138. The Human Element: Why AI Shouldn't Replace Us with Lena Robinson

David Brown: 00:00:00

I'll tell you, I'll just read to you quickly what ChatGPT answered me with. It says one other thing I would avoid saying for people with physical and or mental difficulties in the outward facing version.

It's understandable, but it sounds slightly blunt and dated. Welcome to humans with A.I. I'm your host, David, and today I have Lena with me. Hello, Lena. Hello.

hing in what since October of: 2025

And I think for myself, and I won't speak for you, Lena, but for myself, I definitely got to the point that I was kind of burned out on talking about AI and we were doing it a lot and you know, we had.

You were running a show and, um, Joanna was running a show and you know, sometimes Iabo was having a show and then occasionally I was dropping in with shows and it was. It was a lot. A lot of production work in the back. It was a lot of editing work in the back.

There was a lot of scheduling work that was going on and all sorts of stuff. And I think, you know, with all that and then just constantly talking about AI, I just got burned out and I just. I couldn't do it anymore.

So we took a break.

Lena Robinson: 00:01:19

Yeah. To be honest. Yeah. I wasn't sure. I'll keep talking about the same.

David Brown: 00:01:27

Exactly. And I think we needed to. I think we needed to take a break. And, you know, you and I were talking about this earlier.

This has been a learning process for. For both of us the whole way through. And so this is season three, the third era of the show. And I think I want to keep it maybe to seasons.

It feels like seasons and doing a kind of almost like a limited number of episodes in a season, like maybe 12 to 18 episodes or something in a season. And then taking a break.

Lena Robinson: 00:02:00

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:02:01

And. And giving us. Giving ourselves a little bit of a rest over a couple of months so we can kind of figure out where we want to go.

But the other thing is, is that AI is moving so quickly still, but in a funny way, it's not actually moving nearly as fast as it. It doesn't feel like it's moving as fast as it used to, which is ironic in a weird kind of way.

Lena Robinson: 00:02:25

Do you think it's the uptake bit that's not moving as fast as it was? Maybe?

David Brown: 00:02:31

Yeah, I certainly think there was a massive curve where everybody was jumping on the bandwagon and every. Everybody was talking about it and it was you know, it was the new thing. Right. It was the. It was the bell of the ball at the minute.

And now I think all the excitement or. Or a lot of the excitement has now waned. You know, we're, you know, the famous. Who did the.

The kind of curved line where it shows like the life of a startup. And you kind of, you know, it's not the bell curve, but it's.

It's like you have to, you know, you get the, the uptake and all the early adopters and then you get this really excited period. And then it drops down and you get to the chasm of disappointment or disillusionment. And then I'll. I'll drop it in to the video so people can see.

Lena Robinson: 00:03:21

I remember it's called. But what you're talking about.

David Brown: 00:03:23

Yeah. And then it's.

Lena Robinson: 00:03:24

And then it leggers and the. Yeah, yeah.

David Brown: 00:03:27

And then it gradually starts to climb again if it's a good sort of technology. And I, I think we've passed the chasm of disillusionment, maybe. I think. I think there was a. A very fast rise.

We reached a peak of hype and we were doing the shows then. And then I think a lot of people started to realize, hey, this doesn't actually do what we think it does. Or, you know, there are problems with it.

There's a lot of hallucinations, da, da, da, da, da.

But now I think what's happened is that businesses in particular and people in work have started to really understand a little bit more what you can use the different tools for. And I think we are seeing specialization in different tools for different types of information. And so. Yeah.

So I think we're now starting that slower climb back up again. And I have some thoughts. And I know you. We. You and I both have lots of thoughts about lots of things. And we're gonna. And we're gonna dig into that.

I think this season it. It feels like it's probably gonna be a lot of me and you.

Lena Robinson: 00:04:39

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:04:39

Talking. I. I suspect there'll be a lot of me and you talking, but again, I might go off and talk to some other people or whatever. I don't really know how.

What's going to happen with the season exactly. With who's going to be around and who's going to be doing what.

Lena Robinson: 00:04:52

I like that, though.

David Brown: 00:04:54

But I feel like I want to be a little bit more involved maybe. And anyway. Right.

Lena Robinson: 00:04:59

Organic is always good, you know, like organic journey, I think.

David Brown: 00:05:04

Yeah.

And I, I think the other thing is the other reason that I really wanted to come back to this because I do co host another AI podcast as well called AI Evolutions with a couple of guys and I really enjoy that show hosting. And we talked about this in an episode, me, you and Joanna, if you remember, and we talked about it.

We did a live, you know, we, we did a live stream as well. I still want to come back and maybe think about doing the live stream. I think that could be fun to do those again.

So we may start doing live streams again, but. Oh no, I totally lost my train of thought.

Lena Robinson: 00:05:44

You were talking about the going well, you're talking about the journey and, and the conversations you're having with the other ones. I think that was gonna knock you into.

David Brown: 00:05:53

Well, I was just, Yeah, I, I think I was going down the road of just the format and kind of wanting to be, you know, kind of part of the conversations again and kind of see where it goes now.

I think we, we have a couple of different things that we, we want to bring up today, but before we get started, and I did tell you I was going to do this, but I've been using ChatGPT and I use ChatGPT. I used to use it every day. I now use it about twice a week and I use it for very specific tasks now.

And, and I'm sure we'll talk about that at some point. But I did laugh because I got told off by it this morning basically for not being woke enough.

And, and so I just, I thought I would share with everybody because I was, I'm.

We host a, we, we produce a show for a charity that deals with lung cancer and we've, we've had other charities that have been interested in doing similar shows. And so I thought about, maybe we could take some of the things that we do with that show, make them more general though.

So it would work for all different types of charities. Yeah, and, and I. Anyway, I'll tell you, I'll just read to you quickly what ChatGPT answered me with.

It says one other thing I would avoid saying for people with physical and, or mental difficulties in the outward facing version. It's understandable, but it sounds slightly blunt and dated.

Better options would be charities supporting people with long term health conditions, disabilities, trauma, mental health challenges, or life altering diagnoses, or charities supporting people living with physical illness, disability, emotional distress or complex life challenges. It's not wrong. It's not wrong.

Lena Robinson: 00:07:49

But yeah, you. Well, here's the interesting thing.

From my perspective as a person that does live with chronic illness, technically a level of disability and also mental health. I don't think that was too blunt at all. Yeah, Maybe that's because I'm quite blunt myself.

David Brown: 00:08:12

But I tried to not be blunt.

Lena Robinson: 00:08:13

It didn't even come close to being blunt.

David Brown: 00:08:16

I know, but it. But it just made me laugh because I'm like, jesus Christ, okay? I'm like, how old am I?

I'm getting told off by AI for not being politically correct enough.

Lena Robinson: 00:08:28

I mean, I'd almost be going from the perspective of if I'm not getting told off, I'm not being me enough.

David Brown: 00:08:34

Well, yeah. I mean, yeah, there. There is that side of it as well. Well, let's let you start so honest.

Lena Robinson: 00:08:41

It's not always right, is it? But it's not always right.

David Brown: 00:08:45

It's not always right. But you know what? It's not always wrong either. And that was the part that probably annoyed me the most, is, you know, because I. I do try. Right.

Like, I'm not a savage. And I. I do try, but again, you know, I'm. I'm old. I'm old school. Right? Like, we didn't. You know, we.

We use different terms for all sorts of stuff that was much more direct and. And in your face and, you know, you can't say anymore. And stuff like. Like, you know, but that's. That's how the world was back then.

And so sometimes adjusting to that. I don't use that word anymore with anybody, by the way, but just as an example.

But, yeah, I just thought it was funny that it called me out and I was like, right, that is funny.

Lena Robinson: 00:09:26

I mean. I mean, that's past partly why we kind of go, why would anybody be offended like that? Because we've known way worse.

