Techstrong Gang – June 20, 2024

Hey, everyone. Happy Thursday to you. You know what?

You gotta love it when the government wants to get involved in our lives, right? Tobacco warnings for social media. FTCs going after Adobe.

What else is next? And we even have some cracks in the facade of a general ai, all of that more you're watching Textron Gang. Hi everyone.

Happy Thursday. It's Alan Shimel here from Techstrong and you're watching Techstrong Gang. We've got a really interesting glide up for the gang today.

We, we go in a little bit of this East west thing where we, let me introduce you to our Western folks. We got two folks coming to us from lovely California. Uh, one is a, let me introduce her first.

She's been on Textron Gang before. She is a marketing expert as well as a, just a great person to have on our video. I wanna introduce you to Lisa Martin, or reintroduce Lisa Martin.

Hi Lisa, how are you? Hi, I'm great. It's so great to be back on Textron gang.

It's Great to talk about some UI, Really cool topics. Yeah, I think these are pretty meaty. You know, I'm here from the government, or I'm from the government.

I'm here to help, uh, joining Lisa for his first appearance on Text Strong Gag, but he's also the late newest editor at Techstrong and he's contributing, I think his first article went up on Text Strong ai. Mm-Hmm. And we'll be discussing that later on today.

Uh, it's pretty well known in our circle of, of the tech media. Jon Swartz. John, welcome.

Thanks for being here and welcome to Techstrong and Techstrong Gang. Hey, thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Absolutely. All right. So East meets West, our East coast contingent here.

It's to my immediate left, or maybe it's right on your screen, I'm not sure. Uh, she's the editor of our editor of our Echo Insights, uh, series of podcasts and videos, as well as a bit of an environment and sustainability analyst herself. It's Bonnie Schneider.

Hi Bonnie. Hi, Alan. Thanks to having Me.

It's always great to have you here. And then to my extreme left from the Bronx and soon to be back in the Bronx. Perhaps it's our, uh, con, uh, editor in chief content.

Chief content Officer, I guess is the right word. Mike Vizard. Hey, Mike, how are you?

All things extreme, eh? Yeah. Anyway.

Alright, so Mike, I, I don't know if you want to kick it off. I, this surgeon general story got go. So the surgeon General, As only the surgeon General Ken kicked off a bit of a firestorm calling for warning labels on social media, which kind of then led to all kinds of conversations out there about whether or not we need to ban smartphone from schools.

And led to a debate about whether or not the science behind whether or not this stuff is highly addictive, is debatable. But Lisa, what's your take on all of this from a marketing perspective? Are these environments becoming somewhat toxic?

I, I, I believe so, yes. I, I was lucky to not grow as a Gen Xer to not grow with social media and smartphone. So I can't imagine from a parental perspective the, the concerns there.

But I, you know, as you said, John and I are West Coast, we're from California, there are prop 65 warnings on everything. Movies have ratings. Is the effect muted?

Um, I think from a marketing perspective, they need to be really realistic about how much goodwill this do. Um, Alan, in, in the entry, you mentioned tobacco and we saw regulations starting back in the warning labels starting back in the sixties, that didn't really have a, a material impact until the taxation started. So I think, uh, warning labels are okay.

Um, I don't think they'll hurt, but I think the government needs to be really realistic about what value will it add. And another thing I think it brings up is the shared responsibility model for parents. I don't think it should be 50 50.

I think the social media companies need to be doing a little bit more on the regulation side. Um, but I also think, let's look at this really practically and, and, and try to evaluate what impact will this have and how long will it take? So I I Lisa, I agree with just about everything you said there.

Uh, my, my point though is this num well, I have several points. Point number one is this. What makes you think this just applies to children?

You know, I, I, I was lucky enough, I, I caught a, a, a lecture by Chuck Todd, former meet the press editor of NBC. I was lucky enough to watch catch him. This is, it was for the 2016 election, so it was sometime ago, um, right before the, that election.

So it was 20 15 8, 9 years ago. And he called it, he said, the problem in society today, and it's not just an American US problem, it's it's worldwide, although it's probably most keen here in the US is that most people have not figured out how to tell truths from falsehood, have not learned to assimilate social media. Because social media, what social media brings it, it brings, you know, 1,000,001 an infinite amount of voices.

Everybody has an opinion, right? And, and the ability to manipulate people via social media is directly related to the ability of people to be manipulated. Right.

And there's a lot of reasons that goes on for this. We've seen people go to their tribes, they each go to their own corner 'cause they want to hear what reinforces their tribal beliefs. They can't tell trolling from other nation states versus actual people.

AI enhances this. I do firmly believe that we need some sort of governor on, on social media. John, let me ask you this question.

'cause you've been around media a long time. Social media companies are really media companies pretending not to be media companies. Exactly.

And it seems like they're using algorithms now to drive content to a specific kind of advertising consumption model as part of their business model. So maybe is the issue here, not so much the warning labels, is we need to go back in and say, you know, what the heck is a media company who really supervises these things and say, Hey, this current model doesn't work. Yeah, it hasn't worked for a long time.

