Everyone Hide! The Computers Are Coming

Gord Vickman: Welcome to the next episode of Podcast Payoffs. My name's Gord Vickman. Here with my podcast partner Dan Sullivan. And if you stick with us today, we might be able to ease a bit of anxiety you may be feeling, or maybe people in your industry, about the coming of AI. We titled this podcast in a cheeky way. Everyone Hide, the Computers Are Coming, and they're coming for you, and they're coming right now. But stick with us today and you might leave feeling a little bit better headed into your weekend. Dan, always a pleasure. Welcome to the next episode. We're at 38 now, the little show that could.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, thanks, Gord. Yeah. This is a topic I've been following since I was a teenager, because computers started becoming a topic in the 1950s, 1960s. So, if you're just waking up to the fact that the computers are coming, you've been missing a lot of history.
 
Gord Vickman: You were right in tune with the microchip right from the start. I've heard you speak of that numerous times, that you knew that one microchip compounds upon another, greatly increasing human awareness and cooperation. The latest quarterly book is You Are Not a Computer . That's a distinction we're going to dig a bit deeper into in a moment. But Dan, why did you write this book, You Are Not a Computerand why do you feel people need a reminder right now?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, I think that the biggest scare for a lot of people when it comes to computers, and especially not so much the computers, but the software, where you have what is now called artificial intelligence, and it's an interesting name, but it doesn't really have any meaning. Things either have intelligence or they have no intelligence. So, it's all real intelligence. I have squirrels in my yard that can capture a thousand acorns for later eating, and they can bury them in different places and they know where exactly to go. I don't think there's many human beings who have that kind of memory about where they planted something for later use. So, it's very clear to me that in some ways, squirrels have a superior intelligence than humans do.
 
And dogs, it's pretty well been proven that dogs have, besides an enormous sense of smell that's way beyond ours, they also have a instinctive understanding of human emotion that a lot of humans don't have regarding other human beings. Dogs can tell good from bad pretty quickly between human beings, human beings to trust and not trust. A lot of people's life would be a lot simpler if they knew right from the beginning that there's certain people they shouldn't just trust. So, very clearly that dogs have a superior intelligence.
 
I say this because the world is filled with intelligence. Every form of life at the animal level, at the plant level, has an intelligence about something that humans have to spend years understanding how this intelligence actually works. And you say, "Yeah, but computers and life forms, biological forms are radically different." And I said, "Well, you're talking about intelligence, and I'm just saying that there's a lot of biological forms that have an intelligence that no computer could possibly match, like photosynthesis. I haven't seen a computer yet that can turn sunlight into green stuff and then have that green stuff throw off oxygen and then suck up the carbon dioxide in the world."
 
And I said, "I don't think there's any computer that can actually match the intelligence of a plant." So anyway, I'd just like to restore that because the basic premise that I've seen so far coming out of the high tech industry is that all intelligence is just information processing. And that humans, we process information, that what humans do is they process information and, therefore, computers process information. But computers are now getting to the point where they're a lot faster than humans, and therefore humans are superior in intelligence. They do this sort of a slight of hand trick where they make a premise that what's happening when there's intelligence is that it's information processing. My basic take on that is that that's silly. That's just silly. It's ridiculous. That's not what humans do at all. Humans don't process information.
 
Gord Vickman: It's just a losing game when people start trying to compete with the processing power of computers. What you're suggesting is take the fork in the road and don't even bother trying to do that because that's not what we're here for. You made a distinction, Dan, in a workshop that I was in, and it was about meaning and how this is our role as human beings. Right?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, let me ask you a question. I mean, you're at a younger age level than I am. How are people talking about this? I don't find too many people in their 70s really being very, very concerned about this topic. I'm almost 80. I've been around technology a lot, and enormous number of predictions have been made at the early stage of a technology that this is going to change the world. The whole point of it, the world is always changing and it comes from thousands of different factors. I think certain technologies have made a huge difference. Some of them are communication technologies, but some of the most significant technologies that have changed how life is lived are actually transportation technologies. I mean, transportation really, really does change things. If you have a breakthrough in transportation, that significantly changes things. I'm not sure communication is all that significant if it doesn't really change transportation.
 
Gord Vickman: I think it has to do with the mindset of abundance or lacking. I'll give you an example relating to podcasting. The show is Podcast Payoffs. We talk about the intersection of teamwork and technology under the umbrella of the podcast industry, but we want to expand a little bit. I have heard people say things like, "In 10 years, we won't need lawyers anymore. Don't go to law school because everything will be handled by an AI. We won't need doctors anymore, so doctors are on the way out."
 
