Announcer: You are listening to the National University Podcast.

0:00:10 – Kimberly King

Hello, I’m Kimberly King. Welcome to the National University Podcast, where we offer a holistic approach to student support, well-being and success – the whole human education. We put passion into practice by offering accessible, achievable higher education to lifelong learners. On today’s episode, we are talking about using AI in marketing and, according to an article in Forbes magazine, in a nutshell, here is what they see Marketers are concerned about the possibility of being replaced by machines. Company executives don’t want to overpay for marketers to use these machines, but with respect to the former, they think that when they say, the effective marketing depends on critical thinking and to experience what creative instincts AI has, and so this is going to be a process. We have some really interesting information on today’s episode about AI in marketing.

On today’s episode, we are talking about AI in marketing and fintech, and joining us is Doctor Paul Markham. A unique, proven global strategist, transformational leader and futurist committed to first-to-market product development, driving revenue and EBITDA growth in Fortune 100 growth and startup organizations. Dr. Markham brings his decades of experience to advise his clients on artificial general intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain, and is set to deliver the next generation of enterprise systems for the 21st century. And also joining us is Dr. Justin Goldston, returning. Dr. Goldston is the academic program director for the Logistics and Supply Chain Program at National University. His research is focused on blending the practices of supply chain management, emerging technologies, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, and sustainability to create positive global change. He has over 20 years of experience consulting with organizations around the world on enterprise-wide digital transformation initiatives, and we welcome both of you to today’s podcast. How are you?

0:02:14 – Dr. Paul Markham

I’m doing well.

0:02:16 – Kimberly King

Great. Today we’re talking about- Well, first of all, before we get to today’s show topic, why don’t you fill our audience in a little bit about your mission and your work? We’ll start with you, Dr. Goldston.

0:02:32 – Dr. Justin Goldston

I think, based on what I’m seeing within the Web3 space, my mission is to kind of create ethical AI, as well as ethical blockchain solutions. I mean, there’s a lot of nefarious actors both in AI and in blockchain, but I think that if we build the tools now to combat that and mitigate that risk, I think we’re going to be in a better place, because these technologies are moving at breakneck speed and we have to kind, of find solutions now to combat the actors, because greed is going to take over very quickly once these tools begin to be deployed.

So, that’s my story.

0:03:11 – Kimberly King

We’re kind of in the wild wild west out here, aren’t we with this AI? And what about you, Dr. Markham?

0:03:20 – Dr. Paul Markham

I guess my motto is stolen directly from Da Vinci- Simplification is the ultimate sophistication. What I mean by that is, it’s really understanding the factual matter behind what is artificial intelligence, what it really is, In particular, what role other technologies play in artificial intelligence. Possibly, I could argue, quantum is more important than both artificial intelligence and blockchain. But my kind of what I love, my mission, is when people say oh, is that what it means? Right? Because I think we all tend to, no matter what industry we’re in- medical technology, you name it- we tend to be heavy on jargon and a lot of that is, I think, to confuse people, and basically my role is to educate people on how simple some of these things are. Thanks.

0:04:18 – Kimberly King

Well, I’m looking forward to learning more about it. And today we are talking about AI in marketing and fintech. And I want to start with you, Dr. Markham. How would you describe the current role of AI in marketing and how has it transformed traditional marketing strategies?

0:04:46 – Dr. Paul Markham

Well thank you for the question, and I think there’s0 the two ways to answer this is depending on your perspective, and that really comes down to this simplification. If we look at the traditional marketing world, and that’s where I come from, is we put together strategic plans. We then bolt on, you know, target marketing strategies and then we go to market with tactics and campaigns. So how has it changed? Well, on the one hand, traditional marketers will be doing what I call incremental innovation. They will be adding AI to their current strategy.

Forward-thinking, futurist marketers- or marketing scientists, as I like to call them- they actually see that it’s changed dramatically and comprehensively, never to turn back. We’re in the actual stage right now of business to individual. That’s correct. That means that the four P’s we like to talk about in marketing- product price promotion and placement or distribution- that has changed dramatically down to customization. I like to call it genetic marketing.

It’s not there yet, but because of the attention economy, the digital attention economy, the only scarcity out there is your attention. So right now, marketers- forward-thinking marketers, not traditional marketers- forward-thinking futurist marketers, marketing scientists… They see the world starting and finishing at what we call business to individual. This is just emerging now and this is not because marketers want to do it. This is because we’re using machine learning, deep learning, the application of natural language processing, large language models and all the rest to deliver something for you- for you- not for “you” as a target market. That is gone, so traditional marketers are in big trouble if they think that the way forward with AI is to actually add it to their current marketing strategy.

0:06:47 – Kimberly King

Interesting. I’m going to ask you another question, Dr. Markham. What is the major misconception of AI in marketing? And then, what are the biggest barriers businesses face when adopting AI in their marketing efforts and how can they overcome that?

