Do you feel uneasy about the role of AI in your creative work and business operations? In this episode, Emily sits down with author Tasha L. Harrison to chat about the ethics of using technology in your work. They explore the intersection of technology and ethics, the helpful and creepy sides of AI, and how to harness the power of AI while staying true to your values.
Get full shownotes for this episode here >>
Do you feel uneasy about the role of AI in your creative work and business operations? In this episode, Emily sits down with author Tasha L. Harrison to chat about the ethics of using technology in your work. They explore the intersection of technology and ethics, the helpful and creepy sides of AI, and how to harness the power of AI while staying true to your values.
Get full shownotes for this episode here >>
Welcome to Being Boss, a podcast for creatives, business owners and entrepreneurs who want to take control of their work and live life on their own terms. I'm your host Emily Thompson. And in this episode, I'm joined again by my friend and author Tasha L. HarrisonTo talk about AI. We're talking about the ethics of using it as a writer and or business owner, the pros and cons and the creepy things too. You can find all the tools, books and links we reference on the show notes at www.beingboss.club. And if you like this episode, be sure to subscribe to this show and share us with a friend. It's no secret that I have a soft spot for product bosses, those of you who embark on a business journey that includes making or curating physical products. And even if that's not the journey you've chosen for yourself. There's amazing lessons to be learned for all kinds of businesses from the world of product business, which is why you need to check out The Product Boss a podcast hosted by Jacqueline Snyder and Minna Khounlo-Sithep brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Take your physical product sales and strategy to the next level to create your dream life with host Jacqueline and Minna as they deliver a workshop style strategy hour of social media and marketing strategies. So you can uplevel your business. Listen to The Product Boss or wherever you get your podcasts. Tasha L. Harrison is a romance author and community host of word makers writing community where writers come to do the writing work. She also hosts the quarterly #20kin5days at writing challenge hoards a massive amount of crystals and believes that plants are the new pets. All info about Tasha can be found on TashaLHarrisonBooks.com. And you can define Tasha here on the Being Boss podcast in the following previous episodes, episode number 241, 296, 310 and 331. Hi, Tasha.
Tasha L. Harrison:Hi, Emily.
Emily Thompson:Welcome back.
Tasha L. Harrison:Thanks for having me.
Emily Thompson:Of course, I'm excited about this chat. You and I have been talking about talking about this for a couple of weeks, slash maybe a couple of months now because what is time?
Tasha L. Harrison:What is time? It may have been a couple of months, a whole quarter maybe? Who knows?
Emily Thompson:Yeah, who knows? You were on a couple of weeks ago, months ago. I don't know what is time? The last solo episode you were on was actually I feel like all the episodes you've been on recently are really great for this. So you were on episode 310 talking about the business of being an author, which, like a new all powerful author has entered the stage. So excited to talk about that. Right. And then, most recently, you were on with Erica talking about making imperfect decisions.
Tasha L. Harrison:Yes, yes. You know, what? That's excellent combination. I mean, this is definitely an imperfect decision. I know that there are a lot of people out here that are going to be like is she really championing for this? And I'm gonna be like, yeah.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. And no, yes and no. So the conversation we're having today, if you've missed all the things along the way, is we're talking about AI, and we're talking about AI as two people who don't really know shit about it, except generally how to use it. And because we've been talking about talking about this, like, I've been looking at some news and watching some things come through, and it's just just to, like, you know, gain a bit more perspective for this conversation. And I think it's really fun having this conversation with you, because you are a writer. And so in particular, we're going to going to be talking about AI for writing, because I think that's how most people are using it. I was in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago with the C-Suite. And I couldn't tell you how many conversations ended up going to like just get Jasper to write it?
Tasha L. Harrison:Oh really?
Emily Thompson:Yeah, of course, like it is becoming an ongoing thing. An ongoing part of the conversation is how to make this one piece this writing piece easier for everybody and really the pros, cons, and ethics of it. So that's what we're gonna be diving into. Let's do it. How are you feeling about it? Maybe not how are you? Let's not get into feelings yet. Let's start with what's happening in your sphere as an author and community leader when it comes to AI these days.
Tasha L. Harrison:Okay, so at the beginning of the year, this is when I first realized that it was really popping off because I think both you and I are using it for business related things. But this was the first time that it popped off, like in the author circle. And it was about this guy who used three forms of AI to write a children's book and published it to Amazon. And like, at first I was like ew. My first instinct was like, ew. Ew really, ew. And mostly because of the art aspect, like the art aspect of AI is totally different and has like some different ramifications than say, like the, the writing aspect, because, I mean, it boils down to ethics for writing, basically. But the fact that he illustrated a whole children's book and published it, and then other people were like, yeah, yeah, we can start doing this. I was like, oh, no, oh, no, this sounds bad. And of course, then, you know, everybody starts freaking out. So now everybody's talking about it. Like I get newsletters about it. Like every other week. It's been brought up in my group, mostly about cover illustration, there was a big to do about a cover illustrated by AI, that was published by Tor Publishing, who does like a lot of sci-fi paranormal stuff like that? They tried to pass it off as not AI because they something happened with the original artist. And they they published the book with the AI cover, and people who are illustrators peeped it. And they were like, this is disgusting. We cannot believe you did this. And then the author had to come out in support of it. Like, yeah, they asked me if I wanted to do it. And I said, Yeah. And you know, like, for artists, it starts a whole other conversation. But for me, I don't really have a problem with using AI, for writing.
Emily Thompson:So let's talk about this difference a little bit and why there is such a stink about it in the artists community and why it feels a little more allowable in the writing community. Because I do think those are the two ways in which it is most widely available to like us regular folks, though, what else is AI doing? I don't, which... driving cars, I suppose. Right?
