137. New Season. New Format. Same AI Mayhem?

David Brown: 00:00:09

n at the end in the autumn of: 2025

So we took a long break over the summer because we'd been recording for a couple years straight, actually, with no real breaks at all.

And I think we all had a little bit of a thought about how we could do it better and, you know, maybe make it a little bit more interesting and change things up. So we will. We're going to move to a new format where we have co hosts. We're all going to. We're all going to host together on most of the episodes.

And if somebody can't be here one week or another week or whatever, then we'll either maybe get a guest in to take their spot, or we'll just host it ourselves, or we'll just get on with it and the show can just keep rolling. So over the next X number of weeks, whatever that works out to be, you'll have all of us or two of us or one of us or, I don't know, somebody.

Maybe we'll just get somebody in if we can't all do it at the same time. So welcome, everybody. Jo Shilton and Lena Robinson.

Jo Shilton: 00:01:15

Hi, everyone. Hello. Welcome.

David Brown: 00:01:17

Hello. This is also the first time we've actually done a live broadcast. So if it's terrible tough, you don't.

Jo Shilton: 00:01:27

Have to watch it again.

Lena Robinson: 00:01:27

It's gonna be fine.

David Brown: 00:01:29

We have no idea how this is gonna pan out. And we just thought, well, let's just do it. No time better than the present.

So thank you, Lena, for trying to apply a little bit of organization to proceedings here. So.

Jo Shilton: 00:01:45

That's all right.

David Brown: 00:01:47

I think we've had a traditional show so far, which has been a traditional kind of interview podcast, where, you know, 95% of the episodes have been us just sitting around and having an interview and chatting with somebody that we thought would be interesting to just talk about different themes. You know, we've had the theme around creatives with AI and women and education and marketing and the law and all the different stuff.

And I just got the feeling that we. We kind of split everything up too much, and really we just needed to have one show we can have different themes.

And it just made sense to me to kind of pull it all back together.

Lena Robinson: 00:02:25

I mean, we needed to try, didn't we? We needed to experiment to see what.

David Brown: 00:02:29

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, 100%. And I think.

I think the other thing is, is a lot of the podcasts that I listen to regularly and another podcast that I co host on all have three hosts. And it seems to work really well because then, you know, we all, we all have different perspectives on stuff.

We all, all three of us have different perspectives on AI for sure.

And so I think it might be more interesting and just a more well rounded conversation for people listening if we talk about it and then kind of bring stuff to the table.

Jo Shilton: 00:03:04

Yeah, agree.

David Brown: 00:03:06

The other thing that we talked about as well was being. Trying to be more topical with stuff that's actually happening in the real world right now.

And so moving forward, what we want to do is kind of bring a story or some sort of a topic with us.

You know, if we've got an actual article that we saw online or some post on LinkedIn or some, you know, crazy social media post or something that we want to mention, we'll bring that and we'll, you know, we'll each bring something to the table and, and we'll just, we can all talk about it and see how we feel. And then we might also have a topic, a general topic that we want to talk about. You know, that, that show as well.

And so today Lena has proposed a topic for us to, to discuss. I think that was everything. Lena on the list, wasn't it? That we wanted to.

The housekeeping bits at the beginning just to, to kind of let everybody know what's going on.

Lena Robinson: 00:04:00

Yeah. Set out the new structure.

David Brown: 00:04:01

Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, so we're going to talk about latest news and I think before we get too far into it, Joe, do you want to start with the latest news?

What's your, what's your topic? Your big like what's happened over the summer or that's really caught your attention lately. That's happening in AI.

Jo Shilton: 00:04:22

Oh, hang on, I thought we were just doing something that happened this week. That's fine. You do. This week I put my hand up. I feel like I've not done my homework. So I just. There was two.

David Brown: 00:04:32

Awesome. Me too. So we're just fine.

Lena Robinson: 00:04:34

Well, I have. So we're all good.

Jo Shilton: 00:04:36

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:04:37

Lena's done her homework and I like that.

Jo Shilton: 00:04:39

We only decided to check this morning where we're going to share the news article with each other that we're going to talk about because I.

Lena Robinson: 00:04:45

And also that we were going live today.

Jo Shilton: 00:04:48

Oh yeah.

David Brown: 00:04:50

I don't have a topic. Well, I have a general topic. I don't have an article so I can talk about anything, so.

Jo Shilton: 00:04:55

Exactly. Well, I had one that just. That someone had mentioned to me today about AI being used to help people book holidays.

But the other thing that I wondered whether one of you two would bring was the one which I don't really have, all the facts was about Google turning off a hundred search options and it's only showing 10. And that, I think, to me is a bigger discussion point because that's really about how AI is controlling what it is that you can find.

So even if you aren't using AI to book a holiday and you're just using it to search for something, not going to get as many options back. So is it starting to control everything we do? Do we know that? Do other people know that? How do we stop it?

David Brown: 00:05:33

Yeah, that's. That's actually a great story to mention. I saw that one as well.

And I think for anybody who doesn't know what we're talking about, you know, Google used to return a hundred different search results that were targeted to whatever your query was. And obviously it has a long tail where it'll do more than that, but it would kind of rank the first hundred. Right.

And because some of the AI tools like ChatGPT and some of the other ones were actually using Google search to then do its research, Google felt like that essentially Google was powering a lot of the knowledge of the other AI tools. And since Google has its own tool, it didn't want them to compete. So what it's done is it's now taken that from 100 back to 10.

Now, for most people, what that means is, is that now it's Only the top 10 search results that you're really going to get that are going to be the best ones instead of the top 100.

And that also means for many of the smaller sites that were outside of, you know, the first page of Google, like if you're a small company and you're outside the first page of Google anyway, like, the chances of your search results coming up now are next to zero. Whereas if you were in the top 100 before then, you would, then you would show up and. Yeah, and that's massive for small businesses.

Lena Robinson: 00:06:58

That's going to make it small business. Yeah, brutal.