0:07:03 – Dr. Paul Markham

You might hear- this is a very odd answer, but it’s factual. The biggest barriers are actually the culture of the organization and the leadership of the organization. Many marketers, not all of them, but the mindset that, oh well, we had to do this before- the internet came along, we had to go to online marketing- and then we had to add things like customer relation management tools and so on and so forth. So the biggest misconception is that that’s just what we’re doing now.

Same thing goes with blockchain. Right, as far as marketing goes, people think, oh, that’s got something to do with Bitcoin or Ethereum. It’s absolutely a misconception. Blockchain is going to turn the internet into basically a database. It’s going to transform marketing to the point that people won’t be able to understand for a whole different reason, something called taking out the middleman and, you know, I think Justin could talk to this a little more with regards to supply chain. So the barriers are, in fact, the leadership and culture, where people think this is another let’s just say, add on to our current strategy, where it is absolutely not. Same thing goes for education, for instance. A lot of people think that AI is another tool for students to use and so forth and so on, whereas the reality is AI is going to be the university we’re going to have agent driven or agent connected large language models with basically avatars at the front end that are going to be objective and massively more powerful than what we know today as sort of like, instructors and so forth.

Same thing goes in marketing, is that the people that start from essentially large powerful basically databases within large language models and connected, that becomes the marketing strategy. So the misconception is that AI is a bolt-on. The barrier is in fact the culture of organizations and the leadership within there. I will say the organizations that understand that you have to be a marketing scientist even to play moving forward, they’re thriving, not just surviving. They’re thriving and they’re going to move at rocket speed. They’re adopting more and more new technologies.

I think AI has become a kind of a story, whereas it’s only part one of the miniseries. Ai is narrow, basically narrow nodes of artificial intelligence. It’s kind of dumb, if you want to know the truth. Artificial general intelligence. Think about the easiest way to talk about it is connecting all those nodes together into something that’s kind of equivalent to a human brain. But I’m really racing forward towards part three of the mini-series, which is artificial superintelligence. That’s where they’re thinking machines and actually, let’s just say helping us. So us as marketing scientists, we need to be futural leaders and actually thinking beyond artificial general intelligence. So biggest barrier actually, are the humans, I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, the humans that are stuck in the yesteryear, and the misconceptions are that this is just an add-on to what we’re already doing. It just is not.

0:10:34 – Kimberly King

I appreciate that and it is true we’re still in the very beginning stages and where we’re still teaching AI, at least from the landscape that I’ve seen. Dr. Goldston, how is AI currently transforming the fintech landscape and what innovations should we expect in the next few years?

0:10:56 – Dr. Justin Goldston

I think AI has completely changed the fintech space now as we know it. It’s not in the future, it’s changing now. Now, I think, with blockchain and with crypto and with Trump getting in and Trump- So, a month before the election, Trump actually created his own DeFi solution: World Liberty Coin. Right now, fast forward the Trump, not Donald Trump himself, but his group, his group, his companies. They’re looking to acquire BAKKT, if I’m not mistaken. Right? So if Trump himself personally is adopting, you know, this technology, what do you think he’s going to do once he comes into the presidency? Right, I mean before before we came, mean before we came online, if you go, look in the chat, I sent the Arkham Intelligence link to Donald Trump’s wallet, right.

Now again, I’m looking right now, he’s got Trump. Trump has $8.9 million in cryptocurrency in a wallet that people know about. So you know for sure he has wallets that nobody knows about. If you look at the second article, JD Vance, vice president, JD Vance however, you want to say it Sorry for disrespect, right, he has a half a million dollars in Bitcoin.

So, with those people, having those interests in mind, what do you think is going to happen from a government perspective? Right, their whole campaign was hinged upon making America great again. Right, building up the economy. How do you think that’s going to impact the fintech space? Right? Now, to what Dr. Markham was saying blockchain, crypto and marketing are completely tied together, and that’s going to be tied together with autonomous agents. Now, I’m an investor in this one project called Colin. So if we go on X and you type in Colin underscore -I just looked it up- Colin underscore AI, the first tweet from this so-called crypto influencer, this marketer, this crypto marketer- the first tweet was on the 7th and if you go, look at that thing, if you go look at that X site, there’s been multiple autonomous posts every single day. This is how the FinTech space is going to transfer. It’s going to transform social media, how it’s going to transform marketing and how it’s going to transfer form, how people are interacting from a from a from an AI perspective.

Now, I know you talked about just FinTech, but for every single industry, the biggest problem people are saying how’s this going to displace jobs? There are certain, there are certain repetitive jobs that people do not want to do, right? Although there’s influencers, although there are social media people, those people don’t want to do that. If they just manage an agent, now they can scale like you wouldn’t believe. I’m seeing it right now. I’m at Georgetown University right now. This is week three of what I refer to as a global social experiment. We’re actually putting these things we’re talking about into practice using autonomous agents. Right, now I can’t talk about it because I’m trying to kind of disprove some of these things, but we’re actually seeing it now and, like I said, we’re only in week three. So, to answer your question, it’s going. So AI is going to transform everything, not just fintech- everything, and we’re seeing it.