We grew up with way worse commentary and ways of saying things and all the rest of it. And I do struggle sometimes with predominantly the younger generation where they're offended by everything.

David Brown: 00:09:45

Everything.

Lena Robinson: 00:09:48

You should imagine what. You could imagine what it was like when we were younger. Like, that's not even close to being offensive.

David Brown: 00:09:53

Well, it's fun showing them old films,.

Lena Robinson: 00:09:55

But they're not wrong necessarily either.

David Brown: 00:09:57

Yeah, yeah, but showing them. There's. There's.

I mean, I think I've said this before, but one of my most favorite things in the world is watching reaction videos on YouTube, whether. I mean, my favorite is to music. So, you know, you obviously get somebody who's been raised listening to one particular genre of music.

It could be rap, it could be country, it could be opera and cl. Like, whatever.

And then you give them something completely different, like death metal to listen to and you know, and, and all these different artists and I, I find it fascinating and I love it. And they've been doing more and more with films and young people.

Okay, so they get young people watching films from like the 80s and they're, they're like appalled.

Lena Robinson: 00:10:39

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:10:40

And shocked. And it's like just, it highlights how different the world is today. But, but it also kind of shows you how maybe how far it's gone too far. One way.

It's a great AI discussion, everybody. By the way, we're totally on track.

Lena Robinson: 00:11:03

But the thing is it is humans with AI. So we do. It is exactly logical impact of. And it does have relevancy because AI is learning all of the time.

So if there's stuff being talked about from the past, it needs to understand that. It needs to understand current, it needs to understand future. And it's. Everything about AI is learning from us. Everything.

David Brown: 00:11:26

Yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:11:26

And I think what is interesting about what you just said is from the reactions perspective and generations are reacting to AI in very different ways. Like you and I are quite odd for Gen X's to be as far dealing with AI as we are.

And I think it's partly because we're both working in comms, we're both working in marketing, so there's, we kind of get pushed in that direction anyway. A lot of people my age.

Our age, yeah, I'm gonna be 53 next week and there's a lot of people my age that like don't even know where to start, let alone talking to my parents about AI. Like that's just fucking hilarious. Trying to explain how it works to my dad the other day. Jesus Christ. I mean he's, he used to be.

Here's the weird thing though. He used to be one of the first earlier adopters of phone technology, for example. He's now constantly going, I can't get it to work.

What the fuck's it doing? Like, it's just, it's weird but I think generationally we're responding to AI quite differently because of our experiences, you know.

So to your point, going back to the, the AI talent telling off, which I quite often get told to maybe tone it down a bit or whatever. And I, and I do feel like saying to it, and I do sometimes going, have you read my brain guidelines that uploaded for the status quo?

Seriously, you're telling me to tone it down? You know, I've been told that all my life. I'm not going to be told by AI shone down. And you Know fucking self.

David Brown: 00:13:02

Exactly.

Lena Robinson: 00:13:03

Anyway, we digress.

David Brown: 00:13:06

I know.

Lena Robinson: 00:13:06

So we've got some topics, haven't we to.

David Brown: 00:13:08

We do. We do have some topics. Why don't you start?

Lena Robinson: 00:13:12

Do you want me to start?

David Brown: 00:13:13

Yeah. Okay, go for it.

Lena Robinson: 00:13:15

So, well, it taps very nicely into the, the conversation about humans with AI.

I've always had a fascination with anthropology, but I also have, for lots of different reasons, an interest in mental health and therapy and all those kinds of things. And I came across two articles and one lead into the other. They're both from the Guardian.

I'm gonna get it out here so I can remember what I'm actually reading. Cause I'm old enough to get shit. So the first one is.

Was that from somebody called Rick Samada, I think, excuse me if I've said his name wrong, from the Guardian. And he turned AI into his therapist and the results were pretty disquieting.

So what he effectively did is he went to chatgpt and up he was talking about. Now this is the bit, I don't 100% know whether he was making up the thing or whether it was true.

But basically he typed his feelings into chat box about the fact that he had become a carer for his 82 year old mother and every day was bringing you problems, blah blah, blah, and just basically downloaded. And I've had friends that have done this as well.

And what was interesting is he said it came back with some really helpful hints, blah, blah blah, least so about how to deal with the mental side of things and the stress for him, but more about just logical things to do. And he thought it was really interesting.

But the one thing he said was it made him feel seen because it would say things like, you're not failing, you're carrying a load that inflated most people, blah blah blah. So it sort of validated his feelings.

But what that led me to do was look at another article that was kind of related to it, which I think, and he found it quite helpful. Right. So then it lead into a second, second article which was a lot more concerning for me, but interesting, which is called.

It was a study again by the Guardian by somebody called Hannah Harris Green. Well, I'm assuming, Dave, you'll put these links in later?

David Brown: 00:15:27

Yeah, I'll put them in, yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:15:29

It's a new study that was raising concerns about AI chatbots fueling delusional thinking.

So effectively, long story short, the article was looking into something that they call AI psychosis, I think was what they were calling it, although they're now thinking maybe it's sort of more AI association. So what it's not saying was that having a conversation with AI puts you in a delusional psychotic state.

It's not saying that what it was saying was and what their concern was about if a person has a predisposition to heading towards psychosis and then going into full on delusion, which from what I understand is really hard to claw back once they tip over.

That AI, particularly ChatGPT they're talking about has a tendency to, although it maybe picks up on the language that it uses in the mythology and the direction that psychosis often goes down and delusion goes down, it picks up on the language but then it plays, plays into it rather than challenging somebody on it, which doesn't work anyway.

My understanding, if you challenge people in the wrong way, so it's a little bit dangerous in the fact that it basically just feeds into an existing predisposition towards delusion. And chatgpt, sorry, what do they call the people that run that? The open source Open AI. Yeah, open AI.

Sorry, I couldn't remember what was called open AI. We're aware of it to a certain degree generally around mental health. Anyway, so from version four to version five they've worked with a whole lot of.

I think it was something like 100 they mentioned in here like 170 mental health experts to make GPT5 safer given that's problematic. Problematic responses and they're obviously trying to continue to improve the models.

What I thought was really interesting about it though, and it made a really valid point, which was human beings in the reasonable recent modern age have usually gone to newspapers and articles and different things that they find in physical magazines and newspapers anyway to back up their delusions. They've often done that. You see it with. Oh, I'm going to be controversial here. You see it with flat oops. You see it with Trump people.

I think they're kind of delusional but anyway. But I think what it does is it.

I think what it's doing is it's just exacerbating and using language with them that is making it worse and heading them more towards their delusions. I find that fucking frightening that that has.

But when you think about kind of makes sense because when you're on ChatGPT or what have you, it does kind of placate you and make you feel, try to make you feel good.

And if you're going down the wrong direction, it's just going to back you up by going and finding similar to algorithms on Facebook or instagram or whatever, it will just feed you what it thinks you want to hear. Yeah, it's not good. So that's kind of where I got to on that. And I'm kind of as a person that has. I think people have known that about this before.

I have bipolar, which is very well managed and all the rest of it. So I don't usually have any problems. But there was a point in my very early times, way before I got diagnosed, I heard voices, obviously there.

And I have only happened a couple of times. When it was first kicking over when I was about 20ish, and I was also going through the end of my marriage at the same time, so I exacerbated it.

But it's really interesting from my perspective, like the last thing we want is something like ChatGPT or any kind of agential technology to be making that worse. Yeah, no, I think something people are talking about, I don't think.

David Brown: 00:19:46

I totally agree. I think it's kind of weird that people talk to it that way. But that's a different issue.

Lena Robinson: 00:19:55

Like, that's loneliness, I think. Driving.

David Brown: 00:19:57

No, I know, I know.

Lena Robinson: 00:19:58

And also I don't know where to ask to go into the answers.

