Stephanie Wierwille: [00:00:00] Welcome to the No Normal Show, brought to you by BPDA marketing services firm that delivers the future to healthcare’s leading brands. This show is where we leave all things status quo, traditional old school, and boring in the dust, and celebrate the new, the powerful, the innovative, the bold, all focused around the future of healthcare, marketing, and communications. Rear, EVP of Engagement here at BPD, and I’m joined by Desiree Duncan, VP of Health Equity and Inclusion, and also Chris Bevelo, chief Transformation Officer. Hello, Des and hi Chris.
Desiree Duncan: I keep on walking in the free world. Question mark.
Chris: Oh my gosh. Who’s sang that? Neil Young,
Desiree Duncan: One of the Neils. Yeah.
Chris: I think it’s Neil Young.
Stephanie Wierwille: Well, we know it’s not Backstreet Boys.
Chris: I can’t remember
Desiree Duncan: Aw.
Chris: my keys an hour ago, but I can remember Neil Young from [00:01:00] 1993. I’m gonna go with, uh, hello. Also, I have a shout out to everybody. Um, new listener, Jenny Ringo from North Memorial Health. Hi Jenny.
Thanks for listening. We’re gonna have you on, on the show. I know you said you didn’t want to, but we’re gonna have you on the show just saying.
Stephanie Wierwille: That’s gonna be fun. Let’s go.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Stephanie Wierwille: So today we have a really good show. Um, today’s episode is all about ai, what’s happening in the world of AI marketing communications. I don’t know about you guys, but I think we, we can’t go more than five minutes on this show without mentioning ai, but time we’ve decided to dive all the way in, uh, for the entire, um, time. And that’s because there’s been a lot going on as usual. We always say that. Um, but there’s, there’s some new interesting things to cover, especially around trust and ai. So here’s just a little agenda before we get into it. of all, we all have a fun little pop culture moment to share ’cause we’ve all been watching the same thing.[00:02:00]
And it is very much, uh, kind of tied to this topic of tech and ai. Then we’ve got some new headlines, um, so some new news from OpenAI, a new MIT study that we found really interesting that I think, um, ties to, you know, the future of work and the future of society. And then our main topic is all things trust ai. Um. uh, you know, consumer sentiment around AI use within marketing and branding, but then also tech industry, uh, and organizational leaders take on the future of work. So that’s our session. I think before we get into it, we’ve got a couple little housekeeping items. One really exciting one is that we have a webinar coming up. Called the Future of Health System Chief Marketing Officer Webinar, and it’s gonna be with you, Chris and Andy Chang, CMO of UChicago Medicine, and Christine Kotler, CMO of Baptist, south South Florida. Chris, do you wanna tell us a little bit about it? [00:03:00] You’re muted.
Chris: Amazing. Take two. Yes. This is building off the study that we released a couple months ago. This. Space on about two years of, uh, really looking at the trend of new threats to the CMO role, but also the new opportunities, uh, that the future is bringing. So we’ll be diving into that with two actual health system, CMOC, MCOs, truth be told. Uh, and so we’ll be talking about all of those. We’ll talk a little bit about the threats, but we’re gonna focus on the, the opportunities. So it’ll be fun. We may be adding one more, so we’ll see.
a, maybe there’s another panelist. Stay tuned
Stephanie Wierwille: wait and see. I’m really excited about that one. Um, in August, I’ve got my calendar marked. Um, what an awesome crew. And then, uh, we’ll stay tuned for the, the last panelist. Um, and just one last note is that, um, as always, we love to [00:04:00] shout out to the No Normal Rewind, which is our newsletter, and it goes through all that we share on the No Normal show, but also gives some extra insights, all the links, all the, um.
Additional stats and facts, uh, around the topic of the week. So with that, let’s get into it. Um, as I mentioned Chris and Des, it’s been a minute since we’ve all been kind of on the same media vibe, media, uh, circuit. We were all into White Lotus pretty deep there a while back at the beginning of the year. Um, but recently we’ve all watched Mountain Head and speaking of tech and ai, mountain Head. Is very relevant. So, um, I’ll, I’ll open it up
Desiree Duncan: Irrelevant.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Des, go, go ahead.
Desiree Duncan: Yeah, so in case you haven’t watched it, uh, you know, be wary of some spoiler alerts here. Um, but essentially the movie is about, um, you know, a culmination of all of the, you know, tech figureheads that [00:05:00] we have been seeing in our lives playing out. But like all of these characters, uh, basically that they meet up at a resort in, I think, I guess Utah.
Um, and they are.