I mean, there's been a lot of movement, I think back to 2019 when Mark Zuckerberg is speaking before Congress and he is making these assurances that they will go back and self-regulate themselves and make their platform safer for others. While at the same time he is batting away these assertions that are a media company, which exactly is what they are. They're not gonna do anything.

They haven't done anything, um, despite his promises, despite the threats from the government, the lawmakers, uh, the regulators. It's, it, it probably in this case, and again, the surgeon general, the sentiment is noble. But I've heard this promise before, over and over again.

And there'll almost never be any legislation, I promise you that. So there needs to be some sort of oversight committee, and there probably needs to be some movement that starts with the schools. And I think yesterday in California was a significant day because of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is the second largest in the country with 430,000 students, is going to start a ban of social media and cell phone use beginning in the year 2025.

At the same time, governor of the state Newsom wants cell phones out of all schools. I mean, in a sense, you have to start with something. The warning label is just, to me, it's a, it's a noble idea, but it's not gonna gain any traction.

And you're gonna need to impose some sort of fines or some sort of serious implications for the social media companies, which unless you force them to do so, they are going to continue to reach out to people, whether they say they're not or they are, they are gonna be reaching out to people, especially those under 18. I think that's true because, uh, unfortunately, if you put a warning label on something, especially for teenagers, that's gonna make them more for good and true looking at it. And the other thing is, is I agree with, um, what both Lisa and John said, it's, it's a noble idea.

It's a good idea. But how will it be in practice? How often are these warning labels gonna come up every time Somebody logs on every time they post something?

Right. I mean, it just, it could be that their whole experience on social media warning, warning, you know, I just can't imagine how that would be implemented. I, I asked my 14-year-old about this, and he looked over his, his phone at me and said, people are idiots.

And that was that. Um, um, but Lisa, let me come back to you and say, um, will advertisers act on any of this? I mean, 'cause we see from time to time somebody gets upset and they say, oh, I don't want my ad units showing up next to this kind of content.

Well, if I have content that's targeting people who are under 18, is that stuff that I wanna approve? Does, does, do the marketers need to be more conscious of what's going on here? That's a great point, Mike.

They absolutely, marketers need to be much more conscious about this. I think the whole, you know, when you talk about advertisers, it's, it's revenue. It's where their revenue's gonna be impacted negatively.

They're not gonna wanna act on that. I think both Alan and John brought up some great points. It it, you know, and Bonnie too, like, there's so many warning labels on everything.

It, it's is the effect muted probably I think where revenue is concerned, companies are going to be, uh, trepidatious to impact that. We're gonna be talking about that in our next segment with Adobe. But I think Alan bringss up a great point.

Should this just be limited to children? No, I think as adults, even even those of us who didn't grow up in, in social media land and internet land, um, probably need more psychological tools and kids do as well to really be able to distinguish fact from fiction, fake news from real news. Where am I being manipulated to John's point, interesting what California is doing.

I mentioned prop 65 warnings on everything in California. Um, is is the, the risk of inaction here, I think is, is great. Does it need to actually be more than a warning label and actually removing the devices for certain periods of time?

Um, I think that's gonna be an interesting thing to watch. And, um, advertisers are gonna be paying, I think, very close attention to that. You, you know, go ahead, John.

Oh no, I was just gonna mention really quickly. So a lot of the competitors of, especially Facebook, we wanna call 'em meta whatever, but specifically Facebook have taken advantage of the situation like Mark Benioff and Tim, especially Tim Cook, you know, they refer to meta as big tobacco. But I think there's this distinction that it's really hard to regulate something like your mental health, right?

Like a car, you can add a seatbelt, an airbag, what have you, or a helmet, um, with tobacco, in a sense, you can, you can ban the advertising on television, which, which happens. It, it, it's, it's, this is a whole nother thing. I mean, this is something that, that goes far beyond the physical wellbeing of someone.

I just wanted to bring that up because I think of even earlier this year, the FAA grounded nearly 200 Boeing 7 37 max nines. Um, and there was a massive Gary recall, you can do those things to protect consumers physically, but in terms of their mental wellbeing, in terms of the reach of Facebook and meta, it's so much more difficult. I don't, I don't know, a warning label is, again, it's a good start, but it's just, it's kind of a superficial start.

Well, I John, in that vein, that, that's another problem I have with this, is the warning label supposedly, or the warning label is, is based upon that somehow using social media will affect your mental health. Is that really why we're banning it here? Because you're gonna be men, men your mental health, or are we banning it because it infects your brain with lies or, or you're manipulated?

Doesn't necessarily, I mean, is that mental health? Is it gonna cause you depression? Is it gonna cause you suicidal thoughts?