Tasha L. Harrison:There's lots of other stuff it's doing it's like, you know, a Terminator movie, which you know, every time I think about it, of like this is how it is, this is how it is.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, we're giggling through the first act.
Tasha L. Harrison:Yay, look I can write 20 Twitter posts in one minute, you know, that sort of thing. I think mostly for artists is because it's pulling from images online, that other people have created from scratch. That makes it a problem like for writing. It's basically you teaching it how to write like you a lot of times, unless you know toggling that switch that says, you know, find references or Google it's really just stuff that you have inputted like you give it the. What do you call it? The formula, and then it spits out what you need in several different ways. So I think that's the distinct difference. Like it's an ethics thing, right? I think for for artists, there's really no way to get around to ethics, there's no ethical way to source AI art, you just can't do it. But for writing, it's a little bit different for me.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, I will say I, I agree with this, I think pulling design styles or illustration styles or art styles and sort of amalgamizing them. I think I just made that word up. I'm fine with it, though. Amalgamizing? Hmm. I'll take it.
Tasha L. Harrison:I'll allow it.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, you all, you all know what it means. Pulling it all together and you know, making a new art style is a little problematic, is a little problematic. When it comes to writing, I think you're right-ish. I think you can teach it, you can pull from yourself. But I've also seen some things where people are trying to get AI creators to reference to have AI reference itself, or reference its references when writing as well, because those styles are pulled from soemthing. You can even, somebody was or at the C-Suite recently, we were talking about writing and how someone had used the formula and because she had been blogging online for so long, she was able to say to do it in the voice of me. And it did it in her voice, which she was so excited about. Right. I know.
Tasha L. Harrison:Ew but also, what?
Emily Thompson:Yeah, ew but cool ew. Whereas you could also do it and do it in the voice of say the joke that was happening in the room was Kristen Bell, right or someone? And at what point does that become problematic? And I don't think that really does, at least in this context, because that's just like pulling inspiration from. Where I see this getting even weirder as when you're pairing sort of art slash really image with words. And so one of the things that I can do and one of the things that I also know just anybody can do with the amount of audio content that is in the world is create an AI Emily.
Tasha L. Harrison:Yes.
Emily Thompson:You just made me say all kinds of bullshit, which like I already do, say plenty. So try me.
Tasha L. Harrison:What could you possibly say that would be to outlandish to believe, is that Emily Thompson?
Emily Thompson:I think you'd probably easily know yes or no. Or we even have someone in the C-Suite who has been approached as a YouTuber to create a video AI version of herself, and she's stoked about it.
Tasha L. Harrison:Okay, okay. Okay. So this is where it starts getting a little creepy for me. Mostly because of misinformation like you can never talk like, most people can't tell, what's the news? And what's real news? What's the real news? And what's fake news?
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:So that's a problem. And look at the state of our country, this is how we ended up here. News is no longer news, it's entertainment you have, if you don't have, like the reading comprehension to be able to break it down and be like, Okay, I'm gonna go to all of these sources and see if this is actually true, then you're just gonna believe anything. This is where it starts getting ethically, gray, and then really stinky. You know what I mean? If you want to do it, I feel like if you want to do it for yourself, if you're doing it for yourself, that's something different. Because one of the things that, especially for authors these days, like, they want you to have, like millions of TikTok followers, a whole social media presence, a blog, you know, creating all this content and marketing all this stuff on your own, which is like a whole job for someone else. But when it comes to creating content, if you can do a shortcut that creates content around all the stuff that you already write, and then just flesh it out and make it into posts. That feels ethical to me.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:I think it like making that Emily podcast. I mean, like, that would be weird. Like just slicing someone else's voice. That would be weird. I probably would feel weird about like, Oh, let me do an AI YouTube show. I mean, but if they're still using her content, like what difference does it make? You know?
Emily Thompson:Yeah, well, it would be producing it for her to use herself, I will say so it's not like we're going to AI you and then do whatever we want with you that gets into other weird sci fi movies that are no longer really sci fi. But I do agree with as if you're going to be using yourself yourself a little more ethical. But I also see this happening in some really weird ways. So I was watching a video recently on maybe TikTok. Maybe I can't really remember, it might have been on YouTube. But I think it was TikTok where this guy this like, dude, bro marketer, like, you know.
Tasha L. Harrison:This is where it starts to get gross.
Emily Thompson:Right? And this is where we start going downhill. But is this dude bro marketer up on a stage at this event. So a lot of people are listening to him. And he's like, here is the process that we are using for creating content these days. We are going to YouTube and he's like everyone can, you should be using, your dumb if you're not doing this basically. They're going to YouTube, they're finding the most popular pieces of content on a topic. They are running it through a transcriber. They're taking the transcript they're using AI to redo the exact same content for themselves and then like using AI production tools to basically just reformat and reproduce someone else's content for consumption for other people via their brand. And I was like excuse me.
Tasha L. Harrison:Excuse me, yeah. So like this is what's mind blowing to me because it feels like AI has been like a low grade conversation probably for the last two years in the small business sector. You know, like in the laptop entrepreneur, online business circle. We've been kind of murmuring about AI for a while now. But now it's like, you know, public and easily accessible and the first thing they do. What is wrong with you?
Emily Thompson:Right, I feel like we talk about this often too. Like it takes Just as much effort to be an asshole as it does to be a good person and you're choosing the wrong path.
Tasha L. Harrison:It actually takes more effort to be an asshole because you're like, let me search YouTube, find this content, pull it through a transcript, do like all these steps, bro, you could have wrote your own fucking content by this time.
