Kara Swisher · 51:56
Comes from two. Hi, Kara and Scott, not mister and missus Swisher. As an independent author, I've been watching, the rise of narrative AI with interest. Right now, their prose is fever dreams, but it's gonna improve. Do you see a future for human authors? And if AI written books flood the market, what can human creatives do to stand out? Thank you. Two Verd. I don't know, Scott. What do you think?
Scott Galloway · 52:19
Do you like the idea of being married to me? Be honest.
Kara Swisher · 52:22
I don't. I'm thinking of seeking a divorce. Yeah. I'm gonna hire a very high priced divorce attorney.
Scott Galloway · 52:27
I've already talked to every divorce lawyer in town to contaminate them.
Kara Swisher · 52:30
Thanks, Tom.
Scott Galloway · 52:31
I had the best divorce in the world. Was called my my divorce tragically amicable. We're still friends. Mine was Mine actually made it more sad. I'm like, wait. Why are we getting divorced again?
Kara Swisher · 52:41
Mine was amicable too. Ours city ugly, though. Ugly. AI written books fled the market. Can human creators do to stand out? Can you stay on topic?
Scott Galloway · 52:54
Are you planning to divorce me?
Kara Swisher · 52:55
I am since the beginning. I would just want you for your money and your apartments. I want the apartment in the in the settlement.
Scott Galloway · 53:02
Said every woman in my life, quite frankly.
Kara Swisher · 53:04
Exactly. I think I deserve it, honestly. Yeah. I really... I... In in a weird way, I really do put out for you. Anyway, human creatives, what can they do to stand up? Answer two's question.
Scott Galloway · 53:15
That was good. Look.
Kara Swisher · 53:16
I know. I'm getting better at these sections.
Scott Galloway · 53:18
Every technology has a a similar effect, and that is it consolidates the market, and it it basically... If you're a middling lawyer drafting leases, vanilla leases, you're in a lot of trouble. If you're a writer who just does okay work but not great work, watch out. Here it comes. Yeah. But if you're a thoughtful person that's creative and knows how to... AI is not gonna take your job. Someone who understands AI is gonna take your job. And Right. This is... I'm already using Notion AI, one of our advertisers. And I will take... So for example, I will take, we're talking about, and this is gonna be scary, about starting something called prop... You know, the original AI, professor G, and feed in my book, my most recent book on, I wrote something called the algebra of wealth, feed in every transcript from every prophecy podcast and create a generative AI that could potentially answer questions. Yep. But the thing is, the the thing you feed into it is what makes what makes it original or different. And so if you're someone who can produce really great original work, your compensation is gonna go up. If you're someone that needs to constantly rely on generative AI for other stuff, you're probably in trouble. But if you're doing original work and using generative AI to help you, to inspire you, to fill in gaps, to make stuff better, you're gonna become a warrior. So this is Yep. This doesn't make you obsolete. It makes mediocre people obsolete. And what will happen is there'll be unbelievable new businesses, and there'll be new adjuncts and new services and new jobs created by these little companies, and they'll become medium and big sized companies to do really cool things with generative AI.
Kara Swisher · 55:07
There there is an interesting thing. Some... This guy named Jake Ward on Twitter put, we took a website from zero to 750 k a month SEO traffic using a 100% AI generated content. Seven k total pages generated hit 300 k a month after six months, seven fifty after 12, four k plus keywords in positions one and three, 13 k plus keywords in positions four through 10. He did this whole breakdown. And to me, it's Demand Media AI edition is what it's doing for that for that market. Right? If you remember Demand Media who kind of was a content farm, and that's... This is a version of a content farm. And you're... He's right. Mediocre, you're fucked. Any press releases, earnings releases, things like that, anything that can be done in this way. Then then then a human checks it, sure, is gone. And and even... And much stuff is, much marketing material is media. It's just... It's easy to copy. It's easy to do. And so that's really... You have to be creative, really hyper creative.