Is it going to cause you Well, That's, yeah. Supposedly there are ad nauseam studies that point to the harmful effects of suicide, depression, isolation. You know, there's an article in the Times, John that says, researchers are not, you know, that, and I don't want to be the guy who's saying climate change isn't real, even though 80% of you know this just in It, a climate change report from an oil Company.

Right, exactly. Right. So who are your, where's the reports and researchers coming from?

But to me, I, I see the, the, the evil side of social media is not so much as causing mental health issues as it is causing people to it, it tears at the very fabric of our society. It, it increases tribalism and, and all of these bad things, right? For society.

And People will say that, well, we've had pamphlets since time began, and Thomas Payne and all this other stuff. And it was the same kind of argument. However, the subtle difference here is they're actually using algorithms to go optimize this stuff in a way that is manipulating people and playing to their weaknesses or strengths or whatever it is that they perceive.

This is a deliberate action. It's not just kind of like I presented a bunch of content, people stumbled over it and, and they made an opinion about it. This is a deliberate use of mathematics to go target people with specific messages.

And that's where things are a little bit beyond the, so, So let me throw something else out at the, at the, the gang today. All right, so let's say we said, okay, let's do this for social media, but why stop there? Let's go after Fox and CNN and MSNBC two because they're, they're doing the same thing.

They're using algorithms and messaging and manipulation Yeah. To increase this. These are all why stop there?

Yeah. These are all media companies, right? That's how they reach their audience.

They maximize the messaging for certain segments of the audience. And if you watch M-S-N-B-C, you feel as if you're part of this echo chamber. And I feel the same way on Facebook.

I try to minimize my use. And I'm glad you brought this up, Alan. It's not just those under 18.

It's, I think every, every age it's, it's, I I don't look at news feeds intentionally now because in a sense it kind of does depress me sometimes because I feel as if I'm leading the most boring life in the world compared to, to what others are doing. And that's probably within the algorithms of the people I'm following. Yeah, could that could be too.

So I, I'll tell you one, I had a great con law teacher when I went to a law school. This guy's name was Dr. Cy means he had come to New York law from Stanford where he was the condor teacher for, um, William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor.

So this, this was the guy who taught those Supreme court people con law. And he always said that there is a gap of anywhere from three to 10 years between technology and society's ability to, to understand, absorb it, use it correctly. I think in the case of social media, we and the internet, we, we've gone so far ahead on the technology side of things that it's probably 15 or 20 years, but it will catch up at some point.

I think people will learn to lay off the social media to understand, you know, quality versus quantity in terms of echo chambers and voices and you know who the people are who are gonna understand that first. The kids today, the kids who are growing up with it by the time they grow up, I think are gonna be more versed in saying b******t, excuse my Bs or not Bs and, and understand it. So let's put the warning label off for the Gen Xers of the world, as Lisa mentioned, that I need to insert right now a warning label for text on gang.

Uh, these are the opinions of the members of the Receive. Please make up your own minds. Right.

Exactly. Alright. Um, but that's, that's kind of how I, I I, I feel about it.

I applaud the surgeon general for at least calling it out because whether we ever do warning labels and whether they ever work or not, at least it opens up a discussion here about what to do other than saying, oh, my TikTok is Chinese. We gotta ban that too. Yeah.

I'm, I'm hoping people start understanding how these platforms really work and then come to the conclusion that you have. And maybe that's the thing that the media should be doing is saying, Hey, let's go explain how these algorithms are used and how you're being kind of gamed. So at least people understand.

Well, The media, um, is, is one of the problems is the media is competing with big tech for news. That's why people, less people are watching, um, media in the news, but also the model has changed. It's more sub subscription based.

So that's why you're seeing the echo chamber, whether it's in Google News or, or online digital journal. So everyone's in their echo chambers. And I don't know if they're, I guess I'm saying is I don't know if the media is going to expose it unless the messaging matches their own.

So you're, you're, you have a 14-year-old, my, my sons are 24, 25 and, and 22, so little older. And I will tell you, having been exposed to social media, you know, since they're young kids, I think they're, I, I talk to them about this all the time. 'cause I'm interested, I talk to their friends about it.

Kids that age young, adults that age, I think are much more savvy. They tend to go to alternate places for news. Yeah.

And, and why do they, when I say, why do you like this source? They say, 'cause they don't gimme opinion. They're just reporting the news.

And I get to make my own choices. You know, that's interesting you said that because my two youngest kids actually are minimum user minimal users of the classic social media platform. Yep.

They, they think they're BS as you, as you said earlier, they don't trust it. They go to alternate sites that so many of whom I've never heard of. No, me neither.

But when they point me to some of the podcasts they listen to, I find them to be better than almost any form of media that's out there. I just don't know about them. Mm-Hmm.

They're so deep use. So I do think that's, I do think the younger people are actually much smarter in how they approach this. And they've already kind of policed themselves.

They've actually slapped the warning labels on themselves, and maybe they passed that down to others. I hope they, they just seem much more smarter in the way they use social media than those like my age. Yeah.

