoots in exotic locations

35:19

plummets. A representative from WPP

35:22

told CNN that the new platform outperforms

35:25

having people quote manually create

35:27

hundreds of thousands of pieces of content using

35:29

disparate data coming from disconnected tools

35:32

and systems. That sounds

35:34

like smaller creative teams will be needed

35:36

to service client accounts. Jenny,

35:40

I want to play a little game with you here because I know this

35:42

sounds far fetched, but let's imagine you're

35:45

a comedian with a comedy special that's

35:47

being released and you need to get some eyeballs

35:50

on that. Turn to

35:52

AI for PR material, perhaps? And

35:54

say you.

35:56

See, this is why I'm talking. I mean, yeah,

35:58

obviously that'd be amazing.

35:59

You know, I can streamline it, it's gonna

36:02

be faster, I don't have to pay anybody to do

36:04

it. But here's the thing, my album that just came

36:06

out, the album cover. One

36:09

of my close friends and high school teammates

36:11

is an incredible artist, and we paid

36:13

him to make the cover

36:16

of my album. And now I'm selling stickers

36:18

and I'm selling t-shirts and him and I are splitting the profits

36:21

of that. And that feels so much more gratifying

36:23

than if I had just used AI. And here's the thing,

36:25

I know AI would have done a good job, I would have made something

36:28

cool. I don't pay anybody, I'd make more money,

36:30

but

36:31

I don't know, human collaboration, especially in

36:33

art, that's what art is. I mean, it's

36:38

always in some respects

36:40

collaborative. I mean, obviously there might be a visual artist

36:42

that works by themselves, whatever. But

36:44

even so, the human element in art

36:47

is so important, I think. I

36:49

hope, I want to believe that. Maybe

36:51

I'll be wrong, you know, maybe in a few

36:53

years, there'll

36:54

be a 100% AI movie that blows

36:57

my mind, I don't know. You

36:59

know what this reminds me, at this moment reminds

37:01

me a lot of what was happening with

37:05

recorded music, you know, at the turn

37:07

of the millennium. I mean, where

37:09

we have a lot of people involved in

37:12

the, and there's a lot of ways too, in the

37:15

making, not just the creative

37:17

content, but the marketing

37:20

of that. It disappears and

37:22

what you are left with is, yes,

37:24

the end of the gatekeepers, but also a kind

37:26

of grand leveling in that you have

37:29

more creators who are now able

37:31

to access platforms

37:35

and ears that they might not have been

37:38

able to reach were

37:40

it not for the proliferation

37:42

of technological tools, like, you

37:44

know, they could pro tools and that sort of thing, right?

37:48

What are you seeing in your reporting? I mean,

37:50

is there a kind of parallel here, parallel

37:53

experience that AI represents?

38:00

play with AI a lot and I have

38:02

tried, I've really tried to make it write

38:04

my newsletters for me. And in theory,

38:07

I feel like it should be able to, right? Feeded all the

38:09

articles, like turn it into a newsletter. And

38:11

it just falls flat. It

38:13

has no personality, it has no soul. And

38:16

I think the stuff Kenny touched

38:18

on is like, I think for art

38:20

to make sense to humans, it needs to have

38:23

a message. It needs to have something that goes underneath,

38:26

that understands humanity to

38:28

be able to connect with it. Like I am not,

38:30

I'm not Hemingway, right? But I would like to think

38:33

that my writing is funny, engaging, ads

38:36

analysis, ads context, and

38:38

people read it for those reasons. Like

38:41

a lot of the stuff that a lot of journalists cover,

38:43

you get a press release, you mush it

38:45

around a little bit, you add a picture, you hit publish,

38:48

please AI, take that away from us. Humans

38:51

don't need to be involved with that. But for

38:53

real like fun reporting, talking

38:55

to people, engaging, like

38:58

it's about the core of what makes us human.

39:00

I think that talks about art. I think that talks about anything

39:03

we're like, I'm sure you've had this, right?

39:05

You sit down with a magazine and you read an article, it's like, whatever,

39:07

I've got some new facts. Or you have one where

39:09

you're like, oh, that was engaging. I feel like

39:11

I knew the story. I understood

39:14

the

39:15

characters. I understand why this impacts

39:17

the emotional element there. Yeah. Right.

39:20

Right. And so far, AI

39:22

hasn't been able to do that. And I think like

39:25

there are some advertising type forms

39:27

where AI can probably do well. Like it can

39:29

crank out 6000 different Facebook

39:32

ads that are super targeted to Kenny's

39:34

interest, to my interest, your interest. Right.

39:37

And so I can see that if it's just

39:39

about crunching numbers, like

39:41

an AI can

39:43

crank out 10,000 pictures and 10,000

39:45

ads and see what I look at for

39:47

a millisecond longer than any other ad and then

39:49

reformulate that ad. Great. But humans

39:51

should never be involved with that anyway.

39:53

Hiya, you mentioned something that

39:56

made me think of a kind

39:59

of dilemma that I think the

40:01

rise of AI hints at.