David Brown: 00:07:01

I mean, that's going to make it really difficult for discovery for smaller businesses. So. Yeah. What do you. Well, what do you think? You work in comms, Joe, what are you.

Jo Shilton: 00:07:12

Well, I know and sometimes you say it's so easy, you just go for the top hit. I don't go for the top picks. I don't go there for the sponsored one. I go for the One, you know, it's like choosing a bottle of wine.

Don't go well unless you're going for the house because you know you can trust it. Don't go for the second one down because you're just being ripped off. Go through a fall down or just choose the one you like.

But sometimes it is more fun to just scroll down to the next page. But then you got the rubbish stuff. But yeah, it's the impact on the smaller businesses and then who's in control here? Is it Google?

Is it AI and the sort of. Because I was thinking about it under the sort of vision of trying to organize a holiday and like, what would you do and how do you do it?

I can ask ChatGPT to, you know, schedule a four day itinerary in Rome or I can do my own research or I can put a shout out to all my friends and ask them what they recommend or buy a guidebook. And I think people are relying on AI. But you don't know. I still, I wouldn't trust it.

I would still take that itinerary and I run it by other people or people that have actually been to the place you're going because let's face it, AI hasn't been anywhere. So you need the human input. But I think it's all just scary. And then part of me thinks let's just ignore it. But how do you.

If there's only 10 options then it's really limiting everything. It's, you know, and who's written those 10 options? How's Google decided?

Everyone knows that if you're trying to do marketing and you're trying to put an advert somewhere, no one knows what the secret, you know, secret sauce is to get you in the top 10. And now, you know, top 10 isn't going to be good enough. You're going to be top five.

David Brown: 00:08:39

Yeah, yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:08:40

It's interesting because the other question, and I don't know the answer to this because I haven't, it's the first time I'm hearing of this today, but is whether or not as a search person, searching, can you bypass the 10 and say I want you to give me the top hundred?

David Brown: 00:09:00

No, I don't think so because then the AI would just do that.

Lena Robinson: 00:09:04

I mean, I'm assuming at the end of the day Google's doing it so everybody has to pay to be in. But then that's going to be a big like auction war. Oh, what a fucking nightmare.

David Brown: 00:09:14

They don't care. But I don't think it's Even that, I think the Google search algorithm will still continue to work the way it works now.

It's just limiting the number of relevant results that you get. Now, whether Google will come out with like, maybe if you use Google Gemini and you search using Gemini, then.

Then I would, I would think that Google Gemini would use all of the search results and would give you something better. So that would then set them apart because, you know, it's their.

It's their data set that they pull together and it's their algorithm that they use and whatever. So that. That makes sense. I guess what I, I guess what I don't understand is, is it.

Does it still happen if you just go to google.com and you, you know, or do google.co.uk, whatever, and then you put in a search term on their web page, do you still get the limited 10 results or do you still get the hundred? And is it only the API connections and stuff that they're using that they're limiting? And I don't. Do you remember what it said in the article, Jay?

Jo Shilton: 00:10:22

No, I think we need to find it and link it to this. Okay, well, there are any show notes if a show's live.

David Brown: 00:10:28

Yeah, there'll be show notes afterwards, of.

Jo Shilton: 00:10:29

Course, because also other search engines are available.

David Brown: 00:10:34

Yeah, of course. They're shit, but they're available.

Lena Robinson: 00:10:38

Can we ever use them?

Jo Shilton: 00:10:40

No, no, no. Just go, what is a Bing?

David Brown: 00:10:44

I use Bing every once in a while. And the thing about the real difference between them.

And look, we know that, you know, Google has its own thing and it's got Google Ads and all the other stuff and it's, you know, it puts the, kind of the sponsored posts up at the top a lot. But I tell you what, man, if you go on Bing and you search for something, all you get is ads.

Like, there's no, you know, there's no seemingly natural search results that come out of that. It is literally just all paid crap that you get and trying to sift through that. I mean, I've.

I've tried it so many times and I'm just like, oh, these results are terrible. And I just, I just can't. It really just does my night. So.

Jo Shilton: 00:11:24

So that was my news. News talking point. What was yours? Lena.

David Brown: 00:11:28

Awesome. No, that's very good. I'm gonna go next because then Lena can segue into her questions that she, that she wants because she put the topic forward.

Lena Robinson: 00:11:36

So the questions. Fine.

Jo Shilton: 00:11:38

Cool.

David Brown: 00:11:39

Yeah, well, that's. Yeah, well, you'll do your news and then that you can Segue straight into the questions if you want them.

Lena Robinson: 00:11:46

I love.

David Brown: 00:11:48

Yeah, I think what's been really interesting for me, this isn't anything in particular but it is something that I've started playing around with which is using the agent in chat GPT. I finally got access to it, I have the paid account so I use the. Just the low level paid account, like £20amonth, whatever.

And it finally got turned on for me and so I went in and just set up a basic agent and said hey, I what I asked it to do is I wanted it to go out and interrogate the web, find interesting articles about studios because I've got, you know, the studio now and I wanted it to find like the top five articles that it thought were really well researched, that were referenced very well, that were, you know, had a good solid writing style and then to bring those back and to put them in a Google sheet for me and to give me the URL of the article, give me a short summary of what the article was and why it's interesting.

And then that way what I could do is it's then surfacing that list for me and I can go look at those every day and see if that's something that I then want to take and comment on and share on social media. I don't want it to write the post for me, I just want it to surface the information so that I can then go and see what I want to do.

And you know, I said, you know, run at 5, 5am every day so that when I wake up in the morning and I go to the office, I have the list of things and I can just look through it. Does it ever run? No. And then I'll go and ask it and I'll say, are you supposed. Do I have to be logged in for you to run this query and do this task?

And it's like, no, no, no, you don't have to be logged in, you don't have to do anything. It will just run in the background. And I'm like, but it didn't run today. Yeah, and then it goes, oh, I'm really sorry about that, I'll run it now.

And then it runs it now and then the next day. And I'm like, okay, so is this going to run tomorrow? And it says, yes, it's going to run tomorrow and then it doesn't run tomorrow. So that's on the.

