Why 95% of AI Investments Fail to Deliver Real ROI

Speaker 1 ? 00:01

Ninety-five percent of companies that have adopted AI cannot point to a real return on the use of it. That's kind of shocking. Jonathan Aberman watched this whole industry chase the same tool and end up in the same place, which he calls equally average. He says the problem isn't the AI. It's that nobody asked what AI actually cannot do. Well, welcome to the Real Jason Duncan Podcast. I'm your host. Of course, the real Jason Duncan. I'm an entrepreneur, an author, and someone who has spent most of his adult life questioning what people say is true about business. about money and success. And every conversation in this show is built around one idea. The gold is the lie. The beliefs that hold people back aren't failures uh that they can't that they can see. They're failures that they don't see. They don't recognize they're there. because they're beliefs that they never questioned. And so every guest I bring into this chair across the internet for me is here because they used to believe something, whether it's about their industry or uh it could be about themselves or about how the world works. that turned out to be wrong. And what they found on the other side of that belief is what makes this conversation worth having. And so my guest today believes something about AI that most of the business world still believes right now. And we're going to find out what it cost him to hold that belief and what he knows now that most people don't. So here's what's happening. Um here's what's happening inside every boardroom. Every strategy strategy meeting, every startup pitch happening right now, leaders are asking, how do we use AI? How do we use AI? You've probably, listener, you've probably asked that question, right? But nobody's asking what can't AI do. And that's not a small gap. A 95% of AI adoption efforts haven't produced a measurable return. That's since that's shocking. Honestly, I don't know if I believe that. We're gonna see if it's true today. But that's what our guest says. He says that the tool that was supposed to differentiate everyone is making everybody the same. And so my guest has figured this out, not because he Read a study, but because he spent decades in the middle of the machine as an attorney, as a venture investor, as the dean of a business school, and now as the founder of a company built around one thing that AI actually cannot do. So Jonathan Aberman is an entrepreneur, he's an investor, he's an innovation strategist who's been at the center of DC's technology ecosystem for over two decades. He's helped launch more than 40 technology companies. Forbes called him the unsung hero of the effort to bring Amazon headquarters to Northern Virginia. And he was the founding dean of, is it Marymount? Am I saying that right? Marymount University's College of Business, Innovation and Leadership and Technology. And he's a partner at Ruxton Ventures. He's the co-founder and CEO of Upside, which is a company built around a category he helped create called Original Intelligence. So Jonathan Aberman. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 ? 03:10

Well, I'm looking forward to getting real with you, JD. Thanks for having me. This is my kind of place. This is my kind of place. I like talking about re reality. It's it's Good God, and there's so many places around the world where you can talk about hype right now, particularly on AI. So I'm looking forward to unpacking it with you.

Speaker 1 ? 03:29

Well, I am um I I I don't know what the overall percent how the percentages break down. We're gonna talk about that 95%.

Speaker 2 ? 03:36

Yeah.

Speaker 1 ? 03:37

But if you took a look at the overall world chart of who's using AI. There's a very, very, very, very, very small portion of people, percentage of people that are using it um for agentic purposes where it's actually doing things. It's pretty deep and it's running things. Well, I'm one of those people. I'm all the way in on this. So I'm very passionate about what it can do, and I'm also aware of some things that it cannot do. But before we recorded the show today You told me something that most people in your position wouldn't say out loud, or at least they wouldn't do it in front of a lot of people. You said that the lie that you believe, the one that cost you, is that AI on its own can can solve any problem, any task. That's a lie. And and that what you've come to believe and understand is that AI has a categorical limit categorical limitation. It creates sameness. at scale. That's interesting. So what you're saying is that differentiation doesn't come from the tool, it comes from the human desire for novelty. the the part that only people can provide. And that's what I want to dig into today's to today. So before uh you know you've told me all that before, but what I want to start before the answer, I want you to take me back to when you held the other belief Not the polished version of where you are now, but the version where you actually thought AI was the thing that could do anything.