I love that. That, sorry, Alan, that that one, both you and John brought that up. I don't have kids, so I pulled friends with kids to wanna kind of get their feelings on this.

But you bring up a great point about these are the generation, you know, like those 16 through 25 year olds who've grown up within the digital age. So it, you know, while there is mixed data research on the effects of, of, of social media, on mental health, I think there's probably some truth to that. There's also a, a flip side that you both brought up.

And that is these, this age group is very well educated on this. They've grown up it, we haven't, right? So it's interesting that if we flip the coin here, what could we learn from them?

Could they help us to start identifying BS natives? Yeah. Maybe there's an opportunity there that we're kind of glossing over Digital natives.

Yeah. Now ai, and we could do this on another session, but AI adds a whole new level to this, right? Um, and, and how that's gonna affect this.

But we we're over our time here, we need to take a break for this segment. We're going to take a break here on Textron Gang, and we'll be back in a minute. We're gonna talk about is Adobe manipulating us?

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All right, folks, we're back into our next segment. And the FTC is chasing down Adobe. They are accusing the company of, uh, deliberately pushing people towards more expensive subscription services and then making it difficult to cancel and then charging fees for the cancellation on top of that.

So there's this whole pattern here, and I'll start with Lisa just kind of looking at you first. But, um, it seems to me that Adobe's not the only company that does this. So is there a bigger conversation to be had here with IT vendors and marketers in the age of subscription services?

That's a great point. I think Adobe might be, um, being made a scapegoat here. They've clearly had a tough month.

We just saw some of the, the updates to the TLCs that they had when it came out a week or so ago that, Hey, we own your content. And, and we are, we are in a, a world of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of content creators and influencers who freaked out and Adobe said, Hey, okay, we didn't communicate this very well. So I think, and, and ironically that came from their chief trust officer.

Um, I think they broke quite a bit of trust. I've seen some great really informative tiktoks on the subject, but I think Mikey bring up a great point is this could be opening a can of worms here for where other organizations, because Adobe went subscription back in 2012 and it accounts for the majority of their revenue. A lot of other businesses are in the same boat who probably don't want to make it easy to cancel, um, for that reason.

But maybe Adobe coming out saying, okay, we didn't communicate this properly. We're gonna listen to the consumers, um, is a step in the right direction. Um, I think back in 2022, the FTC launched a probe into this, which Adobe didn't respond to.

Now with a lawsuit filed in my hometown of San Jose just a couple days ago, there's now more, uh, potentially accountability for not just Adobe, but others. You know what, that's interesting that you're saying, Lisa. I think that's plays exactly into the FTC strategy.

I think what they're doing, and again, this goes to their chair, Lena Kahn, they are taking on big tech and they are doing it kind of strategically where they're looking at them, what they consider the easiest or lowest hanging fruit or most egregious offender, and then setting a precedent for other companies. 2 billion in subscription revenue last year, which was nearly double what it was in 2019. And I see, I think they see a pattern here and they're trying to help protect consumers.

And it even goes back to kind of Biden and his speech, I think it was last year, where he was appealing to consumers and eliminating predatory fees from airlines, ticket selling companies like Ticketmaster, just this idea of the hidden fees and then the almost nearly impossible discontinuation of some of them of, so I, again, I think Adobe's being used as kind of like the pinata for a lot of other companies that are doing the same thing. So look, there's no doubt that big tech has a target on its backend. It's not just in the us it's in the EU as well.

And, and perhaps rightfully so. Um, but really, I mean, this is a saist a SaaS question here, right? I'm an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber.

I have been since they went to that model for any of you, and I'm assuming most of you have used Adobe one way or another, right? I mean, Photoshop was 1200 or 1400. Photoshop was a lot of money.

And, and then if you wanted the full version of, of Acrobat, and I mean these are staple tools we use, right? You got Creative Cloud, it costs you, I don't know, 55, 54 99 a month. Doable.

What I think people didn't realize that maybe Adobe didn't do a good job because they didn't want to do a good job, is you had some options. You could, you could do monthly, which was let's say $60 a month. You could do an annual subscription, which you pay all upfront.

So instead of $60 a month by paying it annually, maybe you got it for $48 a month, or you could do a monthly annual subscription, which is, they took the cost of that subscription on an annual contract, right? Which was $48 and added a little bit of VIG so that you could pay it over the month, monthly instead of annually. And so it was $54.

So that became sort of the Goldilocks, you know? Right. Versus 60 versus 48.

I don't want to pay 60 bucks a month every month, but I don't wanna lay out 48 times 12 all at one shot. So I'll go for 54. It gives me the, you know, it's Goldilocks in the fine print though, was it's still an annual subscription.

And so when you cancel before that annual period is up, you are on the hook for the 12 payments at $54. And I think that's what kind of got people complaining to the better business bureaus and stuff like that. On top of that, it seems like they had a little problem with the unsubscribe button.