Lena Robinson: 00:13:47

Have you asked why it's not running and what's its answer?

David Brown: 00:13:51

I haven't. But what's really interesting Is. Is that. So that's the cheap level.

So I have a friend that's in one of my networking groups and he uses the 200 pound a month, like Pro Chat GPT and he literally runs his entire company off of it. So he does. He does like boilers and gas work and stuff like that.

And when he goes on an appointment, when he comes back, and he uses the voice thing with Chat GPT almost exclusively. So he talks to it and she talks back to him.

So he's given it a personality, he's given it a name, and then he talks to it just like a person and she talks back to him.

And so he'll say, okay, I was just at Joe Blogg's house and I installed this and I checked this and I did that and here's what was wrong and I had to replace this and I had to do that and blah, blah, blah.

So he does all his notes and everything as voice notes that then takes all that voice note, it puts it into the spreadsheet and it puts it into their, like, logging software so that he's got. They've got access to that and all the other people have access to it. And then he can say, oh, you know, where am I going next?

What appointment is it? What do I need to have? And he just, literally just talks to it like it's his assistant.

Jo Shilton: 00:15:08

That's cheaper than having a personal assistant, isn't it?

David Brown: 00:15:10

Yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:15:11

Yeah. So is the difference between the proactivity. Literally how much is being spent, do you think? Two hundred versus twenty?

David Brown: 00:15:18

I don't know. I think it seems like they have more functionality in that higher one. So he can give it a personality.

Lena Robinson: 00:15:26

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:15:26

And he can tell it like, you have choices about how you want it to be. So he has it. There's like a romantic kind of option. So it's a little bit more flirty. And so he has the flirty option.

So she's always like, you know, slightly flirty with him all the time.

Lena Robinson: 00:15:42

It's kind of like when we had GPS and you could get it to do it like in a Caribbean accent or a New Zealand accent or get it to be Samuel Jackson. Yeah.

Jo Shilton: 00:15:51

My series, Irish. The female Irish. I don't want any man telling me.

Lena Robinson: 00:15:56

What to do because I kept snoring and it kept waking me up going. Can you repeat that, please? On three. On two different. On my phone and my iPad. Yeah. So that series gone.

David Brown: 00:16:08

Oh, I love it. That's awesome.

Jo Shilton: 00:16:10

That's the funniest thing. Yeah.

David Brown: 00:16:13

Yeah. I always thought it would Be really funny if you could have your partner's voice on there. Just because it just be even more annoying.

Just be like, I don't need you giving me directions all the time. The hell are you doing? Where are you going? You're not supposed to go that way. Yeah, with AI it'll be even worse.

Jo Shilton: 00:16:31

Oh yeah, cool.

David Brown: 00:16:33

So that was, that was my little experiment. I suspect that this is going to be a running commentary through the next sort of, you know, few conversations as I try and get that to work.

Lena Robinson: 00:16:44

Well, you need to. I think that why it's not doing what you've asked.

Jo Shilton: 00:16:46

Yeah, Lena's right. 100. Because we use Copilot at work now, which runs off ChatGPT anyway, and I asked it the other day, can you shrink this image to under one megabyte?

I said, yeah, yeah, here you go. And so I just tried to upload it again. I was like, oh, that's not right. So I checked properties. No, you haven't. They'd made it. Made it 10 megabytes.

So I went back, I was like, no, you haven't done it. And tried it again. I said, no, you've made it bigger. And I had to go back about six times and eventually it finally did it, but it kept going.

No, no, I've done it.

Lena Robinson: 00:17:13

Well, that would be driving me insane.

Jo Shilton: 00:17:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I just thought, I'm not letting it go do it. It's.

David Brown: 00:17:22

I think it's certainly a good idea. And when I ask it to run, it does actually do what I want it to do. So it can access the spreadsheet on its own.

So it goes to the spreadsheet, it logs in, I can see the user pop up. I can watch it actually populating the cells and all the information.

And so it does get the URLs correctly and it does do a good summary of what's there and it puts the date in the author's name and all the other stuff, you know, if it's available. So the doing of the task isn't the problem, it's the auto scheduling of it. And maybe that's something.

Lena Robinson: 00:17:58

I wonder if the reason it's doing that is because you know how we had the conversation the other day about it's saving. It's across the board. They're trying to. These are trying to save space. Right.

And it's possibly going well, it's going to take up space unless it's a priority. Right now I'm just kind of going to pretend he asked me to not pretend. He didn't ask me to do that until he actually asked me because then.

Jo Shilton: 00:18:27

I pretended I've done my homework.

David Brown: 00:18:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. So we'll see. But it's. I could see where stuff like that, you know, I'm now starting to play around with that side of it and I can see.

And Joe, this kind of gets to you, talking about booking holidays, right? It's the same kind of thing.

Like you could set it off and you could say, I want you to check every day at 8am for cheap flights to Barcelona and when you see flights that are under £100, let me know. And if you could set that off and were confident that it was running then, you know, randomly.

Someday it might actually send you an SMS text message saying, hey, I found a flight on EasyJet that's £98 if.

Lena Robinson: 00:19:08

You want to book live.

David Brown: 00:19:10

But. But it's a personal.

It's more of a personal assistant, so you can kind of tell it what you want and you can just speak to it, you don't have to type it in. And I think that's the other thing is I want to play around with the voice because I haven't in the. I haven't so far played around.

I just dictate stuff and do you know what I mean? And then it kind of does a transcript for me. But I want to play around more with the voice and particularly with it talking back.

Because I think that could be really interesting because I've said for ages on all, you know, since I started this show, I've said, I can't wait till the day that I actually have a. Like an assistant that can just sort shit out for me, right?

Like, can you just get me a, you know, a dinner reservation at, you know, for seven o' clock on Friday night? And it just takes care of it and just goes, yeah, you've got it. Like, that would be amazing.