Chris: That’s their
Desiree Duncan: Yeah, someone’s, well, it’s their, like, it’s their house, but it’s like their mountain house, right? It’s not their actual like re regular residence. They’re all like, come meeting up for like a, a boys’ weekend
Chris: cottage.
Stephanie Wierwille: One of their 10
Desiree Duncan: this cotton,
Chris: That’s
Desiree Duncan: one of the 10. Um, but, you know, uh, insanity is ensuing in the rest of the world and it’s just, it really just gives that glimpse of like my.
Goodness, these are the people in charge in a way. And it just, it’s too real. It’s almost like some of these movies, these films, like nowadays, it feels like it’s, it’s less like Black Mirror where it’s like this future, like world potential. It’s like, it’s more like right now. Um, but yeah, they’re basically launched this ai, one of the guys on there, um, he had launched a recent ai, um, I guess.[00:06:00]
Piece of tech where on the social media you can create and generate your own videos, and that they’re creating all of these fakes and deep fakes and it’s just really causing complete and utter chaos. Um, and then it takes a turn. I, I, I won’t get into that turn. Uh, that was very interesting. Um, but yeah, I’m just kind of curious, Chris, your take on this boys weekend.
Chris: Uh, it was, it was, so, it’s by the guy who did succession. So if you like succession, style of, um, dialogue and character development, it’s, it’s great. I will say the twist was kind of not needed. It kind of took it in a different place. It was still entertaining, but it is, it is, to your point, as such a critique on. Like these tech bros that are worshiped, uh, these tech oligarchs, whatever you want to call ’em, and they’re apparently based on. folk. It’s kind of hard to tell who’s supposed to be who. Uh, but they’re definitely based [00:07:00] on folks like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and that kind of thing. The, creators have come out and said that. Uh, but yeah, I mean the, the whole AI thing, essentially the premise is that the AI. Uh, deep fake is so realistic, you can’t tell the difference. So reality kinda goes out the window and it is causing upheaval around the world where you have, you know, factions that are, you know, ready to fight each other, and then they see a video of like a massacre, and they, they’re like, that’s it.
We’re going, and they, you know, start wars and battles and all this strife because of, know, what they’re seeing online, which is completely not true. Um, again, that’s happening already.
Desiree Duncan: And like the president calls them and is like, we need to talk. And I’m like, wow. In what world does the president just call,
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah,
Desiree Duncan: help?
Stephanie Wierwille: about it.
Chris: they’re not only aloof, see it as like a positive, like let’s, it’s about time we shake the tree, reorganize things. It [00:08:00] literally gets to a point against borrower alert, but it literally gets to the point where they’re like, oh, we could totally run. I think it’s Columbia. Or Venezuela and they take over a country and, and it does not seem that farfetched the way they do it. especially given our friend Elon and the chainsaw and Doge and all that, and they’re like, well, we could totally run this South, south American country better than they could. Let’s leverage this to, have our own kind of utopian tech which also sounds a little like Peter Thiel, which if you saw his recent interview. Also, it’s hard to believe that’s real, but it was, he’s crazy. They ask him whether he believes in, you know, that humanity should be sustained and he takes a long 45 second pause to decide his answer. Um, anyway, it’s, it’s very entertaining. very creepy and scary and not that far removed from where we’re at or where we’re probably gonna be. that’s me, Stephanie.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, well I, [00:09:00] it was a perfect blend of, there’s comedy and parody, so it was very entertaining. But yes, as you all have said, it’s very much a, um, black mirror, but make it now, I think it’s very tech. Naval gazing in my opinion. And I guess my takeaway would be we are building these systems that let ourselves set ourselves on fire, if you will.
I think we’ve already done that a little bit with social media. We’ve talked about it, but I’m hearing you all talk about it. It’s kind of ironic ’cause I know all three of us are very bullish on AI and tech, but yet I think we also continue to look at both the positive and negative outcomes. Um, so anyway,
Chris: Oh, totally. don’t talk about that. Maybe we, maybe we will
Stephanie Wierwille: I.
Chris: But I had a dinner with my family and my, one of my daughters has graduated from college and her degree is in digital audiences, which is pretty cool. But I’m trying to talk to her about AI and she is, um, just will not hear it. She just will not hear it because it’s, you know, it’s terrible. [00:10:00] It’s destroying the planet. It’s sucking up all of our energy and our water and the people in Ven Memphis can’t breathe. of it is true. All of her points are true, but I’m trying to be like, Hey, you, you kind of need to understand this. I understand it’s gonna be our new tech overlord, but, uh, as we’ll hear shortly, uh, your. Future may depend on understanding it. So it is, we don’t really go to the that of it, but it’s all too real.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, as we get into these topics, I think we will hit both, both sides of it a little bit more. So let’s move into our headlines. There’s a couple interesting headlines. We’ll, we could go all day on them, but we’ll finish, just touch on them. But, um, the first is this really interesting continued anticipation around some hardware that OpenAI may be building.