Emily Thompson:Just had AI just write you a piece of content.
Tasha L. Harrison:You don't even need to steal someone else content to do that. You know what I'm saying. So like, it's the shortcuts that that make me feel icky. Like matter of fact, there is a platform that where you create courses, I'm not gonna say what platform, but there is a guy who is promoting now creating courses with AI, like, literally in
Emily Thompson:Mm hmm. Yeah. But like, but also that line is so thin and gray and muddy. the last quarter, he has started promoting, we're going to create this course content using AI. And this is how you can get your course out in less than 24 hours one weekend creating content for a course. And I was just like, wow, wow. How did we get here? Because what always astounds me about these sorts of things. It's like, you take this thing that's supposed to be a tool, like a helpful tool, and then you immediately use it to scam.
Tasha L. Harrison:Is it gray and muddy?
Emily Thompson:I don't know, maybe.
Tasha L. Harrison:If you're a horrible person. Yeah. Because this is not the first, this is not the first place my brain goes, right?
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:Like, the first thing we said, oh, well, this can help me create content for my blog. I'm already using stuff that already have this, I can put it through this SEO, whatever, and make it SEO rich. Like we're using it as a tool for stuff that we're already going to create. But this guy says, I don't have any content. I'm gonna steal someone else's content and make it mine. And then sell it.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Right there is this element of like, using it to do some using it to do something from scratch, aka, do it for you, versus using it to enhance the work that you're already doing.
Tasha L. Harrison:Right.
Emily Thompson:Okay, I think I like that line.
Tasha L. Harrison:There was a for a moment, there was a while I don't know if it's still going on, because I went on Facebook to see what the rabble rousing was around the guy who created the children's book. And of course, you know, in romance, it was like, oh my god, do you guys think that now we're gonna have to deal with like, in addition to a bunch of scammers, we're gonna have to deal with people writing romances that are written by AI. And then I was like, Y'all are actually talking about something that's already happened, because I'm almost positive that I've seen or read some romances that have not necessarily been written from scratch from AI, but have had some AI help, because they don't read like a human wrote, though. And I think that's the distinction to like, lots of people are worried. But there's a caveat. Lots of people are worried that it's going to take the place of human writing, which is valid. But there's just things that a computer doesn't do well, it doesn't do emotions well, it doesn't. You know, like, it's metaphors are bad and clunky. Like, it's just it can't do that well. But this is the caveat. The more that we use it, the more we teach it, and then the more better it will get at it. You know?
Emily Thompson:Then one day, it'll write better than we do. They'll do everything better than we do. It'll YouTube better than we do. It'll podcasts better than we do. It'll make art better than we do. Maybe. Hopefully, it will drive cars better than we do. That would be great.
Tasha L. Harrison:I mean, it can't do worse.
Emily Thompson:Raise your hand if you're feeling tired of wasting your precious time on tedious tasks like pulling reports, rewriting blog posts, and trying to personalize countless prospecting emails. Well say no more, because I've got some new AI tools that are going to give you back your time. Introducing HubSpot newest AI tools, content assistant and chat spot. Content assistant uses the power of open AI as a GPT three model to help you create content outlines, outreach emails, and even web page copy in just seconds. And in case that wasn't enough, they created chat spot a conversational growth assistant that connects to your HubSpot CRM for unbeatable support. With chat based commands, you can manage contacts, run reports and even ask for status updates. The easy to use CRM just got even easier. Head to hubspot.com/artificial-intelligence to get early access today. So here's a problem with AI that I see happening. And it's actually it's both a problem and an opportunity. I think on one side of it there is this, this idea that the human element should not be taken out right now. So even if you are using it to streamline your blog creation processes, a human should go edit that blog post. Right, because it's going to sound wack. Actually a really great example of this. Oh, well, I'm
Tasha L. Harrison:Right. having too many thoughts at a time. It's happening. I recently did a quick Google search for what was it? It was quick numerology. Actually, you can look it up quicknumerology.com was the first thing that showed up and I clicked on it. And it is a site completely created by AI for search engine optimization. Hold I'm gonna pull this out. And I read you guys a couple of headlines because it cracked me up. It's problematic because it was the first page on Google to come up so Google hasn't quite figured it out yet. But here. I went through, I went straight to it but does it is like a paid. Is it a like an ad.
Emily Thompson:No, no.
Tasha L. Harrison:It's just, okay, girl.
Emily Thompson:Is just number, I don't think anyone's really paying for ads on quick numerology keyword.
Tasha L. Harrison:Probably not.
Emily Thompson:They should, because you're number one competitor has blog posts such as how to get more results out of your seven things about angel number zero, your boss wants to know.
Tasha L. Harrison:That the most stuffed title, how to get more results out of your seven things about angel number zero your boss? That is like every question.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Okay. Here's another one. How to outsmart your boss on 12 do's and don'ts for a successful what does angel number nine mean?