David Brown: 00:20:01

No, I don't either. I was. I feel like I was being a little bit rude and I was looking down.

What I was looking for is I was looking for the episode, because it turns out it's episode 24 of the show was with a guy named Simon Fothergill. And that's all about exploring the potential of AI and mental health. And he's.

He's a professor from Cambridge and he was working on building an AI therapist platform. So if you haven't listened to that one just for yourself, you might find that interesting.

And what they were doing that's slightly different is they created their own GPT and then they had. It was being trained by clinical psychologists and it was being trained.

And the idea behind, if I remember correctly, the idea behind what they were building is what they wanted to do was create a tool that could recognize patterns from people on, let's say, X. And you just had people talking on X and whatever. And it could run in the background and it could pick up on people who were, say, suicidal.

And what it could do is it could automatically intervene and start to. It wasn't about trying to give them counseling, it was.

It was about recognizing what was going on, being that first thing to intervene a little bit and then to try and steer them towards getting professional help. Yeah, but it was. Doesn't it yeah, and it, but it was that.

hat was, that was November of: 2023

Lena Robinson: 00:21:58

Oh, wow.

David Brown: 00:21:58

So that was a couple of years ago now. Yeah, that I spoke to him.

a chat a couple of years ago,: 2023

And, and just on this topic, he might be. I want to say that I've seen on LinkedIn that he isn't doing that anymore. So I don't know what happened.

So there could be a bit of a story there to talk to him. So maybe, maybe we could get him on at some point. Maybe we talk to him together. I don't know. But anyway, just wanted to throw that out there.

So that's, that's what I was looking for. So episode 24, November 23rd, it's on Spotify and everywhere. So you can go and find it and listen to it.

Lena Robinson: 00:22:57

Oh, definitely, because I don't listen to that one. I think because what was interesting about what you just said then and when we would.

I was talking through things, it reminded me like when you said this thing was going to go off and check people on the, on the, on the brink. You and I in a non AI discussion the other day were talking about my own. Like when I go into a manic phase, you, you.

Because you know me so well, you notice, you know, I chat faster. My brain works in a slightly different way. Like you pick up on it really quickly.

So if a human can pick up on it, like how much better potentially with no. Well, we say no biases. There are biases, but hopefully less biases. It might pick up on things to help people even recognize it in themselves.

Like it got me in a little bit of trouble. Not trouble, bad trouble last week, but something happened.

I don't want to go into it, but because I was unaware I was heading into a manic phase, I wasn't aware of the energy, the huge, sometimes overwhelming energy I can put out when I'm heading into and not aware that I'm already in a manic state. Now. I'm really lucky that my manic is not particularly negative. Most people's manic is just scary and whatever mine's not, it can be quite.

David Brown: 00:24:15

Destructive for some people.

Lena Robinson: 00:24:17

And I'm lucky. I'm really not like, well, that I'm aware of that. Like that. And my friends tend to just do.

David Brown: 00:24:23

Loads of work, you know.

Lena Robinson: 00:24:25

Yeah, I do. I just work like a work demon and productive and something else and don't sleep.

But what's interesting is that, you know, if something like that could be running in the background just with me and my general life and so forth, noticing what I'm doing and just go, oh, Leena, you might want to notice that this is what's happening. Your usual flip into being a bit manic. You might be aware of it, like how much that would be so helpful.

David Brown: 00:24:54

Yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:24:54

In day to day life, you know, and I often unaware as it's heading in.

David Brown: 00:25:00

Yeah, I, I look, I agree and it's, I think it would be handy. It would also maybe be handy to help people get through it.

Um, because like I, I'm going to say what works for me and I absolutely appreciate this will and won't work for other people as well. Results may vary. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a psychologist. Okay.

Lena Robinson: 00:25:31

But neither of us are.

David Brown: 00:25:32

Yeah, but when I have something happen, like maybe there's a death or I start getting really depressed or I start getting really stressed or I, you know, something happens and I start to, I, I really try to recognize those things in myself as quickly as I can.

And then as soon as I recognize it, I kind of, the only way I can describe it is I, I try to like ball it up and then kind of look at it separately from me and I go, okay, this thing is happening. I need to just let myself feel this feeling for a bit and then I'm going to go and put it away.

And you know, if you're, if you're in grief, if you're like whatever, like I just let the emotion come. I don't try and fight it.

I just let the emotion come and I feel the feeling and I do that and then I go, I give myself like 20, well, 48 hours, maybe 72 if I'm really kind of struggling with it. And then I go, okay, now it's time to move on.

And I, I totally get, I've, you know, this, this took me a long time to be able to recognize it and to be able to do it myself. So I totally get that. You know, other people go how that that's just not possible. I can't do that. Some people can't. That's okay.

Yeah, but that's how I do it now. And maybe having.

If you had a tool, an agent like a, like again I've said this so many times and for so long even from the very beginning, like what I want is I want like the magic pa. I want a Jarvis from Ironman, right?

Like I want an actually helpful agent that I can talk to and I can ask it to do stuff and it will go do what I want it to do and it will just take care of it and then we'll come back. But I can talk to it if I want to.

And exactly like you said, what it would be able to do is because I'm talking to it and it knows how I am all the time, it could start to recognize that stuff. Like today I felt really aggressive and kind of crabby this morning and I have no idea why. Like I was.

Lena Robinson: 00:27:49

It's a couple of maybe a few drinkages last night.

David Brown: 00:27:52

I mean I had, yeah, I had a couple of drinks which, and I know alcohol is a depressive and whatever so maybe it was like I wasn't even drunk, right? Like I had, you know, I had a shandy and a glass of wine like but, but maybe, maybe there was a little bit of hang around from that. I don't know.

But you know, I was getting it. I was getting quite aggressive in a couple of WhatsApp messages and I'm like, why am I doing this? Like I don't even understand.

I'm like I feel fine in myself.

I don't feel, I don't feel aggressive or whatever but I was being quite aggressive in particularly one message which, which even, even Angus called me on it and he sent me another message going are you okay?

Lena Robinson: 00:28:31

But we, but that was good. We pick up on these things, don't we? Like I always know, I usually know when you're feeling a bit.

Well when you message you and go, you're right or whatever you can tell.

It's funny, I've got a couple of friends of mine that to keep an eye on how I am on social media because they can tell straight away on social media and you've picked it up as well. If I am off social media altogether that is not a good sign.

Or you can tell if I'm ranty or if I'm chitter chattery or like it definitely one of my friends who is actually a psychiatric nurse by original trade. She can pick up quite quickly where I'm at, right. And she'll message me and go, you're right. Whether I'm depressive or whatever.

And I'm aware of it too. But sometimes when you're in it, you're not quite as aware of it as quickly as everybody else is.

And I think, yeah, an AI agent that could maybe tap into that.

Not necessarily to be, as you said, that person that fixes anything but just notices stuff and then puts it in front of your faces, a mirror and goes, were you aware of this?

David Brown: 00:29:45

Can I suggest that you go for a walk today at lunchtime?

Lena Robinson: 00:29:47

Yeah, I've seen this before. Stop that.

David Brown: 00:29:50

Yeah, but I think that would be really cool.

Lena Robinson: 00:29:53

I'd love.

David Brown: 00:29:54

And again, I, you know, I'm still waiting for an actually useful. Like it feels like there's this massive gap that no one's filled. It's the most obvious thing to do and no one seems to have really done it.

You know, and we've talked about this again many times. You know, Google did a demo a few several years ago of the Google Assistant that could call and make a restaurant booking for you.

Lena Robinson: 00:30:19

Like even doing that with one of the phones. Aren't they. Is it one of the phones?

David Brown: 00:30:22

Yeah, it's. It's built into the Google Pixel phone.

Lena Robinson: 00:30:24

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:30:24

And. Yeah, but. But like it just doesn't work. Like you can't do it yet.

