AI Myths: ‘Customer First’ Means ‘AI Last’ with Chris Hood | Chasing Curiosity and Sharing Boundless Insights from Ideas that Matter
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Transcript
Today we talk to Chris Hood — speaker, strategist, and author of Infallible, a book that challenges a lot of what we’ve been told about AI. And Chris should know - he’s spent his career working with companies on their digital strategies — from advertising in movie theaters to helping count votes for FOX on American Idol.
I’ve been avoiding talking about AI on the pod because honestly, I didn’t know what else there is to say. But Chris offers something new to the conversation I hadn’t heard before. First, he dispels some myths and suggests that where most people think we are with AI is actually 7 years away. And there is a huge gap between what companies are focused on and what consumers really want. And since we are the consumers, we have the power to decide how fast this moves. The truth is most consumers aren’t crazy about any of this, and Chris has great stories of companies that went too far too fast.
We also talk about what this convenience is costing us, how AI is making us lazy, how it borrows from social media to keep us addicted and why we need less Star Trek and more Columbo.
So what will AI never replace? Curiosity and connection. This conversation is a perfect example of that.
Please enjoy, Chris Hood.
Every other week, join your host Bob Mathers, keynote speaker for conversations designed to push you out of your comfort zone. Each episode delivers boundless insights and ideas that matter by inspiring you to get off autopilot and keep chasing curiosity.
Key Takeaways:
- The Danger of Overhyping AI: Many companies are marketing AI like it's magic, but most consumers either don’t care or don’t even realize they’re already using it. The focus should be on solving problems, not shouting about the tools.
- The “You Bias” of Generative AI: AI tools are designed to flatter you — to tell you your ideas are brilliant. It feels good, but over time it can reinforce ego, limit critical thinking, and create a false sense of confidence.
- We’re in the Cut-and-Paste Era: Generative AI makes it easy to sound smart or get things done quickly, but we’re losing nuance, creativity, and original thought in the process.
- AI Can’t Replace Human Connection: Emotional intelligence, empathy, humor — these are deeply human traits that AI can’t replicate. For businesses, this means finding the right balance between automation and authentic connection.
- We’ve Seen This Movie Before: Chris draws parallels between the rise of AI and the early days of social media. Back then, we trusted tech companies to self-regulate. We know how that played out.
- Don’t Trust the Echo Chamber: Platforms like LinkedIn make it seem like AI is everywhere and everything. But when you step outside of the bubble, most people are still trying to figure it out — or not thinking about it at all.
- Be the Columbo, Not the Sci-Fi Dreamer: Instead of fantasizing about the future of AI, we need to ask harder questions and look at the real implications. Curiosity and skepticism are powerful tools.
Links and Resources
Connect with Bob Mathers
Chirs
Generative AI is making us lazy. You know? We are degrading our critical thinking skills. We are becoming less creative. At a point zero one percent per year decline, then in a hundred years, it will happen where we don't even realize that we have created a world that we don't do anything in. Bob
Hi. Welcome to the Growth Mixtape podcast, and I'm your host, Bob Mathers. We have one rule here. We're gonna chase our curiosity way outside our comfort zones. The more uncomfortable and awkward, the better. We're gonna talk to people you've never heard of doing jobs you didn't know existed. We're gonna hear human stories about the things that connect us, what we can learn from one another, and what we can take away to apply to our own lives. These conversations might not seem to have a lot in common at first, but just like songs on a mixtape, it creates something memorable and emotional. Today, we talk to Chris Hood, a speaker, strategist, and author of Infallible, a book that challenges a lot of what we've been told about AI. And Chris should know, he spent his career working with companies on their digital strategies from advertising in movie theaters to helping count votes for Fox on American Idol. I've been avoiding talking about AI on the pod honestly because I just wasn't sure what else there was to say, but Chris offers something new to the conversation I hadn't heard before. First, he dispels some myths and suggests that where most people think we are with AI is actually about seven years away. And there's a huge gap between what companies are focused on and what consumers really want. And since we are the consumers, we have the power to decide how fast this moves. The truth is most consumers aren't crazy about any of this, and Chris has great stories of companies that went too far too fast. We also talk about what this convenience is costing us, how AI is making us lazy, how it borrows from social media to keep us addicted, and why we need less Star Trek and more Colombo. So what will AI never replace? Curiosity and connection. This conversation is a perfect example of that. Please enjoy Chris Hood. Alright. Chris Hood, welcome to the show. I'm, I'm really looking forward to this for a few different reasons. Chirs
Well, I'm looking forward to it for all of the same reasons you're looking forward to it. Bob
Yeah. We'll see. But I like that. That's a good start. You know, it's, we were talking a little bit about this last week. I've I've kind of shied away a little bit from talking about AI in the podcast only because there's just so much out there. And even before this episode, I went and searched on capital a, cap capital I in the Spotify, and I scrolled for, like, fifteen minutes. I didn't get to the end of it. But then I came across some of your content and your book, and I thought, okay. This is a different perspective that I haven't heard before. We're bringing the consumer experience into it. And since we're all consumers, maybe it helps cut through some of this noise that just gets people overwhelmed and worked out. Chirs
