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Marketers at the Crossroads of AI: Navigating Excitement, Fear, Hype, and Uncertainty
130 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of the AI-Driven Marketer, Dan Sanchez takes a departure from the usual format to delve into the current sentiments and implications surrounding the future of AI. Drawing from a recent poll on LinkedIn, Dan explores the diverse range of emotions people have towards AI, ranging from excitement to fear and uncertainty. He discusses the impact of AI on the marketing industry, emphasizing the importance of embracing this technological shift while acknowledging its potential challenges. Throughout the episode, Dan encourages listeners to adopt a growth mindset and become active learners in the evolving landscape of AI, positioning themselves to lead the way in this new era. Join us as we dive into the uncharted territory of AI and discover what it means for marketers today.
Timestamps:
00:00 AI's impact on marketing and future implications.
03:43 Three-way split on AI: exciting, terrifying, uncertain.
09:37 Blockchain and cryptocurrency may become important.
12:22 Take action, learn, be ahead in AI.
14:36 Prepare for AI's impact on truth and misinformation.
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Transcript
Introduction: Exploring AI's Future
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the AI Micro Skills Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Sanchez. Friends call me Dan Chas. And today I wanted to have kind of a different episode. Normally I dive deep into AI, how to do it, give actionable advice, have interviews with people to give actionable advice and so on and so forth to help you level up in your AI marketing. But today I wanted to have a conversation.
LinkedIn Poll: Gauging Sentiments on AI
00:00:21
Speaker
I just ran a poll on LinkedIn to see how people felt about the future of AI.
00:00:28
Speaker
not about what they think is going to happen, but how they're feeling about the potential future of AI right now. And after looking at the results of these, I think there are some implications worth discussing, because if you're a marketer listening to this, you're probably becoming increasingly aware that AI is
00:00:46
Speaker
going to change everything, right? You're one of the few people listening to podcasts about marketing and AI. There's a few podcasts out there like this one, but there's not a lot of people tuning into them yet. So you're in the innovator crowd trying to figure out this stuff before everybody else does. So I wanna talk about the current state of how people feel about it and what that's going to say of how things are gonna play out for the next six months to a year and what that means for you. So let's take a look at this poll.
00:01:16
Speaker
You can see I worded it very carefully. Like the future of AI is mostly, and I have four results here. And you can look
Poll Results: Excitement vs. Uncertainty
00:01:23
Speaker
at it on your screen. If you're on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or on the website, you could see it here, but that's okay. I'm gonna do my best so that you don't have to see it. I'm just gonna explain the results to you and then walk through it step by step. So if you're looking at it here, you can see that there were four options to pick from. There was the future, let me reread the title. The future of AI is mostly, and the options were exciting,
00:01:43
Speaker
terrifying, hype, and uncertain. Those are the four options. The future of AI is mostly exciting, terrifying, hype, or uncertain. You had to pick between one of those four. 191 people voted over the course of the day on LinkedIn. 4,000 people-ish saw this post, and like 191 voted.
00:02:06
Speaker
So let's break down the results and what that means. Most people voted for exciting 41%. And I think if we had posted this in a more general forum or outside of social on LinkedIn, because I find the innovators are hanging out on LinkedIn a little bit more.
00:02:25
Speaker
The ones more likely to be listening to podcasts like this and are interested in AI, they're probably on LinkedIn, so it's gonna lean that way. I think a general crowd would probably go in a different direction, but that's okay.
Audience Perspectives on AI's Impact
00:02:38
Speaker
For this poll, 41% said exciting. 16% said terrifying. 15% said hype. So very close between terrifying and hype. And then 28% said uncertain.
00:02:53
Speaker
So exciting leads, followed by uncertain, and then with half as much terrifying and hype. But still, those two together make up 30%. It's about a third of the people. So if you look at these, it's roughly split into three crowds. There are the people who are optimistic, the people who are pessimistic, and the people who are somewhere in between. How they feel about AI.
00:03:20
Speaker
The reason why I think this is important is because emotions rather than logic are usually the things that drive behavior. And that's true especially across a large number of people when you're looking at it from a group. And because I put this poll on LinkedIn and I've been talking about AI and the people who follow me are generally more AI focused, I think the exciting part would
00:03:43
Speaker
outweigh. So I'm just going to split these into three buckets, even though it's 41% for exciting and less so for terrifying hype and uncertain. I think in a real world, it's probably going to be more of a three way split. I think it's even less exciting if you put it into like a baby boomer out in the country world, they're all going to be terrified of it. But still, let's say it's a three way split between people who are optimistic, pessimistic, and uncertain, or that somewhere in between, not sure
Comparing AI to Digital Marketing Evolution
00:04:08
Speaker
yet. What does that mean?
