an ai future 

resting pitch face episode 34: an ai future

This week it was announced that Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak are among over 1,100 who have signed an open letter calling for a 6-month pause on AI development. In this week’s episode of Resting Pitch Face, we discuss why and the various arguments for and against the development of AI tools.

With first-hand insight from Lee on the advancement of ChatGPT, including his experience of early beta testing in 2020, and how AI has been worked into Flaunt’s business strategy.

Dan also somehow manages to bring football into it 👀

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or subscribe to our YouTube channel for weekly episodes. See below for a full transcription of episode 34.

transcript

Dan
Would you sign the ai letter that is being thrown around at the moment, which is to say stop training AI because there’s a threat, a threat to humanity and a threat to society. So I think it’s come out this week – I actually can’t remember who signed it.

Lee
Elon, Steve Wozniak. Noah Yuvel Harari 

Dan
Just some big ones then.

Lee
And lots of other people within that. Funnily enough though, no one from Microsoft.

Dan
I wonder why. Yeah. So it’s this week’s news. Last number I saw wasn’t very big in terms of people.

Lee
If it’s not mega, but it’s significant. People are signing it are like leaders within the space.

Dan
GPT fours come out fairly recently as well, I think. Is it tied in with that do you think. Yes.

Lee
So they suggested capping it for now at that not releasing any further. But I think that the thing is it’s got to a point with GPT four where it’s reaching autonomous learning and autonomous development. So I don’t know how that would see it stopping unless it’s in the power of.

Dan
Which they’re not going to do.

Lee
Which they’re not going to do. So I don’t know. I get it. And I do. I think the the speed in which it’s advanced, if we’re talking about chat GPT since it got released to the public is is mega it’s like mind blowing.

Dan
I’ve read the last first six months down tools for six month lockdown tools but you know what I mean stop training it.

Lee
Well it starts getting tricky when they open up to the internet, which they are doing. Yeah. So it’s it’s now going to be capable of going and finding information.

Dan
And the reasons that I’ve read as to why this letter exists is apart from what we’ve touched upon to say and they’ve picked out the threats that they think AI poses to the lives of society in another way. How many times we were told, I don’t mean us, but just do you read about conversations as to whether A.I. is going to replace jobs, etc.? I think that’s really extreme. But what do you think? Like, is this all a little bit media frenzy?

Lee
I think there is an element of that, but this is like a preview of what could happen. I think we’re not in there. I think this is kind of why Google’s been so cautious about rolling Bard out because its capability is not, I don’t think, properly understood. You’re talking about something that learns autonomously. And when you really think about that, then then it becomes a little bit frightening.

Dan
Yeah. And I think I was reading this morning about the big potential sort of red flags and that hesitance isn’t quite a strong word when I’m about that’s what I was reading about it, getting into the wrong hands.

Lee
Inherently it’s gonna isn’t it.  the internet.

Dan
I read something about Putin in 2017, said something about it’s power already and you don’t want to hear that from him years ago.

Lee
No, I think it needs governing somehow. I don’t know how it would be governed. It probably takes the big tech companies to put something in place. I think Microsoft, Google, people like that to come together and put something in place to stagger its release. I dunno.

Dan
It was the CEO at Open AI, there was an interview with him that I was reading about from I think this week or whenever the GPT four release day was whatever that was. And he was saying, you know, they’ve already built in safeguards, you know, safeguarding bits and pieces. But he still admits himself that he’s got concerns, which I think says, well, it’s totally, totally different, but same principle. The football industry at the moment is going through a bit of a how can we govern this? Should there  be an independent body and all that. And I’m saying on a granted a much sort of scary scale, absolute parity with with what’s happening in football, Do you think it’s going to be a put pressure to the big tech companies then to.

Lee
It’s the only logical people that I think will be in a position to.

Dan
Influence.

Lee
Govern it certainly from a public standpoint.

Dan
Yeah, it’s interesting. This week was I think the second new best conversation about with a potential client that I’ve mentioned proactively embedding the likes of GPT into their future content plans.

Lee
It’s funny isn’t it? I’ve been testing the API since December 2020, right. And it’s now picked up traction like we’ve built, we built into Google sheets and something else back in 2020, early 2021, when the beta it was out and now it’s public. Obviously it’s been mass adopted. I think all this it’s going to take jobs is, I think, propaganda. I think you need you need the human to use it to its full potential.

Dan
And also like someone I can’t remember again, what I was reading and someone rightly said, it takes a human to kick start the human input.

Lee
But what what I think people are probably slightly worried about is when it doesn’t need that. Yeah. Which, which could happen quite quickly.

Dan
And I guess that is concerning.  It’s really interesting to see out here. Content chat. Chat GPT specifically being referenced here as slotting  into future content plans for come a couple of conversations I’ve had already. I’m not surprised.

Lee
We’re  literally building in to all our stuff at the moment where we’re using it at the moment across the board to increase efficiency, not to do things for us.

Dan
Yeah.

Lee
But it does just, it does just open up potential time saves, it’s just building trust in the output and not just doing it as a copy and paste exercise. It’s how you utilize and how you train it and how you integrate it. It’s comparable to when the  calculator came out into public to the public. I can’t remember what year it was when the calculator people protested against the calculator.

Lee
Really. Yeah. Because they were worried. They’re worried about the potential of.