Mm-Hmm. You know, you know, a a Alan, they also had this weird, I think, I believe if you canceled within a month, you owed Adobe an early termination fee. That right.

Half of the remaining Equivalent to six months. Yep. Yeah.

I think it was 14 days and you cancel after 14 days. That's that 50% that you're talking about John. Okay.

Ask, can I ask Bonnie a question? Sure. When's the last time you read a licensing agreement in any of the software you may used?

Uh, Well, it's funny you mention it. I, I always check to see about the subscriptions because it's, I've noticed it too. It's very hard to cancel it.

It's cumbersome sometimes. They'll say, we're sending you a code now and you never get the code and then you have to call, and I just had this with GoDaddy, so it, it, it is, I think it is across the board with big tech, it's very hard to unsubscribe. Yeah.

And it seems like they go out of their way to make sure that the customer service experience is so crappy that you don't want us to go through that. So you don't unsubscribe. They don't wanna to call, make it easy.

And, and so shame on for, for that aspect of it, shame on Adobe. I I don't fault them for their model about the annual versus monthly and all that. I do fault them for making it hard to unsubscribe at any cost.

Hey, Mike, do you remember? Oh, I'm so sorry, Alan. Hey Mike, do you remember back, back, like 30 years ago?

Remember a OL got into trouble for, it was very easy to sign up for the service, but it was nearly impossible to discontinue it. Yes. And they got fined like hundreds of millions of dollars.

I can't remember if the f it was the FTC, whoever it was. So there is precedent here, and it's, it's it kind of a sad sign or sad, um, acknowledgement that, again, I hate to beat up on the federal government, but they've done such a bad job regulating texts. They don't understand it, and by the time they understand it, it's too late.

So then they have to scramble to try to figure out how to address things like social media. And this is something kind of the state they're in with ai, they're trying to get ahead of the problem because they, they foresee, maybe they understand it a little bit better, but they foresee the same circumstances that have led to these other things. Anyway, in a sense, it's just this, this whole kind of idea, understanding it, I I, I, I laugh 'cause my brother still has an a OL email address that he can't find.

My mom Does too. You know what? This happens.

But let me throw it back at you, John. Why does the government have to be your big brother here? Why is it up to them?

I think because in a sense, tech has proven it can't self-regulate itself. Maybe that's why, I don't know. I'm, I've been in tech 30 plus years too, and that's something I've always heard from the tech vendors, which is, hey, we gotta self-regulate ourselves so the government doesn't have to step in.

Right? Yeah. I mean, that's something that Zuckerberg and others have said.

They said, look, if you give us some guidelines, we'll follow 'em. Just give, give us a framework. But I think that's always the problem, the inherent problem when you have lawmakers who absolutely have no idea or clue how any of, and they're Not, and they're never going to, And the only reason that they get engaged every couple of years, Alan, is because it is good politics.

It's bipartisan, and they know this. I mean, I I I've talked to senators like Blumenthal on, on the left to, uh, black Blackburn on the right, they work together on legislation. It'll never see the light of day.

It'll never happen. But there's scoring political points and it's, you know, here's, here's it's, it used to be, uh, big tobacco used to be the oil industry, used to be the auto. There's always the, the boogieman, the The whipping point And the book and the boogieman now is tech me.

It's, it's too powerful, too fast. And it's, most people don't understand it. So it's always easier to criticize something people don't understand.

Um, and something that is kind of a shiny object right now. So, So let's not, let's not go to the government here, Lisa. Yeah.

When will customers stand up and say, I am mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore. And then that creates the backlash that changes the behavior. That's a great point.

I think we're seeing it with Adobe. Like I was saying, I was on TikTok yesterday and the day before, really kind of looking at what are, how are creating, because like I said, there's millions of content creators. There's so many that are trying to become the next TikTok star, the next YouTube star that don't have a lot of money that are trying to really, honestly create businesses.

And I think when we see Adobe as they be the Martha Stewart of tax evasion here, in terms of making an example out of them, we're gonna see more consumers who are using tools like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop to try to make a living get much more vocal. And I hope the chief trust officer and the two executives who are named in the suit take notice and actually start employing, uh, consumer listening programs. But even to Alan's point, you know, in terms of the whole self-regulation, government regulation, and John's point too, the Zuckerbergs of the world, the Adobes of the world, the, the chief trust officers, the, the legal GC folks, they all have exactly what it takes to put the right, um, guidelines in place so that this doesn't happen anymore.

They have it, they're just not acting on it, and they're, and they're kind of playing down, waiting for the government to step. And when they No, that's a flywheel. That's just gonna keep going.

It's not gonna happen. Maybe When people step up, Yeah, people Need to step up. There're have been people who stepped up.

I mean the, the former chief security officer of Facebook, I mean, they pointed out that this company well knew what they were doing and could have addressed a lot of these issues and chose not to. I mean, I, I consistently hear that from, oh, I'm Sorry, that's an individual, John, I'm talking about en mass. People say, I'm not, I'm going to go use Carell draw.

