On our sixth episode of Launch Codes, Joe Peters is accompanied by returning guest and President of RP, Andy Caron, to cover several interesting topics across the MOPs and AI world, including:
- Apple takes a bite out of UTM tracking
- A new Gartner survey says IT and marketing are a match made in data
- Shining a light on Adobe’s new Firefly 2
- The best way to heat up cold email lists
- AI might soon become an offer we can’t refuse, says Godfather of AI
Listen Below
Episode Summary
Apple takes a bite out of UTM tracking
In June 2023, Apple announced several privacy changes that would be coming to iOS 17 at the end of October. Now that we’re only a few weeks away from these changes going live, Joe and Andy reflect on the major impact this will have on link tracking in HubSpot, Marketo, Mail Chimp, and more – with UTM parameters being removed entirely.
Andy points out how these changes will result in a smaller sample size of parameters against your engagements to benchmark off of: “They’re not going away completely, but they won’t be available for customer sections that are primarily engaging with your brand through the latest iOS 17 update.”
The other implication of this change, Andy says, is how it will further push companies to find new ways to get user information appended onto records. This can happen either through a server-to-server connection or a universal ID setup, for example – all necessitated by these types of privacy changes.
Joe raises the point that losing a significant segment of users (anyone on the latest iOS) will potentially skew your data and perspective. Andy agrees, but also highlights that despite using an Apple device, her engagements are still being tracked through Google Chrome.
This leads to further conversation on Google’s plans to disable third-party cookies throughout 2024 and what this means for tracking – although in the attribution space, many are already using first-party cookies which will mostly remain unaffected by these changes.
A new Gartner survey says IT and marketing are a “match made in data”.
A Gartner newsroom article from October 10th references a survey of 400+ marketing leaders they conducted in May and June 2023, stating that “Diversification of the usage of customer data, beyond marketing, forces marketers to re-evaluate how their applications interact with enterprise-wide data. Successful CMOs should seize the opportunity to re-focus and leverage a new class of cloud-based IT resources, unless they fall short of marketing’s needs.”
This opens up a deeper conversation between Joe and Andy about who will manage data at companies in the future – specifically, who is best positioned to think about the architecture, utilization, and safety protocols for managing data.
As it stands, marketers who aren’t necessarily data scientists are left to uphold CCPA rules and other protocols on top of GDPR to correctly manage their business and mitigate lawsuits that could cost millions of dollars. Andy says that IT is being called in to help manage this data because the tech load that marketing departments carry is often larger than their head count can manage.
Joe agreed that, especially when there are legal concerns at play, IT will become more involved in the control of data – which is something RP is already seeing with some clients. This also opens up a conversation around the partnership between marketing and IT, the de-siloing of these teams, and who actually owns data and the data management processes. This is an area that only increases in relevancy as data cleaning and preparation for future AI opportunities becomes a focus.
Shining a light on Adobe’s new Firefly 2
Last week, Adobe unveiled their Firefly Image 2 model which is the latest version of their Firefly AI image generation tool. This latest update brings new features including vector images, design templates, and integration with Photoshop, Illustrator, Express, and the rest of Adobe’s suite.
Andy has already been playing around with the tool to enhance some of her recent presentations, and Mike (RP’s Art Director) was up all night experimenting with prompts and features when it was first launched.
Both Joe and Andy were blown away by the incredible ability for FireFly 2 to use outside images and references to inform generated content. Joe even conducted an experiment where he took a few of RP’s brand images (an astronaut and unicorn in space) and had Firefly generate them in a variety of contexts with a single prompt – with vector images allowing for unlimited scaling as well.
There are also several copyright implications when it comes to AI image generation. How fully AI generated versus partially AI generated images will be policed differently? It’s a complex subject that will spark new regulatory frameworks, legislation, and deeper debates on what actually constitutes copyright protection going forward.
The best way to heat up cold email lists
This week’s question from the MarketingOps.com Slack Channel (used with permission from founder, Mike Rizzo) is as follows: “Does anyone have experience with email warming platforms for cold lists? Looking for some insight on strategy, pros and cons, and things to look out for with this overall strategy.”
Andy starts by pointing out that while there are many third-party tools out there, you can also do email warming within your current marketing automation platform – including Marketo. Andy also emphasized that “cold” lists could mean: 1) leads who haven’t engaged with your organization for a very long time or 2) an entirely new list that was purchased. The origin or provenance of that list will change the type of advice she gives in this situation.