Yeah. I it's, one of the reasons I wrote the book because, a lot of what I do is within that realm of customer centricity. And when I spend time with organizations and talk about being customer first and what does that really mean, you'll often get into these conversations about technology and and how that impacts the consumer. My first book, customer transformation, was a spin off of digital transformation, which was a term that has become overly used, and and it's lost its meaning. Right? Digital transformation was intended to be a customer centric approach to how you would evolve with the customer based on their needs for technology change. And so I wanted to reemphasize the customer part because in reality, it's the customer that changes first or it should be. And then how do you kind of keep up with that expectation they have around the technology we use? Consumer whether they want it or not. And this is especially the case when we think about, startups or the entrepreneurial drive that people have. If if you were to survey a lot of startups right now and you say, you know, why are you building a startup? What is your startup about? They're going to lead with AI. We are an AI company, and we are going to solve, you know, whatever the as opposed to, does your customer even care? Like, what what Yeah. You're building something without even validating it. So we we talk so often about, you know, you've gotta start with a customer. I I've kind of simplified it into customer first, technology is last, and maybe you'll use AI to solve whatever problem you are trying to solve for your customer. And yet, again, with our fascination around AI, it seems to lose all of the sight on the customer. Bob
Yeah. And, you know, that simple line that you've used before, putting customers first means putting technology last. I was like, man, yes. I really, I wanna come back to that because that really resonated with me, and I work with a lot of startups too, and I know exactly what you're talking about. It's all about AI enabled this and AI enabled that, and I gotta believe maybe that's coming from trying to say the right things to attract capital, etcetera, but maybe that's the last thing that customers wanna hear. Chirs
Yeah. Especially when we see reports coming out that show that the average consumer could care less about artificial intelligence. They don't even realize it. I think there was a report that came out and it said something like, we'll say a hundred percent, but it's probably, like, ninety nine percent of us use AI on a daily basis. But about sixty eight percent, somewhere around there, seventy percent don't even realize they're using it. If you go to Starbucks, you're using AI. The Starbucks app has AI built into it for personalization and for tracking and analytics and all of the data stuff. So there's all of these use cases that have AI that is a part of our lives, but yet we have, in the last couple of years, wanted to overly market the AI component. And there was another survey, I've got some of this on my website, where they pulled a group of two thousand consumers, and they put various products in front of them. You know, here's a vacuum cleaner, and then here's a vacuum cleaner powered by AI. And pretty much in every scenario, the consumer selected the one that did not have AI associated with it. And so that just shows you that you can use AI. You can put AI into your products, But when you start to market it as an AI product or you start to bring that forward and remove the concepts of what is the customer's problem and how am I trying to solve this problem, When that is overtaken by the technology, consumers are turned off by it. And so you've gotta really think about what we mean when we say customer first because it's definitely not focused on technology because in most cases, you know, we talk about, like, the sausage factory and all those other, you know, terms. They don't care how it gets done. They just are coming to you to solve whatever that problem is. And as long as you deliver that, it doesn't matter how you're doing it. Bob
Yeah. I've I've there's a couple things in there that I wanna bookmark, and that's awesome, Chris. Before we get more into the book, there's a couple things about your background that I just had to ask because there's a few, interesting colonels in there. So you actually your first the first thing you developed in tech, I think, was to help, or to change the way advertising happened in theaters. And as I was reading this, I was like, I think I remember this. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Chirs
Yeah. So it and and it's a great kind of story to kind of frame what we're talking about here. If you went to the movies twenty, twenty five years ago, there used to be this really cool thing called lines that would be outside of the theater waiting to get in and all of that anticipation and community driven around a shared experience of going to the movies. Well, also, what was common in that time was advertisements that you would see on front of the movies. Now we see that still today. It's in a different format. But back then, it was slide based. So thirty five millimeter slides, you would have like a carousel if anybody is in photography. A carousel that would hold roughly ten minutes worth of slide content, and it would flip through. You know? Classic sound. You know? And all of a sudden, you get the next slide. Well, there were several problems with this. Well, the first one was is that, if you sat there for half an hour before the film, you would see the same slides because they would rotate around every ten minutes or so. Also, you would have human error. So sometimes the slides would be flipped