Scott Galloway · 56:07
Look. There there are certain industries that are just gonna... I've always thought the disruption is more a function of how ripe the industry is. I don't think... I think everyone's talking about writers right now, and I do have a prediction around the writers' strike.
Kara Swisher · 56:19
We'll get to that. Yeah.
Scott Galloway · 56:19
I think the the industry that's gonna... Okay. There's a mother of all chance right now is health care. I would not wanna be a pathologist, a virologist, or radiologist right now because there's no reason
Kara Swisher · 56:29
already been under siege. Yeah.
Scott Galloway · 56:30
There's no reason why... You know, what would... AI is really good at looking at patterns and then predicting, alright. If if you give me a million data points, I'll I'll give you with really great accuracy what the million and first data point will be. And it strikes me that looking at stuff under a microscope and trying to understand what is the pathogen here, that AI is just gonna do that better. And we've been over... I don't wanna say we've been overpaying these people because the end practitioners haven't done as well, but the insurance company and the people have inserted themselves in the middle in the pharma companies, you know, you gotta think that that's where AI is really gonna boom.
Kara Swisher · 57:06
Yeah. It's gonna be everywhere. But books too, I'm sorry to tell you, there's a lot of mediocre writing out there, and this will be mediocre for you. And mediocre but necessary, the banal but needed. Like, is... You just have to have it around. Like, here's your explanation for this and that and the other thing. So there's... You just... You don't have the imagination big enough to figure out where this is going. But we have to move on. But go ahead.
Scott Galloway · 57:28
Last thing. But but the last point. Like, Alec Yuval Noah, Hari, the guy who wrote Sapiens.
Kara Swisher · 57:33
Yeah. Mhmm. Harari.
Scott Galloway · 57:34
Hari... Him with armed with AI. Yeah. His next books... I can't even imagine the kind of content he's gonna be able to produce because
Kara Swisher · 57:42
Yeah.
Scott Galloway · 57:42
The way his mind works, his ability to connect instinct with human behavior and what the future might look like, I I just don't think any AI can come up with that, but what he'll be able to do is say, alright. Give me a history of homo sapiens, you know, in this, you know, in this era and what happened, and he will have just a level of of of rigor and research he wasn't... He didn't have access
Kara Swisher · 58:06
to before. If as long as it's from good sources. That's the thing. So we'll have to see. But you still require creativity and a certain flair. Yuval has a beautiful writing style, I think. So that that is is... You can start to mimic it, but it's still very hard to mimic certain people, like Scott Galloway, for example.
Scott Galloway · 58:24
God. No generative AI comes up with a German shepherd driven
Kara Swisher · 58:29
by husband, Scott Galloway, my ex. That's right. Soon to be ex.
Scott Galloway · 58:34
I'm taking the kids. I'll be at my sister's.
Kara Swisher · 58:38
If you've got a question of your own and you'd like them answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 Alright, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
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— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 1:00:48
Okay, Scott. Let's hear a prediction.
Scott Galloway · 1:00:51
So in the eighties in Britain, the coal miners are... I think it was national
Kara Swisher · 1:00:56
coal mining prediction? But go ahead. Go ahead.
Scott Galloway · 1:00:59
I'm setting it up. I don't wanna be replaced by AI. I'm trying to provide some creative context here.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:05
Alright.
