The Artificial Intelligence Show

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#32: AI Writing Mega-Episode — The Future of Writing in the Age of AI, AI Writing Tools: Capabilities, Limitations, and Concerns, and How AI Will Change Writing Careers Producer: MAII or Music Radio Creative Feb 01, 2023

Show notes

This week on The Marketing AI Show, all three topics focus on AI and writing. This mega-episode brings to the surface many of the questions we’re hearing from our community.

AI writing tools are rapidly transforming the art and science of storytelling, and in the process, they're disrupting writing as we know it. Everyone at every size company now has access to powerful and affordable AI technologies that are redefining writing and forcing companies to reimagine content teams and strategies to remain competitive.

We can already 10X our content output, like ads, articles, blog posts, emails, and more, with today’s AI—and it’s growing more powerful by the day. This has created massive uncertainty for writers, brands, agencies, and media companies.

And it’s made it essential that writers, editors, and content leaders take action to understand and apply AI. Today’s podcast episode is a mega-episode on AI writing and the impact it will have on writers and writing as we know it.

Funding is flooding the space, and we’re already seeing media businesses incorporate AI writing into their business models—with mixed results. But these businesses are moving forward anyway. It’s important for marketing and business leaders to remember that a tool like ChatGPT is just the tip of the AI iceberg for marketers and business leaders. It's the shiny object that's captured everyone's attention, and rightly so.

So what is the future of AI and writing?

The second topic on AI and writing touches on AI writing tools.

These tools can enable all sorts of highly valuable use cases across writing functions. Used intelligently, these tools can dramatically improve your productivity and performance as a writer.

On the other hand, they also have plenty of limitations that any writer using these tools must be able to identify if they want to succeed at AI-powered writing.

How should these tools be used by individuals and brands? We believe that understanding the very real issues raised by this technology is key to adopting it in a responsible way.

And finally, how will AI change writing careers? AI is going to have a major impact on the careers and skills of writers and content professionals. These more intelligent tools are already opening up new frontiers of creativity, productivity, and writing at scale for savvy professionals.

But they’re also changing the nature of writing work and business models, and writers and companies will need to adapt accordingly.

Mike and Paul invest these 45 minutes in helping listeners understand what these new developments mean, providing context on what marketers and business leaders can do, need to consider, and how to adapt.

Listen to this week’s episode on your favorite podcast player and be sure to explore the links below for more thoughts and perspective on these important topics.

#31: 22-Year Old Creates ChatGPT Detector, Google Gears Up for AI Arms Race, and the Dark Side of AI Training Jan 25, 2023

Show notes

This week in AI news, we talk about education, an AI arms race, and a very dark side of AI training.

First up, A 22-year-old has created an app that claims to detect text generated by ChatGPT. The tool is called GPTZero, and it was created by Edward Tian, a senior at Princeton University, to combat the misuse of AI technology. Tian believes AI is at an inflection point and has the potential to be "incredible" but also "terrifying." The app works by looking at two variables in a text: “perplexity” and “burstiness,” and it assigns each variable a score. First, the app measures its familiarity with the text presented, given what it has seen during training. The less familiar it is, then, the higher the text's perplexity is, meaning it's more likely to be human-written, according to Tian. It then measures burstiness by scanning the text to see how variable it is; if it varies a lot, it's likely to be human-written. Tian's app aims to incentivize originality in human writing and prevent the "Hallmarkization of everything" where all written communication becomes formulaic and wit. Paul and Mike discuss what this means, ethical issues, and opportunities and challenges for this tool.

Next up, this week, Google staked its position in the AI arms race by announcing its commitment to dozens of new advancements in 2023. The New York Times reported that Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were called in to refine the company’s AI strategy in response to threats like ChatGPT and major players like Microsoft, who just formally announced its multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI. According to the Times, Google now intends to launch more than 20 new AI-powered products and demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot features this year.

And finally, a new investigative report reveals the dark side of training AI models. A recent investigation by Time found that OpenAI used outsourced Kenyan laborers earning less than $2 per hour to make ChatGPT less toxic. That included having workers review and label large amounts of disturbing text, including violent, sexist, and racist remarks, to teach the platform what constituted unsafe outputs. Some workers reported serious mental trauma resulting from the work, which was eventually suspended by OpenAI and Sama, the outsourcing company involved, due to the damage to workers and the negative press.