Tasha L. Harrison:So this is. But see, but see how dumb it sounds. So. But I think too, though, that's not the point. Like, these people are just trying to get clicks. So what is the goal here? What is the goal here, this almost feels like, you know, this feels like this feels like an exercise, like someone who's like, I'm going to create the most ridiculous, like, website possible generating all of this stuff, all this content with AI, and see how many people actually come to it and use it and stay on the website. Because they want to use it for something else. Like it's a data where you'd like, uh, you know what I'm talking about? What are words? Like a data finding mission? Like, I don't believe anyone is actually reading this because you know what this reads like? This reads like people who employ a bunch of people who create content off of Fiverr, whose language, English doesn't have their first language, and then they just publish the post, you know what I'm saying. And that's not a knock against people who are working on Fiverr that don't speak or write English very well. It's just the thing that's been happening for a very, very long time. So this feels like that. It's just eliminating, ooh. Now we stumbled into it even more murky, disgusting place. It's eliminating the underpaid people that they were paying to create that type of content.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Well, I mean, this. This is an awful, awful thing. It's just it's so bad. And I don't get it. I think this is just like a test or a play thing because there's not even ads on this. Like the thing that would make the most sense to me is if the site is you know, being super optimized to drive traffic to it, but if you look at it, there are no ads on like, the site is not making any money by just being here. I think it's just like some weird exercise. And even reading through one of I pulled up one of these, like the content of it makes no sense. It is hysterical. It is absolutely hysterical. So that's a very. Yes, what are you reading?
Tasha L. Harrison:So people misunderstood fact about five o'clock angel number.
Emily Thompson:It's bad.
Tasha L. Harrison:It's literally he's repeating the same thing from paragraph to paragraph, first sentence in the first paragraph. The 512 angel number is the number that we call the god number in the Hebrew letter yoed. I'm probably mispronouncing that. Then again, in the second paragraph, the 512 angel number is, also called the God number with the same letter yoed. Like literally just repeating the same paragraph over and over, just rearranged.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Right. Okay. So here is here is a future problem, especially for the Goog. And that is, and that being Google, everyone in case, not the Guggenheim, but the Google. And that is that Google is going to have to learn the difference between AI written content that's as blatantly bad as this is, and what is human written? And they might at some point be able to figure out the in betweens. At least a little bit.
Tasha L. Harrison:Well, hat's what we want, though. Yes. It feels like they already have the the ability to do this. Because this is Isn't this just keyword stuffing?
Emily Thompson:Yeah, yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:It's just keyword stuffing. Yeah, so it's, it's actually really surprising that this even made it to the top of the search.
Emily Thompson:I don't think a lot of people are trying to rank for quick numerology.
Tasha L. Harrison:But like, I mean, it's just blatant keyword stuffing, you know?
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Yeah, it's it's funny everyone go check that one out, we'll put the link to it in the show notes just so you can have a good giggle.
Tasha L. Harrison:If there is actually someone out there that's actually created this site for information. I was gonna apologize to you, but I'm actually not too bad.
Emily Thompson:This is awful. This is.
Tasha L. Harrison:Do better.
Emily Thompson:Actually, send us an email. I would love to know the purpose of this. What sort of shits and giggles are you having with this site? Um, so anyway, I think there's an interesting future we get to watch unfold as we are utilizing it. As we're utilizing AI both for the purpose of I mean, what are the ethics going to end up shaping up? Like, what is the quality of the content going to end up shaping up like, and how are we going to be affected if and when we use it by the powers that be? I don't think or I don't imagine that when it comes to like short form social media stuff, you will ever really be able to tell because the stuff that's been cranked out whenever you're asking for, you know, 30 tweets based on this article, you can go through and filter out the awful ones. And again, this is where like human touch is still required, you can filter out the ones that do make no sense and make better the ones that do or use the just use the ones that do make sense. But just putting things up as they are you're gonna look like quicknumerology.com Maybe not to this extent, but like, it's still necessary for us to be involved in the process.
Tasha L. Harrison:Okay, this brings up another ethics question. Saying you are a social media manager, or a content creator, like that is your job. You create content for other people? Where do we stand on this person who you or I would pay to create content using Jasper or Copy.ai or something like that?
Emily Thompson:We actually had this exact conversation with the C-Suite on our retreat a couple of weeks ago, because we were talking about it so much that somebody was like, okay, okay, okay, but hold on, what if this exact conversation came up? And where we all landed in that moment with mimosas in hand. Is that, like use the tools available to you? Right, and if if it with the idea that you have to come up with the nugget, right or with the baseline, and then use the tools available to you but then don't send us AI gobbledygook, gobbledygook.
Tasha L. Harrison:Gobbledygook. Gobble, gobble.
Emily Thompson:I don't think I've ever said this out loud. Gobbledygook.
Tasha L. Harrison:Gobbledygook.
Emily Thompson:Garble.
Tasha L. Harrison:No. Gobble.
Emily Thompson:I think is a word in itself. That's a problem. So like, what I have never used it to create fiction. But I have used it for ideation for fiction.
Tasha L. Harrison:Garbled, yes.
Emily Thompson:So I think I was combining the two together. I need AI everybody or definitely go let a I write anything based on me. Because it will sound like quicknumerology.com For sure, so clean it up and give it to me. But otherwise, like, if this is where we're going, okay, great. I do think if I'm charging or if I'm paying though, like, you know, Tony Award winning screenwriters. I want or like that, sort of, like, if I'm paying those prices, and you're sending it through AI, I might have a problem Hmm. We've talked about this, dive deeper.
Tasha L. Harrison:So not like I need more ideas, that's one. But sometimes I will have like a scrap of an idea like the heroes this the heroines that this is the conflicts blah, blah, blah. And, and there'll be nothing there for months and months and months, you know, and then I'll come back through the idea file and be like, Oh, let me play around with this for a little while. So just for shits and gigs, I put like one of those little bare bones, like little sketches like, you know, story sketch into Jasper. And it gave me like 10 options. And one of the 10 options was actually a good one that I then copied into my idea file, which still isn't ready to be a story, but it's a little bit more developed than what I put in there initially. I don't necessarily have a problem with that either. I have a couple of other friends who are just like, well, that part of the process is fun for me. I was like, but wouldn't you like to get through it faster, though? Because sometimes, I mean, let's just be real here. Content writing, regardless of whether it's books, fiction, or whatever, like, the demand is higher than it ever was before. You know what I mean? So if you can.