Dan
No more mental maths

Lee
Being replaced, that’s it’s like that but obviously much more extreme and you’ve got media access and things like that is instant isn’t it. So but it’s obviously when a technology surfaces, everybody’s going to look at it and think, fuck.

Dan
But is it not that we’re not in that spike of interest due of media?

Lee
The thing is innovation, whatever form it comes in, doesn’t really give a fuck about people’s opinions of it. And I understand both sides and it’s difficult to come to a final conclusion of whether it needs capping or not in this conversation. But people that stay on the fence for too long or don’t take advantage of it.

Lee
They’re going to just get left behind ultimately.

Dan
Did you read to have your own opinion of a certain fellow in marketing, an Australian fellow that is a big name called it a toy or a fucking toy at the moment for Marketers. 

Lee
Mark Ritson. 

Dan
Yeah, I sort of get that at least I get is where it fit into his rhetoric, which was there’s a lot of fundamentals out there from a market perspective that are just not boxed off. And now this is the new shiny syndrome, which there’s always new shiny toy syndrome isn’t there. But he’s saying, right now it’s something to note that it exists.

Lee
In that circumstance. I think he’s definitely right. And it’s ludicrous to think that you can like I don’t even know how like 16, 17 years worth of marketing experience can be just Yeah. Squashed with a chatbot. 

Dan
Yeah but I do think it’s interesting I think media is I think the the uptake of its use what didn’t it break records GPT for like there was 1,000,100 million users in short space of time or some. Yeah it was Tik Tok did really well done it but apparently this is absolutely I couldn’t.

Lee
Yeah, it was like a million in a day or something, wasn’t it.

Dan
What’s fed like into that? Again, such cynic, but not just media stories behind it.

Lee
Well mass adoption I think marketing community will be driving the majority of that. Yeah. And it’s the people that are going in thinking, right, this is going to help me be much more efficient.

Dan
Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s again, someone someone saying see it as a  tool to enhance rather than a.

Lee
Of course it is.

Dan
Replacement. Yeah. I can’t remember what the terminology used by the open AI fella something about that they’ve got ambitions for it to become the reasoning engine rather than, as I’ve said, like a replacement platform or whatever you want to call it, which I thought was quite an interesting angle to take on it. Going back to Ritson though in his in his article, they also said that it’s a fucking toy. And I think where he’s coming from there is linkedin at the moment is just absolutely cluttered.

Lee
Yeah, this is why I haven’t really spoken about it in content because it’s just it’s just one of those things isn’t it, that has the it’s like when you remember when the yandex code leak happened. Yeah. Fucking hell.

Dan
But that’s what I mean by the shiny toy syndrome as well. This isn’t just a media frenzy and sort of Yandex leak perspective. This is something to play around with as well. Like en masse? Absolutely. En masse. I know people in all different walks of life. My brother with his business, in his coaching business, turned around to me a couple of weeks ago. And went, Look at these blog posts I’ve written in chat GPT.  It’s taken me 5 minutes, all that. So and I get it. And this week I’ve actually used it quite I mean successful is too strong of a word, but I’ve liked how I’ve used it this week for research prospect list purposes. So I, I get I get it’s use right now I guess I’ve probably not been as close to using it as much as others and seeing the bullshit on my feeds and linked in and just the sheer volume of talk around it. I then read that this letter thing being signed and I just I’m overwhelmed by it. And what are we really there? Do we really need to fucking with Elon Musk signature on it? What is it like, do you think it’s needed to right now to stop for six months? Six months even? Why just six months, though? The questions I ask.

Lee
I mean, it’s hard to come up with a definitive opinion on it because I get both sides so well. I’ve used it before and looked at it from an objective view and see the value in it, yet see the other side of it where the fear is coming from and there the potential for it to get too advance too quickly. I think uncontrollable innovation scares everybody, I think

Dan
Isn’t there intrigue as well

Lee
100%. Yeah.

Dan
But I guess in Elon Musk, etc.. Yeah. Putting their names to it is a different story than me going I’m not check and let’s push it a little bit more. Let’s let’s keep saying it just pure purely from a.

Lee
Put you look at someone like Elon Musk for example and Tesla their software is renowned. Yeah it’s a big selling point for the cars. Elon Musk is probably thinking I’m I’m under threat here of our software being diminished in value because this new technology has the potential to overtake where we are.

Dan
Yeah. He’s also fucked up twitter by the way at the moment. Well at the moment, ever since he’s come in hate my feed he’ll Yeah.

Lee
Interesting for me was Steve Wozniak and Harari because. Yeah. Wosniak he doesn’t need  explanation but yeah, he’s an expert in humans find that quite an interesting one.

Dan
Cynical me is coming at it and saying is this not just a PR move who knows? But it’s interesting and I think I’m more intrigued than scared. But I reckon my base level of sort of usage of it and knowledge of it is probably more remove than you, for example. So I just read what’s in the news and take it with a pinch of salt.

Lee
I think if you if every single person stopped using it right now.

Dan
Yeah.

Lee
Just disappear with it.

Dan
Yeah. Do you remember clubhouse. Yeah. I actually never logged into clubhouse. Not once.

Lee
I did

Dan
Shite?

Lee
Just a room full of voices 

Dan
Shite?

Lee
Yeah, yeah.

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or subscribe to our YouTube channel for weekly episodes.