0:14:29 – Kimberly King

I mean and Dr. Markham, you just said this too, if you’re still thinking of, you know, yesteryear and not getting into the future, then you’re already well behind the eight ball as fast as this technology is happening. What are the most exciting trends in AI-driven marketing right now, and where do you see this industry heading in the next, say, five years?

0:14:52 – Dr. Paul Markham

I have to build on what Justin said. I just do. I hope Lee’s okay with it. There’s a battle royale in the marketplace right now. Essentially, there’s these things called central banks. They’ve done very nicely over the years, they certainly have. There’s also another thing called a decentralized cryptocurrency, what we know of, right, things like Ether, Blockchain and so forth and, believe me, I’m getting to the marketing part. I am. But, as Justin said, it’s all the same story. It really is. AI has been around for decades.

I mean literally. I was working on AI back at least 20 years ago, so this is nothing new. What happened? GPT popped its head up. This is what actually happened. And it was sort of like the tip of the iceberg- all the engines, we’ve been working on this stuff for years. We were doing this in healthcare to detect lung cancer. Boy, back in the in 2010, we were actually using machine learning, deep learning and so forth. So nothing new here. Right? GPT popped its head up and the guys at Google literally said I’m sure, because I know them- they said, oh my God, this is going to screw our whole business model. Why? Because Google is set up on the concept of go fetch and you get paid for the advertising. All of a sudden, that’s in big, deep peril. They took their eye off the ball. So did Apple. So here we are, right. We’re getting to the point of you’re asking me about trends. So let’s look at this.

Back in 2017, I created an actual cryptocurrency called T-Corn for healthcare. Back in those days, the fight was between all of what I call decentralized, but there was another one in the background this is really important, called XRP Ripple. This is a nothing. No one wants to hear about it. It really doesn’t matter, so forth and so on, but here’s going to be the battle that’s coming up, I think, Justin, is that XRP is more of a centralized approach and some of the big companies, if they decide to adopt XRP, it’s going to cause a lot of trouble because the central banks will like an XRP approach. You might think why is this guy talking about this in marketing? Because it’s all connected right. Right now, I’m launching an ICO for something that’s a quantum computing enabled AI blockchain exchange for pharma. You might go, wait a minute.

You’re in marketing? That’s correct, because this is a very simple way for people that are business people to raise money. Back in ‘17, we were doing this. These days, they’re far more related to security tokens. So you might say, okay, how does that work with trends and future? Well, let’s going to happen right now. Moving forward, I’m going to look at my phone- and you might think this is 20 years off. It’s just not. It’s very close now. I’m going to look at my phone and be able to order a shoe my shoe, not a shoe, my shoe, exactly my shoe from Nike in Shenzhen in China. I’ll be able to do that and the thing will actually be sent to me. But all this is going to take place with a digital currency, and here’s the main point of this. Right. I, me personally, remember the second P? First P this is my product, not my product as a background or Australian or a Catholic or a Buddhist. No, no, this is mine. It’s going to be business to me, to individual.

The next thing that’s going to happen. This is the most important thing that tokenization is going to do for us. It’s going to give me my price. Listen to this. This is what’s really important. We all have a digital footprint. Everybody on this screen has a digital footprint. People don’t even realize this, but what AI is doing, it is actually helping to build products, right. So if you don’t think that- hypothetically, just say I’m a Nike fiend. I love everything Nike. I’ve got to have Nike, Nike, Nike, Nike. And I am absolutely on Instagram, I’m on Facebook, I’m this, this, this. They are going to give me different pricing when they can, right, when we are tokenized, meaning, in the background, I’m going to get different pricing based on my digital valuation. Oh, yes, you might go wait on. Is that going to change your net worth, Paul? Yeah, it really is. That’s what’s happening and that’s what’s really going to hit marketing. We start getting to the second P once this tokenization happens.

And, to Justin’s point, it’s not about whether this is going to happen or not. I think the only thing is who’s going to win? Is it going to be the European central bankers that basically run the central bank here, and that’s going to depend on where Jamie Dimon ends up. If Dimon ends up in this latest administration, I don’t know what you think, Justin. If he does, maybe because JP Morgan’s got a coin- they’ve got Ether- you might be thinking that- people that aren’t me and Justin might be thinking well, are these guys just going to talk about coins and crypto and all that? But it’s all the same thing now, and the fact of the matter is, I think, that blockchain in its infancy very, very poor what I would say power usage and so forth. But as we bring quantum into this, I think everything’s going to change dramatically. The only thing that I fear moving forward as far as trends in the future, I really hope that we keep to a decentralized blockchain and we don’t go for the dare I say it, the old way, which is a centralized reserve bank, essentially moving forward. I’m hoping, Justin, that that happens, but, boy, it’s fun to watch for sure. So, to me at least, in trends and in the future, we’re really going to be looking at it. It’s going to be AI at the center.

