Chris Perry, Chair, Weber Shandwick Futures and author of Perspective Agents, joins CI Conversations host Jennifer Sain to discuss The Weber Shandwick Collective’s AI Accelerator , finding clarity in the overwhelming noise surrounding AI and how companies can use that clarity to take action.
For more marketing insights and ideas, please subscribe to this podcast or visit intelligence. interpublic.com.
For updates on CI’s podcasts and Thought Leadership, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram and subscribe on Apple Podcasts.
Chris Perry, Chair, Weber Shandwick Futures and author of Perspective Agents, joins CI Conversations host Jennifer Sain to discuss The Weber Shandwick Collective’s AI Accelerator , finding clarity in the overwhelming noise surrounding AI and how companies can use that clarity to take action.
For more marketing insights and ideas, please subscribe to this podcast or visit intelligence. interpublic.com.
For updates on CI’s podcasts and Thought Leadership, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram and subscribe on Apple Podcasts.
[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Collective Intelligence Podcast from IPG. We deliver marketing insights that help modern brands thrive. In this episode, you'll hear about the latest perspectives featured at intelligence.interpublic.com. Listen then log on to find new opportunities for your brand to stand out.
[00:00:22] Jen Sain (Host): Hello, and welcome to another episode of CI conversations. I'm your host, Jen Sain, and today we will be talking about what else, but AI. Yeah, actually, ChatGPT is turning one, happy birthday, I guess. And we are fast approaching 2024. So of course, everyone's talking about what does the future of this mega trend look like? So to get into that, I'd like to introduce our guest, Chris Perry, Chair of Futures, the AI accelerator at Weber Shandwick, Chris, thank you very much for being here.
[00:00:53] Chris P: Yeah. Good to be here and talking about the topic of the day, week, month, year, right?
[00:00:59] Jen Sain (Host): Exactly. So obviously there's a lot to talk about around AI. And I think one of the things that we can all agree on is that many companies are struggling to implement AI in a meaningful way. And the AI accelerator is an answer to that. Can you kind of tell our listeners a little bit more about the AI accelerator?
[00:01:16] Chris P: Sure, and I'll start with the struggle, as you mentioned up front, we're about a year into the ChatGPT movement, and it is descended on us and our clients and marketers and media people writ large in an incredibly fast way. And instead of focusing on, again, the wonders of these new technologies, we really [00:01:40] focus from day one on our people, on our clients and potential partners that could help us. Kind of understand the moment that we're, you know, that we're in, and not only some of the applications of these things, but the implications of these things.
[00:01:54] Chris P: And so we spent roughly a year in development mode with clients. We've probably had 50 plus meetings with clients from all over the world across all business sectors and in nonprofit categories, if you will. And we found consistent questions. From the time spent with our clients, starting with things like overwhelm.
[00:02:15] Chris P: There's just so much noise around AI. How do you kind of get your bearings? That's like a fundamental challenge we've seen. How does it apply to marketing communications? That's really, when we talk about acceleration, we're really focused on. Our clients, which tend to be chief marketers, chief communications officers, you know, clearly there's application for chief human resource officers.
[00:02:38] Chris P: So, how does generative AI meet what those functions do? So there's a lot of machine learning and other applications of AI that have been placed for a while, but generative AI and how that overlaps with marketing communications and understanding culture. Like that, that that's the territory that we're focused on and probably the most important challenge. And I think our clients have is it's hard to understand the potential and the risk unless you're in the tools. And so we've essentially created a service offer that's complete, that includes consulting to help our clients orient and get up to speed the ability to create pilots, new applications, new types of campaigns, new types of content that can be [00:03:20] created with these tools.