Speaker 2 ? 04:57

Well, I think you'd to be honest, uh it's not AI qua AI, it's software. I I've been in around software and loving software and technology since God. I remember when I got my first IBM PC, I mean I've been in love with technology for a long time. And I would say that I'm very clearly a technology optimist. I've always believed that technology tools were the best manifestation of the best of us. And so I have this very deep-seated belief and I've been doing policymaking here in DC. I worked in Silicon Valley. I've you know had a ringside seat to this. And um what became apparent to me was that a lot of the the words that so many of us in industry around technology using, you know. uh don't be evil, try and do the right thing, uh trying to change things and so forth. Somewhere along the way, uh over the last five or so years, particularly since Gen AI, I think in some ways that the industry has lost its way. Meaning that uh uh I I think a lot of the vocabulary that we have been using to talk about technology now is broken down Because it's left us without the ability to talk about the insight that I gained, which I think is an important one. And I know I want to point out I didn't gain this insight on my own. I get this insight by meeting some really smart AI scientists that were here in my community that had a chance to get to know. I mean, they're the ones that pointed out to me the architectural limitations of the large language models You know, they're the ones that pointed out to me that there was a fundamental problem of homogeneity in the information and AI narcissism and scientists that I respected. You know, once I became aware of this, I thought to myself, to your point, a mistake? Or more of a, you know what, we've got to talk Really, about the limitations of AI and what humans can do in order to really take advantage of the opportunity of AI And uh and once I saw that, I I guess it's like what you've pointed out with other people you've had in your show. When you are all in on something and then something happens to rock your world. You, you know, you have a tendency to go off deep in that direction. And that's really what's happened to me. I didn't have to start this company, but I needed to start this company. Right. And I needed to start out with the scientists that I met because we felt really strongly about it. You know, there that that our society, our business community needs this contra narrative. Not because everybody else is wrong, but because with this narrative, a lot more of us can be can be right. So you're you know, you're exactly right. It is your show's about. It's yeah, that aha moment. The more that you change your mind. The more that you get vested in something, the more likely you are to be able to evangelize. And this is very much that kind of moment for me. 100%.

Speaker 1 ? 07:51

Well, you spent um you spent four and a half years as a business school dean teaching founders, uh MBAs, shaping how the next generation thinks about technology, uh, software, value creation. Um but at some point during that time you had to be telling people that AI was going to change everything.

Speaker 2 ? 08:08

I mean, so JD, what ended up happening was I I went in very much to uh just um be a traditional business school dean and focus on uh making the business curriculum and the computer science curriculum, which was part of the same college, really work well. And in about uh I started doing that in 2019. And in about 2021, I saw what was going to happen. with so you know, machine learning, how it was now morphing from a process improvement to, you know, frankly, higher level reasoning. That's what Gen AI really is. And I said to my colleagues, we have got to lean into creativity and bring it into the curriculum. So we actually merged the Art and Design College into my business school. and change a lot of the curriculum to focus much more on creativity uh around innovation because at that point I realized that creativity The human process of creating differentiation is actually the most important thing for all technologists to have because as we're learning AI makes processes and agents. I mean, we can amplify our originality, but if we don't use originality, it basically obsoletes us. So that was, you know, really I I I infused the university with this. We had a doctoral program around creativity and business, various things. I said, all right, it's time for me to go back into being an investor. And then, you know, funnily enough, I was doing a panel for local arts council on creativity and innovation and investment. And that's where I met one of my co-founders. He was my co you know, he was my panelist and he started talking about cognition and human importance. And I said, I like this guy. I want to be in business with him. And then he took me to his lab and showed me the invention. And You know, here I am living the life of a startup founder again, not sleeping and and uh loving it and hating it at the same time.

Speaker 1 ? 10:05

When did when did it happen that you started to see a hole in this AI promise that It can fix everything and you're like, wait a minute, it it can't. It can't do a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2 ? 10:14