Look, I just need to give you one more example. Some guy at a university was asking me you know, what are we going to do about? The students are cheating. And I said, hey, that’s not the question. So what I did? I showed them this website. I don’t want to mention it on here, but anyway, let’s just say it is a new company that’s coming out.

It’s a 24-hour news network, right, it’s a bunch of large language models that takes objective feeds from around the world. It has the most beautiful people you’ve ever seen. It’s kind of like Brad Pitt and someone like somebody else- the perfect people. This is interesting, you should listen to this. This thing runs 24 hours a day and I showed this to this faculty at a university and he goes, well, I see what you mean. Are you saying there won’t be any instructors moving forward?

And the answer is, of course not, right, but there won’t be any news presenters. There won’t need to be any of those things. Right, they will all talk to us with our digital twin, and our digital twin is nearly there. The biggest trend of all that you’re going to see coming up very soon- and I’m sure Justin’s watching this too- is what’s going to be called digital assistant. It’s nearly there now. I don’t mean a Siri, I’m not saying that at all. It’s going to be a Paul Markham digital twin out there that is going to be so addictive, right, it’s going to be basically a large language model that has built me basically out there in the metaverse and it’s going to be my best buddy. When I walk out the front door it’s going to say hey, Paul, I know you forgot to send a birthday gift to your oldest daughter, it’s okay, and, by the way, the traffic’s heavy on 45. And listen you put on a few pounds. So listen, I checked out, I called the – and you might- People might say no, no, no, no, no. Are you sure?

I mean, I’m driving my car the other day and the Mercedes said to me pothole, and I’m just like seriously? and then clunked down the pothole. This is going to move at such a rate, I don’t think anyone’s going to be ready for it. So, as far as how many jobs are lost and all the rest of it, here’s what I say to people. Here’s my advice- hey, make sure you get ahead of this. Become a steward. Don’t become a fear monger. Embrace this stuff. Learn how to code, for instance. You don’t have to be a software engineer, just learn. I mean, you can do all these courses for free, right? Learn about Python, learn about Java, learn about the language of the world we’re living in. That’s my little take, anyway.

0:23:05 – Kimberly King

That’s fascinating. I have so many questions- I don’t think I have enough time, but like just your example about what the future looks like, where they are, you know it’s us or whatever. The news you know had the anchors or whatever. Just one question-

0:23:21 – Dr. Paul Markham

It’s us on here, right, it’s us what we’re doing now. I mean, I’m sorry, Kimberly, I just want to add this. The other day I showed somebody at a university this I just typed into a website. Apart from the fact that marketing is sorry to say this on a podcast, maybe you want to take this out. It’s gone already right it’s gone.

I can talk to this uh site. I don’t want to mention it, but I can talk and say, hey, can you give me an AI? Uh, sorry, can you give me an iPhone 15, 16, competitor, write a marketing plan. Can you also write the code for the website and listen, can you give me a text when it’s ready to launch? Yeah, what. No, no, that’s not tomorrow, that’s now right.

0:24:01 – Kimberly King

That’s right now.

0:24:03 – Dr. Paul Markham

So, while I was on this call with someone and they asked me, what should we add to make this course exciting, I said, well, let’s try this. We’re sitting there and we actually just typed a bunch of stuff in – this is true – and then what happened was two beautiful voices this beautiful bass voice and this other lady. They’re talking to each other on a podcast. I’m not kidding, and it wasn’t a podcast, it wasn’t anything. It was machines. Wow, I’m just saying. And we typed it in and they’re called LXDs, they’re the designers for you, the education Justin and I do. And they said, yeah, but, but where? It was like they were speechless, and I said you type into it. And they typed in it and they said, oh my god, and this guy had a beautiful voice like that and then I’m just saying it was- it was actually perfect and we did that real time on the call and you know what the great thing is? They’re going to build that into my courses, so they’re going to be a bit interesting. Sorry to hog this, Justin. I know this is for both of us, so I’ll shut up.

0:25:06 – Dr. Justin Goldston

I’m learning too. Keep going.

0:25:08 – Kimberly King

I do have my next question, but really quickly. I’m just thinking, and maybe one of you can answer this or we can table it. But I mean, when you’re feeding into an AI just from building from us, how I’m a consumer of just knowing both sides. So, speaking on the political landscape, I want to know both sides but I may be tending, you know, to be biased toward one side or the other. How do we make sure that’s balanced in the future? How do we think that?

0:25:37 – Dr. Paul Markham

I love this question. I’m sorry. I’d like to take this first right.

0:25:41 – Dr. Justin Goldston

Go ahead.

0:25:44 – Dr. Paul Markham

So everybody says to me, you might have heard about Elon Musk, right? I love him because he launches rockets. But you might have heard he’s saying, oh, we’ve got to slow down AI because it’s going to be terrible. It’s gonna, yeah, come on. What happened was OpenAI moved a little bit too quick for Elon, so he needs to slow down the market, right? Here’s what I say about what you just said. I will be absolutely thrilled when the machines go from artificial intelligence to general intelligence. Here’s why- because machines are not inherently, even if they’re biased from us humans, right, they’re going to take out the bias.