[00:03:21] Chris P: We can help our clients with an emerging set of questions around what should the function of the future look like, and then I'll just land the framing around this and that there's a lot of new questions that come with this movement is again, millions and millions of people are now equipped with A. I.’s . What does it mean for public policy. What does it mean for the threat of mis and disinformation? How is it going to change media? So we're in a very unique position at Weber Shandwick to help again, not only in the application of these new tools But the implication of millions of people using these tools
[00:03:55] Jen Sain (Host): Yeah, exactly And I think that's why this is you know I I kind of was a little cheeky at the beginning saying what else we talking about, you know But AI but I mean it's because it's not just industry specific. I mean it is just this cultural moment that there's going to be a before and after when, you know, we look back in history, you talked about some of the common questions and concerns that you found with like clients across geographies and different types of business. There's typically a lot of wariness and fear that AI is going to take over jobs or roles and that kind of stuff. And I know that's been talked about quite a bit, but I would love your particular perspective on that.
[00:04:34] Chris P: Yeah, I think naturally when there's disruptive change, there's fear and resistance. That's just common human nature. Then you have this element of AI and, you know, roles and jobs in the future. I think, you know, for a long time, there's been warnings that robots are going to take over, take over the world, so to speak. And so there's almost like a undercurrent of doom, if you will. When, you know, [00:05:00] when we're faced with, you know, with the power of these models and the power of, of what they could do, I think it could be intimidating to kind of leap in. It could be a little confusing on where to start, but that's why we started with our people.
[00:05:11] Chris P: Not, you know, running around and cutting deals with various, you know, AI partners. And so what we did was we created a pilot at the beginning of the year with roughly 90 of our employees from all parts of our organization. So typically when you think of ChatGPT, you think, or stable diffusion, you think, well, our creatives and our producers have to be all over this. Of course, we have involved our creatives and our producers and our writers, but we also included our account leaders. We included our media strategists. We included pretty much all the core functions of our business, and we equipped them in a secure sandbox, which is essentially a place for our pilot team to basically test image generation tools, writing tools, and text summarization tools in a secure location, meaning the data is all kept on our servers.
[00:06:01] Chris P: It doesn't go out into the public web, and we didn't give them, other than obviously guidelines around confidential. Client information, really too many rules. We just wanted them to go in and experiment and then report back on what was beneficial, what was kind of so so, and what just was not up to the hype. In that base, one, took the intimidation off the table. Two, gave us a sense of how this is really going to, you know, not only automate elements of our work, but elevate elements of our work. And that provided a working foundation for us then to expand our pilot team to what's going to be the whole agency by the end of the [00:06:40] year in a secure sandbox where they can do their work.
[00:06:42] Chris P: And it also gives us credibility when we go to our clients who face the same fears and challenges and sense of intimidation. And what I've seen is, of course, there are some things that we do that could be radically sped up, but if anything, our hours are moving into doing different things. And what I'm most excited about is we're in the process of essentially creating a completely new discipline. So when you create a new discipline, you create new roles, you create new ways of working, you create different outputs. And so while in some ways generative AI may change the way we've done our work historically. There's a whole new suite of work that we essentially have to invent and develop and kind of see it play out over time.
[00:07:27] Chris P: So, you know, no one has a crystal ball in terms of, you know, what roles are going to look like in the future. But I think most of the roles that are going to be a part of Interpublic in the future or many of them are going to be new. So I look at it through a positive lens, not necessarily a doomer lens, because again, like many of my colleagues, I've been in the tools really deeply for almost a year. And it's a game changer.
[00:07:50] Jen Sain (Host): I mean, and it could, you know, I mean the era of AI, is it the new era of like industrialization? I mean, there have been moments historically where we've had, you know, these innovations I think that have changed completely the way, you know, we do business and exists, but we, you know, obviously acclimated. And do you think AI is going to be one of those things where it's, once the fear settles and once it becomes part of our everyday life that it'll, again, it'll be a before and after and, but it'll be said not a doom after, but a positive after.
[00:08:15] Chris P: I think you described it is, uh, very [00:08:20] relevant to the introduction of the accelerator, the way that we framed it for our clients is we have to look at this as a before and after moment, and we've already hit the after moment and that requires. Our ability to help our clients envision what marketing communications looks like on AI. So as a part of our launch, we created a new site where we have news feeds. We have perspectives from our teams and partners in the industry. We have demos so people that come to the site can see some of the ways that we're, you know, working through these tools to create different work.