Jo Shilton: 00:19:57

That's what you want to. I like that as well that you said it was your friend was. He's like plumbing and heating engineer, whatever he's doing.

Because I think the classic thing is you just think, oh, it's just people in offices. It's just people that are sitting at a laptop, they're using it. But you're right, being out and about and being able to just talk to it.

Because I was thinking that the other day I was cycling, I was like, oh, I really want to check the price of something too. I should go to this job or this shop. I was like, if I could just Speak to it, you know, like the film.

David Brown: 00:20:19

Yeah, yeah. The other thing that. And it might be interesting, actually, to try and get him on one time, just to talk through how he uses it.

But the other thing he can do is it's his. I think it's his company. And at the end of the day, what he can say is he. I think he calls it Imogen or Isabella or something.

I think it's Imogen, something like that. And I'll just say Imogen, whatever the name actually is, but he'll be like, imogen, can you give me a recap? How did today go?

And then what she'll come back and say is, she'll say all the jobs got done. There seemed to be a little bit of communication issue between this particular person in this team or this team and this team.

So there was a bit of back and forth going on, but they got the problem result. Like, it literally goes to that level to be able to analyze what's going on.

And so if there was a problem and, you know, she might say to him, oh, Tom was working on this job at, you know, 327 Main street and he wasn't able to finish because he didn't have the part and blah, blah, like. And it literally will just read it to him while he's in the truck on the way home.

So he can just ask her and she will just tell him what the summary was of the day. Because they all use it.

Lena Robinson: 00:21:27

Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking about my. My dad's retired now, but I'm thinking about my mum and dad's business as landscaping.

And they often had multiple jobs going on at the same time.

And I can imagine that if dad had been doing that because he spent so much of his time figuring, like, firefighting all of the time, it could possibly predict issues.

It could have explained to him what was going on for the day so that it could prepare at the end of the day for the next day and sort of let people know. Oh, I mean, that would have been. And also he'd be on the phone all the time, trying to ring around everybody. It could have been, like, gone.

Here's all the thing that's happened, here's what needs to be done. Can you email? Can you message out the blokes and tell them that they need to do this before they start? Kind of for the day, I'll be genius.

David Brown: 00:22:10

Don't know if you can hear that banging in the background, but if you can, I have no idea what it is. It's not my Fault. Cool. Okay, well that was me. Lena, what did you, what did you have?

Lena Robinson: 00:22:20

So mine's quite an interesting one and I have a Google alert for AI stuff and today's one was really interesting. It's something we've talked about before actually and that is about is AI going to go into an AI bubble? The answer is we're already in it.

And I was looking at the different publications was Yahoo Finance was the first thing, but then there was the Guardian, couple of articles in the Guardian, cnbc and even talking about the impact that AI crashing in a similar way to the dot com bubble because they're comparing it. What they're doing is they're comparing timelines and what have you and doing comparisons of like, is it likely to happen again?

The answer is probably. And I know that the bank of England, for example is warning of growing risks with the AI bubble bursting.

And I think the challenge is the valuations that have been putting on these businesses. So for example, OpenAI has a valuation at the moment of US$500 billion. It currently to date hasn't made one iota of profit. It's in the shit.

But what they were talking about was every, every experiment's being done which is why all the money's been throwing, being thrown at all the things and the thing that'll mess everything up is they don't know what's going to work and what's not. However, what everybody like, even people like Jeff Bezos got into it. But you know, they're looking at things like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft.

I'm reading my notes spending billions and billions on experimentation. But what they are pretty certain of is there probably will be a burst.

But what they are also aware of is mainly because they're looking at what happened last time, it is investing in infrastructure. So there will be a long term payoff no matter what happens with the financial side of things. The infrastructure's being built.

Like, you know, they're spending money on, you know, building. Sorry, I'm trying to think of the words here.

They're trying to, you know, they're building out the servers and all the infrastructure and they're spending money on that. Not just experimenting but they're also spending money with each other.

So there was this, there's this deal that's been done this week between, and I can even remember how to say it's Nvidia it's called, and to do with chips and things being bought, but they're basically swapping investment across each other. So OpenAI and them are Investing in each other. So that's a circular figure, which I think is really interesting.

But what I want to know, I guess, from, from you guys, is what, like, we all lived through the dot com boom, all three of us, right? We've seen what happens and it'd be interesting to see what your views are on the amount a.

The amount of money that's being spent with virtually no income. Like, where the fuck's it all coming from? But also, you know, is the doc. Is it going to burst and is it going to.

Because the bank of England is worried.

Jo Shilton: 00:25:53

Well, it should be worried. Of course it's going to burst, obviously.

Lena Robinson: 00:25:58

Yeah.

Jo Shilton: 00:25:59

And that'll be a big disaster. Everyone will wonder why we fell for it and then, you know, it'll backpedal. But then, as you said, all the infrastructure's there. It's all there.

It can be used for good, hopefully after it's been used for bad and it's exploded. But yeah, and people will pull back or people change their minds or they'll stop using it.

You know, it's like everyone thinks it's cool to begin with and everyone's using it. And then you're like, oh, actually, like, you found out it's not that great. It's not actually doing what I needed it to do.

Like, I found out it's not actually done what I've asked it to do. And you do have to just check it. You can't trust it, you can't rely on it because it's not sentient, it's not a thing.

And it's just all these guys with all these millions of billions of dollars that are doing all this stuff to try and invent something and create something. Yeah, it's crazy. So we've just, you know, we're kind of on the sidelines, but we're also in it. But that's when we have to try and direct it.

And that's why you have to, David, go back to it and tell it if it's not doing what it's saying it's doing.

David Brown: 00:26:54

Yeah, I, I think the other thing is, is, is everybody's testing it, right? We're all trying to figure out what it's actually good at it and what it's not good at. And you know, for me personally, I've.

I've really found that it's very good at doing things like outlines. So if I want to talk about something, I ask it to give me an outline of the things that I should think about. And it's very, very Helpful with that.

It's very helpful if.

Lena Robinson: 00:27:18

Yeah, the document structure.