You know what's really funny is is uh so I have two co-founders. Uh Adam Green, who is an expert in cognition and creativity, he's the first guy I met, and he introduced me to a a friend of his named uh Dan Johnson and Dan is actually the AI savant that uh invent a lot of our models. And uh Dan and I sat down, oh, I would say about 14 months or so ago, and he said, I want to show you what happens when I run my model. And what his model does is it identifies how people perform tasks, you know, creative tasks. He said, look at this, look at this group of people. He showed me a scatogram. It's like an idea cloud. That's what it is. It's an idea cloud. Of a thousand people answering the same question. I think it was uh What do you do if you with a comb? Right? And it was a really it was really interesting, Jason, because it was it was a very it was like a like a really nice word cloud, you know, a lot of different dots. I said, what's this? He said those are the people answering the same question slightly differently and you see how there are clusters or a few clusters. I said, yeah, you said that's common knowledge. Those are probably the people that said, oh, comb or kazoo, right? But all these are the people, they've got crazy ideas I said, that's really interesting. You can measure that. He said, yeah, that's what my model does. I thought, that's kind of cool. He said, look at this. He said, here's the same group after we introduced them to large language models. And all these diverse dots went to three clumps with a couple of dots. I said, what's that? He says, this is the AI. Telling people what the right answer is and them using the right answer, and this is AI sameness. This is what AI does. It pulls people to sameness. And and then I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, the models, in order for them to work, well, they have to create consistency. So if people rely on the models without question, they're going to come back with the same things AI. And that was when I said, oh my God, A, this technology works, but B, holy geez. So that's when I went from sort of uh you know the old joke about the uh the ham and the ham and egg breakfast you know the uh the chicken is interested but the pig is committed? Yeah right that's when I went from this is kind of cool to oh my god I need to do something with this It was that moment.

Speaker 1 ? 12:29

So uh interesting that's an interesting perspective. And so there is a gap between knowing something intellectually and actually feeling it. I mean you could look at the data, uh which you y you're purporting in that ninety five percent of companies.

Speaker 2 ? 12:44

Just so you know, I don't just so you know, I mean I'm just The great thing about my life is I'm a like an idiot savant. I have lots of really smart people that give me information and I repeat it. That's what look, that's what a tech CEO is. We're idiot savants. But uh That that 95% figure came from a s of a pretty interesting study done by MIT. You know, McKenzie's got one that was 70%. Uh GAO's got one that 70% of agent installations don't work. I mean, you know There are a lot of percentages flying around, but the 95-1 sticks in people's mind, and I'm not I'm not ashamed to ride it, but God knows I didn't I didn't come up with it on my own.

Speaker 1 ? 13:17

Well it just it sounds so preposterous. that that's why i don't i didn't believe it at first now i'm not saying it's not true and if m mit did it they at least put a lot of brain beh power behind it but i wonder what I I wonder what that's based on. Is it, hey, we use ChatGPT and we just ask it questions or I get I get casserole recipes from it. Okay, well there's no ROI of that

Speaker 2 ? 13:38

But it's a fair question. So the survey is at this point, the study's probably close to a year old. And uh, you know, they were largely going and asking CFOs and financial types, all right, you spent this money on AI, have you gotten a return on investment? And uh the general view was no. Now let's be clear. Um there are a couple things going on in the world, and your experience, because you mentioned earlier that you're you're using agents. This industry's moving so fast.

Speaker 1 ? 14:04

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 ? 14:05

I mean, six months ago, if you and I are having this this conversation, it would have been all chatbot all the time. And now it's it's agents and you know the conversation it's a whole different thing. Um I think that if you had the conversation today, uh or you know you asked today, you probably would find that a larger percentage of companies would be able to quantify an ROI from the standpoint of labor saving because clearly There are job functions now that a really good agent swarm can do. We're seeing that. And we're going to see more of that. So I think that if you did this today and you said, hey, you get an ROI, from a financial point of view, the percentages would be higher. Right? The interesting question is whether or not ROI ultimately for all businesses can just be a measurement of quote productivity. Or whether or not ultimately ROI is going to require measurement of something else, a value add. And this is where I think that the industry is not thinking through things. Right? In other words I think that right now we've got really good metrics for understanding the time saving, understanding the productivity, right? We understand that. But when you get into issues of, well, is the output demonstrably better? You know, it is is the output uh gonna make a business difference. We've send we don't really have uh objective metrics, and that's really why I decided to do this company upside because You know, we're we are able to provide a demonstrable metric on is this human being capable of work with AI and come up with something that you get that's different from what you get by asking an agent on the model? Or is this piece of content demonstrably better than what you would get if you ran the model? Not to say the models suck because they don't But just w at the end of the day, we need some sort of metric other than cost efficiency to truly achieve the benefits of an AI deployment. You know what I mean? I mean we know in our gut when we're doing a better job, but not all of us are lucky enough to be self-employed or work in in small groups. A lot of us work in large organizations CFOs and bosses need a metric to actually quantify quality, not just quantity. And I and I think that's really where I'm getting at. But yeah, maybe that's how you and I can coexist in the same planet, because You know, you're you're sitting there like, wait a minute. Agents are making my life better, and you're telling me that agents suck, and I'm not. I'm I'm telling you know, so like I think it's a good idea.