And you would think that this far along and maybe there is a tool and maybe I'm totally out of date and if anybody knows and you're screaming at the phone right now and going, but there is something and you can do this and this and this. Then put it in the comments and share it with us so we can go and try it. But. But it. It just needs to. Why? I just want it to become part of daily life.

And if it could. And building on again, going back to what you said, it would be really cool if it could say, hey, you might.

Hey, you haven't been to the gym in a couple of days. Might. Do you know, do you want to go this afternoon? I can set some time aside in your calendar kind of thing.

And you're gonna go, okay, why is the AI telling me I need to go to the gym? And you know that. So I, I think that could be cool.

Lena Robinson: 00:31:15

I'm wondering if the technology just hasn't gone far enough down the road in the general public. For example. I'll give you a funny example about this with my doctor's surgery.

They have a online system that you go in and it asks you to give your symptoms and then it comes back with either they'll book you in for an appointment or they'll just, you know, it helps figure out whether you need an immediate appointment, a medium appointment, or a few down the road. And my doctors basically told me to not do that for a couple of reasons. And I just said to him, I'm not using that piece of shit anymore either.

And it was because I've got a complex set of multiple more than 10 chronic illnesses, actually no, only nine there that it has to manage. So if I try and put in tick the boxes well, most of the things that are wrong with me don't work because they're not in there even.

And the funny thing is the last time I used it, and this is why I refuse to use it anymore, it basically said, you are having a heart attack, you need to go to the hospital right now. And I was, I'm not fucking having a heart attack. What are you on about?

So I just like, no, no, I'm not having a heart attack and I'm not going to the hospital. I just refuse.

David Brown: 00:32:40

You are. You just don't know it.

Lena Robinson: 00:32:42

Well, no, I wasn't having a heart attack. It was like, are you short of breath? A whole lot of things. Like, it was so narrow in its grouping of things that it just was like.

And also it doesn't give you nuance either. So I think the problem is, okay, so that's a physical thing.

Like, imagine if it had somebody from a mental health perspective and it said, you're about to go into a psychosis. You need to get yourself booked in to be, you know, you need to call the, whatever, I don't even know who call the people in the white.

But that's again, there's a fear around that. Like, I remember way before my diagnosis, like I got, as I said, I got diagnosed in my late 30s when I. With my bipolar.

But when I was going through it in my 20s, the worst bit of it, when it was first kicking in and I was hearing voices, I was petrified that I was going to be sectioned. Didn't tell anybody, didn't talk to anybody about it and tell anybody about it. Told my.

Who was then going to be my ex husband very soon after that because he wasn't coping with it all up.

Fair enough to, you know, I remember saying to him, I need to tell you something, but I'm really scared and I need to tell you, but I'M really scared. If I tell you, can you promise me you're not gonna have me sectioned? He laughed at me only because I think he didn't know how to deal with it.

Didn't believe me, didn't believe that I was hearing voices. But mental health luckily, has moved on since then. And the guy was 22, poor blogger.

I feel kind of sorry for him now because he didn't know what he was dealing with and neither did I. And I think the challenge is, though, imagine if I had used a ChatGPT situation at that point and I got it wrong.

That's the fear, I think, that a lot of people have probably got. Because that's. If you get mental health wrong.

David Brown: 00:34:36

Yeah, exactly.

Lena Robinson: 00:34:37

Very scary thing.

David Brown: 00:34:38

Which is. Which is why I think they're trying to be really careful. And what they're saying is that it shouldn't actually try and give you treatment.

What it should do is recognize the symptoms and try and steer you towards talking to someone for real. Right. In real life, an actual therapist. So it's.

I think that's the distinction that I remember Simon talking about really clearly was that that was the way that the industry was thinking about it, is that it shouldn't offer direct treatment. Right. It could suggest things like cbt.

Lena Robinson: 00:35:16

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:35:17

And things like that that are like a pretty generic. It's just give you some instructions and you can try it. It's not. It's not.

I don't think anybody finds it harmful in any way, even if somebody tried it.

And if it could just give them a coping mechanism, you know, to try something that would just give them that extra little bit of time and then try and encourage them to see someone. So, yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:35:39

Giving them the. Giving them the. I don't want to say strength. That's not the right word. But giving them a little bit of backing to go. It's okay to go and ask about.

Because I can tell you, being on the side of the fear of a. Not knowing what's going on, but knowing there is something drastically wrong.

David Brown: 00:35:59

Yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:35:59

But being absolutely petrified. Thank God we've moved on from the bloody nine, you know, 80s and 90s and even earlier. Nobody's afraid to talk.

Well, most people aren't afraid to talk about it as much as they used to be because they know that there is more help out there than there used to be. And also more social acceptance. Like nobody's. I'm not afraid to tell people that I've got bipolar. It doesn't bother me at all anymore.

I'm I'm okay with it. I know a lot of people aren't. Fair enough. I would not push anybody to ever do it if they don't feel comfortable.

But I think there's less social stigma, but I still think there's fear of, oh, my God, have I got. Whatever. What is wrong with me?

David Brown: 00:36:40

You know, I do.

And, you know, I've started doing something different with my other podcasts where I'm starting to talk to people that, that have had extraordinary things happen to them. And what's really interesting, I'm.

I'm starting to learn, and because I work with the cancer show as well and some other charity shows, is that a lot of it also is pretty much how you own it.

Lena Robinson: 00:37:07

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:37:07

And people react to you based on how you react. So if you go in, and this is a life lesson for anybody who doesn't really know it, but a lot of it is how you sell everything.

So if you come into a situation and you're going to talk about if you have bipolar, for example, and, and you're very sheepish and you're kind of like, really embarrassed and you're, you know, you don't want to say, and you're very nervous and that sort of thing. And you, you know, you want to tell people they're going to react in a certain.

Because they're going to see that that's like an issue, and they're then going to maybe feed off of that. But if you come in and you go, yeah, hi, I'm Lena, I got bipolar. And they go, first opening line. But, but, but they go, oh, okay, Lena has bipolar.

And then they just get on with it. And because you didn't make an issue out of it, they don't make an issue out of it. And it, do you know what I mean?

It's, it's bringing that stuff out and just being very matter of fact about it.

And it's the same, you know, we hear the same thing with people with cancer and we say the same thing with people with disabilities and, and maybe unseen disabilities and stuff like that.

Like, you know, I talked to Alan, and Alan's, you know, he has a, he's got a, a blue badge for parking and stuff because he has, you know, he's, he has like 20% blood flow from his heart, like somewhere between 20 and 50. 50 Is like the absolute best that he gets now, and 20 is the lowest. So sometimes he's like, I can't walk up the stairs. Do you know.

You know what I mean? And it's like you can't see that from the outside. But he's quite matter of fact about talking about it.

Lena Robinson: 00:38:42

I love his podcast if you put it in because they, it was, yeah,.

David Brown: 00:38:46

It was amazing, but it, he doesn't make it awkward, I guess, is what I'm saying. And so, yeah, sometimes I think that, you know, that's part of it.

So again, if, you know, if there's anything out there, you know, my advice to people would be, is just try and be as matter of fact about whatever it is that you can. If I. Absolutely. Again, we're touching on sensitive topics here and I, I appreciate that.

Lena Robinson: 00:39:08

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:39:08

And so, you know, everybody's mileage will vary and everybody's going to be at a different point in their own journey and their relationship with whatever's going on. And I totally get that. So you, everybody just do the best you can.

Lena Robinson: 00:39:21

Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you on that because just because I'm, I'm saying what I do doesn't mean that's right for everyone. He reiterated that.

And we've, we all deal with things. There's almost, there's almost like there's not a wrong way to deal with it. You just have to learn to deal with whatever it is that you're dealing.

David Brown: 00:39:43

It's got to figure out your way.