David Brown: 00:27:20

Yeah, exactly.

Jo Shilton: 00:27:20

Things that everyone knows how to do that should be structured. But it's that creativity side.

David Brown: 00:27:26

Yeah, but you can. Like a lot of times I might write something and then I'll go, did I forget to mention anything? And then it'll go, oh, what?

Have you thought about this? And I'm like, oh, actually that's a really good point. And then I'll go back and put something in. So I think.

But again, I don't have it do my articles. For me, it's a. It's a different thing. So I use it as an editor more than I use it as a creator.

So it's not creating anything for me from scratch, but it is helping me edit what I've already got. And I very frequently, I now realize that's what I use it for mostly. And some things like that.

Now specifically talking about the bubble, which that leads into the bubble.

So I think there's also tens of thousands of companies that are all AI companies, but really what they've done is they've built a front end that's using an API connection to ChatGPT in the back. So they're actually all very dependent on ChatGPT.

If ChatGPT shut off their APIs, I would say probably 3/4 of the AI companies that are out there would be out of business straight away because they have no model of their own and they're literally just piggybacking off the back. And that's where a lot of this little money is going. But again, people are testing it to see how it works and under special cases.

And I think we are going to see a lot of. We're going to see a lot of merging, we're going to see a lot of companies going away. We're going to, you know, as.

As they roll into larger and larger companies.

And, you know, I mean, OpenAI just had an event the other day that basically they're now that they're rolling out their own connections to apps internally, that's actually going to kill tons of the smaller companies that are doing that kind of thing anyway.

And so they're going to end up eating all these smaller companies by releasing their own tool that does effectively what those companies are already doing. So we're going to have a correction in the market just from that. And then I also think we're definitely in a bubble.

The question is, what's the next one? Because what happens is as soon as one bubble bursts, that all that money goes Somewhere else. So what's the next bubble?

Now there's two possibilities. I think one is sooner than the other one. So I think I'm going to guess the order.

And again, I've said this on shows in the past, but I think quantum computing is the next bubble. That is the next bubble.

They've already got quantum computers now that are working and that can do regular tasks and there's all sorts of crazy, you know, security and all sorts of things, considerations around that.

But they're already using the new quantum systems to make new encryption that the quantum system, the other quantum systems wouldn't be able to break. That are just insane compared to what we're able to do now. But I very much see in the next.

I think in the next few years you're going to see a massive movement of money from the AI companies into the quantum companies. Because once you have the quantum computers that reduces the cost of the AI by like to, by like 90%.

It reduces the energy consumption, it reduces the chip, the reliance on the chips and everything else. It like literally completely changes the game for AI.

And so Nvidia and all those companies, they better make their money now because as soon as quantum comes out, none of those graphics cards are needed anymore.

Lena Robinson: 00:30:56

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:30:56

And so they better make hay now. And you know, you could potentially see a massive crash once quantum really rolls out.

Lena Robinson: 00:31:03

Probably is why there's a lot of spend and investment happening at the moment. Because there's a window in which they're going to be able to make their money.

Unless they're doing like what some of the fuel companies are doing and investing in solar powered this and that. They've sort of diverse to find because they can see the end coming now.

David Brown: 00:31:24

They're just making their money as fast.

Lena Robinson: 00:31:25

As they didn't do with film, but should have invested in digital early. It didn't.

David Brown: 00:31:31

They just made their first new actual film though and released it. So you can buy Kodak actual film again.

Lena Robinson: 00:31:37

Oh yeah, I've still got some in the fridge.

David Brown: 00:31:39

Yeah, yeah. Film. Film cameras are coming back in popularity now.

Jo Shilton: 00:31:44

Everything.

Lena Robinson: 00:31:45

I love it.

David Brown: 00:31:46

Yeah, it's all cyclical, so. So that's a great. It's a great topic. It's absolutely true. We're definitely in a bubble. I think we're going to see a lot of market consolidation.

We're going to lose a lot of companies and we're further along than I.

Lena Robinson: 00:32:00

Think a lot of people realize as well. Like. Yeah, I think, I mean I was talking about the bubble right at the beginning when I took over with. With the creatives with a podcast, but.

And it's something I've continued to talk about. It's like, it's so obvious, this bubble.

But having read the articles I've read and we will put them in the show notes, I think we're financially way further along the track. And I think the impact that's gonna hit us as a result, when the boost does happen is gonna knock some businesses sideways.

And they're not expecting it. I'm not sure why they're not expecting it. It's like, it's so obvious it's happening. I've been talking about.

David Brown: 00:32:43

One, I think just. Just to finish my last thought quickly. I think the next thing after Quantum is the fusion power.

Lena Robinson: 00:32:52

What is fusion power? To explain.

David Brown: 00:32:54

That's the. That's. Instead of splitting the atoms, it's putting them back together. So this is the new Tokamak technology and stuff that's coming out.

Essentially what it is is they're making a sun that will generate energy. And so it generates like. I think they've got it up to. They've had some.

Some of those reactors running now for 17 or 18 minutes, which is compared to where they used to be and where they are now. That's massive. That is an enormous step.

And I have a whole crazy conspiracy, not conspiracy theory, but I have a whole crazy theory about where that technology came from, because there was. Humans had no way of working out how to even begin to do that.

And I reckon that that's some sort of alien technology that they've captured from somewhere.

Lena Robinson: 00:33:46

Well, that's not where I thought we were going today.

David Brown: 00:33:48

I know that. I told you it's crazy. But we're getting more and more stuff coming out that saying they actually have captured alien ships and they.

They couldn't figure out how they were powered and they needed so much power. And I reckon they had these tiny little. These tiny little reactors in them that.

That created enough energy that enabled them to do what they want to do.

Lena Robinson: 00:34:09

Anyway, that's my Crazy Uncle Dave. Please tell me it's going to be on Crazy Uncle Dave Show.

David Brown: 00:34:15

I might get a proper scientist on to talk about it, but, yeah, you've got an alien.