[00:08:57] Chris P: It's just very different ways of thinking about what marketing comms, you know, looks like today and going forward because without being able to visualize it. It leaves a lot to the imagination, and when there's a lot left to the imagination, again, human nature suggests we, we're skeptical and we're fearful. This is just such a huge wave coming that I don't think we're going to be able to get out of the way. So the question is, how do we ride it?
[00:09:23] Jen Sain (Host): Absolutely. And I think what's so interesting about this trend, it's that it is such this game changer, but not only from our industry perspective, but also just a societal perspective. So you kind of have these two sides of the coin. So if you were able to have a pilot group of. You know, people to understand, you know, to really look at these tools and, you know, understand them more, because I think that there's a lot of opinions about, you know, AI, you know, and, you know, what's the next role of the artist or the writer from, from a consumer perspective, not from, you know, marketing comps. So with a skeptical consumer in mind, does that factor in? To how you're looking at [00:10:00] this and, you know, developing that understanding and then content and then action items for your client. It does the consumer perception factor in as well as the worker perception.
[00:10:11] Chris P: Yeah, I think it's perception, but it's also behavior. I believe this week when open AI did their demo their demo day, they talked about 100, 000, 000 people using. Open AI tools every week. They have been the fastest technology ever adopted in the history of innovation, if you will. And so while there is skepticism and fear, look at the behavior, right? And the interaction model has already changed. And that's before these tools start to help us construct virtual worlds and. AR environments and some of these things that will likely become probably more talked about going into next year. I think if we take a step back, we have to think through the significance of the moment that we're in. And you invoked, again, industrialism.
[00:10:56] Chris P: This is an industrialism moment, and we're, we're at the inception, right? We're still talking about faster horses, so to speak, right now, when in reality, we're at the dawn of a new way of seeing and experiencing the world. This stuff is going to change how we think, how we create, how we connect. All these have implications on the work that IPG and its agencies do, and in the work that our clients do. And so, While, again, right now there's a lot of focus on how do we use these tools to implement what we do today and maybe accelerate the kind of work that we do, my sense is the nature of the work that we do is going to be radically different a couple of years from now than it is today. And so, today, I don't think we can completely focus on [00:11:40] skepticism or fear or some of the things that you see in commentary and opinion. You have to look at how people are behaving. How this stuff is changing us from the inside out and how do we create in completely new and expansive ways as more and more of these tools give us more means to. You know, think and create differently.
[00:11:59] Jen Sain (Host): Yeah absolutely. You know, it's, it's interesting, you know, just anecdotally, you know, I have a friend that works in a college and they implement AI to, you know, help their students write their resumes and to prepare for interviews. So I do think if you take a step back and, you know, I'm certainly guilty of that, of looking at the opinion and the commentary and getting kind of sold on the fact that everyone is, you know, fearful and, you know, staying away from it, but in reality it is being implemented. Yeah. In daily life, you could say, as well as, you know, on a business level and speaking of a business level. So when you work with your clients, are there any, you know, client specific concerns that you've come across where either reluctance or, um, roadblock or anything, anything that you're seeing from your clients?
[00:12:43] Chris P: Yeah, I think the biggest challenge right now is frankly, attention. Our clients are in our teams. They're running hard, complex businesses. And they're, they're running these businesses again, without a lot of capacity to explore and invent and, you know, figure out, you know, new ways of working, using these tools. So what we're trying to do, and it's literally written into the framing of this agency service, is to help accelerate understanding, orientation, testing and piloting new campaigns and new platforms and new ways of taking advantage of the data our clients have.