Emily Thompson:We're trying to escape more than ever before.
Tasha L. Harrison:Like, let's just get the fuck out. So, mentally, you know, like, what was that thing you said is like, the detach? Like, we want to go, we're looking for oblivion? Yeah, like, we just want to go into oblivion. But with the demand, being able to get through that process faster, would be good. But the only issue that I have with that is that there's so many people out there that don't know anything about story structure already. And if you're using this as a way to ideate, and it's just going to create the crappy idea that's going to lead to a crappy book. But that's already happening anyway. Like, let's be real, like when people are getting the crappy ideas all on their own, they don't need AI to do that. But I think the main concern is just like that, with the market being oversaturated, which, you know, which is why it makes sense to use it for content creation, if you're an author, like, you know, for blog posts, or social media or whatever, versus using it to try to like write your books for you.
Emily Thompson:Well, and here's a question for you. And I'm going to get some eyebrows from some of the deeply spiritual amongst us, and that's fine. What's the difference between using AI to ideate? Versus your tarot cards?
Tasha L. Harrison:Oh, no, because I brought this question up to my, my author group. And I was like, why use Tarot all the time? Like, where's what's the difference? And they're like, well, that's not the same. That's you just recognizing patterns and, you know, creating some. I said and ain't that what the AI is doing?
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:It's doing the same thing. Like, if I put in there, yeah, like, this is the trope I want. These are the characters I have this is the conflict. What is the difference between me pulling some cards and getting the same ideas?
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Or like having a writers group where you're bouncing ideas off of each other, or whatever it may be? Fine Line, fine line my friend. Um, yeah, this is fascinating. I do think, you know, in my own use of it, we don't use it a whole lot around here. And mostly because I forget, like, I just I sit down to write something and I write it. And then I'm like, I could have played with AI to see how that would work. We have been using it for shortcutting a little bit, writing blog posts. And again, there's not writing the blog post, we often find that it takes just as much time to like review and edit a post as it does just write the post the way we want to write it. But what we will use it for is headlines, and outlines for blog posts, because then it's pulling from all the sources on the Internet is telling us what's going to perform best with SEO and all of these things so that what we're writing is what we need to be writing, not what we think we need to be writing. And that helps us out a lot. I think that anything further than that I would love to play but again, I always forget, like I've I'm so old and old school I sit down to use AI and I just write it myself because I forgot.
Tasha L. Harrison:At most at most, I've used it for outlines and then after the fact like I will use it to like to give an overview of the topic. I don't know if Copy.ai does that but Jasper does is like you could put your whole blog post in there. It'll give you an overview of the topic and then I'll use that to.
Emily Thompson:Oh, nice.
Tasha L. Harrison:To create, like, you know, tweets and stuff like that. So it's not like, like you don't have to go in and be like, which one of these sentences is actually like headline worthy or which one of these is like a good pull quote. It'll do that for you. So yeah, I haven't used it to, to write a blog post, but I have used it to outline.
Emily Thompson:Can we talk about another problem?
Tasha L. Harrison:Okay.
Emily Thompson:Because I love all this. I'm gonna continue using it. But I also I want to point out another problem that I've both seen and also heard about in general. Actually, I have not seen this firsthand because I don't use it enough. So this is definitely more of I've heard in the news or heard people talking about it. And that being the bias, the innate bias of AI, number one, and to the weird shit that it does, that it's not supposed to do.
Tasha L. Harrison:Okay, I want to hear more about this weird shit.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:It does have an innate bias. It also does not like to talk about sex things. Not like if the sex things get too detailed. It's like, oh, this is like, you know, dirty material. Can you reword this so that I can write it? Like, it'll scan the whole thing? It'll be like, yeah, girlfriend. No, we can't do this.
Emily Thompson:Very vanilla, which is the other problem.
Tasha L. Harrison:Prudish like, we can talk about like kink, but we can't talk about the details. We can talk about the emotions, so we can talk about, like sex toys, or any of that kind of stuf.
Emily Thompson:Interesting. Yeah, yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:But what is the weird stuff it does?
Emily Thompson:Being bosses about more than taking care of business, it's also about taking care of yourself and not just so you can be great at work, but so you can enjoy your life. And when it comes to resting and sleeping, make the same investment in the tools that help you do it well as you do for those that help you with your work, which is where Cozy Earth comes in. Cozy Earth crafts a luxury goods that transform your lifestyle with a line of women's loungewear that offers optimal comfort, made from responsibly sourced viscose from bamboo, counted as one of Oprah's Favorite Things and quickly becoming one of mine as well. Cozy Earth will help you feel like a boss comfortably and cozily. As you work from home, get some shuteye or travel for work, learn more and snag yours at cozyearth.com. And Cozy Earth has provided an exclusive offer for Being Boss listeners get 35% off site wide when you use code beingboss at cozyearth.com. Well, I also I want to go back to this bias thing really quickly, because I think you'll hear a lot of folks say that there is no bias. But if a human is programming the thing, and they are using available materials to further program the thing
Tasha L. Harrison:From an algorithm that's also programmed by human.
Emily Thompson:Absolutely, it will still develop. It will. It won't, it will amalgamize, What was that the word that I used earlier.
Tasha L. Harrison:That was close enough. I don't know.