So, a. Few, I believe month, maybe a month ago or so, Sam Altman sat down with Johnny. Ive, and Johnny Ive is the, um, apple [00:11:00] iPhone designer. And they mentioned in their sit down interview, it was like in a coffee shop or a bar, uh, that OpenAI has acquired io, which is i’s startup and $6.5 billion deal. And. What came out of that was this development of a new hardware device.
So at the time they said it was a pocket size screen free third core device that will kind of be the new iPhone, if you will. And then more recently, rumors are swirling. Chris, I’m have your voice in my head here that it could be a pen. Um.
Chris: No,
Stephanie Wierwille: of, uh, maybe anticlimactic. We’ll see if it’s really a pen.
But anyway, um, I know you all had been looking at this. What was, what was your take when you saw this? What do you think about the, the feature of hardware?
Chris: I let Des give a real take before I give my take.
Desiree Duncan: Tell you, I want to hear your take. Yeah, I’m just, I’m like, it’s been lackluster, like any update has been lackluster, so I’m, I’ll wait until I see it.
Chris: Yeah, I just [00:12:00] imagine like, remember how Steve Jobs used to like launch the iPad or something? So it’s like a giant stage and they’re like, is everybody ready? And there’s like a curtain and the curtain draws back and there’s a table with just a pen sitting on it. And also I will say, um. Whenever I hear you talk about it, Stephanie, it reminds me of one of the best movies of all time, um, say anything where John Cusack falls in love in high school and then his girlfriend breaks up with him and she gives him a pen.
And one of the most famous lines is he says, I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen. that’s what I think about when I hear like, Ooh, Jonathan Ives is gonna design something and it’s gonna be a. A pen, that pen’s gonna like fly me to San Francisco for half the price. I’m
Stephanie Wierwille: Hmm,
Chris: really exciting.
Stephanie Wierwille: that
Desiree Duncan: It might, who knows at this point?
Stephanie Wierwille: Sorry. What does.
Desiree Duncan: Who knows? It might at this point.
Chris: Well, if it’s like a wand now that’s different. If you had [00:13:00] said a wand like, Hey, branding idea. Open ai, you should call it a wand. And all of a sudden now when you unveil it, it’s gonna be like, Ooh, look at this wand. But if you call it a pen, not gonna not gonna go there.
Stephanie Wierwille: I always did wanna be Harry Potter, so I will, I will take a wand. Um, okay, so we’ll wait and see, and hopefully there’ll be, you know, more developments in this space. And maybe it will be more than a, more than a pen because Altman says it’s gonna be the fastest. Just a hundred million unit product launch ever.
It’s gonna redefine ai, it’s gonna redefine hardware forever. So that’s a pretty big promise. So we’ll see. Okay. Yeah, he did. He did. He teased it.
Chris: a pen or is this just your guess?
Stephanie Wierwille: No, they did not mention a pen. This is, said it was going to be a pocket sized, screen free third core device, whatever that means. And then in the last week, the rumors have started flying.
You know how they do of like people who know something about [00:14:00] something say that it’s gonna be a pen. So.
Chris: Okay.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
Chris: Can’t wait.
Stephanie Wierwille: so another headline. We have this, this, this one hit the, um, hit the news feeds, I think last week or so and started some interesting debates, which is a new MIT study that suggests that generative AI is eroding critical thinking skills.
So this was done with a brain scan study. And it tested users who, um, created content or, uh, or wrote or researched with chat GBT and produced essays. And then they compared that to folks who wrote original content or folks who, who Googled, um, and used a wide variety of research. And so the finding, I don’t think this is terribly surprising, but I’ll see what you guys think.
Um, the finding was that. Generative AI users showed lower brain activity and the EEG scans um, showed that cognitive thinking, uh, would be in decline if we all lean in. [00:15:00] So you all feel I.
Desiree Duncan: In some ways it feels a part of this larger, like a mega trend of like, our brains gonna work anymore in a few years. Uh, I’m thinking of the study from a, the report from earlier this year around reading comprehension, going down for. For students, kids in grade school, um, and then around college students.
And hearing from like professor friends of mine, it’s like, oh, these, these kids, they don’t read books anymore. And it is, and I don’t know, it feels kind of daunting. Um, but I know that folks are like, there was an, uh, recent article, I think just this week from Harvard Gazette about, you know, discussing interventions around this.