Scott Galloway · 1:01:06
So the... I think it was the National Minecrafters or Mineworkers Union, took on Margaret Thatcher. And, basically, Thatcher said, this is my moment to show that I'm the iron lady. We need to move to different types of energy, and just said no over and over and basically broke the back of the coal miners union. The same thing's about to happen here with the writers. They have the same skill set or a similar skill set to authors, to journalists, and they make a lot more money. In addition, this... I mean, this is a dream come true for the studios and enforced multilateral pause in spending as they recalibrate and have cloud cover to come back with fewer employees. The union here, the writers union has so badly miscalculated the power dynamic here. And and the the studios are gonna slowly but surely, quietly, they are going to break their backs. And this is gonna end really poorly for the writers. It's gonna end... Can't... It's it's almost... It it... I wouldn't be surprised if we found out that the studio heads got together and said, piss off and upset the writers union so they go on strike and force all of us to stop spending and producing content. Because every individual is like, I got eight shows I haven't gotten to yet that I'd like to that I'd like to watch. So this is gonna be reminiscent. This is the information age coal miner strike in The UK. It's gonna end really poorly for the riders. They are totally... And all this virtue signaling with stars who make 10 and $20,000,000 a year showing up and pretending that they stand with their brothers and sisters, I just think it's hilarious. You're gonna see this union come back to the table, and the studios are gonna just do what used to happen to me when I was trying to raise money through the nineties with VCs. They're gonna grin fuck them and to say, that's interesting. Riders are really important to us. We should keep talking, and they're gonna do nothing. And then when a bunch of the the riders that are gonna be replaced by AI anyways start thinking, I can't pay my rent and start putting pressure on the union to settle, the union's gonna end up with a worse deal than they had going into this thing. So my prediction, the information age equivalent of the British coal miner strike is happening with the Ryder strike, and it's gonna end the same way.
Kara Swisher · 1:03:23
Margaret Thatcher.
Scott Galloway · 1:03:24
So the studio heads are Margaret Thatcher. You don't get my analogy? I thought that was pretty good.
Kara Swisher · 1:03:29
I I do. I get I get it. I agree with you. I I was... A bunch of, writers and actors have written me, and I'm like, I think you're... I don't think you have leverage here. I don't see the leverage. Maybe I'm missing it. But Well,
Scott Galloway · 1:03:40
you know who the culprit is?
Kara Swisher · 1:03:41
Where Where creative creative is not enough leverage, and I and I applaud writers
Scott Galloway · 1:03:45
for that. They're angry. They're angry at the studio heads. The real culprit is all the kids who work for me at professor g. They don't watch ad supported TV. They all watch TikTok. 850,000,000 creators on TikTok assume 1% of them are any good that they have so misread the situation. And if I were a studio head, I would be thinking, oh my god. Thank god for this union. They have given us a gift.
Kara Swisher · 1:04:08
Yeah. I don't know how many... Their signs are creative. They're just a leverage. I don't see it. I don't see it. I get... I'm getting a lot of angry letters from writers, but I'm sorry to tell you. I'm not sure what you should ask for, and I agree. It's... But they're gonna be smaller writers' rooms. They just don't wanna pay as much, and they're not gonna have to on some level. And and and and this is... The the the danger here is creating a disgruntled group of creatives that work for you eventually because you do need creativity to to really do well. But I have to say, the leverage is not there. I think you're right. Good prediction, Scott. Good prediction.
Scott Galloway · 1:04:44
Do you have anything, Kara?
Kara Swisher · 1:04:45
What? No. I don't have a prediction. I'm just right. I just report and I'm correct. This is second week in a row. I don't know what I'm gonna the third week in a row. I'll think of something. I got two in a row so far. I have... I've gotta think about what I wanna I wanna... Unfortunately, I'm often right about Elon Musk stuff.
Scott Galloway · 1:05:01
Unfortunately, I'm often right. Yeah. That's that's your biggest problem. How right you
Kara Swisher · 1:05:08
one. I had a whole show on it with, Ryan Mac and Zoe Schiffer today about it. But one thing that came out that Ryan just tweeted was about the... Some guy suing him who was working on their operations team. And, like, they wanted to install shitty locks on... In offices that would put people in danger and said, just do it because no one will catch us. Like, this guy is alleging this. I just... Every time I think I'm, like, disappointed, I'm like, you're kidding me. Like, really? Anyway, it's just... I don't have a prediction except that I'm always surprised by how the depths of bad behavior. Anyway, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more pivot. Can you read us out?
— Predictions segment ends —
Scott Galloway · 1:05:48
Today's show was produced by Lara Naaman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertaught engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Breaux and Mil Silberio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, my wife, have a great weekend.
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