AI versus Marshy - Trust us - and regulate everyone else

If you’re new here, welcome to our newsletter where we explore the impact of AI from a neurodivergent tech-y growth marketer’s perspective. Last week, we touched on the idea that AI might not be an existential threat, but that’s a topic for another time. Today, we’re diving into a different angle on the commercial advantage of big tech in the AI space. Ominous interactions with a robot (via DALL-E prompt) ​ Last week we picked on Meta’s AI scientist - who said AI isn’t an existential threat. It’s not the time for grand sweeping assertions as really everything is up for discussion this early in the race. I’m currently reading Techno Feudalism by Yanis Varoufakis (h/t one our readers) and if history can teach us anything it’s that it repeats itself and humans will find evil ways to use technology - dating at least as far back as iron. The AFR has uncovered another angle get there - commercial advantage. Andrew Ng was the founder of Google Brain, and later led AI at Baidu. He told the newspaper when big tech paints AI as a big threat, and poisitions themselves as the force for good to address it, there’s a knock-on effect that will benefit big tech. Simplified - it goes like this*: BT (Racing ahead) AI bad, we’re good, trust us to keep researching how to harness it Big G(ovt): We need to regulate this BT (racing further ahead) while regulation comes into play: Hehe, that should be enough of a headstart Big G: Unleash the regulation! Any other competitors: Well sheee–iiiit, we can’t do anything with all of this red tape BT: This is quite the moat we’ve built for ourselves, look at all this power! This is playing out as we speak. I recently watched a lecture (it’s not recorded sorry) from the Centre for AI and Digital Ethics (from my old university) by Julia Powles - she’s an associate professor of Law at UWA. The topic was Corporate Culpability of Big Tech and pointed to the fact that tech companies have a history of moving fast and disrupting (including breaching any regulation) to gain advantage before the law can catch-up. Within tech circles this is known as blitzscaling . There’s a book about it of course This is what Uber did in new markets and continues to unfold on Planet Earth. Australia tends to punch above its weight in calling this stuff out, here’s a link to a submission from CAIDE calling out its influence in Australia in response to a Senate enquiry (page 11, the Harms section is on point ✅). These sorts of arguments are generally on the fringe at best for everyday people - the reason it’s important is because it’s going to set the tone for impacts that will be felt for decades to come. Personally - I was very convinced by Sam Altman’s belief that the OpenAI approach is going to help the planet. But me being persuaded isn’t the same as it being true. Rest assured we’ll be continuing to watch this space! 🍿 Cool tool - Using ChatGPT to translate a marketing sprint We’re trying something different this week. Here’s the de-identified output of a 6-week marketing sprint done in Figma from earlier in the year. All of the post-its This process is what we do when we’re working with a client more hands-on. They need lots of things from marketing and have no idea what’s most important or who can do what. Post-its (digital or otherwise) are really effective for helping clients see what should follow, what’s in a group, or what should happen before what. You can now feed this a photo or screenshot into ChatGPT with its image recognition. Originally appeared in newsletter : AI versus Marshy #20: big tech trust + regulation, decoding a marketing sprint, and brain scanning