00:04:09
Speaker
If you're listening to this, you were probably in the excited bucket. You're looking forward to the things that come with AI. Hence you're listening to a podcast about it or reading the newsletter that accompanies this podcast. And I think that's a good thing because I think we're all starting to see that AI is a thing to be reckoned with. I have the same feeling about it for AI that I had about social media. And social media changed my career because I went heavy into digital marketing and social media back in 2010 before it was like,
00:04:37
Speaker
like now digital marketing just is marketing it seems silly to even call yourself a digital marketer because like that like digital is marketing now hardly anybody's doing like just traditional right mostly marketing is digital um i think it's going to be the same thing with ai
00:04:54
Speaker
Like, it'll be funny to have this podcast 10 years from now because I'll be like, oh, AI marketing. Yeah. And people will be like, yeah, like all marketing is AI driven. Of course it is. It's kind of like it'd be funny to say that about digital marketing now. Right. This podcast will have its season introducing people to this new topic and then it will just be a part of life.
00:05:14
Speaker
like social media and digital marketing or just life now it's just marketing. So AI will be still what is and that's good. So we're leaning into it and
00:05:25
Speaker
It's important that we're leaning into it because right now leaning into it is still, it's still hard. It's still hard to lean into it because there isn't a clear path. We're wandering into new territory just like we were with digital 10 years ago. There wasn't a clear path. We didn't understand how to measure the funnel in between like top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of the funnel, you know, tofu, mofo, bofu, and how to
00:05:49
Speaker
prioritize content and different parts of that, how to get people to take steps down to the funnel, how to track it, measure it, make the most of it.
Embracing AI Amid Challenges
00:05:56
Speaker
We understand this now, but it took a long time and they still debate it over. Especially on LinkedIn, they're debating the funnel and all that kind of stuff, right?
00:06:05
Speaker
But it's definitely more clear than it was in the beginning. Before, it was all the bloggers coming out trying to help us understand, and they were on the cutting edge. They were building a map of what was uncertain back then. This is repeating itself today. And for those who are excited and leaning into it and learning, we're going to be the ones going into the uncertainty to build the maps for those others to follow.
00:06:30
Speaker
The funny thing is the ones who make the maps usually get to call the shots. So I don't know. That's why I started this podcast because I want to be the one leading into it rather than being on the backend following because there's so much to be gained in being on the edge with widespread trends like this. There's always micro trends, but this is going to be a macro trend that hits even more than marketing. It's going to hit all the business and every department across almost every industry. It's going to be so big.
00:07:00
Speaker
And that's good.
AI's Role in Efficiency and Job Dynamics
00:07:01
Speaker
So I think that's gonna play out for those who are excited about it and optimistic and leaning into it now Which is why I invest more and more and more and learning AI for those who are terrified Or think this is hype. I think this is going to be very negative
00:07:15
Speaker
But that's partly what creates the opportunity for those who are excited. The people who are terrified and hype are going to do nothing. Or if they think it's all hype and it's going to fall down, they're actively going to avoid it and push in the other direction. But what do they have to gain if they're right? Maybe it becomes our opportunity because cost becomes we could have learned something else, something more true, time tested.
00:07:44
Speaker
But what I found over and over again in my career is that technology is setting the trend for everything in marketing. Everything's technologically driven now because we're spending so much more time on our technology devices. It makes a massive difference. So because we're spending more time on technology, on smartphones, maybe VR in the future, think AI because we're spending so much time on technology, it only becomes more important. So the people who think this is all hype,
00:08:13
Speaker
this could go poorly for them. I honestly think I used to think that we won't lose jobs too fast. I'm starting to think now that that's just not true. I'm starting to see AI become more and more useful. I'm helping clients even build processes to cut what used to take, you know, 80 man hours down to eight man hours. That's a 10 fold improvement in efficiency.
00:08:35
Speaker
and possibly effectiveness, like they'll be able to do more in way less time. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that business won't have to hire as many people to take on the same amount of workload. So it's not that people are going to get laid off because of AI taking their job, it's just that companies will do what they normally do and lay a bunch of people off and the people remaining will have to do more work. And they will offset that through AI, which means they will hire back more slowly.
Lessons from Past Tech Trends
00:09:03
Speaker
AI will take your jobs or people who do your job, people who are marketers who know how to leverage AI will be the ones now taking your place because a team of two marketers will be able to do what a team of 20 marketers could do when they're properly leveraging AI. That's just going to be a thing. So those who are thinking that this is hype and that it's terrifying, so they're putting their head in the sand, I can't see this playing out well for them. And if they're right and we're wrong, what have we lost?
00:09:32
Speaker
I don't think we've lost anything. I think we've, you know, but rolled up our sleeves, learned something new. And if it turns out to be nothing, kind of like, kind of like how blockchain and cryptocurrency kind of feel right now, though, I think those will come back as AI becomes more prominent. The need for making things authentic with blockchain will become more important.
00:09:51
Speaker
have some issues still to work out on that side because that was very unintuitive when I tried to learn blockchain and crypto. But still, I don't I don't regret learning about what I learned about blockchain and crypto when I was learning how to buy NFTs and all that kind of stuff. I didn't invest a lot. I certainly made some money, you know, a few thousand bucks I made in crypto trading. And I bought an NFT and I got charged to the roof every time I moved crypto money around and
00:10:16
Speaker
I invested a few hundred bucks and probably a couple of weekends really learning that stuff. And I don't regret it at all, even though it's become nothing right now. I still think it'll be something in the future and it was good to learn and flex my mind and learn.