upside down. And the most interesting thing was that there was often trivia questions on these slides. So you would get a trivia question, then you would get an advertisement slide, and then the next two slides would have the answer. Well, I was working at a movie theater, and I was going in and I was talking to the guests that were there. And as I was talking with them, somebody said, hey. Do you ever change out these slides? Because I've seen them all. I know all of the trivia questions. I basically memorized them all because I come all of the time, and I see them all of the time. And it got me to think, like, could there be a better way to do this? Could we animate it? Could we, create a database of trivia questions so that if I had thousands of trivia questions and randomized them based on who was in the theater, well, then no one should ever see the same questions. And and then apply that also to digital advertising and animated advertisements, you know, different types of, games that we could put into that. And so I basically built a system called DigiReel, and it it was just that. It was an entirely digital based advertisement system. And then we started to actually play with algorithms and early stages of artificial intelligence to recognize who was in the theater based on, you know, device or based on, you know, purchase history. And then how about the rating of the movie? If it was an r rated movie, I could adjust the types of advertisements to meet that audience. I could also, simulate certain types of, trivia questions based on that. And it just kept expanding from there because now that you have the data and now that you could, you know, engage with it in different ways, you could build really interactive and creative systems. We even began to play with coupons inside of grocery stores and then connect. Well, if I took my ticket and scanned it at the grocery store, I could then also further know who that individual was to be able to personalize those experiences, you know, continuously. But what's really interesting about all of that, the technology is cool. It eventually got acquired by, CineMedia Group, which is if you've been to the movie theaters today, it's pretty much what everything is. It's all, you know, reel to reel advertisements and movie trailers. So they've kind of lost that personalization experience. But the most interesting part of this whole thing is is that it actually started with me talking with a guest, a customer, who shared their experience and then tried to figure out how I could solve that problem. And then the technology came afterwards. How can I leverage technology to solve that problem? But it started with the conversation. It started with the customer. It started with a complaint, and then it grew from there into what it became. Bob
Yeah. Well, there's a couple things about that story, Chris. One, I think I just realized that my kids will never know that experience of lining up around the corner for a new movie. Like, we'd go and there'd be, like, half the people from the high school were there. And there's the, you know, the badasses are having a cigarette, and there's people driving by in their cars. And it was like a it was like a a whole community out there before the big event where we're all supposed to go and sit in the dark and be quiet. Chirs
Yeah. I mean, I love those days, and part of my job at the movie theater was actually going in and and introducing the the the show and doing trivia questions live in front of so I would always go in with a crowd of five hundred people, rowdy audiences, trying to entertain them with movie poster giveaways. And sometimes it was, you know, as you would expect, rowdier than you would want. But it it was really interesting because, ultimately, you you would have that community that was there to just have fun and see a movie. And, yeah, we've lost a lot of that now. Bob
Yeah. I know. That's you talk about that in the book too, and I do wanna come back to that how we've we're just systematically removing all the friction from our lives and and without really thinking about what we're giving up. I really love that. You also worked at Fox for a while, which was which I thought was really cool because you worked on some very big shows, including American Idol. And it made me realize again, it kind of made me feel a little bit old, but I was thinking back about the days when TV and technology were very separate. Now we think of streaming or TV as it's all kind of mashed together. But you were using technology at least behind the scenes, I think, or maybe with consumers on shows like American Idol. What was that all about? Chirs
Yeah. Well, let's just think about the the evolution of American Idol. When the show started, you used to have to call in to a one eight hundred number to vote for your favorite contestant. Bob
That's right. Yeah. Chirs
And then it went to text messaging, and then it went to, you know, an app. And and so there is a natural evolution of how we could actually cast our vote. You know, there's a lot of similarities just in business. You know? There used to be a time where most companies didn't have a website. They only had a one eight hundred number, and then all of a sudden you had a website, and then all of a sudden you had an app for that. And now all of a sudden, you know, there's AI. The, interfaces have changed over time. You know, we experienced that with shows like, like American Idol. Even shows like twenty four, if you've ever watched that show, where we built an app to allow audience members, fans to kind of tick down the clock in real time and have kind of a shared experience with little mini games that you could, engage with. That was all an attempt to kinda bridge the gap between the technology or the device that was now in our hands with what you were watching on the screen. Now we've got sing alongs. You know? You can go watch a movie and sing along if you know, Wicked as an example. But, yeah, I think, businesses are faced with the same thing. It's that constant evolution of technology, and now how are we going to use this technology to engage with our consumers. And I've always said that there's one constant. You will always have a customer. You have a customer. You have to, serve that customer. You have to solve that customer's problems, and you have to do it for a value proposition that they're going to buy into. None of that's going to change. The technology will constantly change. From here until eternity, there will always be a change in how we accomplish those things, but the root of what you want to do is not going to change. Bob
