AI versus Marshy #11: hype curves, individual brainstorming, + bad hustle

Hey there and welcome to another edition of AI versus Marshy!

This humble newsletter brings you takes on AI from a growth marketer charting the most tectonic shift in change and impact we’ll see in our lifetimes.

But enough hyperbole - we’re not there yet.

This week we cover:

• 🤮 Ugly numbers on AI - but is this BAU?
• 🪛 Tool of the week: Brainstorming on steroids with Figma Jambot
• 😓 Digital sweatshops - some ugly truths about powering tech

Also - we passed 10 issues last week 🥳

I love the snippets of feedback I get and am excited to keep sharing the nuts and bolts of this stuff with you.

We’ve got this! 💪

-Marshy

Hype doesn’t power a business for very long

Do you remember basketball cards? Needing to buy lots of tulips? Bitcoin?

These are all hype machines from different eras.

Let there be no doubt here - AI is in a hype machine as well.

Here’s a fairly grounded swipe at the numbers behind AI right now.

It covers low adoption numbers, shrinking consumer demand, and hackers gaining the most right now.

This is all pretty standard because of something called the The Hype Adoption Curve.

This is how it goes.

From Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm - it points to how new technology comes to a market, enjoys early adoption and hype, and then drops off.

The most breakthrough game changing technologies are able to push past the drop off, and enjoy mainstream adoption. Most fall short and fade into obscurity. I suspect virtual reality as we see it today will be one of those.

AI is going through this process right now. Its enjoyed unprecedented hype as ChatGPT demonstrated it is possible to offer narrow artificial intelligence in a way that us day-to-day humans can understand.

We’re now all wading in the trough of disillusionment - and looking through the article with this lens (along with many other savage takes on what’s happening) - tells us that what’s happening is business as usual (BAU).

There are a lots of challenges in the way in order to get AI right.

These challenges will be solved clever cookies far smarter than this writer.

I think what’s different with this technology is that its sitting on an exponential improvement curve.

As first seen in your welcome email.

Even if AI completely blows up in a bad way over the next 3-5 years - the exponential rate of improvement it’s flying at means the world we live in is going to be very different by the time most of our lives finish.

Tool of the week: Figma Jambot

It works pretty well if you’re a Figma / Figjam user!

If you’re a knowledge worker - you would have likely seen Miro/Mural at some stage and the virtual version of post-it notes.

I have facilitated workshops with actual post-it notes, and the virtual approach has it merits.

Figjam came a bit later and made the virtual process even easier with less lag and clunky interfaces.

Well now that same team have come up with Figma Jambot.

It’s a nifty tool that came out of a hackathon and you can think of it like an individual brainstorming tool.

Often one of the necessary ingredients for ideas and validation is volume and rapid testing.

Jambot allows you to punch through and sweat ideas and thoughts with a clean interface that feels intuitive.

You can check the beta out by signing up for Figma and visiting here.

I tried recording a GIF using it with Descript but the file got too big.

Sweatshops aren’t just a manufacturing thing

I hate the gap between people struggling and the ultra-wealthy.

I hate that the pandemic seemed to make that gap larger.

That’s why I’m focused on sharing the ugly parts of this world alongside the cool things that are happening.

The Washington Post released a story on sweatshops in the Philippines and what powers some of this technology.

Funny that the general consensus is bias is the most ethical issue when there’s hundreds of thousands of people getting paid next to zero.

Its uncomfortable reading.

These sorts of approaches were also undertaken by Facebook - while I worked there. Moderation was done by humans from low-income countries. They were paid to cycle through horrific content and approve/reject reporting of graphic material on Facebook.

It’s not that gross stuff isn’t posted on these platforms - its that an army of people are policing it so we can continue scrolling through puppy and baby announcement photos.

The main argument for these practices seems to be:

• we’re paying better rates than what they can get elsewhere in the market.

The main argument against it:

• this is exploitative.

I don’t know what the solution is - but I do believe dramatic societal change will eventually happen as these gaps continue becoming more evident.

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Thanks for reading! I love that this newsletter is growing and want to continue to share, filter, and opine on this stuff because you’ve taken an interest.

If you’ve got even more interest - you can subscribe to Ben’s Bites - this referral link helps me too. A big warning though - it’s daily Mon-Fri and packed with information.

I should know, because I was looking at his landing page this week and saw my own testimonial on the page!

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I’m practically famous!

Thanks 🙏🏻

-Marshy aka Luke M

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