[00:13:23] Chris P: It ultimately through that orientation and actually getting into work versus talking about this and maybe deflecting it, then that'll lead to fundamentally different ways of working. I tend to reflect on going through this 1 time before, you know, now, you know, 10, 15 years ago, when social media became so instrumental to again, our interaction model. Right? And so we were there, uh, you know, day 1, so to speak. Helping our clients understand social media, the relevance to marketing communications, to getting clients engaged and on board in social networks and actually operate in a way that, you know, is different than running broadcast spots or, you know, building websites or running traditional PR campaigns. So it's, it's almost like a back to the future moment, except for this one carries, I think, a bit more weight. Or maybe a lot more weight than social computing or Web 2 did, you know, in the early 2000s, when we got engaged on that. So we're kind of going through this the same, but, you know, progression and, you know, you've, you've referenced concerns a number of times, you know, they echo the same concerns we heard then.
[00:14:36] Chris P: How is this relevant? Why does this matter? How do I get engaged? Why do I get engaged? And, um. Thank you. You know, what, what happens in culture and kind of consumer society ultimately influences how marketers and corporates need to step up and step into new places.
[00:14:54] Jen Sain (Host): Yeah, you know, that's interesting. I'm, you know, I was kind of thinking of the conveyor belt, but in reality, social media is a much more tangible and kind of apples to apples example. It's true, maybe not to the extent that AI will, but I think that's a really important touchstone that there was this shift, fairly recent history to kind of go from. So that's interesting. No one, no one's brought that up before. So thank you. You're right. I have referenced concerns a lot. So to go kind of push away from the doom and gloom. Is there anything that was surprising to you as you started working with clients and teams in terms of a creative way that someone embraced this or a light bulb moment that's. you had from either the pilot group or client work that then maybe changed the way you were approaching the work with the accelerator or anything like that?
[00:15:40] Chris P: Yeah, it's a great question and I think it really plays to why agency life is so extraordinary. And that's that you have creativity, ingenuity, kind of, you know, a figure it out orientation, you know, to the folks that work at IPG and more, more broadly in our industry. And it becomes evident when you put people in places where they can exercise that creativity and ingenuity.
[00:16:06] Chris P: The example there would be our pilot team working in our, in our sandbox. We originally designed that for a very simple purpose. Give people a place where they can use the tools, experiment and explore how they can elevate and expand the work they do in a way that they feel safe and secure and, and know that they're not like breaking the rules or sharing client confidential information and that kind of stuff as it turns out through that work, our team started to create various prompts and ways of [00:16:40] thinking That we then started to build into what we call applets in the sandbox.
[00:16:45] Chris P: And what we've found is, while again, generative AI is enormously powerful for creative work, it's even more powerful for research, for strategy, for scenario planning, for testing hypotheses, for testing messages. And so now these prompts are becoming encoded. In this environment, so now, again, through the ingenuity of these teams, just using the tools in ways that, you know, work for them, we're starting to build a new way of working in a different way of thinking that more people can be a part of as they get into this environment. So it's just a lesson in if you give people a canvas to paint on, you might be very surprised at what people can create and how it could create new opportunities that we're now seeing. With clients that get into this environment and say, wow, can you build one of these for us? Right? So it's just, we're on a path of invention right now. And I think the key is how do you give people environments for them to do their creative work in a way that they feel secure doing it. And I think that's an important lesson for any agency or any brand that's getting in the game here.
[00:17:55] Jen Sain (Host): Yeah, to build on that and almost take it out of the agency world, are there any industries in particular that you could see, I don't know, I'm sure like everyone, I don't want to say benefit, because everyone could benefit, nor Benefit or not, they're going to get swept up in the tidal wave. But are there any industries that you can identify could really implement AI right now to make a significant difference in their operations or just their brand [00:18:20] identity or anything like that?
[00:18:22] Chris P: Yeah, well, there's a couple of ways of answering that question, you know, one, again, reflecting on the social media era, if you will, regulated industries and particularly healthcare were probably later to the, to the party, so to speak, in part, because of, you know, regulatory issues and, uh, and obviously, you know, security questions that come with how you communicate scientific information, right? The inverse has happened this time around. Because AI has been so embedded in pharmaceutical companies and healthcare companies in R&D and drug discovery in that type of work because it's more mature in a segment like that, then it starts to pull the marketers, the media planners, the communicators and to determine where and how can we realize these benefits from a public communication standpoint.