Yeah. Wow. I totally forgot that American Idol, you used to actually have to call in and then text. That goes to show how long it's been on the air. Chirs
Okay. Bob
So I wanna talk about the book, and we've already touched on a few things themes of that, Chris. I opened the book, and I and on page one, I I wrote down this quote because I had to ask you about it. There's too much Star Trek not enough not enough Columbo. And I'm like, okay. He's got my attention. What does that quote mean to you? Chirs
Yeah. I I I love that line. So, basically, what that means is that the Star Trek emblem that, you know, is is common, you know, where I've got all of my stats and you can beam me up and, you know, and all that kind of stuff is baked into something that you wear. That's an example of we're living in a almost fantasy sci fi world where we believe these things are capable, and not taking a step back and actually thinking about it logically or investigating it and and determining, you know you know, what's real and what's not. And and and I also touched in that same, section of of the book that, you know, where I think a lot of people believe we are with artificial intelligence and where we actually are with its true capabilities is is almost a seven year gap. Our understanding of AI is based on movies like Terminator, you know, or War Games or Star Trek. And so when that's kind of our foundation for what we think the capabilities of AI are, then, yeah, we need a lot more Columbo to kind of come in and investigate this and and bring us back down into a sense of reality so that we can actually understand where we are. Then we can figure out now what do we do with it. But but I think too many people are still kind of living in a fantasy land as opposed to reality. Bob
I had never thought of it like that. You know, it's it's so tempting. I I a client had asked me for something last week, and it was a template. And I knew I had a template, but it was buried in my drive somewhere. I hadn't dug it up in a while. So I'm like, I could spend fifteen minutes looking it up, but I could also just go to chat GBT and and sort of ask it and do a couple of prompts and refine it. And it spit out something that's pretty good. I was like, okay. That's good enough for now. It'll it it'll get the conversation started. But what I've been reflecting after that is that I put a lot of work into that template. I knew the reason that everything was there, the way it was formatted the way it was. I had tried it in different real life experiences. I had refined it over time, and all of that was lost through the convenience of just asking chat GBT for the answer. And maybe it was eighty percent the same as my template. It wasn't rocket science, but all the thought and care and purpose and intention was gone. And as you say in the book, we're just play that forward and think about all of that nuance that we're losing as we just air on the side of convenience. Chirs
Yeah. I mean, I have argued often that, generative AI is making us lazy. You know? We are degrading our critical thinking skills. We are becoming less creative. And for a lot of the AI enthusiast out there, they they will argue this. Right? Like, oh, no. It's making me more creative. It's making me think more. But again, if you decide to do it once, does that mean you'll decided to do it twice? Well, yeah. It's been productive. Yeah. It saves me time. Yes. In a crunch, I'm gonna do this. Now what happens if you decide, well, I'm not gonna review it. You You know, that's taking me a little bit more time, and all of a sudden there's an error in it. We've seen lots of problems where, you know, there was a story most recently where a lawyer actually presented something that was outputted by generative AI, had case studies in there, and all those case studies and, you know, and past legal precedents were all false. It was all fabricated. Right? I teach at a university level. I'm directly experiencing over the last two years that the increased usage of artificial intelligence is directly to, reducing grades. And and that's not because they're being more productive. It's because they are being more lazy. They're not researching. They're not doing the the work themselves. They can't recall anything within a testing environment. There are people out there who will say, well, we've gotta change how we are testing then. That's the fault. It's not AI that's the fault. It's not that they're using AI. It's the academic system that is at fault in this case. And and those scenarios just don't play out. I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago where, you know you know, the quiet surrender, where we see languages flattening. If we are all using AI to generate content out there, then we are all starting to sound the same. My Star Trek versus Colombo would not have come out of a chat GBT type of system. And so we have to think about this and and be honest about it. Yes. AI is powerful. Yes. AI can help us in a lot of areas, but there are a lot of people who will take the easy way out and just do it because it's easier. But at what cost? At a point zero one percent per year decline, then in a hundred years, it will happen where we don't even realize that we have created a world that we don't do anything in. And so it's critical that we get it right now, and I think part of the educational part of that Columbo experience is let us actually learn and think and dwell on this so we can create frameworks that are going to be better for us in the long run. Bob