I'm going to use whatever the open source alternative is, Say this or something. Right. Instead of Adobe, because I don't like their pricing.

I don't like how difficult they make it to unsubscribe. And, and there's another piece here too, Lisa, you mentioned it right in the opening on this segment around the ownership of, of, uh, IP here. It's not that Adobe's gonna take your picture and start selling it online.

It's about Adobe's gonna make that IP part of the, the LLM that the AI uses. Yeah. And, and so, and people are saying, Hey, if you're gonna use my stuff in your LLMI want to be compensated.

I might go so far as to say, if you're presented with a user agreement or a licensing agreement, that's more than, um, a one minute to two minute read, somebody's probably trying to pull something on you. Right? That's the Level, level of That goes into that.

And It keeps updating. I mean, every week you're getting, we've updated our terms and Conditions, so keeps changing that. That is true.

No one reads that. I mean, you list who, who's the senator from Massachusetts? Elizabeth Warren.

Warren Warren, you know, her whole consumer protection thing. I mean, this feeds right into it, but as I said, I don't know if it's truly the government who, who are the arbitrators here? Who I, I think it was the FTC who did say that if you change your user agreements after you introduced Gen ai, that they were gonna watch for that behavior and say, you know, you're not allowed to, like suddenly in the middle of the licensing agreements say, oh, by the way, your content is my out For gen.

Yeah. Right. It's a problem.

Anyway, look, Adobe shame on you. You should do better. I'll, I'll leave it at that.

We're gonna take a break here on Text Drug Gang. We're gonna be back. Uh, there been some cracks.

Is it in the feet of the AI gods or in the facade? Facade. Facade.

Okay. We'll be back. You're watching look Like our faces, man.

Yep. We're watching text. You're watching text Extra deck.

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com to learn more. com where the world meets DevOps. All right, we're back and we're once again talking about AI and what's going on with these companies.

And there appears to be maybe some cracks in the AI facade, at least according to an article by Jon Swartz that appeared on Techstrong ai. John, walk us through your thinking here. What are you seeing?

And I know you're out in the valley and sometimes, you know, that's a different bubble than the one we all live in. Yeah. So, uh, the out in the valley, um, there are people who work within AI companies who will tell you, um, confidentially that they're, they're actually just trying to learn what they're doing right now.

They're in the early s we keep hearing that, right? We're in the early s which means they're not gonna break out the a the revenue from AI related activity. They're also kind of admitting to you that they don't, don't quite think they have their arms wrapped around how this is gonna work or where the use cases are gonna be.

They usually have a hard time giving you use cases in real, in real life. Um, so I, I think, I think that stands out to me, but also this idea that we had this humane AI pilot, this much product that just came out that was backed by Benioff and Sam Altman, that absolutely flopped because it had a bad battery. We rush to markets.

That's another thing. You rush a product to markets to try to get ahead of others and it doesn't work. Then again, we have our friends, and we keep going over this, sorry, Alan, federal regulators are honing in on antitrust activity at Microsoft.

Nvidia OpenAI, state lawmakers in California are seeking tough restrictions and the use of AI to protect consumers. Um, this hesitation, as I mentioned earlier, to break out AI related revenue because perhaps maybe it's not showing up yet. So I'm, what I'm trying to say is this, it's going to grow.

It's just not gonna grow as fast or as significant as we think. And it's with anything, there are growing pains, and I, I would like this prediction, I think within a year or 18 months, a lot of the same companies that recruited an enormous number of AI related jobs might put a freeze on some of those, those hiring practices or even might start cutting back. I I almost see that this pattern kind of replicating the pattern, going back to Covid where you do a mass hiring and then you have to wean back.

So in a long-winded sort of way is on what I'm saying is not everything is as rosy or hyped up as it should be with ai. And, and the companies and the people out here are admitting that they're not saying it on the record, but they are concerned about it. John is saying that the AI emperor is half naked at this point.

You know What, I should have just said that, just to get to the point. I don't, in in this regard, I don't think AI is any different than many other Right. Innovations and new technologies that we've seen introduced over the years.

You go through this classic Gartner hype cycle, right? Where you get in exactly such, so much hype inflated expectations, it can never live up to it. Um, interesting.

John, I know in your article you mentioned the, uh, the pin by humane, or you, I forgot how you pronounce it. Humane. Yeah, yeah.

But make, look, when that first came out, I'll admit it being the gadget boy, I am, I was ready to buy it. I I filled out the form and everything. The beam me up pen.

Yeah, the beam me up pen. Um, it looked cool. It was ai it was gonna replace my smartphone, but then before I plugged down the $700 plus whatever it was gonna cost monthly, I, I started reading reviews and realized that this thing wasn't ready for prime time.

Mm-Hmm. You know, there was some Yeah, that's Apple guys. Yeah.