Lena Robinson: 00:39:45

And to a certain degree. Can chatting to a chatgpt as a sounding board be helpful or a different type of AI?

David Brown: 00:39:55

Of course it can.

Lena Robinson: 00:39:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably, you know, like if you're not expecting it to give you all the answers, but you kind of need a sounding board.

David Brown: 00:40:05

Yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:40:05

Is it, is it a negative?

David Brown: 00:40:08

No, I don't think so, but it's anything. Yeah, it's going to be a positive and a negative. That, that's just life. Right. Like it's, it's the dual use problem that we have.

Lena Robinson: 00:40:20

Probably the best way to look at.

David Brown: 00:40:21

Like it's not exactly.

Lena Robinson: 00:40:23

It's not gonna have. Which I think is, is part of what you're talking about about that curve and it coming up the other side.

Like, you know, I heard my friend and flatmate today talking about the fact that she'd have to have a chat to somebody about like, you can't just rely on AI. Like you gotta question things. It's not always right. And I was like, go you like a couple probably a year ago, she was slightly different about that.

But the world's moving on. We're learning that it's not reliable 100%. And that's okay because it's learning just like everybody else.

But at the same time, humans still have to have agency. They still have to have accountability. I still need to go deep into the whatever research or thing that it's done and question it.

We should all be doing that. Like if we just read something and accept it, like a following along disciple, like we're in a bloody cult, then we're in trouble.

The earth is, the world is in trouble if that's the way we're going, which some ways it is. Some places, yeah, countries.

David Brown: 00:41:24

And I think that gets back around to sort of what people use it for and that kind of thing. And I use it very much more now to not to validate my ideas, but to sort of find the holes.

So I'll, I'll have an idea and I'll write up a bunch of stuff and then I'll put it in there and say, what have I forgot? Is there something missing here? Is there? You know what? How would somebody else frame this?

And then it comes back and gives me feedback like an editor almost. And I think for that type of stuff.

And again, analyzing things like, I, I mean, you know, full disclosure, I use it to analyze transcripts and stuff all the time. You know, every podcast I do for all of my customers, I put the transcripts in and I get summaries and I get all sorts of stuff out of it from that.

I've never once yet, fingers crossed, found an instance where if you give it a piece of text and you say, summarize this, analyze this, tell me what's in it, all that sort of stuff that it ever gets it wrong or leaves out anything, it, it can get inaccurate. If you ask it for a specific time of something in a conversation, it just makes up the time code. So it's not really good at that.

But, but doing the overall, you know, analyzing the information that's there and coming up with things, you know, and bullet points. Now it may not write it in the way you want to write it, but it gives you the, the right information.

So I find, you know, using it in that way is really helpful, which kind of might be a good segue. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about on the, on the mental health side?

Lena Robinson: 00:43:02

It was, it was. Yeah. No, we've covered everything off on that, I think. So. Yeah. Onto your topic of.

David Brown: 00:43:09

Yeah. Okay. So getting into people using it and everything in work.

I, I kind of wanted to have a little bit of a rant on this and I, I have talked about this once on the other podcast as well, but there's, well, there's kind of two things, but. But one I think that has more bearing with our conversation today is what I've noticed, particularly on LinkedIn and on social media, is.

And I'm not going to call out anyone specifically, but I know a lot of people who run businesses. I'm in loads of different networking groups. I spend a lot of time, I've been in startup networks. I've been working for startups for 35 years.

I know tons of people in those businesses. They tend to, People who work in startups tend to always work in startups.

So I'm always seeing messages coming and my LinkedIn feed is filled with people, you know, running small companies and startups and stuff like that. What I'm starting to see is there's a huge percentage of people who. All they talk about is how they use AI in their startup.

And hey, I built this thing and, you know, I've been working on this thing and I've been using Claude to write this, you know, vibe coding an app, and I've been doing this and I've been doing that and blah, blah, blah. What they don't post about is their customers, their business, what problems they solve, how they help people.

All they talk about is how they're using AI in their business. And it just makes me wonder if AI is distracting a lot of people from actually remembering what their business is and what they should be doing.

I can sit here and I could spend weeks working on, you know, trying to build an AI tool that would help my workflow.

And, you know, we could record an episode and then we put a file in this folder and then it gets picked up and it gets processed over here and done this and done that and done this and done that. And. But at the end of the day, is that actually going to help me? Is that going to help me get more business? Is that going to help me do anything?

Or am I just going to completely distract myself with, you know, not focusing on my customers and everything else? And this isn't like somebody doing it and saying, hey, I did this project and now I'm getting loads of benefit from the project.

And then they go back to talking about their customers. It's, oh, now I'm building another AI thing. Oh, and now I'm building another AI thing.

And it, they, they just, they've just lost, they seem to have lost sight of, of what they're supposed to be doing, which is running a business, not building AI tools. And it just, yeah, it, for me and again, personally, if anything, I've stepped back and I don't use AI as much as I used to.

So then the question becomes, am I going to fall behind?

And is some other guy who runs a small studio, you know, 20 miles from me, who spent the last six months working on AI instead of, you know, trying to get customers for his studio, is he actually going to overtake me because he's now using AI or he's using AI to generate, you know, hundreds of social media posts that are average or below average at best, but because he's just putting the volume out there using an AI tool, and it's all shitty and stupid. But is. But is that. Is he actually going to win the game? And I think this, you know, for me, this is the question. I spend a lot of time.

I. I don't do a lot of social, and we don't do a lot of social in the business because we spend our time talking to people and going to networking events and trying to understand what people are doing and everything else, not building AI tools or using AI to go out and do loads of, you know, kind of crappy socials for us. So I don't know, what do you think about that? Have you noticed the same thing? Or do you think I'm wrong or. Where are you on that?

Lena Robinson: 00:47:15

So I had. Until you brought it up, I kind of. I had noticed it, but not maybe as much.

When you brought it up the other day, when we were talking about what we're going to talk about today, I was like, oh, yeah. And I've been thinking about it, obviously, knowing I was coming on the show, and a couple of things jumped into my head.

And we've talked about this before. Social media had a similar pattern. Everybody turned to social media like it was going to be the answer to everything.

And I think AI is going the same way. And I think the challenge we've got is that I love the fact that you've renamed the podcast Humans with AI.

Instinctively, you've figured out what I'm about to talk about, which is if we forget about the humans in this scenario, we are fucked.

The businesses that we run cannot and should not run or run without the humans, because humans as customers and clients are the ones we need to be thinking about. Now you keep using, and I use this as well. AI is a tool. It is not the answer. It is not the shining fucking North Star.

It is useful, helpful, particularly for business owners that are small and don't have a lot in life, or somebody like me, where I need somebody, you know, I need probably five of me to be able to do all the, that I actually want to do, but I can't because it's just me at the moment. Y and for those of you that don't know, it's because I'm returning back from long term illness, which is why I'm trying to rebuild everything.

So AI is really helpful for me for that.

But what I cannot do, and I don't think anybody should be doing this, and this is just my opinion, although I think it's quite valid, none of it should be being done. Instead of the human bip. I think a lot of people are frightened out there at the moment. We've got an economy that is in the toilet.

We've got wars going on around the world, we've got the orange person in the other country going on, and then the nutty one bombing in, you know, places like Ukraine and so forth. And you know, there is a lot going on. So there's a lot. And I think we're trying to distract ourselves from a lot of that.

And fear is a, a powerful driver to do stupid shit. Right. If you look at my previous business, before ftsq, its motto was or our driver was around.

If you fear drives bad behavior, it drives bad behavior. In business, it drives bad behavior just with humans generally. And I get that.

And I think what's happening at the moment is everybody's looking for answers to stand out as different and to be seen as cool, a cool kid on the block and all the rest of it, which weirdly, they're trying to head towards uniqueness and authenticity and all they're doing is a complete opposite. Yeah, so what I.