It’s like, are we just kind of running with the headlines around this or actually digging deeper into what’s happening? So for example, like, I know for me, like reading was always kind of tough in school just because like my, my brain isn’t wired that way. Right? Had there been, you know, Spotify [00:16:00] audio books, what Hot, what have you probably would’ve done a lot better.
Um, but this idea of. How do we keep that part of our brain so active? You know, is it discussion? Is it, you know, really actually sitting with things? But oftentimes we do kind of lean into that. I’m just gonna copy and paste and just kind of keep it pushing. I don’t know, Chris, your thoughts.
Chris: I guess it’s not surprising. I mean, isn’t that what AI is supposed to do? It is supposed
Desiree Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Chris: do things that humans could do and do it better. So if it does it, then why would you be using your brain that level? Um, so in that sense, it’s not really surprising, I guess I would expect that, but yeah, it has broader implications, but it sometimes it’s, I don’t know. Um, I think the stuff you’re talking about, Des is a hundred percent real. Uh, so I, I do get concerned about. The ability to, to, to think critically and all that kind of thing. And it’s also sometimes it reminds me of like, oh, you know, like calculators will [00:17:00] destroy people’s ability to do math. And it’s like, well, do I need to do math if I have a calculator?
Like, wait, why is that a bad thing? Right? Like, I shouldn’t be using my brain cells to add difficult numbers when I can just do it on a machine. Um, but that assumes that I’m using it then to do. things that are worthy. if AI takes away all the worthy things, uh, which is a real. Possibility when you get to the headlines we’re gonna talk about later, and know, we’re gonna have to figure out what, what are people gonna be doing if they don’t have jobs? Um, and if, if the, the AI overlords take over X percent of jobs and people are just universal income, let’s say that we can agree on that, which just seems farfetched, what are they gonna be doing? Because if they’re just sitting around doing crossword puzzles, we’re in trouble.
Stephanie Wierwille: Aw, we love a good crossword puzzle. Um, yeah, I think I’m just, I, I know I’m a, I’m an optimist on this subject, but I just, [00:18:00] I kind of, I won’t say I throw out studies like this. It’s interesting. I like to read through them. I like to consider them, but I’m totally with you, Chris, on the calculator metaphor, an example.
’cause I do remember, you know, back in the day, especially with scientific calculators and. Those just made us more powerful. Those just made us all better mathematicians. Those just made us all, you know, be able to understand concepts quicker and faster. And you can think of almost any technology throughout history, um, that would’ve had this similar controversy.
And here we are. So I think we’ve all, you know, all along the way, been stressing AI is a supplement, not a substitute, is a thinking partner. And in fact, when it’s a thinking partner, um, the, the, it actually levels up our ability to be strategic. So. Anyway, I’m a little frustrated by studies like this just causing controversy.
Go ahead, Dez.
Desiree Duncan: And in a way, it saved lives. Well, it saved lives. Think about like all the calculations we could have gotten wrong when building that bridge, [00:19:00] right? Think about all the bridges that have collapsed in the past that don’t anymore. So like having these tools like help support in that way for the, the larger reasoning, um, uh, capabilities.
But yeah. Chris, you had something.
Chris: somebody from, as somebody who lives in Minneapolis, were the not very old. Massive interstate bridge fell into the river. sure the bridges are better, uh, but I like, here’s the danger, right? Like math is one thing, history is another example. Like why, why memorize history? If you can just like look it up in Google, whatever it, you don’t memorize history for the facts.
You memorize it to learn about what happened and why. So if. When that goes away, that’s bad news already see that, I would say is a fair, I mean we’ve always seen that, I guess, but um, people that don’t understand the past and people that misunderstand the past, it makes it easy to manipulate what the past really [00:20:00] was.
We don’t learn the important lessons to move forward, so, yeah. If AI takes over all that, we’re just, and we’re just sitting doing crosswords, no shade to crossword. Stephanie, I love crosswords. Um, not as much as wordle or connections, but I do love crosswords. But like, you can’t, we’re, we’re gonna be in trouble.
If people don’t have something meaningful in their lives, I can guarantee you
Stephanie Wierwille: Well,
Chris: be true.
Stephanie Wierwille: my, my last, this might tie into as we get into the jobs conversation, but the last kind of to, to that, to that point, Chris, I think that. type of tech like this, especially ai, it just separates the, the, those who are hardwired for hard and love thinking and love the critical thinking and love the strategic element and love using AI to learn as opposed to those who are going to want to take the shortcuts.
So, um, I don’t know. It’s almost an interesting.
Chris: to 85 ratio you just described there. So again, 85% of the [00:21:00] people are in the latter group that you just described. We are in
Stephanie Wierwille: Well, that’s depressing.