Speaker 1 ? 16:31

Yeah, well that well so so let's break it down into m something that I think the listeners could understand What is one or two things that your company and what you guys have discovered that quantifiably an AI cannot do?

Speaker 2 ? 16:45

So what's very interesting is that what AI cannot really do is is create on on a scale that would matter Meaningful differentiation. What I mean by that is that the AI models are really, really good at creating what I'll call shared novelty You know, imagine if if you get it, I get it. And once I get in, you get it, and everybody else gets it, it's no longer novel. It's commoditized. So it's a subtle thing But the best way to think about it, for example, is the way people are getting pissed off now on LinkedIn because it's like, oh my God, another piece of AI-driven crap. Right? It's like They get whacked out because the human didn't write it. What they're really saying is humans often do things that are just tweaked a little bit different. Than what I'd get out of the commodity model. And I want to be able to consume something that's a little bit different. So what I'm saying to you is that when we look at the models, because the way they're designed, w they're they're not capable of giving you serendipity. You know, we call it a hallucination, but you know they're not they're not able to give you that little bit of You could left, go left, you could, or you could go right. You know, like here's a great example uh that I often think about it's kind of a jokey one, but you know, you could train an AI that every time a rooster crows, the sun's coming up But if one day um um the rooster didn't crow, what do you you know Why? Did the sun not come up? Well, maybe the farmer just got P. O. 'd and strangled a chicken, or maybe the chicken choked on a, you know, a pellet, or maybe the chicken wandered off. You know, it's it's that human ability to Imagine the unimaginable, that secret sauce that that makes life interesting. That's the part that I think um AI can simulate, but at the end of the day, I think humans want to consume novelty created by humans. That's that's where I see humans, you know, and that can be in a in a in a help desk being the person that answers the phone. Or it can be uh, you know, you and I having a conversation with that one piece of insight that we couldn't have gotten out of Claude.

Speaker 1 ? 18:52

Speaker 2 ? 20:12

Yeah. Yeah. It what what I think is really getting lost in the shuffle is is that until such time as the AIs can, you know, basically just consume everything through a cryptocurrency, you know, humans are still going to be the the consumptive part of the economy. And we're wired up, just we're wired up to do two things really well. One is seek safety and the other is to find novelty. It's just the way we are. I mean, we we want to feel special about ourselves. We want to feel special to the things we consume. We're always very attuned to that. And um And I think that that's because there's a lot of value in novelty as a currency of human connection. You know what I mean? So so to me. There's always going to be, as long as humans are consumers of big experiences, little experiences, micro moments, there's going to be a premium for people who can provide something that's unexpected. Or special. And uh that doesn't mean that AI is not really good. It is. It doesn't mean AI is not going to get more competent because it will. But what I just don't think at the end of the day humans are gonna be happy living in a world where everything they consume is fundamentally what everybody else can get. I just don't think that's gonna happen.