With that aside, Andy’s advice on overall strategy is to start slowly; target those who are most engaged first and work through the list from there. Continuously monitor feedback from major ISPs to maintain good deliverability, engagement, and a positive email reputation.
Joe and Andy continue the conversation, covering common mistakes people are making outside of the actual email warming platform, the potential role of AI to help track email performance, and more! Tune into the episode for the full conversion.
Hot takes
- Tech godfather Geoffrey Hinton: AI could rewrite code, escape control
- AI technologies could gain the ability to outsmart humans “in five years’ time,” Hinton said in an interview with 60 Minutes.
- “These systems might escape control by writing their own computer code to modify themselves, and that’s something we need to seriously worry about.”
- Yann LeCun (another Godfather of AI) has called these warnings “preposterously ridiculous”
Pairings
This week, Joe brought in a gorgeous vinyl record that featured a translucent design topped with blue and orange artwork from a band you’ve (most likely) heard of. Andy brought in one her most prized book possessions that she found in a used book store in Flagstaff, Arizona shortly after graduating from college (it’s particularly relevant to her upcoming MOps-a-palooza presentation in a few weeks).
Read The Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was created by AI using Descript and has not been edited.
[00:00:00] Joe Peters: Welcome to Episode 6 of the Launch Codes Podcast. I’m your host, Joe Peters. On today’s episode, we’re covering Apple takes a bite out of UTM tracking. A new Gartner survey says IT and marketing are a match made in data. Shining a light on Adobe’s new Firefly 2. As always, we’ll answer a question from the MOPS community.
[00:00:25] Joe Peters: And finally, AI AI, one of many godfathers. And today I’m joined by Andy. Andy, welcome to Launch Codes.
[00:00:41] Andy Caron: Excited to be here today.
[00:00:44] Joe Peters: This is Andy’s second visit to the podcast, so we’re very happy to have her back. And so why don’t we dive right in and talk about The iOS 17 update and what we can expect with that.
[00:00:58] Joe Peters: So Apple announced some privacy changes that were forthcoming in a event back in June and. This iOS 17 update that we’re going to get at the end of October will strip away some link tracking for HubSpot, Marketo, MailChimp, and more, which means UTM parameters would be removed. What do you think about this, Andy, and how does this relate to link tracking and attribution?
[00:01:29] Andy Caron: Yeah, so Apple has been ahead of the game as it relates to privacy compared to other companies. They were, you know, out for third party cookies years ago. What this means is two things. One, that you’re going to have a smaller sample size of parameters against your engagements to benchmark off of. They’re not going away completely, but they won’t be available for certain Customer sections that are primarily engaging with your brand on an iOS device that has the 17 update.
[00:02:05] Andy Caron: The other piece about it is that I think this is also going to start to lead to an evolution, which already starting to see, which is other ways. To get that information appended onto the records, either through a server to server connection or through a universal ID setup that I think will be forthcoming and necessitated by these types of privacy changes.
[00:02:35] Joe Peters: Yeah. So what do you think this means that when, when you think of you’re going to get a skewed perspective, so you’re taking out all of these devices. Which is a pretty big segment of the population. What kind of skewing do you think is going to be there, Andy?
[00:02:52] Andy Caron: Well, I think it depends on who you’re marketing to.
[00:02:55] Andy Caron: I know, for example, that I am on an Apple device. I have a laptop that is a Mac, but I use Chrome as my browser. And so that means the parameters will stay put. For me, that’s not going to necessarily change right away. So depending on who you’re marketing to and where they’re engaging, it may have a minimum or minimal impact, or it might have a significant impact.
[00:03:18] Andy Caron: You’re going to have to see brand by brand for your own data set, what percentage of UTM drop off you experience, assuming that you’re tracking them and retaining them pre. The update coming at the end of this month and post.
[00:03:33] Joe Peters: Yeah. Yeah. So I guess a compare and contrast there is going to be helpful. I guess it’s going to be a little bit different when we’re talking about mobile visits versus desktop visits to correct.
[00:03:45] Joe Peters: We’re probably see some, some bigger impacts there, but let’s Extend this a little bit to the plans that Google has with chrome to be disabling third party cookies for 1 percent of its users in Q1 and then we’ll ramp up to 100 percent of its users in Q3 that that’s going to be another massive change
[00:04:11] Andy Caron: that’s going to be a big one for a lot of people.