They’re going to go and find the data and present the data. If you think about where I’ve been for 20 years healthcare. Healthcare is real black and white. There’s data, but it can be presented, as you say, on a political perspective, which that’s a whole different discussion, right. Political perspective, which that’s a whole different discussion, right? But our confirmation bias, by the way, the machines are really good with your confirmation bias, your anchor bias, framing bias, all that. They know what’s going to light you up. But I would say I’m very hopeful for objective machines. You know that news network I was talking about- they’re objective machines. They’re just going to get the data and present it with these beautiful faces, beautiful accents, the whole thing. And, by the way, they’re all customizable for whatever you want, you might want to- yeah, you’re not going to want someone that looks like me. Let’s say that. You’re going to want these beautiful people on there. So you set it up like that. But I’m looking for that day, Kimberly. Exactly opposite to what you’re hearing, because what I think people are angry about is wait a minute, when the machines actually start double checking on us and our biased perspective, now what happens? Right? And they’re going to regurgitate and it’s going to start to make it look like, oh my God, those humans. Another example is self-driving cars. What’s going to happen there? And it’s going to be dramatic.

The insurance companies, very soon, are not going to actually allow humans to drive cars. They’re going to say hey, Justin, listen, I know you like that Corvette, but if you want to drive that, it’s $1,000 a week. If you do go on to self-autonomous, I’m not saying today, but very soon uh, don’t worry, we might worry with insurance. You can do five bucks a week, and then they’re going to get the point. They’re going to go, Justin, you’re just too dangerous. I’m sorry, we can’t insure a vehicle that you’re driving. So can you sit in the back, like? That’s why the those, uh, in China, those factories are ready to go with like bubble cars. Why? Because if all of a sudden we’re sitting in the backseat, what do we need you know, a Ferrari or whatever? The identity is going to go, I think anyway. So on that, I will now be a quiet person. I just find this stuff fascinating.

0:28:33 – Kimberly King

Oh my gosh, it’s like Jetsons in real time. It’s really crazy.

0:28:36 – Dr. Paul Markham

Well it is.

0:28:38 – Kimberly King

Dr. Goldson, so how does AI intersect with decentralized finance and what potential do you see for the two working together?

0:28:40 – Dr. Justin Goldston

I would say I would say that one of the one of the first, one of the first industries where ML and AI was introduced outside of healthcare, was a finance, was the fintech, was the finance industry, right, you know Bloomberg, Bloomberg Terminal, if you’ve heard of that? Right, they have. They have ML and AI aspects to it. You know, most of the trading on the stock market is done with AI and ML algorithms, right? So so this, this has been tested and proven out in that particular industry for years, you know. So I think the intersection’s already been there. Now, given that the intersection’s already been there, given that these tools have already, because, like so, I’m an investor, I’m an advisor for a lot of blockchain and crypto projects and a lot of those developers, they came from Wall Street. Because they can get paid a whole lot more in crypto. With the raise in the VCs, because they can get paid a whole lot more, they come over to blockchain and crypto. So they’re taking what’s been built for decades in the stock market and they’re transitioning it over to the cryptocurrency market.

Now, people in the blockchain industry, they’re more innovative. They’re more- in my opinion, these are my thoughts. They’re more innovative. They take more risk, right? So because of that, they’re going to have a whole lot more developments than you’re going to see. Also, the stock market is a whole lot more regulated than the cryptocurrency market, right? So people in the blockchain space is going to keep pushing the boundaries, pushing the boundaries, pushing the boundaries until they can’t push it anymore and you have like a tornado cash debacle, right, and then they pull back the brakes, but they’re going to keep pushing until there’s a court case like Uniswap, Tornado Cash and then they’re going to pump the brakes. So you’re going to keep seeing that. And again, like I said, with the new administration coming in the United States, I’m curious to see how, how far they’re going to try to push the boundaries in terms of innovation, because you know, we didn’t have this infrastructure.

We didn’t have this, these AI tools for everyone right? Now, like we did in the past. That was just that was just for a select few. Now these tools are for everyone, now, literally now. Literally, anyone can launch a token. Now anyone can literally launch an AI agent, right. So I’m very curious in terms of what’s going to happen, but also I’m a little concerned. Because, yes, it’s decentralized and once the cat’s out of the bag, there’s no stopping it. I’m seeing what these people are doing. I’m seeing a sentiment of the market. I’m seeing how these people are leveraging these technologies, because you’re going to see people, you know, the various actors, you’ll see people trying to work the system and things like that. So that’s what I’m kind of focused on. You know, I’m doing it for the sake of research. I’m in the pits of blockchain for the sake of research.