Then let's talk about the podcasting audio media industry. The software out there now that can replace video editor, you just issue it some command, some of them do it automatically, it will edit a video for you. Some of them will edit audio for you. People in the voiceover space, if you hear voices on television right now, it's not out of the question that the voice you're hearing is not actually a living, breathing human being. There are AI-driven voices that I remember five, six, seven years ago, when I first heard them, they were very wooden, stilted. We had the uncanny valley thing going. It's like, "That's not a real person because the inflection's all weird and the words just don't link together." But they improved it and now there are-
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh no, I've just gone on to some of the sites that offer voiceover, and I listened to some of the voice. First of all, I've heard worse humans than these voices. I said, "It was kind of pleasant." They have intonation and everything else like that. But I won't download them and try them out because I think what they really want is my information. In other words, they want me to take a paragraph what I'm writing and put it into their format. I don't see any guarantees that your information is sacrosanct. If I take something that's really unique, because I made it up and then put it into their system, I want to know what they do with my information. Because I know they capture it. The moment I go into their platform, I know that my information has been captured.
 
Gord Vickman: Sure.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Gord Vickman: They're not doing this for your reasons. They're collecting this for their reasons.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, they're trying to create a trade-off. I don't have any problem with that. I mean, we're using Zoom right now and you're recording it. So, I don't know if Zoom has a record of all the recordings. So what? I mean, there's hundreds of millions of people using Zoom every day. Do they have someone that goes through all hundred million times eight hours a day? But I worry more about a very, very simple... I mean, Zoom is a very sophisticated technology. It's like television. It's like radio and television and telephone all packed into one. It's very sophisticated and it's very useful. I think the trade-off is worthwhile here, but there's some of them that just are little tricks. It seems to me that the voiceover thing is a little trick.
 
Gord Vickman: One of the things I hear, if this were a recipe for pessimism, it would be heavy on it. But you hear people say things, on occasion, and I do kind of see a bit of a point here, and people will say things to the effect of, "Well, if technology's replaced lawyers, and technology's replaced doctors, and we don't need executive assistants anymore. It's all done by AI. We won't need voiceover professionals, audio engineers, we won't need video editors. So, everyone's just been replaced by an AI, who's going to purchase any of the products that the AIs are marketing and selling if nobody has employment?" Then they'll bring back to the example of, "You have to make room." So Dan, you've mentioned a few times that Henry Ford created the weekend because people were working six, what was it, six, seven days a week?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, six. Most industrial jobs a hundred years ago. Well, at the beginning of the 20th century, were six days. I mean, everybody worked six days, and Sunday was the day off. That had been forever. That goes back thousands of years that you worked six days and you had a day off. But he recognized that the cars that he was making, and he's the first one who mass produced automobiles, he didn't create the assembly line, he simply took the assembly line and applied it to the manufacture of cars, which didn't exist before that. He said, "The people I want to buy the car are actually the people who are making the car. And right now, they don't really have time that they would have reasons to buy the car, because the day off, they're probably tired and they're going to church." Church going was still a big deal. "They're going to church and it's probably family day. So they have meals and everything like that."
 
He reckoned that if he gave them Saturday and Sunday, that on Saturday they'd have a reason or putting the two days together, there would be time for driving around in a car and going further than they usually do. Then he also did something very interesting along with that. He doubled all the pay of his workers. He gave them money because he said, "Look, they have to have money. If they're going to use the car, they're going to have expenses and they have to purchase the car. That's an expense." He put the two of them together. It was interesting because the car, the Model T in 1915 dollars, when it came out, it was about $1,000, which was more than most people's yearly pay. But because of the higher productivity, the assembly line, plus the fact that people worked harder if they knew they got an extra day off, and they got an extra day's pay, they got significant pay, by 1920, five years later, the price of the Model T, it was so profitable that he was able to drop it down to $400 in 1920 dollars. It paid off extraordinarily for him.
 
Gord Vickman: Yeah. But that was a human decision that he as an entrepreneur made. He needed to create-
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, no computer would ever recommend that you do that.
 
Gord Vickman: That's right. I guess the argument from the other side would be, well, you look at Henry Ford, he made a human decision to give his employees the time, space, and finances to afford what he is producing because he recognized the people that he wants purchasing his cars need the money and the time to do so. Whereas AIs, I don't believe have that consideration in terms of putting everybody out of work in this industry, in that industry, it's not going to stop.
 
When people on the doomsday side of this spectrum speak in that way, I can sort of see their point. But also the other side as well that you made, Dan, and I'll paraphrase, it's that humans are meaning makers and computers are information processors. So, we're talking about apples and oranges here. Do you ever foresee a time when people might look at this and say, "Okay, we have to slow this down," or has the train left the station here and we're just [inaudible 00:13:28]?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, first of all, this isn't the first technological breakthrough that's had an impact on how work gets done. This goes way, way back in the early 19th century. Every technological breakthrough has increased overall employment.
 