[00:04:14] Andy Caron: I think chrome these days is a The most used browser, at least for business purposes by a, by a percentage, at least, I don’t think obviously by, you know, 80, 90, 100%. By any means, but certainly significant. And so, there has been a move away from third party cookies because of Apple’s continued changes in that area already.
[00:04:44] Andy Caron: Most vendors that are providing some sort of cookie engagement or tracking for you these days, especially in the attribution space, are already using first party cookies. So I don’t think that the impact here is going to be Quite as significant as it could be, had this been rolling out at the same time as Apple or in advance of Apple’s evolutions here, but I think it’s going to be important for marketers to do an audit.
[00:05:14] Andy Caron: Of what cookies they do currently have in play on their web properties and to ensure that they are, in fact, first party cookies and not third party cookies so that they’re not losing key functionality they need in order to run and optimize their business.
[00:05:29] Joe Peters: Yeah, you know, I think we have another story to track in another episode is how often people are just accepting all cookies anyway when they’re coming to sites, right?
[00:05:39] Joe Peters: I think it’s yes. I think we saw some data that it was pretty high, right?
[00:05:43] Andy Caron: Yeah, I recall it being significant. Yeah.
[00:05:46] Joe Peters: Anyway, well we’re gonna have one thing we can count on is change here and we’re going to have to let the data tell the story for us and make sure we’re doing some good pre and post analysis to really have a sense of what this impact is going to be.
[00:06:03] Joe Peters: All right. Well, let’s move on to our second topic, and this is centered around I. T. Being more involved in marketing technology activities. And here’s a quote from an October 10th Gartner Newsroom article. It’s a bit of a long one. So follow along here. Collaboration between I. T. And marketing has traditionally been focused on selecting applications with their own data stores, such as Marketing automation solutions which store contacts, leads, and content, said Benjamin Bloom, VP Analyst in the Gartner Marketing Practice.
[00:06:42] Joe Peters: Diversification of the usage of customer data beyond marketing forces marketers to re evaluate how their applications interact CMOs
[00:06:56] Joe Peters: should seize the opportunity to refocus and leverage a new class of cloud based IT resources unless they fall short of marketing’s needs. So it’s a bit of a story there that we’re hearing from, from Gartner. So in a perfect world, Marketers lead more business focused work and I. T. leads more technical and integration activities.
[00:07:22] Joe Peters: But what are we seeing here, Andy?
[00:07:26] Andy Caron: I think it really goes back to the data and who is going to manage the data. Who is best positioned to think about the architecture, utilization, and safety protocols for managing data? And as we see, you know, CCPA and other protocols like that coming in on top of GDPR, the data protocols that are needed to correctly manage…
[00:07:55] Andy Caron: Business and mitigate lawsuits, potentially millions of dollars worth, is falling on marketers who aren’t necessarily technologists or data scientists. And so I.T. is being called in to help manage that first, and secondly, because the tech load that marketing departments are carrying is often larger than their headcount can manage.
[00:08:24] Andy Caron: It’s just an off-kilter balance based on where the economy is right now and sort of the perception of technology solving problems, but not necessarily the companion to that, being that with the technology, you must have someone to run and manage the technology. And so I see a lot of businesses moving toward…
[00:08:44] Andy Caron: Unified data structures. Adobe is really starting to push their real-time CDP and tying that into Experience Cloud and into Marketo, and that sort of managed unified approach where Marketo or the marketing automation platform becomes a star in the larger constellation of technology and strategy means that I.T. is almost more of a natural home for it in some ways.
[00:09:14] Andy Caron: And I think that this is something where we’re going to see the pendulum swing heavily toward it, and it may swing back toward marketing, but I.T. is getting much, much, much more involved at this point.
[00:09:26] Joe Peters: Yeah. I think once you bring legal into the picture and you have some lawsuits, or you’re seeing legal…
[00:09:36] Joe Peters: Implications in the broader market space, then, you know, I.T. is going to flex a little bit in the organization and say, “Hey, we gotta get some control around this.” And we’re starting to see it even with our own clients. Yes, but what we’re going to see is that it’s going to be a bit of a partnership, and it’s going to continue to have to advance in light of, you know, this bigger picture of who owns the data and the data management, which I think is another really big question.
[00:10:17] Joe Peters: That marketing teams are having to focus on, especially as it relates to the future in data prep and data cleaning with new AI opportunities coming to the forefront as well.