Chris: Well, don’t you think? I mean, I don’t think most people wanna take the hard path. They don’t.
Stephanie Wierwille: I, I have more faith in humanity than that. I don’t know.
Chris: I’m not, I’m not shading humanity. I’m just like, you know, people wanna live their life. They
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
Chris: to work through hard challenges. Most of them.
Stephanie Wierwille: Hmm.
Chris: I don’t
Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. I don’t know. I guess we could study that. I guess that could, we could study that. Yeah. Okay. So let’s get into our main topic here, which is continuation of these topics. So our main topic, uh, really started, uh, by this, um, some new information around consumer trust in AI generated content.
But from there we have tentacles going everywhere, so we’re gonna start there. Um, and it was a study that was published by Harvard, um, Chen’s education. Our Center for Health Communication, and they did a study around AI generated news specifically. And so they had, um, content that had AI generated [00:22:00] labels, and it was fully disclosed.
This was created in collaboration with ai. I don’t know what the exact language was, but there was a disclosure label. so the majority of, uh, of study participants, um, were uncomfortable with any content that was generated in partnership with ai. my little caveat here is this was around news, so I think we have to consider where the state of news is and the trust of news already. Um, but it does get us thinking about things like, you know, marketing and, um, how AI is used. Not, and I’m not just talking about generating content, right? But in. All realms, like generated video or even data or machine learning. So, um, let me just pause there and see what you all thought about that study.
And then I have a lot more sentiment stats for you.
Desiree Duncan: Christopher.
Chris: Yes. I, I don’t know, like my thoughts are just, [00:23:00] I’m not surprised. It can, um, I. And I think there will be an issue here for quite some time until all of this becomes way more mainstream. Um, you know, I don’t, I, I’m not surprised that people don’t trust it just off the bat. Right. But it’s, what’s ironic is that relative to what. Right, like don’t trust ai, but you trust social media. You trust the internet. You trust news. You trust. Like some of the stuff you just mentioned, Stephanie, like I. Just because data is presented, that’s not AI generated. Why would you trust that? Why would you trust that any more than AI generated stuff?
Right? I mean, humans are, it’s again, this brings me back to like, oh, we can’t have self-driving cars because they kill a person once a month. like, well, human driven cars kill of people a month. So like it’s gotta be relative, but [00:24:00] I just don’t think we’re there yet as a society. So it’s not surprising in that way to me.
Desiree Duncan: Yeah, it feels a part of the typical cycle of brand new thing happens. Like, what is this? I don’t trust a, like, you know, vaccine. No. Uh, but I will trust this random like, ivermectin pill over here that’s like not even rated for, I. Humans. But, um, we saw it with a online banking, right? Like, I’m not putting all my inter my, my finances and all that on the internet.
Here we are like using the complete internet for the Venmo and the cash apps and, and like, it’s insane. Like I actually just, I didn’t realize that we were at the stage where you can put your phone up to the little, like, swipe thing and play through Apple Pay now. I’m like, wow. Um, you know, we always,
Chris: DE’s
Desiree Duncan: what.
Chris: a little bit.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah,
Desiree Duncan: I’m sorry, I still pull out my card.
Stephanie Wierwille: Sorry.
Desiree Duncan: Oh.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, the pay with your hand at Amazon. I’m obsessed with that. I now walk to Kroger and I’m like, do this with my hand and it, I’m [00:25:00] like, where’s your, oh, get with that
Desiree Duncan: At Kroger even.
Stephanie Wierwille: No,
Desiree Duncan: Okay. I am.
Chris: I’m trying. I’m so confused. Your palm print.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Have you not de des, you’re in Seattle, so you’ve probably, so Amazon, any Amazon location or Amazon owned, you know, like Whole Foods you pay with your palm,
Desiree Duncan: Apparently I’m so a ludite and I’m like paying with checks, uh, compared to everyone else.
Chris: This is, this is why it’s so funny that people are all worried about this government run database of. We’re all voluntarily giving our, our eye scans and our thumbprints and our palm prints and our DNA, like, we’re just like, Hey, 1999, you can give me your DNA and I’ll tell you what your great-grandfather country came from. But
Desiree Duncan: If it gives us what we.
Chris: D like it’s, that ship is so sailed. Anyway, Dez, we so cut you off. I’m sorry.
Desiree Duncan: No, it’s all good. But I mean, that goes to prove the point around we will do it if it’s something that we feel that we’ll benefit from. If it’s getting us [00:26:00] what we want, then yeah, take all of my data, take all my blood and all of that. But if it’s something that we are even kind of remotely like, eh, I don’t know, it’s, yeah, it’s, yeah.