This is, this is always the, the, the pitfall right, is in, in your rush to market, it's gonna happen. As you said, there's these, these are cycles. There's the boom, there's the buzz, and then there's a rejuvenation.

It happens in every cycle of, of tech. It's understandable. All I'm saying is that, um, with ai, it's, it, it, it kind of, because it's so well known among consumers, which is really interesting to me, this is one of the few technologies that consumers have really embraced and, and, and really wanna learn about.

So there's this idea that, oh, it's gonna break through immediately. Um, and I'm just saying we should kind of pump the brakes a little bit. I I think it needs to mature.

I'm sorry, go Lisa. Oh, thanks. I agree with that.

Did anyone else get sort of a Theranos vibe when they were looking at minus the fraud part, but just products not being proms not ready for market? It was, another thing that struck me was culturally the leaders of humane AI were very much rose colored glasses, didn't wanna have any negativity, only wanted to, um, really, uh, lawn the, the capabilities even though some employees were trying to raise their hands like they were nose, this isn't ready for prime time. I think they, they rushed it to market, not listening to the reviewers.

In fact, I saw one reviewer, John in your article that said, this is the worst product I've ever reviewed. But I think that companies need to be, to your point, John May be kind of pulling the brakes on this. Like, let's really, it, it's, it's about being pragmatic and practical and I think that will go a long way from an awareness perspective to get much more of the consumers to appreciate the value that AI is already delivering and that it can deliver, Look, humane, bad product, and they got, it kind of gets what it's deserves.

It'll be interesting to see what HP will do. You know, can I, can I just, like, one other thing I just want to mention was that there are certain companies, obviously the leaders in, in generative AI that are, um, making hey, and I guess we acknowledge them. I think there's so much pressure on all everyone else, and I bring this up because I think about Salesforce.

I wrote a story about how Salesforce name kept coming up as one of the companies that was kind of lagging a little bit behind everyone. Um, and, and I think there's so much pressure to, to keep up with, with the latest fad. And I remember getting a message from Benioff just protesting so much about it, and I knew it was just a really tough spot because these guys, again, are under incredible pressure from their shareholders, um, for competitive reasons as well.

And it's just, it's, it's, it's difficult, right? You, you're rushed to do something, you want to do it well, but you have to do something. And, um, I mean, this has happened in other various iterations of technology will happen again.

AI just seems to be the most overheated of them all. Lisa, let me ask you this though. Do you think that all these companies are gonna wind up with a credibility problem from a marketing standpoint that, you know, people are gonna go, you know, we don't generally believe anything these people are saying because a, it doesn't work as advertised Google.

We've seen, you know, stumble what, four or five times now around some sort of AI initiative. I mean, it's getting a little silly. That's a great point.

You know, one of the things when we're talking about Adobe that I was trying to find out is what's the churn gonna be? Same thing here in terms of credibility that the leaders need to understand what is the market ready for being truthful Trust is currency. We've been talking about it for the longest time now.

I think there's absolutely brand reputation damage that companies that go to market too quickly or who aren't listening to reviewers are going to, to, uh, run into. And that could be catastrophic for business. So paying really close attention to that, listening to the consumer's feedback, being trustworthy and honest is gonna be table stakes for businesses in this, in this realm.

Can I ask a, can I ask Lisa a question about Apple and its AI announcements and what type of impact do you think that has on the overall market? I know they wait longer before they plunge into a market. They let others establish the market than they own the market in this case.

Does this lend credibility to, to the AI field, or does it just raise the temperature even more? That's a great point. I, I'm kind of as an Apple fan girl, and to your point, John, knowing that, you know, they, they get into things after smartphones have been established, for example.

But they have a, they have earned a lot of trust globally that I think might be an advantage as they introduce Gen AI to more people. They might have the opportunity with their given, um, consumer relationships to help people maybe appreciate a little bit more the values and the opportunities AI can deliver because the, the general public generally trusts Apple. So you bring up a great point there.

It's gonna be curious to watch to see, I think we might know more in September with the Apple hardware announcements. Like what's reality there? How is my Siri gonna change and benefit me as a consumer?

Mm-Hmm. But I think that kind of handholding and the fanboy fangirl status that they've had for a long time couldn't be kind of a tipping point for us in terms of the general public's appreciation for ai. I don't know if I agree.

I think Apple's gonna wind up being yet another AI company busily shooting off its toes and Well, don't actually get it right. Look, you, we could blame Apple, we could blame Microsoft. The fact of the matter is from the very top of the tech stack to the very bottom of the tech stack, the first thing that investors wanna know, reporters wanna know, media wants to know is, Hey, what's your AI story?

What, you gotta have an AI story. What's your angle? We, I remember this cloud came out 2005, 2006.

You couldn't raise money as a tech company if you didn't have a cloud story. What do you mean you're not storing it in the cloud? You're gonna keep your stuff in a private data center, you're not getting my investment.

You gotta be in the cloud and up there, right? And, you know, you had the IBM commercials with grandma pointing up saying, that's where my pictures are. Wow, you had my dead husband too.