Lena Robinson: 00:34:18

That'll be even better.

David Brown: 00:34:19

Anyway, that. That's the next after, I think, after Quantum. I think we're still 20 years away from anything meaningful happening with that.

So I think we have a huge bubble around Quantum to come. And then when we get to fusion power, that's basically unlimited power for four nothing.

Lena Robinson: 00:34:37

That's been in science movies going to use it for.

David Brown: 00:34:41

Yeah, and it's going to be nuts because. And the safety thing about it.

Sorry not to over rotate on this, but from what I understand, the safety thing is, is that essentially it can never blow up because it needs such a controlled environment to make the reaction happen that if even the tiniest little leak or anything happened, it would instantly stop because it wouldn't be able to maintain. We're talking 100 million Fahrenheit degrees in this thing. And so it just creates a plasma.

Jo Shilton: 00:35:10

Where is this?

David Brown: 00:35:12

They've got two or three of them. China has one, the US has one. I think there's one in Europe somewhere. So Europe has one and it's like this race.

So everybody's now racing to get the first one online because basically as soon as you've got the first one online, you. You literally have almost unlimited power for. For. For next to no money compared to today.

Lena Robinson: 00:35:35

So you could literally have a way to make us all pay, though, I'm sure.

David Brown: 00:35:38

Yep. Oh, yeah, they will for sure.

Lena Robinson: 00:35:40

Anyway, Right, so cool. The topic of conversation today. I wanted to pick something that.

That could potentially be slightly controversial and I think it'll be of interest to most of you listening. So the question or the topic of conversation is around is AI the death of originality? So that's the topic. So the first question is.

The question I absolutely love, and I did get ChatGPT to help me, although I turned it into wordings that I liked. Is AI creating dumber humans or is it just exposing how original we already are? Question, who wants to answer that one?

David Brown: 00:36:30

Go on, Jack.

Jo Shilton: 00:36:31

Well, so it's not creating dumber humans, but I think it's allowing some humans to maybe not use their brain as much as they could be. And I think that's the danger with maybe if, you know, you're using it all the time. I think you have to know what you're doing, because I do.

I use it for work and I might use it to help me sort of draft a news release or a social media post or. But as you were saying earlier, David, it's just. It's more like asking someone, oh, you think I should talk about this? What, shall I include this?

But if it starts to write everything, you just accept it, then, yeah, it's making you dumber because you're not going to be able to know how to interact with people. You know that I saw a little skit on Instagram and it was like, when AI chatgptects over your life to someone walking into a shop. Hello, how are you?

Can I help? You know, someone's asked me how I am or what, how do I respond?

And I think if you just rely on it, you're never thinking for yourself, you're never using your brain, you're never actually sort of getting out of your comfort zone and thinking, oh, what am I going to do if I've got a blank piece of paper? You know, how am I going to even start here? So I think it's making us dumber in that respect.

But then on the flip side, it's doing all the grunt work sometimes and it's doing all that bit that, oh, God, I know I need to do this. I've done it a million times before. And that's the bonus, the kind of where we are, because we are, you know, of a certain age.

We're not just starting out in business. We haven't just graduated from school or, you know, we're not using it to do all our work. We've had to write things from scratch.

You've had to sit there with a blank page, you've had to think, well, what, where do I start? What do I do? But I think because we've got that experience, I'm quite comfortable using AI to help me get started sometimes.

But you still need to be able to go back and do it. But it allows you to be more creative because it saves some of your time. So you've got more thinking time, you've got more space to do something.

So, yeah, it can make you. But then it's. It's your choice. You can be lazy and just use it. And then that's my worry.

Because if everyone's just being lazy and everyone's just accepting what it's churned out, it's never going to learn or get better and we're all just going to accept what it's done. And I did something yesterday and I made the classic mistake. I'd written something myself.

I asked Copilot to kind of put it in a more sensible list and kind of do a kind of overview of it to send someone in an email.

Lena Robinson: 00:38:35

And I was like, right, yeah.

Jo Shilton: 00:38:35

And I showed it to someone, I was like, oh, yeah, I'm just going to send this. And they're like, well, hang on, that's not right, that's not right. And I was like, oh, yeah, I did the thing you're not supposed to do.

Didn't reread it. I was like, well, it's done this bit correctly, so maybe it's not making us lazy in that respect.

It's making you actually think a bit differently because, you know, we are the ones that should be telling it how to do things. And that's why it's so important to feedback. And so you've got to tell it if it's not.

And when it gives me something and it's not right, it's never right. It's never 100% right. And I'm not. They've got someone's name wrong, they've got the tone wrong, they've got the. The date or the.

And I go back and I say, thank you. This is what I've gone with. And so at least it's got that in there for if I do ask it something in the future.

David Brown: 00:39:15

Yeah.

Jo Shilton: 00:39:15

Because it's only learning from what we're doing.

David Brown: 00:39:17

That's a good point. I do always put in whatever I did in the end, particularly if I'm working on like web copy or a press release or something.

I usually do the first draft or whatever, then ask it for revisions. Then it gives me something and then I take that and then I do it.

And then when I get to the end of it, I always put what I used and I say, this is what I went with in the. In the end. Remember this version?

Lena Robinson: 00:39:40

Yep.

David Brown: 00:39:41

And I specifically tell it to remember that version. So it goes, okay, I'll forget the other stuff and remember this one. So, yeah, I. I agree. I think that's a really good way to do it. I.

Lena Robinson: 00:39:52

Do you think it's making us dumber?

David Brown: 00:39:54

It's making us lazy? No, I'm not sure it's making us dumber. Um, I think it's. It is making us lazy, though. And I don't know. This gets back to something again.

I talk, I've talked about all the time, which is it. It's not better than an expert in any given task. Right.

So if you're really good at writing copy or web copy, it's not going to be better at you than that. It is going to be better at you than particle physics. Right.

Like if you, if somebody asked you a question or you needed to know something or you wanted to make a comment about something, chances are it's going to give you something that's way better than anything that you could have ever come up with on that particular topic. And if it's a simple request, it's probably going to be correct. Right.