Confirmation.
Chris: new.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
Chris: One thing that’s interesting, I’ll just gonna throw this in here ’cause it might be a better place, but I’m not sure we are recording this. As the big beautiful bill has just passed the house, which means it will become law. We will not get into all of that other than silver lining.
I don’t even know if I call it silver lining. of it originally was. Outlawing any state driven AI regulation, like literally states couldn’t regulate it and the Senate took that out. So as far as I know, we are still able to regulate ai. that legislation will probably come back, but, so at least there will be some controls on it.
But I just thought that’s kinda like breaking news, a do [00:27:00] breaking news thing.
Stephanie Wierwille: It is breaking news. That’s a big deal.
Chris: Yeah. Let’s, let’s move on
Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Maybe, maybe next time we dig into some of the healthcare specifics of what landed there.
Chris: Yeah. There’s, turns out there’s a, you know, like trillion dollar impact on healthcare. But let’s leave that
Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. We’ll try to
Chris: come back to it.
Stephanie Wierwille: that in a little box and set it over in the corner for a second.
Chris: we’ll just set it over
Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Um, so back to back to consumer sentiment on ai. Um, I think, I think.
Chris: to a more
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Um, I think the takeaway I have is, I totally agree with you all that familiarity, breathe breeds trust and does, I think your point is key, which is we’ll give up a lot for convenience and that’s been proven time and time again, whether it’s data, um, or.
Or you know, anything. Um, and so just because there are stats out there floating around about consumer sentiment on ai, that doesn’t mean stop your agenda. That doesn’t mean stop moving. ’cause there are [00:28:00] also stats that show that those who are more familiar with it are more excited. Younger generations are more optimistic.
And specifically healthcare is an area where people, Americans, um, based on the stats, see promise with ai. They have some reservations. Yes. Um, but anyway, I just think it’s really critical to. Don’t, don’t let that stop progress, um, or stop teams from exploring. Any last notes on that before we go to our tentacles that came out from here?
No. Okay.
Chris: tentacles. There’s more
Stephanie Wierwille: yeah, there’s a lot of tentacles.
Chris: pretty nasty octopus
Stephanie Wierwille: Okay,
Chris: dealt with there.
Stephanie Wierwille: so, so you talked about it earlier, Chris, on I think some of the more recent difficult discussions that are happening in the headlines. And I think that they’re part of why this whole trust issue is, is really than it seems on the surface.
Um, I’ll just hit these three quick, or I think two. Three, three quick headlines, um, and we can discuss, [00:29:00] but there’s, in the last week, news came out that meta is, um, rolling out AI to handle 90 plus percent of its risk and privacy assessments. So essentially replacing human reviewers, um, with the really. I would argue important stuff, um, around risk assessments and privacy and security and societal impacts.
No big deal. That was a, um, shift that came from NPR. Um, there was another piece of new news where Amazon, CEO has said that he expects that, um, that AI will. Reduce the number of corporate jobs and the change our way work is done and then doubling down on that. Just this morning hit um, from Wall Street Journal around a whole slew of CEOs that are talking about AI and jobs.
So I might throw this to you first, Chris, ’cause I know you’ve been watching this for quite some time and, um, you know, it absolutely exacerbates this discussion around trust.
Chris: Yeah, and I mean even, [00:30:00] even more recent than that is Microsoft announcing 9,000 people laid off. 9,000 people. We, so I, I mean, this goes to trust, right? Um, I, there’s just so much we could, we could talk about here. I think the, the one that’s just so intriguing to me is I. Um, having presented on the Joe Public 2030 book, and Stephanie, you’ve probably had this experience for a while. We’ve been presenting on that for three years now, and in there, one of the trends, Copernican consumer is about technology. We’ve, we’ve touched on it, right? wearables, all these things. Ai, um, blockchain really changing how consumers engage healthcare and, and I. And I can remember presenting to health systems where physicians have really not approved of throwing AI in [00:31:00] there, right?
They always just like, whoa, wait a second. Ai, they’re not gonna blah, blah, blah. Just very defensive about ai and in the beginning I just kinda let it go. And then for a while I was kinda like, Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. This is, this is real. Like people were looking at ai, um, and I think I’ve been saying not to those groups ’cause they would probably throw me out the room.
But even on this podcast, what doctors do, there’s a lot of what doctors do, but so much of what they do is assess data and. Act on data, They, they use data in all kinds of diagnostics, all kinds of tests, kinds of evaluation to assess a situation, a patient, and determine what is going on with that person. And then from that dictate a, a course to go forward. That’s all data. And so. I mean there’s been efforts for a long time. IBM Watson is, is not [00:32:00] the least of which to take all that data and try to understand it, AI or not. So it seems inevitable to me that eventually AI can be able to do what data can do or what doctors can do.