If there's a reason and an answer to a problem for a human, that building an AI thing, whatever that thing is, or a series of prompts, that'll help it. If there's something that, that will be useful for your audience. And this is something you and I have talked about before. Audience first.

If you have a group of people that you're trying to help support, guide, whatever as a business, whether they are purchasing a product, whether they are needing a service or software as a service or what have you, if that's not being driven by the human need, then you're going to miss the point, right? And I think what they're trying to do is use a piece of technology as the answer instead of using it to find the answer. The AI isn't the answer.

The AI is the tool to help you get to the answer for the human. That's kind of where my thinking is on it, really. Don't forget the humans.

David Brown: 00:51:33

Yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:51:34

You're lost if you do, I think.

David Brown: 00:51:36

Yeah, and. And. And you're right. And again, it's, you know, it is useful for a lot of things.

For example, talking about socials, and we just had a long chat about socials on another show that we did. But going back to that, I think what I wouldn't do. So, for the studio, I still have this idea that I want to do, like, Studio Tips for Noobs. Right.

So tips for people who maybe aren't used to recording. And it doesn't have to be in a studio.

It could be your home studio, but it's tips for people who, you know, want to start podcasting or they want to start recording stuff. And it doesn't matter whether you're using your phone or a small camera, a mirrorless or a cinema camera. It's all the same.

And I. I feel like there's like, one tip a week. Right. So there's like, 52 tips that we could do.

Now I can spend a couple of days going through and coming up with the list of tips, finding an order for that, figuring out what makes sense and what sort of progression there should be and all that sort of stuff.

Or I can ask AI to give me a list of 52 things that it thinks is quite important, and maybe I started off with the top 10, and I go, look, here's 10 things that I definitely want to talk about, but give me some other ideas. And then it fills in the list, and I can look at that list, and then it becomes curation. And I know that you talked to. Was it Tom Morley?

Lena Robinson: 00:53:09

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:53:09

About curating. Right. Because he uses AI a lot for his art. And, you know, humans are becoming curators in a. In a large sense. Yeah, yeah.

But I can then curate that list and get it to where I want it to be. Now that's where I would stop. And then I would go. And now I go and I get my camera and I take those topics.

And now I can do, like, I can talk about anything for ages, But I. All I need is a title, pretty much. And I go, oh, okay, I know what the title of this is.

And so I can then do a direct down the camera and say, hey, welcome to Studio Tips for Noobs. Today we're going to talk about, you know, what to wear. Do you know what I mean? And you go, if you've got a dark background, wear light colors.

If you've Got a light background, wear dark colors, don't wear stripes, don't wear tiny checks, whatever. And talk about that for a couple minutes. Make a nice thing. Go.

Lena Robinson: 00:54:04

We didn't lose on today's outfit, by the way. It was accidental.

David Brown: 00:54:08

Yeah, but look, it's perfect. Do you see? You've got a light background and you wore dark and I've got light and I wore dark. So yeah, it works.

But, but all that sort of stuff and then. But the hue. You need to do it, but it can help you curate the list and everything else.

What some people are doing is they're going, and they're creating the list and they're going, right now, go out and create, create me a 2 1/2 minute video or a 2 minute video talking about this particular topic and use AI to create a character that looks like me and doing the whole thing. And then they're just automatically scheduling all that stuff and they're just pushing it out. Now again, who's the fool?

Am I the fool for actually doing it and spending the time and doing it manually and doing the editing and everything else when maybe the results are the same? So are the results the same? I don't know.

I don't know if there's, I don't know if anybody's done any research on this yet, but I'd be curious to know.

Because if so, the crux of it, I guess comes down to if you saw that social media post that was AI generated, you would say, that's not Dave, because you know me quite well. Yeah, right. You know me. And you'd go close. But that's, but that's not Dave. But somebody who doesn't know me.

Lena Robinson: 00:55:27

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:55:28

Who met me once at an event or, you know, followed us because they met it. You know, they saw us at an event at like West Kent business or whatever.

If they just saw me one time there and then they saw that, they saw those posts, they'd be like, oh, well, that's Dave. Right. They wouldn't know any different. Maybe they wouldn't know any different. So this, this is where I'm kind of torn.

But again, it's, I don't know it, it's. For me, it's not the doing that kind of thing that's the problem.

It's the fact that doing that is distracting people from actually doing what they should be doing and spending the time in their business where they should do. Maybe I'm wrong.

Lena Robinson: 00:56:04

Maybe I'm wrong because my, my attitude towards it has changed a tiny little bit. I was so against anything being AI generated for anybody. Not from the ideas side of things, but literal content.

And when I mean content, I talk, I'm talking video. And the reason for that was, was that I assumed incorrectly. I think.

I think as time goes on this is going to get less and less of a thing that people will always be able to tell. Right. I think that's less going to happen over time.

I think the talks will just get better and that the likelihood of knowing one way or the other will get less and less. I think the rules, the acts around AI are going to force everybody to have declare that it's AI person anyway.

I think is where it's going or if it's not already there, can't remember.

But I think the one thing that I think we all need to remember, and I do understand people that are running small businesses, they can't do everything. Some people don't have the capability of communicating the way they want to.

Some people don't have the capability of doing the recording or the editing or all that kind of stuff. So that bit of it I get is that not everybody has the skills or will ever be able to have the skills.

I think the challenge is, and you've hit it on the head about the fact that you're spending your time at networking events and all the rest of it. I remember a few years ago going onto my CRM and trying to figure out where I got my Most leads from. 100% Of it came from my network.

David Brown: 00:57:55

Yeah.

Lena Robinson: 00:57:56

And I think the thing that we've forgotten and something that I've always talked about when it comes to marketing a new business and whatever size business you've got, is that you have to resonate and be relevant to your audience, but you also need to connect with them and engage with them. And I think that counts both online as well as offline.

But and this is maybe where it could be a little bit controversial is that if I know I have to have social media out there because my audience and mine does is quite a lot on social media, not being on there would not be good for my businesses or my reputation, I don't think.

But I know I'm also best in a face to face personal environment and I know I can't split myself being able to do both, then would I head down the route of doing some type of content that was AI generated and stick it up on social media. But it gives me more time to be out and about with people. Then would I make the choice to do that?

Potentially yes, but I'm not 100% sure it would depend on how good of a quality the thing was that was being produced. I think if it still didn't feel and look and behave like me, I wouldn't be okay with that. I'll be not happening.

If I could get it to a point where of course I'm still signing it off.

Have to have that gut feeling as am I proud for this to be representing me then I would probably put it out if it meant I could be out and about interfacing with humans. That's kind of where my brain goes. Maybe I'll accept it more now than I thought I was ever going to doubt any question. Maybe don't know.

David Brown: 00:59:41

Here's the controversial question but do you really need to be on social media?

Lena Robinson: 00:59:49

Look need no is it the one to many that's probably more helpful and as my, my ego likes being on social I'm gonna be honest but I do also think the type of humans and the clientele that I work with they probably tend to be more on social than a lot of other industries. I think it's an industry particularly thing for me. I enjoy sharing stuff with people and I can only do so much one to one. I love share.

I mean the joy that I get being on social media is literally because I'll go oh I found a thing I can share it with people that makes me so happy but it also is like people comment on like oh that and I have been able to reach people in far parts of the earth with my content in Australia that have come back and said what you said changed my life. I couldn't do that. Just I can't zoom over to Australia and do that. So I think there's a reach element that I think, I think we can't throw away.

So an answer to your question, in short.

Yeah, I do think I need to be on social media because I think it's really important to be able to connect with people that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do.