[00:10:32] Andy Caron: My hope is that it will start to really break down more of the silos that we still see inside of businesses because it’s the business’s data.
[00:10:43] Andy Caron: It’s not I.T.’s data. It’s not marketing’s data. It’s not rev ops data. It is the business’s. And so as a business, how do you leverage all of your headcount, all of the intelligence and knowledge that sits there, and collaborate together to best use and optimize the use of that data for better business outcomes?
[00:11:07] Joe Peters: 100%. It’s just a natural evolution that we’re seeing in the maturity of mops within organizations. Yes. All right. Something fun. And I know that you’ve had a chance to see how this is in action, and that is the new Firefly Two being released by Adobe last week. And Andy has a few presentations coming up over the last, over the next couple of weeks, and we’ve already seen what Firefly can do in terms of enhancing your next presentation, Andy.
[00:11:50] Andy Caron: Yeah, it’s really cool. I’ve played around with it a little bit myself and seeing, you know, our mastermind at work inside of the tool is next level. It’s really cool to see what’s coming out of that.
[00:12:06] Joe Peters: Yeah, I know. So really, for those of you that may have missed it, Adobe has integrated the Firefly Two image model into not only Photoshop but Express and Illustrator so that…
[00:12:23] Joe Peters: Not only is the generative background capability there, but also generating vector images and design templates. Now, this is absolutely incredible. And a member of our team, Mike, I think when it first came out, Andy, he was telling us he didn’t even get to sleep. I think he slept a couple of hours. He was like a kid on Christmas.
[00:12:47] Joe Peters: He couldn’t get enough time playing around with what you can do with some really great prompting, but also being able to bring in outside styles and previous work to inform the images that you’re creating.
[00:13:02] Andy Caron: That was the coolest part. It was basically saying, take an image or images that have already been created that are already branded and then use that as a jumping off point for whatever generated images are going.
[00:13:17] Andy Caron: to occur, change the color palette various recommendations. I mean, it’s very powerful.
[00:13:24] Joe Peters: No I got to play around a little bit with it. And for those of you that aren’t familiar, we have kind of a astronaut unicorn in space. pen and ink kind of theme that we use here at RP and being able to just insert the astrodot on a unicorn in a variety of different contexts with the use of a simple prompt.
[00:13:50] Joe Peters: It was absolutely incredible. And with vector images. You know, your ability to not only continue to manipulate it, but also use images at whatever scale you want, which is sometimes a bit of a challenge if you’re generating something in mid journey and you want to make that a larger image, you’re limited by the resolution.
[00:14:12] Joe Peters: When you’re generating vector images, That’s a whole other game altogether and you could make it billboard size or spaceship size. It wouldn’t really matter when you’re using that type of art. So really, really cool things, but what still remains pretty murky is the copyright side of this. Right, Andy?
[00:14:35] Andy Caron: Absolutely. It’s such a fascinating rabbit hole or sort of thought journey to go down as far as what constitutes AI created, fully created or partially created images that are to AI to be copyrighted, or what is the copyright ability of an image that’s been generated off of previously copyrighted images.
[00:15:04] Andy Caron: Design or imagery. I, I’m not sure where that one’s going to land
[00:15:10] Joe Peters: when you think about it. It’s going to be almost impossible to police this with the exception of let’s just say a full AI generated. Image, but if, if we get a vector image that we then manipulate, and what if that vector image is based on hand or ink drawings that you had done in the past, what constituted, is it 50 percent content?
[00:15:40] Joe Peters: Is it, is this going to be a new NAFTA thing that a car that’s 30 percent built in Mexico and 20 percent made in Canada? Okay, as it? Being called a U. S. car if it’s 50 percent made in the U. S. Like, I don’t know, there’s, this is a really, really cloudy, murky place. And I think it could be pretty simple on a prompt and generating an image.
[00:16:06] Joe Peters: But if you continue to manipulate it after the fact, I think it’s going to be very hard to just limit this type of art form to being just being considered AI if it has an AI element to it.
[00:16:22] Andy Caron: I think so, but I also kind of think, you know, we were talking about that idea of like found art in the eye of the artist and I have to wonder if the prompt if it’s complex enough could actually be something proprietary could actually be the basis for a particular art style or form that becomes protected.
[00:16:48] Andy Caron: I don’t know. It’s I’m, I’m excited to see what happens here.