40:04

And it's not just the, there's

40:06

been so much written and talked about plagiarism,

40:08

for example, getting AI to do your homework and

40:10

all that. But if you take it to

40:13

that next level where you have professionals

40:15

say in the creative business,

40:17

and for you as a journalist, of course, it's

40:19

writing that story and it's coming up

40:21

with that narrative. On the one hand,

40:24

I can see how being inspired

40:26

by something that chat GPT or

40:28

something might spit back out at you would

40:30

be a benefit. Do

40:33

you credit that at all?

40:35

publicly? Do you do you? Do you

40:38

concede to your readers

40:41

that you had assistance from AI

40:44

or not? How do you how

40:46

do you try to, you know, square that

40:48

because these are some real issues facing a lot

40:50

of folks in the creative arts right now.

40:53

Well, I think there's a couple of truths in

40:55

there. And I'm like, one of them is that I don't think

40:57

original art exists. And

41:00

what I mean by that is that every everybody

41:02

like everybody is inspired by everything.

41:05

The idea of simultaneous invention, like

41:08

the crossbow was invented in six different

41:10

places all around the world at roughly the same time. That

41:12

wasn't because everybody had this lightning

41:15

of genius idea was just like it was the next

41:17

logical step. And I think a lot of that happens for

41:20

creativity too. Like I

41:22

at some point wrote an article which was like, Hey, am I

41:24

an AI? And what I meant was

41:26

that I'd written books that were that

41:28

were based on ideas

41:31

that were brought by other writers, other

41:33

people. So I was adding something,

41:35

but I was also collating a lot of information.

41:38

And that's pretty wild.

41:40

I'm hearing something very comfortably analog

41:42

in the background that train going

41:44

past your window. Right?

41:47

Yeah, yeah. There's something soothing

41:50

about the old school. And I

41:52

think that that's a big part

41:54

of the way that the lens through which we're

41:56

understanding AI

41:58

that it is something for which We don't really have

42:01

a perfect parallel. I think everyone

42:04

is concerned about what this means writ

42:07

large. But sticking with what

42:09

we were talking about there, I know recently Ogilvy,

42:12

the PR company, launched this thing called the AI

42:14

Accountability Act calling for

42:17

influencers to disclose their collaborations

42:20

with AI-generated content. They

42:22

disclosed that with a hashtag like, hashtag

42:25

powered by AI or some kind of watermark.

42:28

One of the leaders of the Ogilvy campaign

42:30

said, I want to quote here, if we aren't

42:32

honest with our end consumers, then

42:34

we lose the effectiveness of influencer marketing

42:37

as a channel. And I think in a way this gets to

42:39

this human aspect of

42:41

it. And what, if anything,

42:43

it reveals when we're

42:46

trying to be honest with those

42:48

that we're communicating with. Kenny,

42:51

do you trust influencers in the first place? Or are you

42:53

on social media much? Or would you appreciate something

42:55

like an accountability act like that?

42:58

Yeah. To answer your first question,

43:01

absolutely not. I

43:04

don't know if you've met an influencer, but they

43:06

basically are already robots. So

43:09

I assume. But yeah,

43:12

I think people should absolutely have to disclose

43:14

that. I think just especially as,

43:16

again, it's like you said, it's brand new. We don't know what this

43:18

is. There's a lot of optimism. There's a lot

43:20

of concerns. And I think one

43:23

way to help with that is to disclose

43:25

so that the public knows. I think people should absolutely

43:28

have to disclose that. I think just

43:31

especially as, again, it's like you said, it's brand new.

43:33

We don't know what this is. There's a lot of optimism.

43:35

There's a lot of concerns. And I think one

43:38

way to help with that is to

43:40

disclose so that the public knows, okay,

43:42

this is a situation where AI is being used. Now we

43:44

can decide, does this seem like a good

43:46

thing in this particular arena? Does it not? I

43:49

think the public being informed about

43:52

the ways in which it's being used is going to be paramount

43:54

to sort of figuring this thing out in a way that could

43:56

be beneficial and not as harmful.

44:00

think like in my world, you know, right now, a lot

44:02

of my, I myself am not a Guild

44:04

member, but we have a lot of my close friends are on

44:06

strike. And, you know, we're looking

44:08

at the effect on, you

44:11

know, television and movies and

44:13

things of that nature. And, you know, and

44:15

in the future, like, listen, there's people that have come

44:17

up through stand up, I've been doing this a long time. And

44:19

there's just certain people that have a charisma

44:22

and a look, and they're maybe not

44:24

great joke writers, but people are like, no,

44:26

that person has something. And they'll

44:28

try to hire a different comedian to write jokes

44:30

for that person. Well, what if that person could just use

44:33

an AI joke generator and be like,

44:35

all right, I grew up in this place

44:38

in a trailer park, write

44:41

a joke about my childhood, and then

44:43

like, you know, they might be able to go

44:45

on tour

44:45

with that. And I personally hate that and think that

44:48

stinks. And I would love it if they would have to tell people