Speaker 1 ? 21:30

Yeah, I I want I want to talk a little I want to lean into that a little bit more but first I want to give a little bit of information to our listeners so I'm gonna get right back to Jonathan in just a moment But uh Mr. and Mrs. Listener, if you're a business owner and you've ever thought about what it would take to sell your company or even just get out of the day-to-day I've got a free live training that I'm doing this week that I need you to attend. I think you're going to really enjoy it. It's called What to Fix Before You Exit. In 16 minutes, I'm going to walk you through the biggest mistakes that founders make that kill the valuation and what buyers are actually looking for before they even think about writing you a check. You can register at what to fixbefore you exit. com. That's what to fixbefore you exit. com. It's totally free. It's live, and it's going to change how you think about your business. All right, now for our sponsor for today's episode, if you are ready to take control of your business cash flow, uh if you want to create your own private source of funding and you want to transform the way you build wealth, Then I need to tell you about this proven strategy called Bank on Yourself. There's this proven strategy that's been designed for entrepreneurs that lets you access capital when you need it without having to go to banksters. That's what I call them. Uh gatekeepers or or even do applications. Your money grows every year. You've got liquidity for investments, for expansion And your savings and growth is protected from all the market shocks. Savvy entrepreneurs have been doing this for a very long time. I started, I learned about this in, I think it was 2019. And I started doing it. And if you are interested, if you've ever heard about this, you can look into bank on yourself at the real jasonduncan. com slash bank on yourself. And what you'll do there is you can book a confidential session with a specialist, somebody that I recommend, somebody that I work with on my own money, and uh who can show you exactly how this fits your financial goals. Go to the real jasonduncan. com slash bank on yourself. And big thanks to the guys at Bank On Yourself for sponsoring this episode. I just had the pleasure back in May of speaking at their annual conference. So I'm a believer, and I think you will be too. So go check it out at therealjasonduncan.com. slash bank on yourself. Okay, so Jonathan, um AI slop. We've we've it's become a term that we're all Used to, right? Absolutely. Yeah. This I hate it. Absolutely hate it. And and I use AI so frequently to I use Claude as my number one And then Perplexity and then Chat GPT and then Google uh Google's notebook LM. I think those are kind of the four that I I weighed in. But Claude more more than any of the any of the rest. And I have taken great pains to make sure that when Claude writes on for me, that it sounds like me. I mean, I fed it, I found this is a true story. I found a book that I started writing in 2016, totally forgot about it. But I found the PDF and I'd only written, it was less than 30 pages But I found it and I was like, holy crap, this is how I actually talk before AI ever had any influence. And so I fed it in there. And then of course all the other writings and I found 231 blogs that I wrote from 2006 to 2000, I think, eighteen. And so I w I was able to teach it. So while AI does produce sameness, AI slop in the writing, it's all the same phrases, it uses the same words, the same triads, the same comparisons, there is a way to teach it to get away from it. But what do you believe about When we see AI slop out there, whether it's videos, pictures, or writing, how should we respond to that? Because I hate it. I want to blow it up. I want to comment. You're an idiot. You should not be posting this crap. I'm sick of seeing this crap. That's what I want to do What do you think we should be doing as a public? Because it's gonna be a bigger problem if we don't do anything about it.

Speaker 2 ? 25:14

Well, so first of all, oh by the way, I just want to say before we move on, I was listening in on your uh your your think about banking yourself

Speaker 1 ? 25:21

Yeah.

Speaker 2 ? 25:22

I think the meta message of where we're going with the AI economy is that and with originality is we're all gonna have to bank on ourselves.

Speaker 1 ? 25:28

Amen.

Speaker 2 ? 25:29

Point out. I mean, uh the the one thing that AI is gonna do is democratize knowledge. You're gonna have to be a value add person. So Kudos for you promoting promoting that. Um uh you know I think that I completely lost my train of thought. I was so excited. Well the AI Slop. What are we doing? So so Funny story uh that that really gave visibility for me. Uh so over the years I was a columnist for the the Washington Post for a while and the Washington Business Journal and uh wrote a I wrote a lot and I definitely have a style. Right? I did just do. I have a style. And so one day, just for grins, I had to do a a column for a newspaper and I said to uh at the time it was uh Chad, I think, my own version of Chad, I said, Hey, write an article in the style of Jonathan Aberman. And it did. And I looked at it and I thought, yep, okay, yeah, that's stylistically alright. And I thought, but it's not me. Right? It's not me. And I ended up I didn't I'm I never would have submitted it, but it was just really interesting. And I ultimately wrote my own thing. And the reason why I did it is because Because of what you're just expressing, which is there is an internal expectation, again, it comes back to our desire for novelty and humanity. There's a quality aspect to it. If you're giving me this, then you're putting your personal brand behind it. You're telling me this is yours. You're telling me that you thought about this. You're telling me that if I read this, this is a reflection of you. So if it wasn't you, then you're lying to me. And so I I think that the answer is what should people do? To me, what people should probably do is be okay with saying, look, if you want to give me a piece of commoditized stuff, commoditized stuff Great. There's there's moments for that. But don't tell me that I'm paying for a quality item. Right? You know, if you if if don't tell me a Chevy is uh is a BMW. It's it's it's a Chevy's a Chevy, BMW is BMW or Smart car is a smart car. Don't I think that what's happening right now is whether it's you know AI slop or crappy videos on X or whatever it is. People are saying, why are you trying to pawn this stuff off to me like it's your work product? Why are you trying to pawn this off to me like you've spent time thinking about it when in fact all you've basically done is hit a couple buttons? So, you know what I mean? So that that's what I think is happening. But which again, it's just reflecting what I think I'm reeling them in mission four, which is, you know, originality is what ultimately has value.