[00:19:12] Chris P: So that's a bit of an interesting question. Lesson in the year of client meetings that we've had is. A good percentage of these clients have been in the health care sector, so that that's one territory. I think the other territory that is available to any client is, I think a lot of the discussion and a lot of the fear is in using public cloud based capabilities like open AI tools or, you know, Google. Suite tools, right? Our clients sit on an enormous amount of data, first party data, trial data, you know, intelligence on their business sectors, and you can activate. That data and make it more useful to more people if it's properly organized and it has a interaction model that helps people just query the data [00:20:00] in human ways versus having to go through spreadsheets and Tableau files and all the ways that the data tends to. Be locked in with analysts and data people versus make that data more accessible to business, business people, salespeople, decision makers. So there's an enormous opportunity to do more work with intelligence that you have inside as much as again, using these publicly available tools for, you know, content generation and some of the things that dominate AI discussions today.
[00:20:33] Jen Sain (Host): I don't want this to be like the doom and gloom, so I'm not saying like for, you know, a wariness perspective, but is there anything tangible that you've identified as a challenge that needs to be overcome or a problem that needs to be solved or something that needs to be addressed to push AI further in a meaningful way? You know, not something being scared my job's going to go away, nothing like that, but a genuine, tangible portion of the technology that you think needs to be addressed to make the next wave successful.
[00:20:59] Chris P: Yeah, so again, there's probably a couple ways of looking at this at this question as well. One's very practical. There's a lot that still has to be sorted out, and it will take some time to sort itself out. Right? So. If you think about the industry discussion around AI right now, you've got issues like transparency of the models. You've got, uh, human biases that are now showing up in AI biases that are an issue. You know, you have the prospects of maybe only a handful of companies, essentially. Running like the rails, if you will, and how society is going to be, uh, [00:21:40] operating and so that consolidation of power, you know, is, is, is a question. And then there are things probably closer to home. Like, these models don't produce factually accurate information. They hallucinate all those things. Again, I don't worry about that as much because at the end of the day, we're still accountable.
[00:21:57] Chris P: And if anything, our judgment when using these tools probably has to be even more refined because we can't put our faith and trust in machines. Our clients trust us to, you know, to deliver commercially relevant, uh, and factually accurate stuff. Okay. So you've got kind of the industry challenges, the technology challenges, some of those forces that. Okay. Will hopefully be worked out in the foreseeable future, but then you get to the practical questions right within a client environment. Are you as a leader or as a practitioner? Are you personally using these tools? If you haven't experimented with them, you're probably already late to the party, right?
[00:22:39] Chris P: Because if you don't, if you don't use the tools, you don't know the questions to ask. Right, so you're only going off of opinion and what you read and what you hear and ultimately you have to have some, you know, 1st person, uh, you know, perspective on these things. So that's 1 Two our clients. They also have to equip their teams and set the agenda for how their team should and should not be using these things. And we've seen that be quite inconsistent across the clients that we've talked to then, you know, you, you. Then you. Need to take it 1 step further. You have to start to anticipate what these might bring in terms of new opportunities and new challenges. So, a particular place that we've been focused on within The Weber Shandwick Collective is the rise of misinformation, disinformation, and narrative conflict. If more and more entities, both human and machines, have the ability to produce, uh, weaponized content, it actually makes seeing, again, how information flows, a CEO level issue, a board issue, this takes on existential gravity, if you will, because Information can be weaponized in ways that aren't just about reputation.
[00:23:52] Chris P: It can bring down the house. And I think there've been some unfortunate examples in brand land that reflect that. I think, you know, the challenges are we're dealing with all new considerations and you just have to be able to build capacity, either if you're running a brand within your own shop or turn to agencies like IPG to build, in some cases, media labs and, and accelerators to. Build that capacity and to anticipate questions and do different things and ultimately run a different type of practice, if you will, in the future.