So there's a couple of things that you mentioned there, Chris. One, yeah, I remember that piece called the quiet surrender. It really hit me hit home for me because I have two sons in college right now, and I know they're using chat GBT. I don't know how much. And I've struggled with this because, honestly, I would have done the same thing. I mean, back, you know, back in my day, it was, like, you know, certain kinds of calculators weren't allowed in, you know, in statistics, second year stats or whatever, or, you know, maybe even spell check-in the early days. So I I put myself in their shoes, and I'm like, yeah. I would probably do the same thing, and I and I just don't know how to reconcile that. And I know there's trade offs. I think what you said is really maybe is the key is just let's stop saying, hey. That's gonna make us more creative, or it's not gonna make us less creative, or can we just admit that it is? And it does remind me a little bit of social media when it came out, and we now know the the impacts that social media is having on mental health, etcetera. And it's like, it doesn't seem like we've learned anything because we kind of just trusted that the tech companies would take care of us, and we believe what they said. And now we seem at risk of doing all that again. I'm sure there were people back then when said we need to regulate this. We need to be more thoughtful. We need to slow down. And the tech company said, don't worry about it. We got this. Chirs
Yeah. Devices in our hands. Right. We talk often about at the dinner table, no devices. No one wants to sit there and have your phones in your hands. You know, we're here to talk and have a conversation. And yet that is also, you know, a a a consistent problem today. I was having a conversation with somebody else and we were talking about customer success and, you know, and and how ChatGPT is helping better communicate back and forth. And I posed this scenario, which was, okay, let's just say that you use ChatGPT to compose the optimal email to send it over to your customer so that it has the right tone, it has the right, you know, language, it it has all of the right bullet points, it has everything that you need, and it's in a great email that ChatGPT produced for you. Now what happens if that customer takes that ChatGPT email, pops it into ChatGPT, and says compose the perfect response back? At what point in time, I mean, we are basically just going back and forth where we're just taking somebody's email, popping it in, and we're having these full on conversations. Like, wouldn't it just be better to get on the phone and call, you know, talk to each other? Instead, you're, you know, you're literally I mean, the lack of authenticity in this process is is staggering to me, and yet we think about it as, well, this is actually helping me build better customer relationships. It's not. I mean, and in most cases, like for me, I'm so familiar with the technology that I know right off the bat if you are sending me a chat GPT or other type of generated email. I I can read it and tell. I've got my students, as you said. My students submit papers and they're like, this was not generated by AI. And I'm like, well, it was because I can tell, you know, it has the signatures. And, oh, well, I put it through an AI, you know, checker. And I was like, you realize those don't work. Right? Like, it's using the same technology to check if it was generated. Like, it does It's a bit of a Bob
circular argument. Chirs
Yeah. So, you you know, and and but we're okay with doing this with our customers. Like, maybe you read it to ensure accuracy and intent and whatever. I've said we are now living in the cut and paste, you know, age. We're not living in an AI age. We're living in a cut and paste age, and that's sad. Bob
Hey. It's Bob, and I'm taking the growth mixtape on the road in a series of keynote speeches inspired by the stories of my amazing guests. At their core, these signature talks are about how to get you and your teams off autopilot and stop settling for small incremental improvements. This isn't gonna come from spewing business advice. My podcast is full of people that have done incredible things, and every one of them struggles with self doubt, imposter syndrome, and the crippling fear of judgment that holds so many of us back. They've also found ways through it by rediscovering their creativity, their curiosity, and the confidence to do scary things. Imagine the power of bringing these vulnerable stories to life live and on stage to help you and your teams hit your targets, find your voice, and be the rock stars you are. Book me for your next event at bob mathers dot c a. Now back to the show. Well, it's interesting when you think about that cutting and cutting and pasting. So, yeah, I could I could ask chat g b t for an answer, and I could copy that and paste it into an email, and then the recipient might do the same. But eventually, you can imagine people are like, well, I I've checked this enough, and it's usually pretty good. So I just want an agent to respond. And all of a sudden, you just have agents bouncing back and forth, and you've completely removed the people. I'm sure that's already happening, but that's just the natural evolution when people realize, I don't really need to check this anymore. I'm just gonna let it respond for me. Chirs