Gord Vickman: That's true.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, the population in 1800, this was the global population, was a billion. Now it was just announced, about three weeks ago, that we've crossed 8 billion. So, in 220 years, we've gone eight times worldwide. People have a much higher quality of life and they're surrounded on all sides by every kind of technology. So, I see the growth of technology, it increases human employment. But I will say this, the people who are afraid of it are probably afraid because they're not doing anything creative that probably the work that they're doing right now, it should be replaced by software.
 
Gord Vickman: You had a name for them in the book, Dan. It was standardized.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, they're standardized people.
 
Gord Vickman: Who are they and why are they fearful and do they have reason to be fearful?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. They will do anything you teach them how to do, but they won't improve it. They'll accept the meaning of something, but they won't add to the meaning of anything. So maybe these individuals have legitimate fears of being replaced by technology. Maybe if they worked for me, I'd want to replace them with technology.
 
Gord Vickman: Oh no.
 
Dan Sullivan: I mean, think about it, and the little project we have going at Strategic Coach right now, where you use a particular thinking tool that's created by Strategic Coach called Certainty and Uncertainty. And you, in your position, as podcast manager, I say, "Is there a possibility that you would like to explore to really, really expand the effectiveness of our reach with our podcast?" And you say, "Yeah, I'd like to do this." And I say, "Well, go for it." Then you go through the version, there's things you know already that are probably certain about it, and then there, there's a whole bunch of things that are uncertain. Then you went out and you found the people who actually know, and every uncertainty you had moved into certainty. Then there were new uncertainties, and you found other people to do that. And now you've created that. There's no technological system that could do that.
 
Then communicate with a team that's doing the same thing and other things. It's just totally unpredictable what you did. Unpredictable that you had this possibility in mind. Unpredictable about what you saw was already handled. Unpredictable about which was the things that were uncertain. And unpredictable who you would talk to, to try to find it. It was all made up. You made up the whole thing.
 
Gord Vickman: In my head.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Gord Vickman: Then we brought in technology quite quickly once we figured out. The project that you're referring to, Dan, just so everyone's included in the loop here, is just we're working on, much like blogs to SEO, everyone who writes a blog has to pay attention to search engine optimization. It's how people find you. It's why you do the work. There's opportunities now in the podcast space, we're working with a company that is going to assist in increasing our visibility optimization. So, when entrepreneurs around the world want to have problems solved and have questions answered by shows that we have produced, questions that you've answered in the past, things that you've spoken to, and we're discussing primarily Inside Strategic Coach that you host with Shannon Waller, it's a wonderful, wonderful program. If you haven't checked that out, please do so. And then Multiplier Mindset, which is an interview feature show that we do with our clients here at Strategic Coach. We answer a lot of questions that entrepreneurs are struggling with.
 
Yeah, we have a vested interest in making those available because we would like more people to listen to our programs. But we're also out here trying to assist people and have them learn about you and the questions that we answer here at Strategic Coach. So, that's the project. We want to become more visible. It was definitely something that was created in a human brain, and technology was brought in as the "Who." It's a tool in our box, but it's still in 80-20 human to tech right now. Maybe that will become 50-50 once we've established everything. It's still fairly early in the rollout of this. That's why I can't say technology's taken over. But ideally it would be nice if that were a totally hands-off experience. Why? Because then we can move on as humans and create new projects that are similar to that. If the tech can take over the information processing, tech can handle that, and then we'll move on and create new things that will give us new meaning. That's how it works.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, just the video that we're doing here is a dimension of our podcasts. There's sound, I mean, most podcasts just started as audio, and then the technology moved forward and now you've got, I mean, the video quality that we're using here with Zoom is way, way beyond the video quality of commercials I was doing at an ad agency 50 years ago. I mean, quality and editing it is a click. They had to use razor blades back... And you could cut yourself, you could cut yourself.
 
Gord Vickman: Yeah, I joined the audio world, the radio world, shortly after reel-to-reel tapes. I mean, back when I was a teenager, I got a radio show when I was 13 to 15, I was volunteering at the local campus radio station. They still had reel-to-reel logs that we had... If the tape ran out. Because you had to record everything that went over the radio station just in case you said something completely insane and they had to go back and the CRTC wanted to slap you for it. But we had to load reel-to-reel, big 14 inch reel-to-reel tapes.
 
Dan Sullivan: That's a very Canadian-specific example.
 