As Paul put it in a recent LinkedIn post, this raises larger questions about how AI is trained: “There are people, often in faraway places, whose livelihoods depend on them exploring the darkest sides of humanity every day. Their jobs are to read, review and watch content no one should have to see.”

#30: ChatGPT Disrupts Education, Generative AI Gets Sued, and OpenAI Now Available from Microsoft Jan 18, 2023

Show notes

Generative AI has so many benefits for marketers. But with the rapid pace of adoption—often with little to no oversight–-issues are quickly arising. From educational concerns to legal ramifications, Paul and Mike discuss this on this week’s Marketing AI Show podcast episode. Also, stick around for an update on the developments between OpenAI and Microsoft.

First up, higher education has been rocked by ChatGPT. Professors and educators need to rethink assignments when it comes to essay writing, take-home tests might become a thing of the past, oral exams will be on the rise, and identifying plagiarism has a new twist. Schools are banning the use of ChatGPT in assignments, but how can they truly know how the assignment was completed? And should educators teach students how AI can augment their learning? One student has created a tool to identify content generated by ChatGPT, but is that really the solution?

Next, generative AI is having some legal troubles. Stability AI has received formal notification of impending litigation. Intellectual property, derivative works, and copyright violations are all discussion points as these technologies advance and learn. As the line isn’t clear, and precedent has not been established, the court cases will continue to mount. GitHub and Midjourney are in the thick of this as well. Once fast to market, Reuters reported that Sam Altman says OpenAI’s GPT-4 will launch only when they can do it safely & responsibly. “In general we are going to release technology much more slowly than people would like. We’re going to sit on it for much longer…” That’s a good thing, but is it too late?

Finally, last week in episode 29, we discussed Microsoft and OpenAI. On Microsoft Azure’s website, they announce, “Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Azure OpenAI Service as part of Microsoft’s continued commitment to democratizing AI, and ongoing partnership with OpenAI.” As part of this, DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT can be integrated into their clients’ cloud apps. Developers are currently required to apply for access, and have to describe their intended use cases and applications before they can get access.

Catch up on the latest news and think about these developments and what it means to you and your business.. Listen to the podcast below or in your favorite podcast player.

#29: Microsoft May Invest $10B in OpenAI, AI Clones Voices, and AI Disrupts Marketing Agencies Jan 13, 2023

Show notes

It’s been another exciting week in the world of artificial intelligence. What does it mean for marketers? The guys break it down on The Marketing AI Show.

First up, Paul and Mike have hypothesized about this, and now the speculation has come true. According to a scoop from The Information, Microsoft plans to incorporate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. Today, Google handles more than 80% of search traffic. In comparison, Bing processed about 9% of worldwide searches in 2022. Rumor has it Microsoft is making a major play into using ChatGPT-like AI answers in search. Not to mention, this could open the door to using ChatGPT in Word and other Office products. Just days after the scoop, Semafor reported that Microsoft has been in talks to invest up to $10 billion in OpenAI. The funding would eventually give Microsoft a 49% stake in the company, valuing it at $29 billion total.

Next, Microsoft just announced a major milestone development in voice AI. The company revealed an AI model called VALL-E that can synthesize anyone’s voice using just 3 seconds of audio. Microsoft shared some audio samples, and simply put, Mike Kaput said they are “pretty stunning.” Based on just a few seconds of a person saying a random sentence, VALL-E can create completely new speech from scratch in their exact voice. The implications of hyper-realistic voice AI technology are widespread and mind-blowing.

Finally, Paul’s recent LinkedIn post on AI disrupting marketing agencies got a lot of attention. In it, Paul said, “Artificial intelligence is going to disrupt a lot of marketing agencies in 2023. Some will seize the opportunity and create enormous value for themselves and their clients, while many will be obsoleted. These laggards won’t all die off overnight, but their relevance and value will quickly fade, and their clients (and people) will move on.” Hear Paul’s motivation for writing the post and the conversation that ensues.