Speaker 1 ? 27:59

Yeah, we uh I think we've got to do something about it. I I I would I would be interested for those that are watching this on YouTube to comment about this the because I think this is a hot topic. When you see that it's whether whether it's clear or not, but you believe that it's a AI crap. AI slop. Do what do you do with it? Do you I hit the thumbs down button? If there's a thumbs down button, 100%, and I don't watch it. I scroll. And because people are getting duped.

Speaker 3 ? 28:26

Yeah.

Speaker 1 ? 28:27

I mean we've seen we in in the political uh uh in the political arena, we've seen people posting stuff that are is reportedly a high profile person doing something or somewhere that they weren't. You know, that that isn't true. We we've got people writing things that aren't true. I mean, it's so it's so bad. I I'm I'm a I'm a I'm an avowed capitalist. I mean, I don't think the government should be involved in much at all, but this is one thing that I kind of think the government needs to say. We need to kind of make it illegal to post something that you think is that your purporting is true or that actually happened that is not. Like a video or a picture that at least has a warning Or something says AI creation or something. I I don't know.

Speaker 2 ? 29:08

No, you're not off your rocker. First of all, you know, we lived in a capitalist society when the FCC used to regulate TV. You know, the 60s and the and the 70s, there was an awful lot of capitalist success in the 80s, too. So regulation doesn't mean we're not capitalists. You can have regulation in a capitalist society. I mean, that's what rules are basically, what are people going to accept or not. And I think what you're identifying is that there is definitely a growing backlash. There's definitely going backlash against the idea that AI on its own is is a great thing. That's all. You know, and I think the backlash is Some people are saying, well, it's going to take my job. Some people are saying it's going to take my humanity. Some people are saying I can't believe it. But what it all comes back down to is this idea that that technology on its own can't answer every need a human has. That's what we're really saying, you know, in the political sphere, in the in the life sphere, spiritual sphere, you name it. Give me something that's real. Give me reality. And uh and I and I think ultimately the answer to all this is accountability and quality control. I think you're exactly right. But I think that whether we legislate it or it happens naturally The days of people being rewarded for being able to provide content as their own and get benefit from that is going to shrink. And you know, be honest with you, that's what my company's running at. I mean, we are we're well on the way to being able to introduce very soon a product that will allow somebody to take a piece of content. and and get a score about how much originality there is in it. So that you can, if you think something's work slop, you'll be able to actually point it out to somebody and say, this was crap. It just was. And we think that'll change the conversation a lot.

Speaker 1 ? 31:01

So uh is that an AI model that's deducing whether or not an AI produced it?

Speaker 2 ? 31:07

So that's a really fair question. And it's actually kinda it's but the difference is that the way we're gonna architect this thing, all we're gonna do is just mathematically provide uh a reference point to to what extent does this thing reflect information that's above and beyond the baseline of what you get from AI? Not whether it's good or bad, just is it is it incipiently original? Yeah. Because that's all we're ever gonna do. I'm never we're never gonna be in the business of having an algorithm that's gonna say you're better than me or I'm better than you Never. That's not the point because I think that the whole point is we don't want to disable people from being the frontal arbiters of what's important. And what's valuable on an individual and a collective basis because that's what makes society why live if you can't without feeling special or being rewarded from being special, what's the point of life?