0:31:33 – Kimberly King

It’s such a fascinating time to be, you know, to really see both, literally. We’re from both sides, probably around the same age group, but just back in the ancient days, right until now and it is warp speed, just you said it’s rocket speed how it’s all happening. And Dr. Markham you were saying this happened 20 years ago in the healthcare industry. I had no idea. And again, now that it’s out there and people are talking about how AI has infiltrated, this is not new, and so to me, this is- it’s new for me. How does AI enhance personalization in customer experiences and what are the risks over reliance on automation?

0:32:14 – Dr. Paul Markham

Yeah, it’s going to be so addictive. We’re really going to make a decision here. Are we going to succumb to the machines because it’s easy to do? You know, hey, Mercedes, drive me to the gas station and then they make a decision on which gas station. Now to your point, the risk is we’re going to be very dumb, right, and we’re going to be basically waiting for the machine to say okay, Paul, time to get out of bed. And actually, you know, you’ve got Neuralink installed, so we’re going to shut you down. Sorry, you’ve reached your end point.

So something I’m involved in and it’s kind of different, but I think it’s important. I got an article published today I’m pretty excited about. It’s all about literally changing, taking our thinking up to a metacognitive level. So, in other words, we’ve got to think at a higher level to be ready for the other side of artificial general intelligence. We’re training these machines on what we know, and they’re going to get to a point where they connect all of it together and they’re going to know what we know and don’t ever say, oh, but they won’t get the emotions. We’ve figured that out too. So what’s going to happen next, is who’s going to be there on the other side of artificial general intelligence to be the stewards, and my point is I think we have to think differently. We need to get smarter, okay, not dumber. It’s so easy, honestly, for the machines to tell us what to do, and the risk is, literally, we are going to be beholden on these machines, I would say, in a lot of ways, we’re nearly there now.

I mean I’ve started to see people that don’t do anything as far as write a sentence. They just wait for Chat to do it, or Pi, or any of the other hundred programs. I mean we’ve really got to. I think, on the one hand, we’ve got to either succumb to the machines and get smarter from a mindfulness-driven, metacognitive intelligence- that’s what my kind of little paper’s about. It’s a different way of thinking, a different way of deciding, more clarity, more objectively moving forward or- the risk is honestly, Kimberly, the risk is, as far as I’m concerned, we’re just going to be like a bunch of couch potatoes, you know, waiting for oh, what do we eat next? What pharmaceutical do we take to overcome what we just ate? You know, I mean, it literally is. And that brings me just to another quick point, just because I know it’s a question- Ethics in marketing. So this is really disturbing.

If you go back, if we, if any of us, have got ethics, you might go hang on, we’re in marketing, so let’s scrub that. No, but seriously, if any of us got ethics, you go back in time. No one’s maybe old enough to remember this, but you go back in time and there was laws that you couldn’t advertise with stroboscopic, you know, on TV or something, because it could actually make people go and buy stuff which they didn’t really want to buy. And there was laws and regulations and all that. There was laws and regulations for all sorts of things. Guess what? AI has completely leapfrogged that If you went to the government offices, half of them wouldn’t even know what AI was. If they did know what it was, the machines have moved at warp speed forward.

So the ethics are – I don’t think here’s my humble opinion and Elon Musk agrees with it. I think mostly the machines are so powerful. Have a look at the money that’s being put into large language models. You can’t even imagine. We’re talking in the tens of billions. And I mean I think that guy from OpenAI said oh, I think it’ll be 50 billion to do the next step. It’s just like what are you talking about? That’s like a scratch on the side. So what I say about ethics is I think it is so out of control now and it’s like the cat’s out of the bag. I think a lot of people right now it’s gone from what we used to call, in marketing, campaigning, suggesting hey you better go and buy that bed.

Now I believe it’s my humble opinion I think people are buying the bed and they don’t even know they’re buying it. Because there’s no regulation on the power. If just say, I’ve got Justin’s, I’ve really got his, I’ve got his digital twin for buyer behavior, I mean, I’ve got all of it. I know exactly who he is, down to the level of what’s his buying behavior, so forth, so on, I’m going to squirt it at him. He’s going to say it’s not going to happen, but I’m going to squirt it at him and he’s going to buy stuff. So that’s my thing with the ethics. It really does concern me, and I don’t think there’s an answer to it because it’s moving way too fast for traditional government regulators. The old days, they could look at a piece of advertising and go no, no, you better not do that. That’s unethical. You can’t do that.

0:37:01 – Kimberly King

Again, I have so many questions and I’m just thinking, I’m reeling. I kind of think when you said it could be really addictive, like kids on video games. Yet the video games aren’t necessarily telling you what to do and when to take your medication or whatever. But there’s that probably from that age group until now, moving warp speed into the future. This is them, probably the same demographics. Dr. Markham, you talked a little bit about some ethical challenges that arise with the use of AI in marketing, particularly regarding data privacy and manipulation. What can you say about that?

