Newsletter #2: What would Steve Jobs do about Generative AI?

Before Steve Jobs died, he wrote a beautiful essay that speaks to his deep appreciation for humanity. 

No doubt, it’s critically important to consider the profile of the leaders driving these super powerful Generative AI systems during this incredibly exciting time. 

Let’s put being pro-humanity towards the top of the list? ;)

Ok, here we go. 

1: What would Steve Jobs do about Generative AI?

During the Napster 1.0 era, Steve Jobs famously convinced the music industry to unbundle the CD by embracing MP3 technology in a way that enabled labels / artists to satisfy their commercial interests while giving fans more of what they wanted and how they wanted it (link).

The Napster 2.0 era, powered by Generative AI, might have just started after an anonymous user created a fake Drake and The Weeknd track which spread across the world wide web, quickly. “0 to 100” quickly. 

Generating a lot of attention and reactions (link).

This opens up all sorts of questions about Generative AI’s impact on the Media + Entertainment industry.

The one I keep revisiting the most…are we at a tipping point in the decline of centralized media / publishing and the rise of decentralized media / publishing?

The answer to that question isn’t clear but it seems like most believe the net result will be fans will get more of what they want, how they want it and they will have an opportunity to move from passive consumers to more active participants in the creative process.

When thinking about these questions, it’s important to consider different responses from industry players. 

You have Universal Music Group appearing to draw a line in the sand:

"The training of generative AI using our artists' music (which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs [Demand Side Platforms], begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation,"

Then you have artists such as Grimes expressing a different perspective:

“I’ll split 50% royalties on any successful AI-generated song that uses my voice,” Grimes announced on Twitter on Sunday, April 23. “Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings.” (link)

Then you have uber talented leaders that stretch across multiple industry stakeholder groups such as Troy Carter saying things like this on his Twitter feed:

“This is crazy!!! Fake Drake featuring The Weekday. How will the industry respond? There’s no trademark protections for voice.” (link)

“Ghostwriter is the new Banksy. He should never reveal his identity.” (link)

“1/The music biz is on the brink of the biggest technological shift I’ve personally seen. The emergence of AI Agents is set to change the game and the role of the talent manager is no exception.” (link)

Is Generative AI a threat to artists, their ability to create and monetize their intellectual property?

Is Generative AI going to enable artists to create more, enabling fans to consume more?

I can’t help but think about - “What would Steve Jobs do?”...

When thinking about this stuff, another Media + Entertainment example to consider is the “Faux Brian vs Fake Brian” on CNBC featuring Generative AI enabled Voice technology version of Brian Sullivan (link). 

You can see where this is headed…

2: Access to an unlimited supply of intelligence - threatening or exciting?

There are a lot of ways to look at the impact AI will have on the labor force.

I tend to be in the camp that focuses on research reports and investor perspectives. From UPenn / OpenAI (link), Goldman Sachs (link) and those seeking to invest to pull the future forward. 

One of those investors, Packy McCormick , recently published “Intelligence Superabundance” (link), a post that’s most definitely worth reading.

Packy unpacks the idea that instead of eliminating jobs, what if by creating access to an unlimited amount of intelligence, “the increased supply of intelligence will create more demand for tasks that require intelligence”... 

“As supply or capacity increases, customers will simply demand more and better products. Latent demand grows over time, as consumers see what’s possible today and demand more and better tomorrow.

This is apparent in the world of atoms, where induced demand was born. When we get cheaper energy, we simply demand more and better energy-consuming products.

When we get more lanes, we simply demand more driving. I suspect the same will be true for intelligence.

Will AI take lawyers’ jobs, or will we simply sue each other more? 

Will it take designers’ jobs, or will we demand better design? 

Will it take doctors’ jobs, or will we all demand our own concierge doctors? 

Will it take engineers’ jobs, or will we demand more personalized and higher-quality software?

Will it replace startups, or will we demand more diverse and better instantiations of founders’ visions, faster?

Will it take writers’ jobs, or will readers just demand higher-quality, more well-researched, more original work?” 

Packy referenced Harvey (link), a Sequoia Capital backed start-up that was the first company built on top of GPT-4 and is aligned with the idea of “Intelligence Superabundance”.

“Harvey is the first and best instantiation of a new breed of company: the AI super app. Harvey is in the business of giving people superpowers. First, lawyers. Next, professional services. Eventually, all of knowledge work.”  