[00:24:31] Jen Sain (Host): Yeah. Cause I mean, it's the opposite of, of, you know, the fear of jobs going away at it. It's just, I'm just reiterating what you've said already that, you know, but specifically in hearing your answer to that question, that it is going to take more judgment, which means, you know, smarter minds and strategic minds and, you know, risk informed minds for all the reasons you said in terms of disinformation. So it really is going to build a new skillset and a new and new roles for all of us in the industry. for sure. And, you know, to be in a network like [00:25:00] ours where you have such, you know, forward thinking, you know, specialties from data to planning to the creative execution, it's to have folks evolving their roles through all of those functions is, is really powerful from a network, I think. And speaking of that, do you in general, I mean, this could just be in general or what you've even observed, you know, working within, you know, with your IPG colleagues. Is there generally, like, synergy between the different disciplines, or is there synergy between the disciplines, or, um, like, what are the, perhaps, are the communication gaps? And you don't have to talk about your experience with your colleagues, maybe in general. Just where, okay, so if a strategist is working with a creative person, you know, working in their own silos with AI, where would they not be able to talk? Is there
[00:25:45] Chris P: Yeah, I would actually flip the question into into a different context. This seems to be a consistent way of answering questions. So far, what's really unique about this moment in time is we're all starting from the same place. What that then means is we're all going to be learning, creating and building something new together. If we look at doing that through our historical ways of working, we're going to move too slow. And we're not going to realize all the potential that these tools bring. So the way that we've constructed our approach is not only creating pilot teams. And not only, again, giving them safe spaces to work, we have by design built communities where on teams, people from any discipline, any market around the world, any practice can be a part of a group that is kind of living.
[00:26:39] Chris P: And learning [00:26:40] in real time, so every day, there's some new app, some new model update, some new search tools, some new, um, like stunning creative engine, case studies, watch outs. And so it's not something that you can. Kind of grok learn from determine how it relates to your work, unless you're a part of a living, breathing thing. And so what we tend to talk to our clients about is AI as a silo buster. And when you start to see what what players outside of, uh, the agency world are doing in particular, we have a great partnership with NVIDIA who cut their teeth on, um, essentially AI and advanced models applied to, uh, the motion picture industry.
[00:27:36] Chris P: The innovation, not only in the output, but how that output is created doesn't bear any resemblance to what it looked like, you know, 10 years ago. Right? And so you can start to see that this is not only a new means to do our work better. It's a means to change the way we work. And so this community learning together, figuring out how we make things in a different way, it's just so core to how we've been building our own understanding our own capabilities. And I think everyone, everyone's going to have to get on board with that because this stuff's just moving too fast.
[00:28:14] Jen Sain (Host): Yeah absolutely. And, um, we're probably winding down our time together. So, you know, speaking of moving too fast, we are moving too fast into 2024 for a lot of reasons. But, you know, since we are in, you know, prediction season, you know, we, what do you think maybe for the first half of the year is, Can you predict, if you look into your crystal ball, that we'll be seeing from AI or the application of AI? Do you, is it everything on the precipice that you kind of have a humming in your brain that you think is going to be the next big step to push AI forward?
[00:28:44] Chris P: Yeah, so it's actually a question I've thought a lot about. Um, I've actually been writing a book about the fusion of AI and human agency. The book, uh, which is going to be published early next year. It's called Perspective Agents and it's a human guide again to this autonomous age that we're rolling into what I think is timely about it is open AI this week provided an update to ChatGPT that not only is more powerful and more timely, you could put more in it. But it allows anyone to create their own ChatGPT agent. And so that was, in a way, a validator for, for the, for the hypothesis of the book. But if we think about what that means next year, you're probably going to see the dynamics of influence change. Because if anyone can create an agent, any brand can create an agent, any company can create an agent, it means who we go to as a source for things we care about has just changed.