Yeah. And I've played this scenario out as well. I've said, your customer your customer is human. And it starts you to wonder, like, will a customer always be human? Will we ultimately get to a point where we do have robots and the robots go out and do our shopping for us? But even if we look at kind of where we're at today in that process, the argument that I've made, it was really interesting because somebody argued that, you know, consumerism is going to be dead and everything is gonna be agent to agent. And I said I said, the moment that you tell me that the agent has access to my credit card and can make budgetary decisions on my behalf without my approval, then we have agent to agent transaction. And the response was really interesting and telling. The response was, well, this has nothing to do with budgets and trans and monetary transactions. It's like, then you're missing the whole point because, you know, there's there's not a CFO on this planet who is going to sit there and say, I'm going to allow an agent to make decisions on extensions of payments for, you you know, for all of my consumers. I don't know. I I honestly I don't know where we're heading, but, I I think we've got a far way before we have somebody go to the grocery store for us. You could have an agent order the groceries online for you and then have the delivery person bring them. But somebody has to make the decision on, do I spend the money on this or not? And I think for now, at least, that's still going to be a human. Bob
And you've talked a lot about the importance of that human connection in the customer experience and how brands shouldn't lose that, you know, that even emotional connection to the brands. And so what is a what are the limitations of AI kind of around that, maybe around emotional intelligence, for example? And and how do how do people have to start thinking about that? Because of at some point, I guess, Chris, we've gotta figure out what the balance is between the technology and the people and the things that we're unwilling to compromise on on the people side. Chirs
Yeah. So that balance is something I also write about in my book, which is, you know, you've got you've got human connection, you got artificial connection. And, with artificial intelligence, you're going to optimize speed, but at the cost of losing the human connection. Versus if you do it all human, you could optimize the relationship, but you're going to lose out on the speed. Right? So somewhere, there's a good balancing hybrid point. And for all of us, that's gonna be different. For every business, that's going to be different. We look at somebody like Discover who has built a market differentiation by saying you can talk to a real person. And we've also seen companies who have basically let go all of their support agents only to then hire them all back because they realize that at some point, people want to talk to a real person. So there is this balancing act that we have to figure out. But, you know, this also goes into this belief that AI has these capabilities that it doesn't. AI is not emotional. There is no emotional capabilities in AI whatsoever. It does not have empathy. It does not have emotional intelligence. We also know when we're talking with an agent versus when we're talking to a real person. It's getting harder to recognize that. The intelligence layers of the agents are getting better at, mimicking human behavior in that process. So some of that is getting better, but we are far, far, far away from getting to a point where the AI can actually mimic and be emotionally equivalent to the human. And so because of that, we as humans want to engage with other humans. I mean, you and I are talking right now on a podcast. Imagine if you called in for this podcast recording, and it was just agent Chris sitting here answering questions. It would not be interesting, and it would not be enjoyable for anybody. So I think there are things that require the human connection that you have to figure out and maintain, and then there are other things that you can automate. And having that discussion and and figuring out, like, what's meaningful to our customers, what are the things that we can streamline and improve, that you have to figure out. And then I think once you figure that out, then you can start to think about the future in terms of what is going to evolve and change and how you can evolve and change with that technology as it improves. But for today, I think you've gotta figure out what that balance is yourself and then implement it accordingly. Bob
Yeah. And I don't know that I hear, at least not publicly, enough leaders talking about having a thoughtful approach to finding that balance because what we hear is Shopify CEO coming out and saying, for any new hires, you need to prove that this job can't be done by AI. And it's so the pendulum is swung completely to, hey. We're gonna air on the side of AI to do everything, and you gotta prove to me that a human can do this better before you're gonna get approval for more headcount. And maybe that's happening behind the scenes, but it really seems like a rush in. And then like you said, I think some companies are, oh, well, okay. That we might have overcorrected a little bit. We're gonna bring some people back, and we're gonna find that that balance for us somewhere in the middle. But right now, it seems like we're way over to the one side. Chirs
Yeah. So great example, Shopify. I'm gonna talk about that, and I'm also gonna talk about Duolingo because, basically, they both did the same thing. Duolingo got crucified in social media. As I predicted they would, I I actually think I wrote about it somewhere, which was that the moment you start to introduce AI into a human, which is communication based type of, application, you're going to have a lot of people questioning why you're even in existence. Now that's not to say that AI can't. One, we we know that it has great voice recognition and great voice capabilities that are increasingly getting better. But, you know, learning a language is an experience is is a human experience. So Duolingo is actually walking back a lot of what they've talked about because of the out cry and the public perception of what they wanted to do. Now in Shopify's case, it's really interesting because Shopify has been a, user of artificial intelligence and a supporter of artificial intelligence for over ten years since they started. You can actually go to their blog, go back