Speaker 1 ? 32:01

Yeah. What do you think, Jonathan, is the cost of staying inside this lie? And let's re-clarify, because we've been doing a lot of talking. Let's re-clarify. The lie is that AI can can do everything and and and that that is a lie. So what's the cost of staying inside that lie for let's say another five years?

Speaker 2 ? 32:20

Well I think that um if we want to We'll call it a lie because that's the way we're talking about it. I think there's a lot of money to be made now by riding the bubble of AI transformation without worrying about people. I think that there's a lot of money to be made building agent uh companies, building infrastructure. There's a lot of money to be made. And as you know, in our capitalist society You know, if you can make a lot of money, you'll follow trend. The trend is your friend. Uh there hasn't been anything like this. I don't think there's been uh uh anything like this happening in the economy maybe ever, but probably not since uh steam power. I mean, this dwarfs every other industrial change. This is huge. So I think people will be able to make a lot of money without questioning these things. But what is going to happen, however, is that the people that are going to make money from this are going to narrow and more and more people are going to be outside and say, wait a minute, what about me? And and whether they say what about me as a consumer of you know what, that's great, you can give me all this wonderful stuff really quickly, but I want something that's me. Don't give me an algorithm telling what book I want to read. Give me a book written by a human or Give me a podcast written by, you know, there's real Jason Duncan. I know he's a human. I know he stands behind. You follow me? So what I think's gonna happen is is The people who want to live within the trend are going to do quite fine. The CEOs who are thinking ahead are going to say, you know what? I need to motivate my people to use these tools. Maybe I need to make sure that I understand how they are going to use these tools. Or professors will say, you know what, I need to start teaching people to think. So I I I just think it'll people live within the bubble and people outside the bubble will start to ask questions and ultimately society will You know, I think ultimately five, ten years from now, you'll have a coexistence between, if we do this right, the tremendous benefits of AI, but people won't be disenfranchised.

Speaker 1 ? 34:18

How are you using it personally?

Speaker 2 ? 34:20

I use it a lot. We use it a lot in our business, and I use it a lot personally. I would say as a really, really smart research assistant. you know, uh uh as an amplifier of uh of ideas, content creator, you know, working with me. Um I haven't really started to fool much with agents or coding. You know, we we're starting to think about using clawed code for prototype development in the company. I mean, how could you not? Um we are using we are going to use agents for different aspects of our business process. So, you know, I mean like why have a bunch of people online answering help requests if you can have a really good chat bot. So we're doing the stuff you'd expect a business to do. Um, so I think that we're I think I'm a pretty indicative knowledge worker user, but I'm definitely not um A tech edge guy? Like it sounds to me like you're more of a tech edge guy than than I am. I'm I don't really need right now to figure out how to make agents manage my calendar. I'm just Shit, I'm just trying to survive right now managing a startup. You know, I got people to figure this out. I got agents in my leverage pyramid. You know what I mean? Right. But I use it um Uh I I don't use it as a friend, I can tell you that. I do not fall into the trap. It is not my friend. I don't have deep conversations with my chatbot and ask it for the answers to light, but I don't say please and thank you.

Speaker 1 ? 35:42

You know, but I my wife gets she can tell when I'm angry because she hears me down the hall, you're yelling at Claude again. Like, yes I am. I'm yelling because you know being stupid.