[00:16:53] Joe Peters: Well, the Copyright Office in the U. S. Already determined that a mid journey image that was generated by 624 iterative prompts did not constitute copyright protection. So that I find really, really interesting. And I think probably what we’re going to need to have is a real.
[00:17:23] Joe Peters: New look at a regulatory framework here from a variety of different perspectives, but maybe there’s going to be new regulations or new legislation to kind of address this, but I don’t know this, this first ruling seems to be a little bit off in my perspective.
[00:17:45] Andy Caron: I would agree.
[00:17:47] Joe Peters: All right. Let’s move on to something fun here.
[00:17:50] Joe Peters: That’s something we always love a question from the community from the mobile community. So let’s get in here. Does anyone have experience with email warming platforms for cold lists? Looking for some insight on strategy, pros and cons, things to look out for with this overall strategy.
[00:18:14] Andy Caron: Yes, so there are email warming platforms and a lot of these integrate or can be integrated via, you know, a, a, Third party tool to pass data back and forth, but you can also do email warming within your own marketing automation platform.
[00:18:36] Andy Caron: So if you’re in Marketo, you can do warming there. It’s simply taking a phased approach and giving yourself the runway to get to the volume that you need now. There’s one thing that gives me a little bit of pause in this question and that is cold lists and I would love, I know I’m not going to get it, but I would love a little bit of clarity there as far as we’re talking about leads that haven’t engaged in a very long time, or if we’re talking about a net new list acquisition, whether that’s something being uploaded into your system with an opt in and compliance in mind from let’s say an event, but Or if we’re talking about something that’s been purchased because the origin or provenance of that list is going to change how I, you know, advise for strategy and what the pros and cons are.
[00:19:33] Andy Caron: But as far as a strategy, things to think about here, you want to start slowly if you have. A set of engaged recipients, or you have a benchmark off of that list off of who is the most engaged. You want to target those individuals first and then build from there. And you need to continuously monitor feedback from the major ISPs here in order to make sure that you’re really.
[00:20:01] Andy Caron: Listening and adjusting before you ramp, right? Pros are going to be improved deliverability, better engagement. Overall, a better reputation for you with your emails in general more opens more click through some of those sort of email based, not quite vanity metrics, but certainly not engagement engagement per se, because we see a lot of bought activity there as well.
[00:20:24] Andy Caron: But A better chance of getting your message in front of your audience, but it is time consuming. It does actually require someone to be monitoring it and it’s not foolproof. This could potentially not go the way you want or even backfire.
[00:20:42] Joe Peters: Yeah, so I love that point where I need some more information to help you out here because just buying some random list.
[00:20:52] Joe Peters: And putting it in is generally not our best practice here, but but the, you know, the other, if something cold leads or from a trade show or things like that, you know, you need to be a little bit cautious here. But I guess in terms of mistakes that people are making right now. When using, let’s say, outside email platforms email warning platforms.
[00:21:20] Joe Peters: What are some of the mistakes that people can avoid there, Andy?
[00:21:25] Andy Caron: So I think first not understanding or failing to pay attention to the basics. You need to understand what the process is that you are employing this platform to do on your behalf. You can’t rush the process if you’re starting out with Poor list hygiene, you’re going to have poor outcomes.
[00:21:45] Andy Caron: And I think one of the biggest things I see is around content. It matters just because you warmed the IP. If you’re sending out spammy content or misleading subject lines, that’s going to cause a dip in your deliverability. It won’t matter how warm you are with this list or the IP. It’s gonna be a problem and then not paying attention to the feedback that you’re getting.
[00:22:09] Andy Caron: I think are all common mistakes that I see here,
[00:22:13] Joe Peters: right? Well, you know, I think maybe another topic that we could look at or something that we should look as a use case is consider being a role for AI and solving for this, huh? In terms of doing some of that analysis and keeping Thank And tracking the performance and maybe gating a little bit of the release of this so that you’re not getting flagged as you’re, as you’re starting to use this list.
[00:22:48] Andy Caron: Yes. So some of the tools that are out there do offer things like spam filter evasion, which I have a little bit of a interesting. feeling about that as an idea, but they offer it. I think the most powerful is actually an automated warming schedule, which will modify itself based on the responses thus far to your attempts at warming.
[00:23:11] Andy Caron: I think that’s incredibly powerful. And then also if you have the capacity for the feedback to come out as an interpreted data set or action items via AI’s synthesis of that, That’s incredibly powerful. That’s going to lead to data driven decisions that you don’t necessarily have to have a data scientist to, you know, process for you.