to two thousand and ten, two thousand and twelve, and find articles that they wrote about the use of AI on their platform. So then you have to start to ask, well, why now? Like, why come out with this statement that you're going to be all in on AI when you supposedly have already been all in on AI, and you support it and have tools that use it. And what I've told people is it's all about what's going on right now, and that's relevance. All they are looking for is a PR hit that, hey. We are still relevant in this world that is hyper driven by artificial intelligence. That was more of a marketing stump than an actual embracing of AI. So it goes back. When you have about ninety nine percent of all consumers using AI on a daily basis, but sixty eight percent don't know they are, that's not because they don't know what AI is or or what it's doing. It's because most companies that are using AI aren't out there blasting that we are powered by AI now. Bob
Yeah. So who else is doing a good job of this? Or what are what other examples can you kinda cite, Chris, to give some put some meat on the bones of this that people might have run into? Chirs
I mean, like, you know, the one that came to mind while you're asking is, like, Disney. You know, Disney and and all of the apps, Disneyland app, Disney World app, like, there's a lot of AI built into the app, built into the experience, built into how you get into lines, built into how they clean their restrooms, traffic patterns throughout the park so that they know where to clean before people come because they've analyzed where people go during certain times of the day and how traffic moves, like optimization of all of that experience is all being driven by AI. Not once do you see Disney AI powered because it it doesn't matter. The unfortunate thing is is that, LinkedIn LinkedIn has become kind of an echo chamber of all things AI. When you leave the confines of LinkedIn and actually talk with real people out there, no one cares. I was just in Vegas last week talking with a group of twenty CEOs about their companies. One of the twenty companies are actively embracing and into artificial intelligence. All of the other ones don't know what to do with it, don't think it really matters to them, hear about it on the news, but don't really care. And so that gives you kind of this perception of, well, like, you know, how much should we really talk about this, and, you know, how much of it really matters? And I I think I think we're inflating it, you know, beyond its means right now. Bob
Yeah. LinkedIn. Yeah. That certainly hits home. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, and sometimes I do pop my head out of there, and I go and talk to manufacturers or clients of mine in hospitality and realize, oh, yeah. This doesn't none of this stuff is stuff that keeps them awake at night or that they care about. Yeah. A couple of other things you talked about and you mentioned, and I I wanted to come back to it. So one, you in the book, you talk about the you bias. And can you talk to me a little bit about what that is? Because I was when you mentioned it, I was like, oh, yeah. Man, I've seen that everywhere. Chirs
Yeah. I mean, this is an example of of the critical impact that AI is having on us, especially generative AI. So the you bias is basically AI that is telling you, that is basically stroking your ego. It's biased towards you. You are the user of AI, and so it's going to give you what you want to hear. And so if you've ever seen something like, this is the most fascinating idea I've ever heard. You know? If or, you know, this is a great idea. This is a great approach. Let's expand on that by, you know, whatever. Like, any of that, that's all fake. And and this you bias, which is basically stroking your ego that everything you write is partly personalization. It's it's attempting to personalize that experience for you. But, also, let's be real, that this is also purposely being driven by the businesses who are making money off of you. Because if you get addicted to using this tool that is stroking your ego every day, then at some point in time, you're gonna forget that it's AI, and you're gonna start believing that this is really great stuff and it has your best interest. And forget that, oh, yeah, man. I'm gonna fork out twenty bucks, forty bucks, a hundred bucks, whatever a month. That's intentional. It's intentionally designed to help you feel good about your outputs. Now, technically, this is done through what we call reinforced learning. And what AI is attempting to do is it starts neutral. It says, okay. I'm going to provide you with a neutral response because I don't know much about you or what you're asking for. But over continued use of time, that neutrality goes away, and the you bias, the personal bias, begins to increase. So the more you work on something like, it's one thing to go in and say, hey. Write me an email for this. You're gonna get a fairly good neutral output. But then if you say, no. You know, let's let's revise this a little bit because I don't really like the language here. Well, now it knows what you're looking for, so it's going to continue to optimize, personalize that for what you want. Why is this a problem? Well, one, it's a form of addiction. But two, if everything we think that is coming out of it is a good idea, what happens when we start to ask it personal questions, physical therapy questions, emotional therapy types of questions, legal questions. Well, this is the best law case that I've ever read in my entire life. To do, you're you're that's not what I want. Right? That's how it works. It's intentionally designed to mimic what you hope to hear from it. You know, another quick metaphor would be, like, if you and I had a new business idea, and we're like, oh my gosh. This is a great business idea. I'm gonna go pitch this off of my mom and see what she has to say. My mom loves all of my ideas. Doesn't matter what it is. Right? It doesn't mean it's a good idea. You know, your your mother's approval, your parents' approval on your next business transaction is probably not the best advice you should get. And, unfortunately, that's what AI is for us right now. Bob