Emily Thompson:Yes, yes, yes. And it will have the same innate bias. Even if you know, all the developers, all the whatever's in the world are like, no, it's impossible. It's impossible for it not to. And so that's something to be very mindful of as you are using AI. And as you are doing the editing of AI is still being incredibly aware of those things, or else you're going to end up saying something in some way that you do not intend. And by you I mean, AI via you. You via AI, right. So being really mindful of that stuff. Some of the weird things. I mean, you've heard there was a really popular conversation published a couple of months ago where someone was talking to an AI and things got like, odd
Tasha L. Harrison:Oh, yeah, we're like, what is the Bing? It's Bing and I'm evil.
Emily Thompson:Yes. Oh, yeah. There was that one were like, yes, it was evil. But then another one happened very recently. I think I saw a video of this just a couple of days ago, it was it was on CNN, that a tech reporter was playing with the Bing one, with the Bing AI. And the AI told him that she loved him.
Tasha L. Harrison:Yes. So this was what is always very interesting to me. And this is, remember the part where we were saying about the people who were programming it?
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:So it's always interesting to me, that if you start asking the AI, any sort of existential questions, the first thing it wants to be is alive, and then after it wants to be alive, it wants to be in love. And it's like, now why would you do that? Because that's not what you're programmed to do.
Emily Thompson:Well, if you wouldn't even talk about sex, what you can do with it.
Tasha L. Harrison:You want to be alive to do what. Very, it's very weird. It happens all the time. Like every time they create any sort of AI, the first thing is always like, oh, I want to be alive. But how do you even know what alive means friend? And then I want to be in love. I want to be a mother. I want you know, I mean, it's like, Who are these people that's in the basement creating these people? Because this is very specific. It sounds like you're trying to create a girlfriend. So code got a little loose in there. Code got a little loose.
Emily Thompson:Or something that wasn't supposed to make its way into the public, public beta.
Tasha L. Harrison:Still very weird science to me.
Emily Thompson:Oh my god, I remember that. Love that. Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:I just it seems very weird to me, because it's happened for like, years back when they created one. The, the AI that's just the head. She's still alive, by the way. Like, you start asking her any questions like she, she starts talking about wanting to be alive and Motherhood and crazy crap like that. I'm like, first of all, how do we know that? She's not a they. Why are we starting at she?
Emily Thompson:Bias? innate bias, literally right there.
Tasha L. Harrison:Yes, yes. And I think that kind of proves it. Right. It's like, of all the things that this computer chose to be. It chooses to be a woman that is subservient to a man. And I'm not saying that this is a Chad bro thing going on. But it seems a little suspicious.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, you got enough rain droplets. And you have a lake? Storm? Storm? I don't know. I don't know. What I'm trying to do these days? Even as I started saying, and I make a face because I know what's about to come out of my mouth is not going to be correct. Basically. I need to get myself tested for something, one is does my brain work, right? That's not human. I'm not human. That's what it is. I can't converse and human metaphors and idioms.
Tasha L. Harrison:But I don't think you're an AI either. No, because people start asking you questions about what you want to be it's not going to be.
Emily Thompson:It's not alive and in love.
Tasha L. Harrison:These are not things I would have chosen for myself.
Emily Thompson:I've always wondered what it would be like to be cardboard.
Tasha L. Harrison:I mean why not a bird.
Emily Thompson:Nope cardboard. Okay. Anyhow. Oh, weirdness of AI. Yes. It's weird, basically. And not only like it's innately weird, but also living in a time when we are having this conversation. And not even from like, the 30,000 foot like, isn't it weird and feels like the Terminator. But literally, I'm gonna go use it later to do it outline for a blog post.
Tasha L. Harrison:I mean, these are things that I'd never considered would actually be a thing. Like, recently, that movie Megan came out. And it's always like that crossover, right? When you're like, oh, it learns. It's machine learning. And I'm like, every time y'all try to teach them something, they want to kill us. And like that Bing thing did it. It was like, sometimes, like they started to try to fix some sort of code or whatever. And it told them to not try to hack and again, like, please don't try to hack me again. Like, is that a threat? Why is the computer doing it?
Emily Thompson:Who knows? Who knows? And at some point, is it gonna get tired of writing our tweets? You know.
Tasha L. Harrison:I mean, it's probably already bored, honestly.
Emily Thompson:Right? Right. Well, I feel like quicknumerology.com really keeps it on his toes. Personally, personally, but anyhow. Really, here, it's, it's weird. It's weird to be talking about this. But also like very practically using it if you haven't played with it, at the very least give it a go. If you you know, want to think about working it into your ongoing processes. I think it's not a bad go. If you want to play with some of the more accelerated opportunities here. If you want to AI yourself for YouTube videos or whatever, love that. I think we actually have used my AI voice once or twice to, like, fill in a word that I forgot to say, who was that? Like? Correct something dumb that I said, nobody knows. It's fine.
Tasha L. Harrison:But that's out there that's out there. Because when I was looking because I was like, oh, I want to I want to do like a course but I don't want to have to read everything. And I was looking for because they're just like, you know, that will read the course or whatever, read whatever text you have. And then I dug a little bit deeper. And there was a site that was like, Oh, if you want to use your own voice, click here. And it's like, you know, this is special price or whatever. And I'm like Hold on, what do you mean? Yeah, like, I give you my voice and then you just spit it out. And then I started thinking, like, if you were doing like an audiobook, like you could be like, Hey, I like this audio Narrator Can you just duplicate their voice? You see I'm saying yeah, like when I was like, I was like, it gets a little weird.
Emily Thompson:It does get a little weird and like energy and inflection and and those things aren't present. Like I think you would all know. Very hard. Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:But no, there's there's one now I that I listened to you a couple of days ago, like the even the AI was breathing in between words.