You know, but this is, this is the culture that we have fostered. You gotta have an AI story otherwise, you know, fomo John, he's John, he is saying it's your fault for asking the question. I've heard that before.

It's always usually My fault. You know, what did Shakespeare say? Kill the lawyers, then the reporters Was that it?

Wait, wait a second. Alright. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna defend, I'm not gonna defend myself.

Uh, but you know, I I just, this is, to me, this all normal auditor. Yeah. Yeah.

I, I it's, it's exactly, it's the cycle. Anyway, hey, we're about outta time here. We, we put in a solid 50 minutes on Textron Gang today.

Before we leave, I wanted to just remind people, you know what, this is the last Textron gang we're doing on a three day a week Textron Gang schedule. We will not have as usual a new show this Friday, tomorrow, but starting Monday, we are Textron Gang and Textron TV for that matter, five days a week, Monday to Friday. We, we've got, you know, due to our relationship with Futur, we, we've got so many more gang members to bring in, like Lisa and, and, uh, Steven FST yesterday, and Steven Dickens and Paul Nash and a bunch of other folks.

We have so much content and quite frankly, there's so much going on in the world. We're coming at you five days a week. It, it comes out on Techstrong tv.

It's on our network and it's also in podcasts on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. So stay with us. Strap on.

We're gonna be here five days a week. Until then though, have a great weekend. This is eligible for Techstrong.

Thank you. Okay. This is a story about ergonomics, the graphical user interface and the dumbing down of the IT workforce.

And it goes like this, okay? Ergonomics is the study of how humans work. And this science has made dramatic breakthroughs over the years.

For example, something as simple as the ergonomic chair allows developers like you and me to sit down and work for hours, if not days, slinging code without doing any real harm to our body. If we were to sit in a hard chair, even for a couple hours, things would go wrong or really badly, really quickly. But the ergonomic chair makes us comfortable.

We can work better. Um, the same can be said of the graphical user interface. Uh, the GUI has opened the doors for so many people to use a computer easily and productively, myself included.

Um, you know, I'm a terrible typist. If it wasn't for the gooey, uh, I don't know where I'd be sitting slinging at the command line for hours on end. GUI takes care of that.

And even something as you know, simple as the cash register has increased human productivity. For example, when you go to a grocery store these days and you go to the self-checkout line, or you go to a cashier, what happens is the cashier will take the item, put it through a scanner, the scanner will read the price and, um, put it, you put it aside with the cashier opener aside. And then you do this for 10 items.

Scan, scan, scan, scan, and you get a grand total. And then you can either pay by card, or if you give the machine or the cashier cash, the machine will figure out, uh, how much change to give you. And it wasn't always like this when I was a kid and I worked retail, um, I had to manually work with a cash register.

I'd pick up the item, read the price, and I'd manually input the price of the item via a keyboard on the cash register, 10 items, keyboard, keyboard, keyboard, 10 times. And then at the end, I'd get a grand total, the customer would give me the cash. And it was up to me to figure out how much change to give the customer.

And there was some tricks to do that, but the calculation was my responsibility. Fast forward today, cash registers figure out change. I'd be hard pressed to find a teenager that could make change on demand at a cash register.

That's just the way it's, but let's talk about the GUI and let's talk about Kubernetes in particular. Kubernetes is a very complex technology, lots of detail. And over the years, there's a whole product line that's developed of GUIs that allow people, particularly entry level CIS admins or DevOps engineers to spin up Kubernetes clusters very easily.

All you need to do is to enter some data, push some buttons, and Walla, you have the, uh, you have a cluster. Okay? There's products like, um, um, open, uh, excuse me, red Hat, OpenShift, uh, a KS, automatic Google console, entry level, uh, developer, CIS admin, put in some data.

You got your cluster. Good news, ergonomically, it's a wonderful thing. Productivity's increased.

But is the operator in this case, the developer or the admin getting smarter or are they losing something here? I mean, the GUI is taking over, working with a lot of the details that go with spinning up a Kubernetes cluster. And when you take those details away, what happens?

Well, one of the things I think happens is that the ability to learn the details of working with a Kubernetes cluster intuitively sort of goes away. 'cause you never see the details. Now, this might be okay, if you're experienced with Kubernetes, if you know everything there is to know about Kubernetes and you wanna increase your productivity, use a ey, go for it.

But for entry level developers, cis admins, DevOps engineers, just giving them a GUI to work with, I'm not sure that's making them any brighter. I don't think it's making them stupid, but I don't think it's making, I do think it's making them a little dumb. So does it matter?

Yeah, I think it does matter. I think understanding the details of a technology is really important. I think using a GUI to accelerate, uh, one's productivity or to increase one's productivity, uh, with the technology is useful after the technology has been mastered.

But to use that as the entry point into working with technology and having a workforce that depends on that technology, that's an accident waiting to happen. And I think it's something worth thinking about.