Gord Vickman: Yeah. The Canadian Radio Telecommunications Commission. It would be like the FCC, I guess, in the United States.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, the FCC in the United States. Yeah.
 
Gord Vickman: Yeah, we have one up here. When I began my editing career, this is like, we're talking 2005 was my entrance into radio. It was all digital. We had a program called Cool Edit Pro, and then Adobe bought it and turned it into Adobe Audition. So I've been using that program since before Adobe even owned the thing. But I never had to go through the wax pens and the tape. Now, our audio engineer, Willard Bond-
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. But what I'm saying is that really good people who are doing videos are better off than that. And there was a lot of mechanical jobs. Technology replaces anything that's mechanical. It requires no thought. It just requires follow-through. You mentioned before that you're afraid, what's going to happen to all the lawyers? Well, I'll tell you a secret about lawyers and that is, most of the money, up until very recently, let's say 20 years, most of the money the law firms made was boilerplate work. It was mechanical forms. You had a $15-an-hour person filling in a mechanical form and they were charging $50 an hour for that person's work. So, a huge profit margin.
 
The law firms were very wealthy, but they were living off low-cost labor. It wasn't because the lawyers were brilliant. I'm sure every good law firm had three or four brilliant lawyers, but they had probably 30 lawyers who were intelligently mechanical. They sounded really smart, but they were just playing scripts that they had learned from the law books. Then they had the really mechanical workers who were doing the boilerplate work. Accounting firms were exactly the same, and software replaced 80% of the work that used to be billed at a very high rate. I don't know many lawyers who are making more money today than they were making 25 years ago. I mean, if you think you're going to make a killing by going to law school, you're probably approaching it from the wrong strategy.
 
Gord Vickman: Dan, as we wrap here, what advice would you give? Because we made a promise at the top of the show, now we're going to fulfill it. We want to lessen or perhaps ease some of the anxiety that those who feel the computers are coming. I'm thinking of, what is it, Skynet, Terminator 2, the big silver robots are coming to get ya. If you had an opportunity to give someone who is fearful and has that anxiety that "I might not have my law job, my accounting job, my voiceover job," whatever, because a computer's going to come and take it. How would you make that person feel better? Or what could you say to that person to maybe have them think about things in a different way?
 
Dan Sullivan: You have to turn it around and it's not about computers, it's what you notice about human beings. What I notice about human beings is that they highly appreciate and they highly reward other human beings who are useful. It's not so much about computers; it's, what do human beings do? Having you as a creative partner for me over the last five years, there was just a lot of things that I had to think about that I don't have to think about. There's a lot of preparation I had to do, and I don't have to do that preparation and you do it, and you're a lot better at it than I ever was. Well, somebody says, "You can get an AI program that does everything Gord does." And I said, "Yeah, but I'm not really good at interacting with AI programs. Now, I'll have to hire an AI manager who, I mean, geez, this is getting expensive."
 
Gord Vickman: The robots are coming.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I would pay attention more to what really smart humans are doing than what so-called smart computers are doing. I mean, what would a really smart human being really value from someone else so that they can become more productive and what they're doing is more profitable? I think people are just looking... But I got a feeling that a lot of the people are worried about computers aren't particularly valuable to other human beings.
 
Gord Vickman: Something to ponder because computers are information processors, humans are meaning makers. If you're searching for the meaning, create more meaning. Does that make sense?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, totally. Yeah.
 
Gord Vickman: Anything we talk about on Podcast Payoffs, we always put the links for our tools, tips, tricks, resources, anything we talk about, we never make you go searching for it. So you can just hit our episode page, Strategic Podcasts with an S, I'll over-enunciate, strategicpodcasts.com. There is our network page. You can find all of our programs that we produce here at Strategic Coach, Dan, your partner shows. If you're looking for something that we... Or if you want to maybe dig a little bit deeper into the episodes, always go to strategicpodcasts.com. Click Podcast Payoffs, this episode, boom, boom, boom. We'll link everything over there for you, and it's easy-peasy to find. You can also get a copy of Dan's You Are Not a Computer . It's a new quarterly book. Why don't we throw a link on there? They can download the free ebook, Dan? Does that sound good?
 
Dan Sullivan: You bet. Yeah.
 
Gord Vickman: Here we go. So, we'll make it free for you, hit Podcast Payoffs, this episode page, you can get your free copy of You Are Not a Computer . Have a look, have a listen, have a read. There's all kinds of bonus media content there too. Not created by AI, but created by living, breathing human beings. We're making meaning and we hope you enjoyed it. Dan, it's been a pleasure as always.
 
Dan Sullivan: Thank you, Gord.