Speaker 2 ? 35:53

Speaker 1 ? 36:39

Yeah, AI is definitely not your friend. It can be a benefactor, it can help you, it can do a lot of good things, but Yeah, there there's definitely a limit to its ability. I mean it it boggles my mind. And it I and I I know you've been in the tech sector too, so maybe you could explain this phenomenon, but It seems to me like every time there's an update, and it could be, it doesn't have to be an AI model. It could be, heck, the platform we're using right now is Riverside. fm. Every time and I'm gonna throw Riverside under the bus just a little bit, but I don't know how else to do this, but every time they do an update, something doesn't work as good as it used to. They gave me a new thing, but then something else breaks. Claude does the same thing. Um I used another I used another um I'm not going to name the company because we're working through the deals, but there's another AI agent agentic company that I signed up for and for two weeks I was their biggest evangelist on the planet. I was telling everybody I knew, man, you gotta use this. And they did an update. It became the dumbest thing I've ever worked with in my entire life. It couldn't even get I'd say my wife's name is Christy. And they say, write me, write me this about this thing with my wife. Well, you and Laura went like what who the heck is Laura? That's not even so it went completely brain dead. It's crazy. So we've got to be careful. You can't um our we trust in God, not in AI. And God we trust, not in Claude we trust. So yeah. But but I do think we need to lean into it. And what's interesting to me is I'm 51 years old And and everybody who works for me is in their 20s. And I'm the only guy that like I'm deep into it. Nobody else is. I'm like, what what where's the younger generation? They're not leaning into it as hard as we are. And I don't know if that's entrepreneurs because most of my entrepreneur buddies that are my age Dude, we're neck deep in it. We're all in it.

Speaker 2 ? 38:22

Speaker 1 ? 40:03

Oh yeah. Well look, before we close out today, I want to give you one minute of uninterrupted time to uh tell the world as directly and as passionately as you can what is this lie that we that you're bringing to us today and why people believe it and what the truth actually is. So I'm gonna give you the floor.

Speaker 2 ? 40:24

Alright, well, the floor is mine to say these things. AI right now is the best possible thing that could happen to you or the worst possible thing. And what's being described to you is is the best possible thing. The reason why it's the worst possible thing is that on its own it creates sameness. Sameness is great if you're doing the same thing again and again, but if you want to stand out and and make money in this world, have people care about you, to have salience five, ten, fifteen years from now, you have got to understand that what makes you better than AI is what we call originality, original intelligence. That's what upside is measuring. Original intelligence is the ability for you on your own, or with AI, even better, to do something that exceeds what either of you could do on your own. And the hub side technology. demonstrates that for you, for employers, for educators, and for everything. That's the mission the company's on. So go hubside. com And see, there's we've we've given away the tech. You can try it out. You can play a game to see what your original intelligence is. You can try it out with a bunch of friends. But the lie Is that you're disabled by technology. The truth is that technology can work for you, but you have to take control of it by celebrating what makes you special.

Speaker 1 ? 41:40

Jonathan, tell people who want to get in touch with you and or they can go to hubside. com. That's H-U-P-S-I-D-E. com. But are there other ways that you want to invite people to connect with you who are interested?

Speaker 2 ? 41:51

Uh I love hearing from people on LinkedIn. Uh I I think that we were talking about platforms earlier. I mean, I'm on all of them, but the one that I tend to use the most, and I and for this stuff is is LinkedIn. You can find me there. Um I tend not to want to put my email address on the web if I can avoid it because I get spam. But uh I bet you could figure out my email address if you remember my first name.

Speaker 1 ? 42:13

Uh we won't put it in the show notes. So we'll we'll leave that out. So Madeline make sure that the his email address doesn't end up in the show notes. We want to contribute to that. All right, so final question, Jonathan. Um if someone listening right now is still inside that lie, and I bet you most are, still believing it that AI is gonna fix everything, it can do anything, what's the one thing? You want them to hear before this episode ends.

Speaker 2 ? 42:38

Business School 101. There are only two ways businesses compete: efficiency and differentiation. If you are in the lie that AI solves all problems, you are only in efficiency. And the problem if you compete in efficiency is only the biggest companies win and only a few do, and everybody else loses. So for substantially all the people that are listening to the show, ultimately the way they're going to succeed is through differentiation. And the sooner they figure it out, the more likely they are to be ahead of the curve and win.

Speaker 1 ? 43:08

That's gold. That's a clip. We'll definitely post that. That's really good stuff. Jonathan, thank you for being here. Everybody go follow Jonathan. Aberman and look up his stuff at hubside. com. That's a wrap on today's episode. If you saw a bar on your cage that you hadn't noticed before, take a minute to send this episode to someone who needs to see theirs.

Speaker 3 ? 43:28

The gold is the lie. As always, I am your host, the real Jason Duncan, and Jesus is King. We'll see you next time.