“Harvey is starting with the legal market, which is $300Bn+ in the U.S. alone. Legal work is the ultimate text-in, text-out business—a bull’s-eye for language models—and Harvey has already begun to make an impact. Harvey helps legal teams find leverage in time-consuming tasks like legal research, due diligence and more, allowing them to focus on client relationships and strategic work that truly moves the needle. In February, Allen & Overy became the first announced enterprise customer. In March, PwC announced it was coming on board. More than 15,000 law firms are on the waiting list today.”

3: Instead of those annoying (but effective) “Intel Inside” ads, how about “Generative AI Inside” instead?

My apologies if anyone who reads this was involved in those campaigns, they certainly were effective at the branding / recall level but I never understood what the campaign meant…“Intel Inside” is a good thing, right…but what’s the difference between ‘Intel Inside’ vs ‘Not Intel Inside’? Why “Intel Inside”?

I’m sure I’m missing something but any-who…A campaign I’d 1000% bet on? 

”Generative AI Inside. Changing the way we interact with all software.”

I really enjoyed - “Generative AI Will Change Your Business. Here’s How to Adapt” via Harvard Business Review (link) which hit on a number of tangible insights.

“Generative AI will change the nature of how we interact with all software, and given how many brands have significant software components in how they interact with customers, generative AI will drive and distinguish how more brands compete.”

Maybe I’ll use GAI to mash up a couple of my favorite campaigns (i.e. Apple “Think Different”, Nike “Just Do It” etc) to create a “Generative AI Inside” campaign... ;)

We could do another one...“GPS Technology Inside” (link) or did I just take it too far? ;) 

4: Jeff McMillan ( Morgan Stanley - Chief Analytics + Data Officer) → I love when leaders Build In Public and bring you inside of how they really think, signal vs noise etc….

In March, Morgan Stanley announced a partnership with OpenAI (link) where Jeff McMillan had a quote within the CNBC coverage about the way they’re harnessing Generative AI that really caught my attention:

“The idea behind the tool, which has been in development for the past year, is to help the bank’s 16,000 or so advisors tap the bank’s enormous repository of research and data, said McMillan.

‘People want to be as knowledgeable as the smartest person' in our firm, McMillan said. ‘This is like having our chief strategy officer sitting next to you when you’re on the phone with a client.’”

No surprise when you consider the way Jeff unpacks his thoughts on “Becoming an Intelligent Organization, The Next Best Action System and Data Science, Machine Learning + AI at Morgan Stanley” in his killer 3 part original content series with Dataiku (link).

Well worth watching as it's full of high value perspective that feels very real in a very good way.

Also, I don’t think it’s possible to pound the table hard enough on how cool it is when senior leaders unpack their mental models, informed by the work they do in the arena. Tangible insights, ideas and innovation. The real stuff.

A few of my favorite quotes:

“You know, oftentimes organizations say they want to be an analytically empowered organization or my new favorite one is we want to be an AI organization. It’s like saying you want to be a facts driven organization or you want to be a phone driven organization. I think it’s the most absurd concept. And in 30 years, people will laugh about it when we talk about AI being a goal. AI is a tool, no different than any of the other tools that have come before. No different than mobile, no different than the Internet. No different than business process improvement.”

“But what we’re trying to do with things like next best action is not inform the decisionmaking of 2 or 6 or 10 of the senior most people in the organization. We still do that and I don’t want to say that’s not important because it totally is. But with a thing like Next Best Action is 2 or 3 data scientists who work on these algorithms are able to shape the decision making of 15,000 advisors. Right, the scale that you’re able to impact is astronomical versus the old model. And the key though, and this is really the difference, is that you have to embed your data science into your workflows.”

“And my recommendation, my strong recommendation to companies is to stop trying to eliminate the humans out of the equation with all of this stuff. The future, at least for the next 5-10 years, maybe even longer is taking really smart people with really good predictive analytics and putting those pieces together. And I personally think that’s the winning combination for at least the near term.”

Humans + Machines. Not humans vs Machines.

Also, BIG shoutout to Raymond Velez who opened my eyes up to Next Best Action soon after I joined Razorfish in 2016 which really accelerated my AI journey.  

While I called Razorfish the “New York Yankees of Transformation” in my 2016 essay (link) I published when I joined, their legendary quote reflecting their core ethos from day one still gives me chills when I read it.

“Everything that can be digital will be digital.” - Razorfish 

You think about 1995 and how far ahead they saw into the future and then pulled it forward, behind this vision is why Razorfish is / was Razorfish...

That’s it for this week. I hope this added to your Sunday reading.

Alec