It's only when you have experts prodding it and testing it for stuff and they're Asking it really difficult, specific questions that it comes up with stuff that's wrong, then that's fine.

But if you ask it really general, general knowledge type stuff on a particular topic that you don't know about 90% of the time, it's going to be better than you. And again, this is why people are doing it. But that's what makes it lazy because you don't have to go off and research it yourself.

And you know, we all know that something like a business plan, for example, writing a business plan, the document that you get out of it at the end of it is not what you're trying to do. It's not the document that's worth anything.

It's the hours that you have to put into it, researching it to, and, and you learn all of that stuff as a side effect of going to do the research for the stuff that you need to put in the business plan. That's how you learn in a, in a real environment, right. Not in school, but in, in real life. That's how you learn stuff.

And so the value of it is doing the research. And now people have got really lazy because you can just ask it for a business plan and it will do the business plan for you.

It's not that you're dumber, it's just that you're lazy. Right. And I think that's the, that's the thing for me that that's the difference.

Lena Robinson: 00:41:59

So I've got a slightly different view on it. Not unsurprising. I think it depends on what generation you are, is whether it's making you dumb.

Yeah, no offense to my young Gen Zers and whatever the new one is, elf, whatever it's called, I do think it's making them dumber because, and not all of them, not across the board, but a, there's a reliance on it automatically assuming it's correct with experience.

Us as Gen Xs, we will read something and automatically instinct, experience, whatever you want to call it, mine will kick in and go, nah, there's something hinky about what it's saying. It's not correct.

For example, I asked it to help me write off the back of a quote that somebody had a referral quote that somebody had given me in LinkedIn saying what they thought of the work that I'd done. And I asked it to help me create. And it was one of the days when my head stuff was playing up and I was struggling with being creative.

I wasn't going to stop at me putting stuff out, so I asked it to Help me write something and which I don't always do. I usually write it myself, but sometimes I have to because my brain's not working. So I asked it to do something.

I gave it the bio, I gave it the LinkedIn profile, I gave it the quote. It ended up making up that this person was an Emmy award winning. Now she's amazing and she's really good and she is award winning, but not Emmy.

When I pushed back on it and said I don't think she's Emmy Award. Did you make that? I literally said did you make it up? And he went oh, yes, sorry, did.

And nobody would have picked up on that if they were younger, I don't think. I think my experience helped me understand that there was something kinky in it. And I think that continues to be the case. You just. I just know.

David Brown: 00:43:49

Yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:43:50

What's happening with the younger generation is like I said, they're assuming it's correct. We're in half the time it's not. And I know why it's not correct for a number of reasons.

One of the facts is a lot of websites are now blocking AI being able to scrape stuff, so it's missing out on half of the information.

I don't have the percentages, but it's definitely not like I can put a website in and go like for example, I was helping doing something for Orion Studios the other day and I wanted it to scrape and pull together all the information off the website. It couldn't do it. I had to go and literally cut it all out and stick it into a document. Took bloody ages. Anyway, it makes me.

Made me realize more often than not, I think there are websites that aren't accessible which tells me then there's a whole lot of research, knowledge, information that's not going into the search that anything like ChatGPT or Claude or anything is doing. And I think the second thing with the younger generation is that I did things like I was captain of the debating team.

Now that categorically teaches you about understanding an argument and critical thinking and being able to throw back an answer. Particularly I loved when I was given a topic that I personally categorically did not believe.

But what it does is it teaches you how to think critically and do things different. I think what. And this is where I think it's, for want of a better word, dumbing down. Yeah, you know the.

Because intelligence doesn't isn't just in there, although it's partly just what's in your. Your capability, but it also has to be exercised like anything, your brain needs to be exercised.

So I think the challenge is to the younger generation is a don't just accept, but also you need to do things that ensure that you challenge thinking, drive critical thinking and think. Just think.

Jo Shilton: 00:45:56

I guess, yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:45:58

I think it's going to make dumber humans if they don't realize that. Some people do understand that, some don't.

Jo Shilton: 00:46:04

Yeah, but then they probably said that when the Internet came along anyway, oh, they're not going to be searching through books and reading, they're just going to be doing that. So I think what. And I've heard examples of this where in schools, people.

Lena Robinson: 00:46:14

But it's true. Look at the world we're in at the moment. Me, there's a whole lot of dumb people.

Jo Shilton: 00:46:18

But you get. Well, yeah, there are, there always will be.

But the, the students are, you know, the tutors are saying, right, okay, use ChatGPT, ask it, tell it to do your homework, whatever it turns out. Now you go back and fact check it.

And that's when people, students are realizing, oh, it hasn't done it right, it has lied, it's hallucinated, it's got it wrong, it's made it up. And I think that then teaches them how to, how to do the prompts better, but how to test it and how to check it.

And I think that's where, that's where the education part will come in.

And that's what schools, I think are already doing or in the main, because we were talking about using it at work for translating and it's saying, well, if you've translated something into French, what you need to, you can't just accept it.

You either need to go and get a French person or, you know, who might not have had time to do it, or you can put it back in and say, can you translate this back into English Now? I did think, yeah, but if it's done it the one way, it's just going to give you the other one like it.

So I'd go and put it in a different translation thing, I don't know, or something, just to double check that. And then by the time you spent all the time doing that, you could have probably just found someone to.

David Brown: 00:47:20

You could have just put it in Google Translate because Google Translate's very good.

Lena Robinson: 00:47:23

Yeah.

Jo Shilton: 00:47:23

And then just put a caveat. I think as long as you've done the caveat.

Lena Robinson: 00:47:27

No, I've seen it mess up global campaigns and you. Oh, no, no, no, no.

Jo Shilton: 00:47:31

But then that's having.

You need to know the nuances of something in a different language and whether, you know, one hand gesture here means something and over there it doesn't. And you know, it's polite to do this. It's not polite. Yeah, yeah. It's those funny words.