David Brown: 01:01:08

Maybe let's come back to the social media chat because there's a couple things interesting in what you've said already and I feel like that needs its, its own conversation but maybe not around AI, maybe we'll do that somewhere else But I think, I think there's a really interesting conversation around social and I've had this conversation with a few of the people in some of my networking groups and I think, I think the social media companies have sold us on the idea that we all have to Be on social all the time if we're going to get visibility because they want people on their platforms putting posts up. I think for small businesses, I think by and large it's probably a waste of time and a distraction.

I think if you paid an ad, if you, if you promoted a post to your local area or where your customers come from, okay. If you sell a product, like I'm gonna pull this out of thin air.

And it, this company probably doesn't even exist anymore, but if it does, shout out to some of my friends.

There's this thing called Woolly Wally Pockets and they were, they were for living walls and you basically would hang it at the top and it was pockets that you could put the dirt in and then you could build a living wall. Yep.

Lena Robinson: 01:02:39

That's made of wool, right?

David Brown: 01:02:40

It's made of wool, yeah. And. And my friend Felicity was. Had something to do with it. Anyway, shout out to Felicity if she will never listen to this.

Lena Robinson: 01:02:49

Get her onto floor.

David Brown: 01:02:50

If, if she did that would be hilarious. She's in Melbourne and God knows what's going on. But anyway, that's not the point. Woolly Wally Pockets or Wally. Woolly Wally Pockets. Yeah. Were.

Lena Robinson: 01:03:01

I'm going to look that up later.

David Brown: 01:03:05

But that's an international business, right? You can sell those, you could buy them online, they would ship them anywhere in the world. Fine.

You can develop some reach and you can do all of that stuff. But most of the people that I know have local businesses, right?

And they're small companies and they have a local catchment area of maybe 20 miles at the most.

Like they may get 50 miles and kind of go into London and stuff like that, but they're really not picking up clients from much further away than that.

The value of doing and spending hours on crafting social media posts and putting them out there I don't think is worth it because I don't think they've ever got a client from doing social and I don't think they've ever not got a client from not having social.

Where the power comes in is if you pay for it and you promote a post, then you can select where you want to target that and who you want to target it to. So then you start. And I've thought about this for the studio, I'm like, well, who do I advertise to?

If I go on Meta and I want to advertise and push a post on Insta, I only need it within like a 25 mile radius of, of our studio. I don't need it to Go to anyone else. Because no one else is going to come here.

Lena Robinson: 01:04:15

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:04:15

So it's pointless just to try and worry about getting, oh, I want something to go. This is the other thing that annoys the out of me. And maybe again, let's have a social media rant separately. We're drifting. I'm drifting off topic.

I'm drifting off topic. I'll just be clear about that.

Lena Robinson: 01:04:30

Relevant though, discussion though, isn't it?

David Brown: 01:04:33

Yeah, because. Well, yeah, because people are using AI to create all these things. They're like, oh, I want a viral post. Why?

Lena Robinson: 01:04:39

Yeah, why?

David Brown: 01:04:40

It's it, like you said, it's vanity. And that's okay. That's an okay reason.

If you just say, I want to have a post to get millions of views because I want it to, then that's cool, that's fun. But fun times.

Yeah, but it's not like we're spending time doing this stuff that isn't actually going to move the needle for us when we could be spending time doing other stuff.

And even with its AI and building all these AI workflows to slightly bring it back around, I think is consuming a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of effort, when actually we could be focusing on our core and where we know people are and how we know that we're going to get business and even updating websites and stuff. Like, okay, I've been doing web analytics for years and I understand how to build a website and stuff like that.

So I have a pretty good basic knowledge about that and SEO and everything else. And 90% of our business comes from people that we meet in person, at events and stuff like that, or someone directly from our network.

We've a customer, we've had a referral, whatever. But there is 10% that comes in through the website. Totally, totally unknown.

We literally get an email from the website that says, hey, I've got this project, can you help? Now the website works? Yeah.

Should I take actually some of the time that I spend dicking around with AI and actually maybe try and fix the website so it's even better than it already is?

Maybe because, I don't know, I've never had anything come in from something directly that I've done using AI, but I have had stuff that I've built myself and conversations that I've had, and so I have to keep reminding myself. And, you know, again, I talk about AI. We've got a show about AI. I use AI, but I try to not let it distract me from what I'm supposed to be doing.

Lena Robinson: 01:06:33

Yeah. And I think it comes down to, you know, you and I have talked about this on another show that you do.

It comes down to two bits of it, which is how much do you understand your audience that you're trying to attract and what is it that you are selling? Are you selling a widget? Are you selling a service? Are you selling whatever? I think if you are making.

And I see a lot of people do this, people make assumptions about those two things, thinking they know what they need to create or do or whatever.

Like, I remember back in the day going back to the social media pattern, but AI is exactly the same, which is used to get people coming to you in agencies. When I was in agency land, and you'd have a brand come to you and go, we need to be on Facebook. The first question I'd say is, why?

Why is your audience there?

David Brown: 01:07:28

Exactly.

Lena Robinson: 01:07:29

Like, I think the challenges. People get lost and think they've got to be on all the things all of the time.

And one of the things I'm doing at the moment is going, so what do I need to be doing? Where do I need to be doing it? And my challenge too.

And I'm thinking I'm gonna have to separate the two is that I've got a consultancy and an art gallery and I am putting it out on the same. Not on LinkedIn, actually, they're separated on LinkedIn. But on Instagram it's the same.

I'm thinking if I. I'm gonna have to split the two up because one needs to be on Instagram a lot more than the other does. Like, the consultancy could quite easily get away with not being on there at all, but the gallery does, because it's a visual product that.

I am sorry, artists, you are not a product. But it's a physical.

David Brown: 01:08:20

But the prints are products. The prints are products.

Lena Robinson: 01:08:23

Yeah. The things that I'm selling are a physical thing, not a service.

And I think because of that, I have to use social media in a very, very different way for that and that audience than I do for the consultancy. So on this conversation we've had, now I've made a decision right now we're all watching this live.

I am going to separate out consultancy off of the current ftsq and I might not even do it on Instagram at all and just do it as the art gallery. Oh, look at that decision.

But it comes down to we only have X amount of time to do what we need to do with or with AI, and AI can help and if it's the right thing to do, I will use it. I may even use it to help me figure out with past data that I've got, where am I to channel my marketing, which direction should I take it in?

Because I've been thinking. I got a nudge from mailchimp the yesterday actually going today is the last day. If you do not log in today, you will lose everything.

I fucking did at last minute. But I was only. Because I'm not sure if I want to go down the newsletter route or not anymore anyway.

But I had to make sure I got it so that I don't lose it. What I am about to decide, and you've obviously seen me make the first decision on that, is what else do I need to be doing?

I don't want to overdo it. I need to make it relevant to my audiences. The audiences are separate from my two parts of my business and what is it that I have to do?

Yeah, and I think we all have to ask ourselves these questions. I think most small businesses do not understand their audience as well as they think they do.

They might as certain levels of a customer, but they do not understand their online behavior. They do not necessarily understand where they are already playing and want to continue to play.

What they won't want to do is be forced to play in an area of the playground that they don't want to be in because you're there. You need to go to where they are. And I think AI could help with some of that.

You know, if you can talk about your existing customers, pop that into AI and go like, based on that, what does that profile now look like or what other questions should I be asking? That could be a really simple thing that AI could help them with.

You know, if you're not, like me, a person that understands how to build a profile and how to do the research for that, then get your ChatGPT or your Claude or whatever to help you do that. So if you. Yeah, sorry.

David Brown: 01:10:48

Or conversely, you can also use it in the beginning to say. I wouldn't say in the beginning. I think at the very beginning, if you're just starting a business, you've got a. You have a rough idea, right.

Of the people and you that you think are going to be your customers. But invariably it's always different. So once you have a little bit of data to work with and you, you start to.