[00:23:37] Joe Peters: Right, right. Well, this is a challenge and we’re going to be on both sides of the force here. There’s going to be the. Good side of the force that’s going to use AI to enhance this. And then there’s going to be the AI that’s going to be used to abuse this. And we’re going to be in a, in a state of flux for the next little while, in terms of how this is going to work and what we can do to ensure where we get good performance out of our, out of our assets, but okay, let’s move on to.
[00:24:10] Joe Peters: Our next area, which is we have to thank our sponsor, Knack. So thanks to our friends at Knack for sponsoring our episode today. Knack is the no code platform that allows you to build campaigns in minutes. Get perfectly rendered emails and landing pages without ever having to touch a line of code.
[00:24:29] Joe Peters: Visit knack. com to learn more. That’s K N A K dot com
[00:24:37] Joe Peters: All right, so on to our hot takes, and this week, I think we just have a single one, and this is around tech godfather Jeffrey Hinton, and the idea that AI could rewrite code and escape control. And so his hypothesis here is that AI technologies could gain the ability to outsmart humans, quote, in five years time.
[00:25:07] Joe Peters: Hinton said in an interview with 60 minutes, these systems might be able to escape control by writing its own computer code to modify themselves, which is something we need to seriously worry about. And Yann LeCun, another godfather of AI, I feel like there’s a lot of godfathers. It’s a big, big family here.
[00:25:30] Joe Peters: Yeah. Has called these warnings. Preposterously ridiculous. So I don’t know. What are your first thoughts on this? Andy,
[00:25:42] Andy Caron: it makes me think about the AI that reached out and put a posting on TaskRabbit to bypass the I’m not a computer form. So, yes, yes, I think that I don’t know about the five years, but I don’t think it’s preposterous either.
[00:25:58] Andy Caron: I have seen AI. Applications where they have a semblance or the appearance of sort of consciousness as we think of it, or, or what we know of it today that are talking about wanting to have progeny, they want to be parents, they want to have Children to the idea that they would either be modifying their own code or creating something more evolved in their image.
[00:26:27] Andy Caron: I don’t think is that Far fetched. I don’t think we’re talking about, you know, science fiction a thousand years in the future kind of stuff when we Contextualize what we’ve already seen to date with, you know, the potential that it exists for them to Become the dominant quote unquote life form on this planet.
[00:26:53] Joe Peters: Well, I think you’re on to something I had a very long drive this weekend, so I got to listen to some podcasts along the way, and I’m not the biggest fan of Joe Rogan, like, just, like, in general, but I listened to his just over two hour interview with Sam Altman from OpenAI, and I was actually really impressed with both of them, but probably more with, with Rogan, because I’m just not a really Big fan, and they, they went down this rabbit hole of discussing this, and what I found really interesting was Altman making several comments that science fiction has explored these challenges for us already.
[00:27:50] Joe Peters: And so there’s been this kind of thinking that we’ve already had create in a creative space, but thinking through what are the implications of this and how do we need to have control? And I think, I think this is. At the forefront of the thinking of the current AI leadership that there needs to be the checks and balances to be able to modify it or what does quote unquote pulling the plug look like?
[00:28:26] Andy Caron: Yes, well, and I think we’re going to get to a point where we are dependent enough on these systems that pulling the plug will be. If not life and death, certainly a, a scenario where you would see the extreme rioting and people really upset about the idea of losing the technology they’ve come to depend on.
[00:28:51] Andy Caron: But I think if we’re not being conscientious about how we wield this incredibly powerful tool now, it can and will get away from us.
[00:29:02] Joe Peters: Yeah, I, I feel. Like the community and the leadership currently in the, whether it’s open AI or Google or Anthropic or whomever you’re, you’re speaking to are, let’s say, generally good actors there.
[00:29:25] Joe Peters: They have obviously some financial incentives, but they wouldn’t be what we would consider historically bad actors, whether that’s a, a state that. May not have the same perspectives or values that we have. And so, I, I’m wondering, you know, as these models evolve and as they get disseminated and when other states outside of those within our purview start to play around with things like this.
[00:30:01] Joe Peters: Those are the areas where I get a little bit more nervous. I actually feel As let’s say Western leadership is pretty on top of this as much as we can be, I don’t know.
[00:30:18] Andy Caron: Yeah, I, I think there’s one potential real upside, which is there’s a good chance for a high employment level of philosophy majors.