0:37:37 – Dr. Paul Markham

I think that there’s really no governance of the ethics of marketing from an artificial intelligence perspective. There just isn’t. I think that if I went to, let’s just say, the people that were regulating advertising in this country and asked them, hey, what do you know about Facebook or Meta and Google’s algorithms that they’re using, I really am absolutely certain they have no idea. They really wouldn’t understand. So, to your point, I just don’t think- what I fear is that the regulations that should be there, they really should, are not. I mean, I think they would argue this, but as somebody that works in the software world, I just don’t see it. The other thing I did want to say one other thing from an ethical perspective. I want to give you kind of a healthcare one that might be of interest, and it’s about adoption, it’s about a way of thinking.

So in the healthcare industry this goes back more than a decade ago. We’re using artificial intelligence and, let’s just say, the machines we had could detect lung cancer, what you call stage one. It’s very, very early lung cancer, impossible almost for the human to see. Three of the top doctors in America saw this and they read these images and said normal, normal, normal. So that was an epiphany. That was a change period for them, because they all said, oh my God, are you telling us that’s very early stage lung cancer? So the good news was they became the evangelists, the stewards for artificial intelligence. Before, it was like, oh, we don’t want to do that, and all the rest of it. They became evangelist stewards and now the fact is, we’re saving more lives.

So in the marketing world, I think that really, from the perspective, is the people that have been adding this as an incremental- they’re going to learn the hard lesson, and they’re going to have to literally get to the point where they’re employing marketing scientists and building, from an AI perspective out – the ethical side, I tell you what it’s going to be, I almost think we’ve got a better chance when the machines are running this than we do when the humans are still involved. I mean that, because I don’t think that. I think the classic was somebody came to me once. They said, oh my God, I watched The Social Network, and it’s all the stuff you’re talking about. It was a relative said that to me, like, in other words, you know that they’re programming me. It’s like, yeah, and that’s like decades old now. It’s like if I went to Google and you went to Google- I think everyone knows this right- we’re going to get two different things.

For instance, if you’re, I always call it the NASCAR. It’s a NASCAR of politics the red and the blue. The fact is, to me it’s kind of silly because, you know. the people that run it are the banks anyway, but yeah, so the end story is I think that you will find the ethics side of it. There are some good points to adoption of AI, but there’s also some very, I think, perilous, where it’s just not being controlled down at what I call algorithm or growth algorithm perspective.

0:41:05 – Kimberly King

Yeah, and again, when we first started, it is still the wild, wild west, very much like how everything is when we evolve and we just, you know, they’re just again putting barriers around things or just, yeah, we see what’s coming, but it’s such an interesting space. Yeah, we see what’s coming, but it’s such an interesting space. So AI is often seen as a tool for efficiency, obviously, but do you think it can truly replicate or enhance human creativity in marketing campaigns?

0:41:29 – Dr. Paul Markham

I think it not only can assist in that, because I think generally people think about it as you say, kind of an automation orchestration. It’s not actually creative. You know, this is why I think all of us marketing people hold out, right. Yeah, yeah, that’s good, we can make things faster and so forth, but it’s never going to be like me. Well, here’s the problem with that. Once the, the, the machines, the large language models are connected together and they are like us, they’re going to have access to, Kimberly, far more data. Like, for instance, a different segment, but very pertinent. Right now, if I had a quantum computing system and I wanted to actually read 15 law libraries, I could probably do it in a nanosecond.

You see what I understand, the point of it is, when we sort of sit back and go, oh well, they’ll never take away the creativity of marking. My argument is it’s going to be far more creative. Yes, it’s going to be originally based on creativity concepts of the humans, but I think people are being really kind of silly, if you like, thinking that, oh well, they’re never going to be creative. I think all you need to do is just spend five minutes looking at some like, for instance, when I put my platform together, this initial coin offering for a crypto, the one that I’m doing right now, I just literally I was in this program called Pi, I think it was, and I just thought I’ll try this for fun.

I can show you this on screen, but it’s about the most complex what you call architecture diagram in a marketing perspective I’ve ever seen. There’s no way I could have produced it myself. This happened in a second. Basically by me talking to the machine about what I was looking for, my lead layer architecture, da, da, da, da da. But it’s got to connect quantum to AGI and blockchain and this thing, in front of my eyes, it took about four seconds. It just like completely stunned me.

So I think, with all of it, it comes back to the thinking. Think harder, be predictive, proactive and, frankly, in my world futural. Be that thinker that’s ahead of the game. Like right now everyone’s doing all this stuff about. Oh well, look at Chat GPT and all these other things. What about if you think about what’s coming next now? Right, like to Justin’s point. He’s talking about universal basic income.

I could argue- I hope you’re right, but I could also argue the other way and go back to kings and serfs right, definitely, very easily could go the other way, Justin, where the evil people running this whole thing can say, wow, this is even easier digital. Wow, we can just like push a button, like in some countries where they’ve got a social credit score. You know, Justin, we just saw you at a liquor store. I’m sorry. You’re not going to eat for a week. So my point is that, yes, there’s some positives and that sounds like a great idea, Justin, unfortunately, humans are still involved, and that little function, right, of greed still seems to be alive and well in 2024.