As advancements become more prevalent, conversations have become more important for marketers and business leaders. Tune in to see how you can act on these developments. Listen to the podcast below or in your favorite podcast player.

#28: The AI Inflection Point Is Here Jan 04, 2023

Show notes

At Marketing AI Institute, we are seeing strong quantitative and qualitative evidence that indicates we are at an AI inflection point, where the technology begins to go fully mainstream in 2023—with profound effects on…well…everything.

For years, we have hypothesized that AI has the power to change just about everything in marketing, business, the economy, and society at large.

In 2022, we saw that hypothesis confirmed thanks to an explosion of AI capabilities and technologies driven by the stunning power of generative AI tools like ChatGPT.

In a matter of months, even the brightest minds in AI have been surprised by how quickly and effectively AI tools have reshaped what we thought possible in marketing and business.

We’re going to devote today’s episode to outlining why we think we’re about to enter a golden age of AI progress that will reshape the work of every professional in every industry.

#27: Head-to-Head AI Writing Tools Test, Will ChatGPT Replace Google, and MyHeritage AI Time Machine Dec 21, 2022

Show notes

Mike and Paul are back for another episode of The Marketing AI Show.

Paul ran a head-to-head test of AI writing tools and posted about it on Twitter and LinkedIn. On both platforms, the posts gained traction and good feedback from our community and from technology companies. In the experiment, Paul ran the same three prompts/use cases through a handful of different tools. The tools were OpenAI’s ChatGPT and their Playground functionality; Cohere; Jasper; Writer; and HyperWrite. It’s an interesting case study showing AI in action.

Next up, we’ve all seen plenty of examples online, many impressive, of what ChatGPT can do. In addition to writing text, ChatGPT is generating outlines, doing research, answering complex questions, and surfacing information. This has led to some serious online conversations asking the following question: Will ChatGPT replace Google search? Today, plenty of ChatGPT’s responses are inaccurate and don’t contain citations, but some people are already imagining a future where we no longer use a Google search to find information.

The third topic of this week’s podcast is MyHeritage. MyHeritage is a discovery platform that helps you find people related to you. The company just released a free tool called AI Time Machine. You upload photos of yourself, then the AI creates hyper-realistic avatars of you in different historical time periods, from prehistoric times to Ancient Egypt to modern times. It’s a timely twist on hyper-popular photo apps like Lensa that are getting a lot of buzz.

#26: McKinsey's State of AI 2022, Lensa AI, and AI Will Eat Software Companies Dec 14, 2022

Show notes

Paul and Mike discuss three hot topics in the world of marketing and artificial intelligence:

An app called Lensa AI is taking the world by storm—and creating a lot of controversy as it does. Lensa allows you to upload photos of yourself, about 10-20 selfies, then it uses AI to generate dozens of avatar photos of you in many different styles, from serious and realistic to fantastical. The app has been generating $1 million or more in revenue per day as everyone and anyone can now create images of themselves using AI. But controversy ensues.

For five years now, McKinsey has been conducting its Global Survey on AI by surveying thousands of business leaders on how they use artificial intelligence. This year’s findings are now out in McKinsey’s State of AI in 2022. There’s a ton to unpack, so check out the show notes for the link. But three big points jumped out at me.

The third topic stems from Paul Roetzer's LinkedIn post and a Twitter thread that are getting a lot of attention. In both of them, Paul outlined why anyone who runs or invests in a software company needs to have a concrete plan for considering how AI will enhance and disrupt the business. Specifically, Paul mentions that “If I was running a software company right now, I would be aggressively exploring how recent advancements in AI (and the ones that are coming in 2023) could disrupt the business.”

Tune in!

#25: What Is ChatGPT, What It Means for Marketing, and How It Will Change Business As We Know It Dec 07, 2022

Show notes

Paul and Mike are back on The Marketing AI Show covering this week's top stories in AI, marketing, and business. This week, ChatGPT takes center stage, but there are also some other developments worth mentioning.