And this is really kind of showing that. Um, and I know there’s a lot of people that don’t want to hear that, but again, it’s just data. And we’re not there today. Like, I don’t know that I would trust ai, an AI doctor to diagnose something by itself, but I personally would not have an issue with my doctor saying, oh, we’ve got, we’ve got a, a AI tool that helps us, and that makes us feel a lot more confident in this. Or it kind of uncovered the potential for that. So we wanna do an extra test. Uh, but that’s me ’cause I’m in the business. Uh, so we’ll have to see how trust and, and all this comes together. But to me, the only thing surprising about that particular study, and I know there’s a lot more in there, is that it’s that it [00:33:00] as soon as we did. It’s, you know, it’s here.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, so we’ll link it in the show notes so people can dig in more. But, um, just this, this really interesting, um, announcement around this area of doctors and AI where Microsoft says that their new system can diagnose patients four times more accurately than human doctors. So we’ll link that so you can spend time with it, but that’s a pretty big deal, pretty big announcement.
It’s, they’re quote unquote step towards medical super intelligence. Obviously, we don’t wanna just believe it because they have a. Reason for saying that. Um, but it really goes to what you’re saying, Chris, which is, um, data is the basis of knowledge worker jobs, and that’s doctors included. And, and it’s not all of the job, but it’s the foundation of it.
And so that raises all these larger questions. Um, des what are your, what are your notes?
Desiree Duncan: You know, I, I might take this into a little different territory, but it kind of continues our [00:34:00] earlier conversations, but essentially, what is the end game here? I. Right. So if we’re bringing in AI and we are going to boost pro, um, business production, right, with fewer, uh, humans, right? Um, but what makes your company run and successful is that.
Humans are actually spending the money that we earn from our jobs on your products, on the things, right? So if none of us have jobs, right, and none of us, uh, then have healthcare that employers are, you know, giving to, you know, insurers that then takes us into actually go to these doctors, then, then what are we doing?
Like, how is anything kind of. Growing. That’s, I mean, when when I listen to these conversations, I can’t help but just think about like, none of this is actually going to end up in service of what the actual need is, which is like driving business. So the biggest business objective [00:35:00] is having people with money that are able to spend on your products, the things that you’re selling.
So, I don’t know, I guess that’s just my question is total tangent, but yeah.
Chris: that’s why you, you have some of the leading advocates for something like universal income or like Elon Musk, because
Desiree Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Chris: realize like, well, the economy doesn’t work that way. You can’t replace 10%. 20%, of the jobs and have the economy function, it just won’t work.
Desiree Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Chris: what are you going to do?
Right? These people don’t have to work. Theoretically. Again, this is all theoretical, but kind of creepy, of close. Uh, that’s where you’re gonna have to have something like universal income. But I mean, now if you say that out loud, mean you get, you get. Called a bunch of dirty names. Right. That’s, that’s, can’t, you can’t say that without being called some political names, which I won’t get into, but the [00:36:00] reality, right?
And, and I think like does it’s, it’s the Jurassic Park line. Right. What’s his name? Um, I can’t think of his name. The scientist in the original Jurassic Park who says, your, your scientists were so busy figuring out how they could do that. Didn’t ask to stop and ask why. Right. When he’s talking about DNA and dinosaurs, that’s where we’re at.
And the, the problem is the cast outta the bag. The toothpaste is outta the tube you like, even that’s. Uh, conversation of how do we regulate it here doesn’t mean it will be slowed down because I didn’t mean China will keep going or someone in Europe or anybody else. So it, it just feels like that’s the path forward and there’s not much that’s going to stop it. So we gotta be realistic about what you’re saying. is the ultimate outcome of this? And obviously that’s gonna hit healthcare. Like if we’re gonna bring it all the way back to what this podcast is about. It’s gonna hit healthcare [00:37:00] marketers, it’s gonna hit, you know, our organizations. So I just think it’s better to kind of hit it head on and be and talk about it.
But boy is that hard to do.
Stephanie Wierwille: Can I give you my, you know, I tend to Pollyanna a little bit. You can totally bring me out of this. You already D are, I mean, and I’m not blind to the consequences, but I just wanna paint the, here’s the positive outcome scenario. There’s obviously negative outcome scenarios, there’s disaster scenarios, but the positive outcome scenario is a couple things.
