Talk me off the ledge: Will AI destroy my industry?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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…because “a huge advantage” is a subjective thing. So while an AI might be able to do “market research” in 30 minutes, I just asked it to “provide me give me a list of all the custom webflow developers in [my city], with a link to their websites” and the list that it provided me…8 of the URLS didn’t work, 1 was parked and 1 went to a password protected page. None of these “competitors” actually exist. Not in my city. Not anywhere else.

Don’t believe me? Here is the list.

It literally just made stuff up. It looks convincing. It may have even convinced Professor Mollick. Especially if he used AI to

in under thirty minutes. He wouldn’t have had time to vet any of that research. It could literally have built an entire marketing campaign and designed a website based on market research it could have literally just made up.

Its like…why would I even want to do that?

The entire purpose of market research is to help guide the ultimate design direction. Which means you’ve actually got to understand what the market research is telling you. The very process of doing research can take you in unexpected directions, giving you an insight into the industry that you may not have previously had, perhaps even highlighting a blind spot that the client simply missed that could give them a competitive edge.

AI isn’t even close to be able to do that yet. Not even in the ballpark. It can do market research, if you don’t mind it occasionally (or in my case, completely) making stuff up. It can do market research, but it won’t actually understand the research or be able to give you a decent analysis.

As I said: “the great creative agencies and use AI as a tool to enhance what they already do. The bad creative agencies will use AI to be more exploitative than they already are.”

This isn’t “agile” development. Agile is an iterative approach to development. What you are imagining is an entirely different approach to development, much closer to the “Elon method” than true Agile.

In fact, we should call it the Elon Methodology in his honour.

But this isn’t something that would ever be useful to me. The discovery session at the start of any website project is critical, and is the blueprint for everything else that I do. AI doesn’t help me here at all.

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It’s a new tool, like calculators were, like spell check, like CAD. Tools can empower greater creations and greater creativity or not depending on who is using it how.

As far as creativity in and of itself? To some elements of the process sure. It is not able to give itself a prompt, but some of the human creative process is simply derivative, and this does that cranked to eleven.

Doing a new version of something already done, in the style of something already done, has a place, is creation, and can only take so far.

Fast food has not eliminated the market for quality restaurants.

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Information-shaped sentences.

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Were you using Chat GPT? Yeah, it’s going to give you all sorts of wrong stuff if you use it as a search engine/fact finder. It’s not really what it does, and its info is limited. Something like Bing Chat works better, as it leverages the web, but it then is just a Bing search with a GPT-4 front end for questions like that. (I tried it in Bing Chat for my city, and it delivered “real” results, but mostly just one actual company and a bunch of freelancers looking for work from the Upwork website. Nothing a regular Google/Bing search wouldn’t return, maybe formatted more nicely.)

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This is a big part of my fear. For as much as we agency folks pound our chests about creativity and originality, we know that 99.9% of the work we generate isn’t truly creative and original. It doesn’t have to be – it only needs to be fresh and attractive enough to engage our audience. For every new ad or video or whatever that smacks you in the face and makes you marvel at its genius, there are a thousand that are less ingenious but just as effective.

TLDR: Clients will gladly settle for “good enough” if they can get it faster and cheaper.

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The meaning of this is not clear. So, you asked it for 25 captions for any New Yorker comics? For all New Yorker comics? For a particular comic? If so, which one?

And no, it was not clear which caption was the funny one, especially since we don’t know what comic it’s from. Without context how can you evaluate humor? Please don’t assume that other people think just as you do.

At least this post contained some actual thoughts at least. So often this poster (and others) include just a link and nothing else in their posts. A step in the right direction, anyway.

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“Bought again”? When did North America not buy things made in China? And why buy it if it’s of such low quality?

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Seems pretty clear to me that, yes, they were looking for New Yorker-style captions, not to any particular comic, just a caption that sounds like it might accompany a New Yorker comic. (And which ones they considered “the funny one” seemed equally clear to me, as well, as it’s the one that’s different than the rest in its unexpectedness.)

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Alrighty then. You’re a far more clever man than I am. I’m not so able to guess what people mean when they don’t communicate it in a manner that is evident to me.