On November 30, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a chatbot that anyone can converse with by typing in text prompts. All you have to do is type in a question or a command, and ChatGPT produces a response. Now, this sounds simple, but everyone in the AI world is positively stunned by the result. That’s because, as Kevin Roose at the New York Times puts it, “ChatGPT is, quite simply, the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public.” Our team tested it out, and we share our results.

ChatGPT isn’t just a big deal for marketing. Some commentators have started to connect the dots about what ChatGPT means for business as a whole, the economy, and society.

We also discuss Meta's CICERO, the Lensa app, Runway's funding, DeepNash, Character.ai, and more.

#24: AI in the Workplace, OpenAI Funds Entrepreneurs, and Google Unveils New AI Projects Nov 09, 2022

Show notes

While our Institute focuses on AI in the marketing world, some of the biggest companies in the world are finding AI applications for the business world and our personal lives. Artificial intelligence will be, and already is, embedded in our world. What are the big players working on? Mike and Paul discuss this on this week’s podcast.

This episode kicks off discussing consulting firm Deloitte, who recently published a rundown of how AI for work relationships could be the next big thing in your office. Deloitte says that AI can “analyze human interactions during and after an event to generate personalized, confidential recommendations at an individual and organizational level to help improve human interactions at work.”

They give a hypothetical example to illustrate the point: Imagine a near-future workplace where AI recommends how you should write a diplomatic email to two leaders pulling you into a nasty turf war. In this scenario, AI could recommend appropriate language and courses of action to resolve the dispute. It’s an interesting discussion on the opportunities and challenges, including the five areas Deloitte feels AI will have a big impact on work relationships.

Next, OpenAI, the creators of GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, just launched a program to fund and support founders creating transformative AI companies. The program is called Converge. According to the company, it is a “highly-selective, five-week program for exceptional engineers, designers, researchers, and product builders using AI to reimagine products and industries.” Participants receive a $1 million equity investment from OpenAI’s Startup Fund. They also get early access to OpenAI models and programming tailored to AI companies. In addition, they get workshops, office hours, and events with AI practitioners.

OpenAI says it’s motivated by “the belief that powerful AI systems will spark a Cambrian explosion of new products, services, and applications.” Mike and Paul discuss why hungry entrepreneurs are critical to the success and adoption of AI.

Lastly, this past week, Google revealed a handful of incredible AI projects that it’s been working on, and they provide a glimpse of the near future of AI. These reveals break down into two broad categories: AI for social good and generative AI. On the social good front, Google revealed ideas such as AI for wildlife tracking, AI for flood forecasting, an AI-powered maternal health app, and an AI model that speaks the world’s 1,000 most-spoken languages. On the generative AI side, Google revealed self-coding robots, where robots can autonomously generate new code. Mike goes through a cool example, and they discuss the implications of these new projects.

Listen to this great conversation with our team, and stick around for the end of the podcast for the rapid-fire discussion at the end!

#23: Google Penalizes AI-Generated Content, Responsible AI Guidelines, and AI’s Impact on Local News Nov 02, 2022

Show notes

This week Paul and Mike talk about three news stories and happenings in the world of artificial intelligence, and they break down their importance to marketers. In a word (or two): buckle up.

Well-known marketer Neil Patel recently revealed the results of Google’s latest algorithm updates on sites he owns that have AI-generated copy—and the results weren’t pretty. Patel disclosed that he has “100 experimental sites that use AI-written content.” He claims the sites are simply to figure out how Google perceives AI-written content, not to “game” the algorithm. Regardless of the motivation, he sure found out.

Next, Boston Consulting Group, BCG, recently released its guidelines for how companies should approach AI based on its Responsible AI Leader Blueprint. BCG defines responsible AI as “developing and operating artificial intelligence systems that align with organizational values and widely accepted standards of right and wrong while achieving transformative business impact.

And finally, earlier this year, the Partnership on AI did work on better understanding how AI will change the local news landscape by talking to 9 different experts in the space, including prominent media outlets and technologists. The Partnership on AI is a major nonprofit that was founded by Amazon, Facebook, Google, DeepMind, Microsoft, and IBM to research and share best practices around the development and deployment of artificial intelligence.

Listen to the conversation.

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