There was something the other day that, A brand of something that. And I can't remember. This is pointless me saying it, but they had to change it because whatever it translated to in the other country, it's.

Yeah, but isn't it like in French?

Lena Robinson: 00:47:54

I've seen that happen so many times.

Jo Shilton: 00:47:57

Like cat pee or something. I don't know.

Lena Robinson: 00:47:59

Right.

David Brown: 00:48:02

No, it's. Look, it's. I, I think there are good points. I think it's a good point. Lena, I, I do agree with you.

I think, you know, again, because we're the last sort of analog generation because everybody after us really always had tech from the beginning. I mean we had tech from when we were teenagers. So I, you know, the very first kind of computers.

You know, my high school had the very first computer class in Memphis. But all of those foundation years, you know, before we were sort of mid teens was, was all analog. Right.

We still had to go to the library, we had to check out books. We had to know the Dewey decimal system and how to find what we were looking for. And we had to, you know, all.

Lena Robinson: 00:48:42

That people don't even, young people don't even know what the.

David Brown: 00:48:45

They have no idea what it is. They have no idea what it is.

Lena Robinson: 00:48:48

But.

David Brown: 00:48:48

Which is fine though. But I mean, you know, the fact that I have the sum of all of the world's knowledge.

Lena Robinson: 00:48:55

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:48:55

At hand is actually really handy in most instances.

And I, it doesn't make me any, it doesn't make me any lazy or less smart that I don't have to go to the frickin library to look up something and to get an encyclopedia so I can find something that, that kind of level of stuff is good. I, but I do.

I see what you mean with the critical thinking and I was laughing when you were talking about debating because it took every, every bit of self control. I had to just say I disagree.

Lena Robinson: 00:49:24

Good. But I think we should disagree if you think I'm wrong.

David Brown: 00:49:27

No, no.

Jo Shilton: 00:49:27

But just to be.

David Brown: 00:49:28

Just because you were talking about debating and I was like, I disagree what.

Lena Robinson: 00:49:32

I would have said though.

David Brown: 00:49:33

I'm sure you do.

Lena Robinson: 00:49:34

Based on. Based on what exactly?

Jo Shilton: 00:49:37

But also when it comes to creativity, we've just been, you know, talking about in what we do sort of work and comms and like writing things. But I think if it Comes to art. And I've, I've talked about this before, I mentioned it before on one of my other podcasts.

But, you know, AI is just learning from what's gone before.

You could show every single piece of artwork up until a certain point, but it would never have come up with a Jackson Pollock if you'd shown it everything up to that. So you still need that bit of creativity. And like, where are you taking it next? How are you going to think of something differently?

David Brown: 00:50:06

But it will come up with study.

Jo Shilton: 00:50:07

As much as you like everything that's.

David Brown: 00:50:09

Come before, but it will come up with its own version of that. And it's. Yeah, after my, My position is that it's a whole different medium. And so it comes up with really crazy, weird stuff. Pardon my language.

I don't like. I guess we'll find out what happens when you swear. But like it.

The stuff that it comes out with is you can look at it and go, wow, that's AI and that is totally messed up. Go, go watch some of the. There's some AI videos that people did to music and they basically choose songs from like, Tool or from Pink Floyd.

And what they do is they say, here's the lyric of the song. Make a video that goes. That goes with this lyric and the music, and they do it lyric by lyric.

So you get these little short, little videos and it's like AI hallucinations. And it is like the creepiest. I mean, I'm not even kidding. We.

And because this is on YouTube, actually what I can do is I can link to one of the YouTube videos in the thing. So if people come and watch this live broadcast bit, there'll be a link down there and I'll. I'll. I'll do it so you can click on it and see it.

I mean, you know, I don't think anybody, I don't think a human, if they did, you know, five grams of mushrooms could probably come up with the stuff that. That came up with.

Lena Robinson: 00:51:27

Oh, I disagree, but I think there are plenty of nutty people out there that would. I mean, people that have come up with the weirdest art, the weirdest ideas.

David Brown: 00:51:40

I'll show it to you and you'll see. Anyway, we've. We've gone. I'm going to call a. A stop. And we've gone. We're 50 minutes now.

I think we were thinking, we were worried if we could go half an hour, which we should have known better.

And we've run over the time that we had sort of set aside So I know Joe has some other meetings that she needs to get to, and I've got to get some stuff done as well. So, guys, thanks very much. That was interesting and fun. We'll see what people think about it later.

And if we want to start doing them live, then what we can do is we can start scheduling them ahead of time and we can tell people, hey, we're going to be live, and people can chat with us. And so people will be able to chat with us in real time, and we can see it in the Riverside or whatever platform we're using.

We'll actually be able to see the live chat so people can ask us questions and interact with us.

Lena Robinson: 00:52:31

So that might be fun.

David Brown: 00:52:33

That might be really fun as well. So I think for today, that's good.

So if anybody ever does see this in the future and you haven't subscribed and hit the notification bell and all the other bollocks that you should do on YouTube, please do that. And we'll. We'll figure this out as we move forward. But, yeah, anyway, nice to see everybody. I'm glad we finally got the tech working. And this was.

Was this good? I thought this was pretty good.

Lena Robinson: 00:52:58

Yeah, it was good.

Jo Shilton: 00:52:59

I haven't done a podcast for about six months, so. Yes, great.

Lena Robinson: 00:53:02

It was really enjoyable. I like it. But it.

David Brown: 00:53:04

I. I think it. For me, it. The interaction between us, I think is. Is better just from a conversation standpoint. And it. Do you know what I mean?

We'll get more used to it, and we'll get more used to how we, you know, so we don't talk. I don't think we did it actually. Too much crosstalk this time, which was really good. But we'll get into a rhythm of it, and I think it'll. It'll.

It'll be better, and hopefully it'll be more interesting for people as well.

Lena Robinson: 00:53:27

I'm not least nervous, weirdly.

David Brown: 00:53:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. All right, thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.

Jo Shilton: 00:53:35

Stay curious.