Writing a caption without an actual cartoon or at least a description of one? Sounds wacky to me. How can you judge the humor of a caption when there is no cartoon?

Let me try. Here are some ideas for cations for comics that don’t exist:

  1. “And, voila!”
  2. “You should have seen the other monkey!”
  3. “No, bless YOU!”

I just came up with those in ten seconds but you have to admit, all three of those are funnier that almost anything that’s ever been written by anyone ever. You just have to have the right drawing to go with them.

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Ever stopped to think that maybe it is just you?

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It was a follow-up to this:

Write captions for 25 Far Side comics

“Why did the chicken cross the road? To get away from the farmer with a hat like that.”

“I can’t believe it. A talking cow! And all this time I thought I was hallucinating.”

“I told you not to feed the penguins. Now they’re all hopped up on sugar and causing a ruckus.”

“Why did the farmer win the award? Because he was out standing in his field.”

“And on the seventh day, God looked down and saw the mess the animals had made. And he said, ‘Oops, my bad.’”

“I don’t understand why people are always trying to domesticate wild animals. They’re much more fun when they’re running loose.”

“I think I’ve found the perfect pet. It doesn’t need to be fed, walked, or cleaned up after. It’s a rock.”

“Why did the chicken go to therapy? Because it was feeling egg-stressed.”

“I don’t know what’s funnier: the cow playing the piano, or the fact that it’s wearing a tutu.”

“Why did the farmer get arrested? Because he was caught milking the cows after hours.”

“I can’t believe the farmer is using a forklift to move the cows. Talk about overkill.”

“I don’t understand why people say cows are stupid. Look at this one solving a Rubik’s cube.”

“Why did the farmer get kicked out of the petting zoo? Because he kept trying to pet the lions.”

“Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the farmer’s market, of course.”

“I never thought I’d see a cow doing yoga, but I guess it’s true what they say: cows are capable of anything.”

“Why did the farmer get divorced? Because he couldn’t keep his cows in line.”

“I don’t know what’s funnier: the fact that the cow is wearing a party hat, or the fact that it’s celebrating its own birthday.”

“Why did the farmer get a ticket? Because he was caught driving his cows to the beach.”

“I don’t know what’s funnier: the chicken playing the drums, or the fact that it’s wearing sunglasses.”

“Why did the farmer get in trouble? Because he was caught cow-tipping after hours.”

“I never thought I’d see a cow wearing a sombrero, but I guess it’s true what they say: cows are capable of anything.”

“Why did the chicken cross the road? To get away from the farmer who was trying to teach it to roller skate.”

“I don’t know what’s funnier: the cow playing the guitar, or the fact that it’s wearing a cowboy hat.”

“Why did the farmer get a ticket? Because he was caught driving his cows to the movies.”

“I never thought I’d see a cow playing baseball, but I guess it’s true what they say: cows are capable of anything.”

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And of course I thought of The New Yorker after The Far Side because of this:

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Interestingly I saw this thread after just reading an article about this by marketing guru Mark Ritson:

(I hope the link works)

His take it that current AI is no substitute for marketing fundamentals.

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He means intermediate goods are being bought from North American suppliers; the purchase is taking place wholly within North America. In contrast with what used to happen: buying in China from Chinese suppliers to be shipped to North America.

As to why anyone would ever have bought from China, the answer is that low price is always obvious. Low quality usually isn’t. And in fact is often actively disguised by less-than-scrupulous vendors. Lesser quality may well fill your needs, but knowing when “lesser quality” shades into “unacceptably bad quality” is often a tough call.

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I have noticed some websites now using AI-generated art for article toppers. Lots of Midjourney over at We Hunted the Mammoth, for example.

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You forget about the eternal monkey with a typewriter who will one day write the entire works of Shakespeare By just trying random shit enough times it will hit upon something that catches people’s eyes.

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I will point out that certain politicians seems to say random shit that seems to cath people’s eyes. 'Tis an eternal mystery of 'uman nature it is.

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The trouble with cations is won’t get anything but negative reactions.

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Dammit! Here I am having an existential crisis, and you cut-ups are making physics jokes.

I do love this place.

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What I’d like to know is whether there is an industry that AI won’t destroy eventually.