Number one. And now I’m just repeating Sam Walton and Kool-Aid. But the positive outcome is AI solves these big problems that humans have not been able to solve with massive data compute. And so I think like as a human, no matter what your role is, whether it’s healthcare clinical or healthcare marketing or whatever, it’s asking the question of like, what is the problem that we’ve never been able to solve that we could now solve?
That puts VA human value the through the roof. The other [00:38:00] interesting scenario that comes to mind for me is. A, AI enables everybody to be entrepreneurial, and it’s, it’s that, you know, again, overly optimistic view of these autonomous companies or, you know, individuals being able to start businesses.
But even inside organizations, think of the innovation that can happen if people approach it with critical thinking skills. And if people take the reins on, I wanna do what’s hard and not what’s lazy. So. and I also think again, it would be an awesome outcome for us to be able to imagine being able to produce far more in foreign less time and actually spend time doing the things we were built to do, like socialize and talk.
You know, so I’m gonna stop there ’cause I know I get a little too fired up. But like, I think we can build that world if we march toward it. And also consider how do we prevent the consequences.
Desiree Duncan: Yeah, that’s I.
Stephanie Wierwille: No, I’m wrong.
Chris: [00:39:00] I should, I mean like we don’t need AI to tell us the solution to healthcare.
Stephanie Wierwille: We don’t.
Chris: It’s a, it’s a, it’s socialized medicine. I’m
Stephanie Wierwille: Okay.
Chris: like the healthiest countries have a socialized medicine program. It’s also the least expensive. So do we really need AI to tell us that? Right. Do we really need AI to tell us that, Hey, if we’re gonna take, if, if me AI is gonna take 50% of your humans jobs, the way to resolve that is universal income. Okay. Does that mean we’re going to, still have to do it. We still have to agree to it. That’s my point. And I think like these solutions, you don’t have to agree with me on socialized medicine, that’s fine. But these solutions. Aren’t that like mysterious? They just, they require, will, they require like collaboration and cooperation? And that seems to be, all of those seem to be in short order. So that’s why I’m, I wish I could, [00:40:00] I wish I could crawl into your brain, Stephanie, and live there for a week ’cause it would make me a much happier person. I’m sure I would be a
Desiree Duncan: and I only bring the, and I only bring it up for just those that are key decision makers and CEOs to really think about that some of the decisions around, okay, we’re going to, you know, get rid of the human so that, you know, we can have all of the, the robots do the things like what are the imp actual implications of that.
Think a little bit further, but cool beans.
Stephanie Wierwille: well
Chris: This is wide ranging.
Stephanie Wierwille: was.
Chris: deep and I, and thank God Stephanie is on here because nobody would ever listen to my old man on the lawn. Dour, sad perspective on life.
Stephanie Wierwille: your perspective is I think, more realistic, so.
Chris: is
Desiree Duncan: Oh,
Chris: me going right there.
Desiree Duncan: circus
Chris: how I stay functional. at that everybody.
If you can’t
Desiree Duncan: Wow.
Chris: if [00:41:00] you’re listening, I’m holding up the, the magic beans candy and sustenance. They’re
Desiree Duncan: Said, no.
Chris: They’re the most amazing candy that
Stephanie Wierwille: I think there’s a metaphor in there for the topic just now, so, uh, anyway.
Chris: think, I think, I think, uh, I won’t say what I think about AI and circus peanuts.
Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Well, when you start with Mountain Head and in with circus peanuts, then you know there’s a whole maze in between. And that’s what we just went down. So we, we love to talk about the hard things on this show and think about all implications, uh, big and small. Um, but with that, thank you all for joining.
Um, Des Thank you, Chris.
Desiree Duncan: Loved this whole journey for us.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Love it. For us on a, on a Thursday before the 4th of July, what a great sendoff for, um, love it for us.
Chris: we recommend, do we recommend Mountain Head?
Stephanie Wierwille: Yes,
Chris: we do,
Stephanie Wierwille: we do. I [00:42:00] do. Des
Chris: do.
Desiree Duncan: One single watch. Yeah.
Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn’t like
Desiree Duncan: Yeah.
Stephanie Wierwille: watch it six times. Um, it’s not
Desiree Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Stephanie Wierwille: but anyway. Um, okay.
Chris: it’s no
Stephanie Wierwille: It’s no wicked. Yeah. Um, so I’m like, how do I wrap after that? Um, thank you all for listening and um, we love to hear from you.
Shoot us an email if, if you’ve got anything, if you disagree with anything we said, I’m sure there’s a hundred things that disagree with that we just talked about. So our email is no normal@bpdhealthcare.com. And until next time, don’t satisfied with the nor. Don’t be satisfied with the normal because. The world is not normal in all of this. Uh, and we’ll talk to you next week.
Chris: Bye bye.