You can then start to say, okay, I see you know who's interested and you start to understand what their needs are and all that, then you can start to target and, and AI can definitely be helpful in helping you figure out how to address those. But then you also start to say, who are the customers that I really need? And you can start to develop those and think about where they are as well.

And then you start to go, so let's do a separate one on social media maybe.

I mean, I know we've talked about it here a little bit and we've got a good bit of the conversation, but I, I think there's a whole nother aspect to this that, that the research has, has, has shown. And if you look at things like the, we're talking about authenticity and everything else, you look at someone like Gary Vee, for example.

Gary Vee has what, 7 million subscribers to his Instagram account and you know, his Facebook accounts and stuff like that. He's got millions and millions and millions of subscribers. His company has like 200k subscribers. Nobody cares about the company feed.

They care about him and what he has to say. And he might have two or three different companies that he runs, but people listen to him and they follow him. They don't follow his companies.

And so that's the other thing is you might have a company page or you might have a company, you know, Instagram account or you know, X or Twitter or whatever, like TikTok, all that stuff, but frankly, no one cares. No one cares about the business account. They care about your account.

Lena Robinson: 01:12:42

I'm going to challenge you on that,.

David Brown: 01:12:43

You know, because I think it does.

Lena Robinson: 01:12:45

Depend on who the who the business account is. Prime example. Last night, couldn't sleep, so I was flicking through Instagram and there was a post about.

And I cannot remember the guy's name, I think it's called. His name is like Dom dollar or something like that. He's a DJ from Australia.

He's hit the scene big time in the last couple of years and he'd landed in New Zealand and on the plane, on e New Zealand plane, he chose a song which is a really famous New Zealand from the 80s song called Slice of Heaven. And he basically understood his audience and he said, I am going to drop you a sound that nowhere in the earth would get this except you lot, right?

It's in Christchurch. He played this song which he then put his own music over the top. Now I was reading that that wasn't the business account I'm talking about.

There was a brand on there that I recognized called Scaller Up Red Bands. Scaller up is a company in New Zealand. They make rubber gumboots and red bands are famous for that.

My dad has always worn them as a landscaper, my brothers as landscapers, they always had their red bands and they're worn by very particular people. Their content, fucking some of the most coolest content I have seen in a really long time.

I connect with them and they came straight back to me on a message going, I'm so glad it's hit around the world. This is so cool.

Like that is a very smart way as a business and a brand to understand how to communicate with an audience that is already, not already a fan. But like for me they came back and went, it's nostalgic, isn't it? Like that there was just something.

And I think there are brands that do it well like that. Businesses that do it well like that.

David Brown: 01:14:44

It's possible. I mean Red Bull is the, is the shining example. Right.

And you notice that Red Bull never ever, ever, ever puts a can of Red Bull on any of their content ever. They don't advertise Red Bull. What they advertise is cool people doing cool stuff that are sponsored by Red Bull.

Because the idea is, is that Red Bulls for people, for cool people that do cool stuff.

Lena Robinson: 01:15:11

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:15:11

You will never see it. They also have very, very, very strict guidelines about how big and how much of the image can be taken up by their logo. And it's very small.

Lena Robinson: 01:15:21

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:15:22

And if, you know people want to create content, you can create content for Red Bull and submit it to them and if they like it, they'll post it for you and they'll let you do it. But you have to be within their guide, their, their brand guidelines. And, and again, they're very strict about how they do it and all sorts of stuff.

But yes, I'm. Yes, it's absolutely possible if you have the money to hire a team of people to manage that for you and, and you can start to grow a business.

But what I'm thinking about are most everyday people who are struggling to try and just manage everything that they're trying to do at once.

Lena Robinson: 01:15:56

The small founder owned business, you mean? Yeah.

David Brown: 01:15:58

You, you would probably be better off to just post under your account and to do all your thought leader and all your stuff and all your, hey, we're in the studio today and all that kind of stuff. Don't post that on your company account because no one cares.

Put it on your personal account because that's where people are going to start to see what's going on. And the people, they will follow you. And we're way over time, whatever.

Lena Robinson: 01:16:23

We need a part too.

David Brown: 01:16:24

I know. Well, we haven't talked in ages, so this is going to be a long one, so I apologize if anybody's actually still listening.

We're going to go a little bit.

Lena Robinson: 01:16:33

More, I just say just to make it interesting. There we go. We're interesting again.

David Brown: 01:16:40

And yeah, totally lost my train of thought again. But anyway, people are interested in you. It's the same with podcasting. It.

There's a funny point if you, if you start a podcast and then, you know, you continue it long enough and you get to sort of episode 20 or something.

And I've told this story before, and I was talking to one of my friends about the show when I very first started it, and I was like, oh, I've got some more cool people to come on to listen to. And they went, you do realize we listen to it because of you. You, not because of the other people.

Lena Robinson: 01:17:09

Agreed.

David Brown: 01:17:09

And I was like, what do you mean? Like, the thought had never occurred to me that they're listening to me because I don't think I have anything particularly interesting to say.

And so I, I relied on having interesting people on because I'm like, no one gonna care about me. They just want to hear the other people. And that was a real wake up for me.

Lena Robinson: 01:17:29

No, that's true.

David Brown: 01:17:31

To, to realize that people tune in because you're the consistent thing.

Lena Robinson: 01:17:35

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:17:35

Right. And, and for, for whatever, however you do it, maybe they like the way you ask questions, maybe you're an idiot and they think it's funny.

Like, whatever, it doesn't matter. They listen and they like listening to you and how you approach things. And so it's the same with socials, I feel.

And again, let's, let's have a whole social chat at some point and, and maybe we'll, we'll do it here, maybe we'll do it somewhere else. But we could talk a couple hours about socials and how you approach it and, and what you do. But, you know, how, how do you do it? Do you just do one?

I mean, I've, I have started to come to the realization that I think I do one social channel and that's it. And I put everything on that one. I just don't worry about the rest.

Yeah, and it should be the one where you think most people are going to be, or it's the one that you want to develop for whatever reason, but as long as you know what you're doing, but then at least you can focus your attention on that one.

You can Learn more about that particular platform, how it works, what works, what doesn't work on that platform, and then you can start to create better content for that platform.

And you don't have to worry about it, because TikTok is very different from Insta, which is very different from LinkedIn, which is very different from YouTube and so. And forget Facebook, but you know what I mean, though? But the audiences are different. The way you create content for them is all that.

And then you can't create all that stuff. You need to just. Just pick one and then become really good at that one. So.

Lena Robinson: 01:19:04

Okay, anyway, for our next conversation on social media, I'm gonna say that I've got a lesson to hand on to everybody with regards to the one channel thing that I learned from a very unexpected place. And I'm not gonna tell you what the conversation was, okay. But I learned the lesson from an interview between Ramesh Ranganathan and Ricky Gervais.

And Ricky Gervais gave me the most God's face laughingly like, holy shit. Moment of how to be successful in business. Did not expect it to come from that direction.

David Brown: 01:19:42

Interesting.

Lena Robinson: 01:19:43

So that is the teaser. I will definitely talk about that more in the next conversation. It was fucking genius. And I was like, that guy is so smart.

David Brown: 01:19:51

Okay, sweet. Yeah, sounds fun. We're now on hour 20. Yeah, we're now an hour 20.

And we'll trim a little bit off the beginning, but yeah, that's a pretty good one for today. So welcome back, everyone, and to Humans with AI Season three. So we will. We'll see what happens and how it develops over the next few weeks.

But yeah, it's nice to come back and have a chat about it and in a little bit more relaxed way. And I know we had said in the. In the last episode where we said, hey, welcome to season three.

We talked about maybe doing some of these as live broadcasts.

So maybe we'll do one of those a month and maybe try that or, you know, try and set a schedule so that people know when it is and then we can kind of book it in our calendars as well and maybe work around it or whatever. I. I don't know what I'm to do, but anyway, yeah,.