The Importance of AI Exploration and Risk-Taking
00:10:29
Speaker
So even if this AI thing becomes nothing, man, it's good to just go and learn things and take bets.
00:10:35
Speaker
I've made a few bets. Most of them, so far the big bets I've made were digital marketing. I made a big bet on WordPress. I made a big bet on Infusionsoft, which turned out to be really good. Now, Infusionsoft is a company of CRM and marketing automation tool for small businesses. They're kind of dying now. HubSpot became the one that became the clear winner from that space.
00:10:55
Speaker
And that's OK, because all the things I learned from Infusionsoft and how to do it has transferred over into everything I do with HubSpot or ActiveCampaign or any other CRM that I currently work with. It's beautiful, because a lot of these principles transfer over. And I think that's the downside of learning AI right now, is a lot of the things we're learning, it's going to transfer over somewhere. Maybe you spend a lot of time investing in chat GPT or mid-journey. The things you're learning now will transfer over. Just like those who invested in Vine, the media app that Twitter had,
00:11:25
Speaker
uh, like, kick-started a lot of careers on YouTube and are now excelling at TikTok in shorts because they learned how to get attention in six-second videos before you could even add music to it. Um, so that's a big deal. Like, take your shot, make a big bet, and go for it. That's why I'm not on... I think the people who think it's just hyper or terrified and not doing anything because it are making a bad move. Hence, I mean, I'm the one here sitting on the podcast talking about it, so...
00:11:53
Speaker
Clearly I'm on the excited train here. And for those who are uncertain, uncertainty doesn't lead to good actions. Taking action is almost always a better action than taking no action.
00:12:08
Speaker
So even though it is uncertain, and it is like if I had the option for people to vote on all of the above, that would have been the overwhelming winner. And I would have voted on it myself because it is absolutely exciting, terrifying, full of hype and uncertain.
Strategies for Navigating AI's Future
00:12:22
Speaker
It's all of those things put together. So what now what? What are we going to do? We need to take action in learning and leaning into it.
00:12:31
Speaker
because it will give us better insights to where things are going. It'll give us a better position to work off of because we're knowledgeable about the thing before people are starting to make big decisions about it. Or if you're in a company and they're going to make decisions about AI, you'll be the one that gets invited to the meeting to speak to it and help. You want to be in those positions. You don't want to be the laggard. You want to be on the forefront of this thing, which is why I'm glad you're listening to this podcast and we can learn and do this thing together.
00:13:01
Speaker
The hard part is, we all have to start over. We're all students in this thing because it's so new. Even the people who are experts at AI and got PhDs in AI five years ago, it will, this generative AI thing is quite different. Maybe not five years ago, but 10 years ago, right? This was, AI has been a topic for decades and decades since like the 1940s and 50s.
00:13:23
Speaker
But we're all students in this together because it's so new. All the developers are starting to figure out how to leverage the API and those who are building custom GPTs. It just came out in October. It just launched the store a few weeks ago. It's all brand new. We all have to be put on our humble caps and become students again. And that's been my goal for this year, 2024 Master AI. Become a student, figure it out, talk to people who are killing it with it.
00:13:47
Speaker
Try things, practice, fail, fail, fail, learn something, fail, get better. It's a growth mindset. And we need to apply it to AI because AI is going to, the more I learn about it, the more I'm like, this is going to take over everything. Like I'd be afraid to be an optometrist right now because it's going to get automated by AI.
00:14:10
Speaker
You've ever been to an eye doctor and you're just giving them yes-no's, I'm like, clearly a computer is going to be able to do this soon. And it will. It's going to take a lot of jobs. And new jobs will be created. I don't know which ones, but chances are it'll go to those who actually know how to leverage it, AI, the most.
00:14:26
Speaker
So, let's lean into it. Let's continue to lean into that enthusiasm. Be at peace with the terrifying things that are coming because it's going to happen. There's going to be misinformation. There's going to be really ugly things that happen because of AI. Oh well, so what? What are we going to do to prepare for those things? How are we going to prepare our minds for being able to recognize true content or fake content? What's your value grid going to be based off? What philosophies do you cling to? What religion do you cling to to tell you what's true, right?
00:14:57
Speaker
because there's going to be misinformation through the roof eventually. They might figure out how to block in the short term, it's just going to be a problem. So we have to be prepared for the bad things as well as the good things. Hype, yep, there's hype. Oh well, we have to navigate that too. So let's continue to move forward with the growth mindset, embrace this thing and squeeze it for all it's worth because
00:15:19
Speaker
those who do will be the ones who lead tomorrow, who build the maps before the land of AI. This new future of AI is unknown. Someone is going to build the map for it. Might as well be us. Let's figure it out together.