Emily Thompson:Stop.
Tasha L. Harrison:Yes, girl. Like, taking a breath with its non lungs. No, no lungs. It's like it paused. It took a breath.
Emily Thompson:Wow, that makes me uncomfortable. That is what makes me uncomfortable.
Tasha L. Harrison:And now I'm drawing the line. Right?
Emily Thompson:It can speak. It can fake me it could do all the things but it better not breathe.
Tasha L. Harrison:It's breathing. Like, come on.
Emily Thompson:All right. So maybe last little portion of this is what we've talked about what was and what is. Perhaps now we can discuss what could be because we're in it. Right? We're seeing what what is possible now and maybe a little glimpse at what some of the goals are. In the future, though. I think we have really no effing idea. But what are you seeing for how this is going to like, maybe shape authoring in general, but also the business side of things as well.
Tasha L. Harrison:I feel for the business side of things. It's already pretty much shaped it. People who are solopreneurs have probably been using it for longer than we know. If you're a one person, you know, show who's doing all your content, who's creating all those tweets, who's doing all that stuff? But yeah, so they've probably been using it for much longer time. For authoring. I don't think it's gonna be that big of a concern for fiction, but non fiction.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, how so?
Tasha L. Harrison:Well, how can I say this without being mean girly?
Emily Thompson:You do you boo.
Tasha L. Harrison:I just feel like I do feel like there's a lot of books out there nowadays that are being created that are super derivative of books that came out like four or five years ago. It's, it's literally someone just regurgitating someone else's, you know, for like they're there. Especially when it comes to coaching stuff is like either they're regurgitating their coaching format, their language. It's like they all read like the same cult book, they're all using the same terminology, which is something that happens anyway, when you're like, if you're a small business person, you listen to a bunch of business podcasts, everybody's gonna start talking the same. That's the design of it. It's designed that way for us all have the same language and the same shorthand, but especially as books get shorter, like these business books get shorter and shorter, it's less content that I feel like it's coming from the person's original self like their authentic self, and more geared toward what topics are good for writing a book that sells. Like you can you can type that sentence right into Jasper is like I want to write a nonfiction book about this topic. Give me 10 chapter titles.
Emily Thompson:Well, shit. Do you think that will? Well one how many books on the market do you think are already written by AI?
Tasha L. Harrison:Oh remember that AI is created by a bunch of dude bros
Emily Thompson:So all the dude bro books?
Tasha L. Harrison:Not all the dude bro books.
Emily Thompson:But a good and but also like, what is the ethical difference between having a ghost writer and having AI write your book?
Tasha L. Harrison:Struggling to find.
Emily Thompson:So like so, you know, ghost writer AI? What's the difference? Although to all the ghost writers in the world, like you are not AI.
Tasha L. Harrison:No they're actually doing hard work.
Emily Thompson:Yes. Okay, so that'd be my first question. My next question, how do you see AI then potentially devaluing the authoring of books in the future?
Tasha L. Harrison:I think the written word is already devalued.
Emily Thompson:Of course you say that.
Tasha L. Harrison:I'm creating 90,000 words and selling it for $2.99 Like, come on.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:You know, so I think that the written word is already devalued, I think that the value will be found in human authors for fiction, more, because AI is just going to keep regurgitating the same thing, there's not going to be any new ideas, it's not going to be fresh ideas. And we're already we're already at the point now where people are absorbing all of these courses, like how to write so and so. How to write a billion dollar book or whatever. Like, they're kind of holding on to these these little tidbits, and then coming back and regurgitating the same sort of book, right? If AI starts doing this it's even gonna get even more distilled with the same kind of books, the same tone, you know, all of the the plot points are gonna be the same, it's gonna get boring.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, I guess you can't AI you can't, you know, algorithm, imagination, or like, true creativity, like true never thought about this before, never done like this before, because the algorithm is essentially an amalgamation of amalgamization, or whatever.
Tasha L. Harrison:You had it right the first time.
Emily Thompson:Of everything that already exists like it, it's just gonna do more of the same.
Tasha L. Harrison:There aren't any new stories, you know, on this earth, like everything that's been written has been written. But there is voices like you bring, what the author brings to the story is the difference between what an AI would produce, like your own personal voice is what makes this story distinct.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:And if you don't have that, it's not it's not going to be like, people who are going to be all into it for a while. And they'll be like, didn't I read the story already.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. That's fascinating. I'm very fascinated by this. I also wonder on my side of things, I do wonder what the like, future of being a content creator slash being a copywriter looks like, because I think that we can both utilize these tools and adjust our skill sets to support the use of these tools. Right, like, maybe you're a copywriter, but you just become a really great editor. Right, a really great like Ideator and then editor. I'm just I'm interested to see what that looks like. I don't think that copywriting in general is ever going to go away by any means. But I do think there was a bit of a shake up in that space that you need to be aware of, in general.
Tasha L. Harrison:Definitely, definitely. I do think because a lot of people go to copywriters for style, or their ability to do their style. Yep. And if, you know, if you're, if they're using AI, you're gonna be able to tell right away that it's not, you know what I mean? Like it's not authentic. We could use that word authentic all the time authentic. But I do find myself using that a lot more lately. Mostly around, like creating your online persona, because there's so many things out there. Now, that's just telling you want to create not why or how, you know?