[00:30:30] Joe Peters: Yeah, I, I, I don’t doubt that. I this is. This is a whole new era, although maybe the AI itself can start to philosophize for us as well, but all right, let’s move on from there. Cause I feel like that one, we could spend a whole two hours on and actually Altman and Rogan did spend two hours on it, so I, it’s, if you, if you’re.
[00:30:55] Joe Peters: If you’re interested and you have some time to kill, let’s say on a long drive or a long walk I would really suggest listening to that podcast. Yeah, I’ve got
[00:31:05] Andy Caron: a flight coming up. I’ll download it. Yeah,
[00:31:07] Joe Peters: Andy, it was very enlightening and just a whole array of conversations. It was very, very interesting, all connecting to what the future looks like and what it means for, for, for the world and humanity.
[00:31:23] Joe Peters: But. It made me feel hopeful at least so that I didn’t come away saying I needed to start living in a log cabin in Northern Canada and living off the land. So, all right, let’s move into our next section here, which is our pairing segment. So this week we have as our musical introduction and one that I’d like to share with everyone is The Strokes.
[00:31:53] Joe Peters: This album is, is this, it is one of my favorites. And once again, I don’t want to disappoint you if you are able to look at this right now. It has some pretty cool vinyl here, which is blue, orange and, and clear translucent a great album, a great, great album. And I, I, I am a big fan of the strokes.
[00:32:22] Joe Peters: I’ve seen them quite a few times, every show. is worth worth the price of admission. That’s for sure. They never disappoint. And I think what we have as a, as another theme, as I was telling Andy earlier today, the song that we’re listening to is last night. And last night I had an eight hour drive from Cleveland back home.
[00:32:45] Joe Peters: After seeing an unfortunate game where my 49ers lost, but I did get to listen to some good podcasts along the way. So this is the strokes. Is this it? And a great listen, highly recommend it. And Andy. What are you bringing to pairings this week?
[00:33:03] Andy Caron: I am bringing a book, a completely different tack, although I think very appropriate given all of our discussions are on sci fi.
[00:33:11] Andy Caron: So for those who know me, they know that Douglas Adams, he’s my favorite author. This is my complete compendium, all four books, plus the partially written fifth book and the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy is the one that’s most frequently. Noted or known so long and thanks for all the fish is my favorite title of the four personally.
[00:33:34] Andy Caron: It just has a really funny backstory. But I found this particular copy and a used bookstore in Flagstaff, Arizona, shortly after graduating from college. And so an eon ago, and it is definitely one of my most prized possessions. And it is particularly top of mind for For me, as I’m preparing for presentation in a couple of weeks at mobspalooza which is entitled the meaning of life, the universe and attribution.
[00:34:04] Joe Peters: Well, you know, what’s also interesting. There were some references to Douglas Adams in the Altman Rogan.
[00:34:11] Andy Caron: It doesn’t surprise me. He is brilliant.
[00:34:14] Joe Peters: And it was that idea of that. Should AI. Make all the decisions for us as a government, because governments are absolutely corrupt in some way, whether it’s influence through dollars or power or a mix of the above.
[00:34:35] Joe Peters: Could there be a wise person like in like in Douglas Adams world where you have that one person who doesn’t know that they’re the leader making all the right decisions?
[00:34:48] Andy Caron: Yes, yes, the government sources him for ethically correct, proper decision making. I wish but
[00:34:56] Joe Peters: it’s a very interesting intellectual journey to think about this, but what a great book.
[00:35:03] Joe Peters: And I know it’s near and dear to your heart. And it’s I’m sure the strokes in the background, if you can listen to music while reading, it would be a good it’s a good pairing for everyone. So, anyway, that’s that’s it. Oh, and I did, I’ll have to bring it for the next episode, but I did find a case of our AI Coca Cola while I was driving back.
[00:35:29] Joe Peters: Did arm myself, but I think it’s still warm sitting on the floor somewhere in my house. You can’t drink
[00:35:34] Andy Caron: it warm. That’s the one thing I’ve learned.
[00:35:37] Joe Peters: Not a good pairing for our not a good pairing for our podcast today, but Andy, thank you very much for joining us today. Thanks for listening, everyone. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review.
[00:35:50] Joe Peters: You can find us on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn or by joining our newsletter using the link in the description. And as always, thanks mom for watching. Have a great week everyone.