0:44:50 – Kimberly King

That’s a really good point. How should marketers measure the success of AI-powered strategies?

0:44:56 – Dr. Paul Markham

My best advice is to understand your own intelligence, because most people are relatively intelligent and do your own research, and I know, in the crypto world right, I mean way back in the day, there’s a million people telling you a million things. You have to learn this stuff yourself. This isn’t, per se, what you’re going to learn out of a university book or anything like that. Don’t wait for someone else to tell you hey, this is what you’ve got to do. Get out there and use some. Dare I say, what I started with. “Simplification is the ultimate sophistication.” Thank you, Da Vinci, but basically start to think about what is actually going on here. So, as a marketer, become an AI steward. Don’t wait for Paul or Justin or anybody. Oh, this is what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to attach this thing and then that’s going to work out. Have faith in yourself. Have confidence. Become basically a steward. Be somebody that’s going to be on the other side of artificial general intelligence.

Don’t be there going, oh my God, I’m going to lose my job- Because you’re not going to lose your job if you’ve got the right mindset. It’s not just critical thinking, it’s really being able to essentially what I call suppress the biases. We’ve all got them- anchor bias, confirmation bias, all these biases. And don’t listen to what people are telling you as though they’re instructions. Take all information in, right, but then question it. Be that person that questions it. You don’t just have to say, oh well, I suppose everybody else is using Jasper, right, so we better just use Jasper. No. Especially what I love, right? I spend a lot of time in California, in Palo Alto, with a lot of these young people. I mean, they just make me so happy- they’re like 27 years old. They don’t see the world like old people, dare I say- they don’t see any barriers. They don’t see that- oh well, that’s how we did it last year or the year before. No, they look at things and they have a whole different let’s say the old days we call thinking outside the box. They don’t think outside the box. That is how they think, right. So they question everything.

That’s what I’d say to people that are just getting into it. Don’t be fearful. Oh my AI- Look, I’m sorry to say it, let’s call it as it is. What is AI? I’m sorry. An Excel macro, technically, is not human intelligence. It’s built in. It’s AI. Back in the day, in the 90s, we built stuff that would read an ECG and tell you if it was this type of morphology or that, that was AI. I mean, don’t get hung up on that. This is this big boogeyman type thing. It’s just not. It’s not. It’s actually something that you’re using. I think it’s funny. There’s a product out there called Grammarly. It’s awesome artificial intelligence.

And I’m going to tell you something. It might just win the whole battle here in this academia. I’m going to tell you why. Because it’s got distribution everywhere. It’s not quite at the level of other things, but it can- Just if you think about disruptive innovation, if you want to read up on that, it’s kind of interesting. Stuff that comes from the bottom can actually move up through the food chain. I mean, if I was sitting in Grammarly, and I had I don’t know 50 million desktops or whatever they’ve got, I’m just going to keep applying to my technology there. No one thinks of it as AI. So guess what people do? They all adopt it. If I say to somebody, oh you’re using AI.

I’m like oh no, no, it’s Grammarly. I go, okay. I’m just saying it is funny, so I just have confidence, Kimberly, I have confidence in yourself. Don’t be frightened by it, because you’re using it every day of the week. That’s what I would say. You get in your car, you’re using it, you know. Think about what GPS is, and we don’t even think about that.

We don’t even think about it, for God’s sake. You know we get in a car, I’m not kidding. I was in Melbourne, Australia, and I got in a car to go and look at something the other day. I live in America, but in Melbourne, Australia, and the people in the front of the car- I’m not kidding- got out a roadmap and I just thought, what are we doing? Like, can’t they? No, right, and they said no, no, I’ve completely lost the ability to read a map. I assume that GPS is just going to find it.

Do you see what I mean? But we don’t say, oh, GPS, that’s evil, that’s ai. Oh, oh, you better bet it’s ai and it’s learning and it’s probably actually gonna say sooner or later, it’s gonna- I hope it doesn’t send my information to somebody who says hey, what’s this guy? Keep going to that gas station for hey, Exxon, you need to send this guy some tweets or something. He needs to come over here to Mobile, right. But the point is, you have confidence in yourself. That’s my advice uh, I love that you’re smart.

0:50:16 – Kimberly King

I love that.

0:50:17 – Dr. Paul Markham

You’re smarter than you think you are. I can tell you that.

0:50:19 – Kimberly King

And it’s nice, it’s refreshing to hear the positive feedback, because you know I mean everybody does they’re afraid of it and it is big brother. At least that’s what they’re saying. So I I really do appreciate both of your points of view, and I appreciate both of you for educating all of us. But I do appreciate you joining us and if you want more information, you can visit National University’s website, nu.edu, and they are lucky to have you, we’re lucky to have you on the podcast. So thank you again for your time.

0:50:24 – Dr. Paul Markham

Thank you.

0:50:27 – Kimberly King

You’ve been listening to the National University Podcast. For updates on future or past guests, visit us at nu.edu. You can also follow us on social media. Thanks for listening.