[00:29:45] Chris P: So this idea of domain expertise, entertainment, subject matter expertise, it's going to take on a different form as people start to interact with agents for things that they care about. You [00:30:00] take it one step further. Today, everyone's talking about AI is a generative capability. Wait till different agents start interacting with each other. So when we talk to clients and we demo different tools, one that we show is an app called Opinionate. And it's a debate app. You can put any question that you have into the app, and two sides debate the different perspectives. And then a third AI is a moderator, and it distills what they, what it believes the right answer is. Now imagine if you not only have three agents. Trying to come up with the right answer. You've got 30 agents or more, and these things are going to start to be incredibly powerful thinking tools that we can use to solve really, really hard problems. So you're going to see a lot of conversation around agents early next year.
[00:30:58] Chris P: I think you're going to hear a lot more about avatars. So today these, uh, AIs they're chat based, but wait till you have. Everything from cartoon like avatars to life like avatars is that allow you to interact in ways that seem real, but are simulated. Once we get into AR and virtual worlds, you're going to see this whole avatar thing blend with LLMs. And again, that's going to change the interact interactive model. Or interaction model, I should say, and we're probably going to be building, uh, applications and experiences and, and, you know, brand presence in places like Apple vision. Pro [00:31:40] Meta’s goggles, like the new hardware is coming. And so again, there's gonna be a whole new set of disciplines that we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to create around this stuff. So I think in the first half of next year, lots of agents discussions of avatars and the AR VR conversation is gonna probably spike again, given what the hardware companies are up to.
[00:32:04] Jen Sain (Host): kind of pie in the sky in a more. I guess, cultural or societal note, where would you hope that AI out in the world, you know, the world at large, where would you hope that AI could make an impact? What's some, what's some area of life where, you know, the average person, perhaps, would you hope that AI could improve it and how?
[00:32:26] Chris P: Probably in a couple areas. I mean, one, kind of the news ecosystem is. Broken, especially where we need reliable information around public health events or conflict or some pretty serious things that we see out in the world right now. Uh, it's my hope and again, I have some visibility into what, um, entrepreneurs and VCs are thinking about. I think there will be a different type of sourcing model for news and information that we care about that won't look like typical print or broadcast news or getting news from TikTok or social media.
[00:33:01] Chris P: We've already seen the damning effects. You know, of that. So I hope that there's light there. I think there's an incredible amount of light around creativity and innovation and invention. There are a lot of problems out there. I think again, the media and authors and commentators tend to do a really nice job of [00:33:20] shining a light on problems. I do think these tools. Used by genius people will be better equipped to solve some of the bigger challenges that you know that we're facing again. I come back to news. I come back to, you know, some of the, you know, toxic behavior on social media. I think we're starting to see a flight from social media, you know, kind of writ large and people I think are going to go into more and more spaces that give them perspective.
[00:33:46] Chris P: That give them a sense of meaning that give them a sense of belonging. And I think AI is going to be an enabler of a lot of these different types of communities and these different places that people, people are going to are going to migrate to.
[00:34:00] Jen Sain (Host): Lovely. I think that's a great note to end on. That's a high note. Thank you so much for this conversation. It was fascinating and so insightful. And I look forward to reading your book. So thank you so much for being here, Chris.
[00:34:11] Chris P: Yeah. Great conversation. Thank you.
[00:34:13] Jen Sain (Host): So Chris briefly mentioned that he had a book coming out but I did want to give some more information about that, so that we can all read it because from this conversation I know that I’d love some more of his insights. I mean that truly, this has been such an interesting conversation. So yeah, so to learn more, Chris’s first book is called Perspective Agents and it will be published from Fast Company Press and it will launch in early 2024. And in this book, Chris actually talks even more about the current technological uprising of GenAI and he explores the future of Human autonomy. And it’s really a call to challenge all comms pros to adapt to and thrive in this new era. So actually, Perspective Agents is available for presale on December 15th of this year of course and everywhere books are sold in January. So do get your copy, like I said, I know I will. For more information about GenAI and all the topics affecting our industry at the moment, please do visit, intelligence.interpublic.com.
[00:35:10] Outro: Thank you for listening to the Collective Intelligence podcast for more marketing insights and ideas Please subscribe to this podcast or visit intelligence.interpublic.com.