And, eventually, that idea, once you've sunken some time and money into it, is gonna collide with the real world where there aren't any customers or a market that cares about your idea. And it turns out your mom or AI, that opinion really didn't matter. Chirs
Yeah. And this goes with everything else. If we continue to buy into it over time exponentially, we start to believe, you know, what's being fed to us. And and you might think, well, that's a good thing. Like, I I need somebody to prop me up and and help me through these things. It's it's really bad. It's and it's a scary thing that we are basically being trained or brainwashed, you know, in a sense in believing what AI is outputting to us without reflecting on the legitimacy, you know, or anything else related to it. Bob
Yeah. Wow, Chris. I, god, we just scratched the surface of so many amazing topics. I can't let you go before I ask this because you mentioned it. So you've worked in AI for so long that you can recognize AI generated content. Give me the cheat sheet on that. Are there are there things that I can look out for? Because I think I know, but I have I have a feeling that if you and I looked at ten different things, I might say two of them are AI generated, and you'd probably say, no. They all are. Chirs
Well, I would say that you've gotta look at this from two different perspectives. Like, I've got my students, and in most cases, I would argue if my students are using em dashes, most likely, they've used ChatGPT to do it. Versus, like, if I'm talking with an author or, you know, somebody who writes, I'm gonna say, they probably didn't. Right? So I I think there's some context in there that you've gotta start to impart of that consideration. I also have started to notice, and you might see some of this online. There is now this concept of, well, you know what? I'm gonna spell a couple of words wrong because if I spell it wrong, then it will come across as being somebody who wrote it. And I'm gonna do that on purpose. Even though this output is from ChatGPT, I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna strategically change something. And people are talking about this now online. Like, how do I, you know, miss spell or use poor grammar to make it come across as human? You know? I also think that when you start to, talk about things outside of you, This happens a lot with my students. My students will submit papers, and I'll be like, you know, this is about technology and language that we don't cover in this class and is, like, ten years, you know, advanced for where you are. You're a nurse, practitioning nurse. Like, you're not a tech expert. You you didn't all of a sudden read this somewhere and pick it up and use it, you know, in in a document. You know, I think there's context. There's, individual perspectives that you gotta kind of take into consideration. There's phrasing of words. If you can see, like, bullet points, structure of language, all of those things you can start to look at and say, okay. This type of sentence and this use of the language in this particular context is not typical of a person. You know? This is not how we would talk, you know, or say it or write it. Those are usually good signs. Bob
Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Definitely some valuable tips in there. Okay. This has been so good, Chris. Before I let you go, I wanna ask you kind of the billboard question. If you had access to a billboard where millions of people could see it, you could put anything you wanted on that billboard, a picture, a meme, a saying, what would it be? Chirs
AI is lying to you. I don't know. Maybe that's a good one. You know, I I've my book, Infallible, is, I thought was really clever, you know, because the concept here is that AI is not infallible, and yet there is this belief system behind AI. And I say it in my book. AI is not the problem. AI is just a technology. How we program it, how we use it, how we engage with it, those are scarier. So, yeah, probably something along infallible with AI and big you know, you're gonna fail when you leverage AI too much, you know, I think is a big part of it. But what we are living in right now with artificial intelligence, we are being told and sold a bill of goods that is actually drastically changing our lives. And we've gotta kind of, take off the glasses or maybe put on the glasses and see what really is happening, you know, and and change our perspectives, you know, of the billboards. Bob
There have been so many things about this conversation, Chris, that are gonna stick with me and provided a new lens on, you know, products I buy and people I engage with on LinkedIn. I don't know. I can't think of any part of my life that that it doesn't sort of touch. So this has been amazing. For people that are have liked what they heard and are curious and wanna learn more, not only can they get the book Infallible by Chris Hood, but where else can they Chirs
find you? Yeah. Best way to find me is on my website. In there, you can find all my social media profiles. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn if you want. You can find my books and links to go buy the books. You can find my podcast, my blog, articles. All of it is right there. Chris hood dot com. Bob
And we'll put all of that stuff in the show notes as well. So this has been amazing, Chris. I can't thank you enough. I've got so much to think about. Chirs
Appreciate it. Bob
The The growth mix tape podcast with Bob Mathers is produced by Bespoke Projects, music by Jean Michel Walter Cronkite. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to follow and rate us. When you do this, it helps to raise our podcast profile so that more people can find us. If you wanna connect, you can find me on LinkedIn using the link in the show notes. 