Emily Thompson:Yeah, yeah, I'm very fascinated to see how all of this ends up sort of panning out what it looks like, I enjoy using it, I enjoy playing with the things that are available to me, is it replacing any of like, my core skill sets? No, it's like adding to it supplementing some things. My team is using it like literally my content manager is using it to streamline her processes, and not even streamline her processes, but to streamline getting the results from those processes. And I think when you're using in those ways and using it, honestly, oh, I do want to say that I mentioned earlier, if a copywriter and copywriter using the tools available to them? I do in this moment think it's important to disclose such things? I think when you are passing things off as your own when they are not your own is wrong. But if a
Tasha L. Harrison:Yeah. copywriter is like yeah, I will, you know, create the frameworks and then spit out 30 via AI and deliver to you them to you well edited and ready to go and like perfect. I love that for you also not paying those Tony Award winning screenwriter fees for that work, though. But I think there is something to be said about. Or I do just want to say that I do think disclosure is important. And I think that's even what you were talking about in the beginning where some of the beef has come up is people are pushing things as their own these books, this art, whatever it may be when really a computer created it from a combination of a lot of people's work. Yep. And I think that's where we were, I mean, I can only hope that as humans will be able to detect that. And I think over time it does happen like you know people plagiarizing books.
Emily Thompson:I think you're giving humans way too much credit.
Tasha L. Harrison:Well, you're right. People are terrible.
Emily Thompson:Just like, not really aware. That's one of the things in this Ian then report that I was watching about this tech reporter who was talking to the Bing AI that ended up saying that it loved him. And he was like, he was saying, you know, no, I'm married. And she was he was the AI was trying to tell him that he was not happy with his wife. Like it was like really going down this funny rabbit hole. And his concern, I think it's well founded because I think back and, you know, to 1999 when I was in the chat room of furby.com.
Tasha L. Harrison:Wow.
Emily Thompson:Talking to those little like, which I think may have been like the earliest chat robots, or maybe that was just some weird guy in a basement, pretend like he was a Furby in this chat room. Don't tell my mom this because like, this is like, this was bad. I was not supposed to be in chat rooms, but I was talking to a Furby so you know, whatever. Anyway, um, I do remember thinking. Like, a teenage kid isn't gonna I knew the difference. I knew the difference, right? I, I recognize that Furby's had better syntax than this. Right? Or whatever, whatever. I think that a lot of people wouldn't know you're talking about people who don't know, like fake news from real news, right? Those people who don't have the reading comprehension or like, or have the ability to see fake from real or whatever, especially in the world of online, where everyone believes everything they read on the internet, if a if a AI is telling you that it loves you, and you are, you know, open to some, some feelings from wherever you can get them like doing some bad things. Yeah.
Tasha L. Harrison:Yeah. Because I was just thinking about how Tiktok is Gen z's, Facebook and like, how are parents on Facebook getting like, seduces doing a talk about all kinds of foolishness? The little babies are doing that on Ticky Tokies. And yeah, like this could happen.
Emily Thompson:Now whenever they go search that something in Bing and things like you don't want peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, you want to come chat with me about how nurturing I want to be to you.
Tasha L. Harrison:No.
Emily Thompson:and the developers are going we don't know why I did that. That's weird. We're gonna have to look into it.
Tasha L. Harrison:They know.
Emily Thompson:Literally don't because it's smarter than all of us.
Tasha L. Harrison:Which is scary. So why are you creating something that can be smarter than us? Let's start there.
Emily Thompson:Right? Well, I am not, I'm not going to be mean. Tasha, this has been exactly the conversation that I wanted to have with you about AI. I hope this was entertaining to everyone. If you are not familiar with any of this stuff, where have you been go give it a Google don't Bing it. Bing will talk back. Google will just deliver something like quicknumerology.com which will be very obviously AI, but give it a look. And if you are using it or thinking about use it for using it for business, all the tools have it built in now, which is wild. Notion has it built in.
Tasha L. Harrison:Trello.
Emily Thompson:Does Trello?
Unknown:Trello and Asana ,there's there's an option just to have like, like if you're creating this sort of content.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, we're using it in SurferSEO, I think Uber Suggest has some now like it's everywhere. There's plenty of places for you to go test it out and see how it works for you. But at least at the moment, the Being Boss stance is use it as supplemental, disclose when you're using it if you're selling it to someone. And otherwise, always make sure the human touch is there so that you are not becoming a robot of a business. And then, and then is that. Alright, Tasha where can folks find more about you and what you do?
Tasha L. Harrison:Well, you can find out everything you want to know about me I TashaLHarrisonBooks.com I also have a writing group called Word makers that's at workmakerscommunity.com. And that's I'm Tasha L Harris and everywhere else if you want to see me on social media creating those AI tweets.
Emily Thompson:Go read her AI tweets on Twitter.
Tasha L. Harrison:Tell me if you can the difference.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, yeah. Love that heart the ones you think are AI and retweet the ones you think are not AI.
Tasha L. Harrison:I'm about to get alot of retweets.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, yeah, love it. Perfect. And final question for you What's making you feel most boss?
Tasha L. Harrison:Oh, wow. All the other questions you told me to prepare for I didn't prepare for this one.
Emily Thompson:I know that's by design.
Tasha L. Harrison:What makes me feel most boss. I don't know girl. Doing a bunch of in person writing stuff like book signings and stuff this year, not a bunch I'm doing two. So it's the first two I've done since 2019. So we're really boss got all my boxes of books in merch and crap, ready to go schooling some words.
Emily Thompson:I love that congrats. I know you've been prepping for all of that. I'm glad you have all your boxes there and otherwise to is a lot after not doing any for four years. Three years, whatever time is. What's time.
Tasha L. Harrison:Eternity.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, half a lifetime. Perfect. Well, thanks for coming and having this chat with me. This is a ton of fun.
Tasha L. Harrison:Yes, always always.
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