Kim Komando: Shaping the Digital Landscape

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1:02gave her that name. Kim is one of America's most successful radio hosts and web entrepreneurs. She is a trusted and respected voice in tech as the host of the popular radio program, The Kim Commando Show. It is on over 400 stations nationwide and heard by millions of people each week. And as you'll hear, she is a one-person online media machine. She has written several books including seven steps to online dating success, 50 ways to make money from home, and iPhone for seniors. Throughout her career, she has been a passionate advocate for using technology to improve lives, but she's also mindful of the risks and challenges that come with living in a digital world.

1:50I'm Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People, and now here is a remarkable Kim Commando.

2:00It boggles my mind that you can do a daily podcast. How do you do that? Just walk me through the mechanics of how you can do a daily podcast. Actually, there's more than one daily podcast. Oh my God. Just to let you know. Well, the daily podcast is actually three days of my national radio show. And so I have a show on total 510 stations throughout the United States. And the weekend show is all three hours. Okay. So what we do is we take hour one is Monday's podcast. And then Tuesday is the second hour. Wednesday's the third hour. And then I actually do a separate show just for WLS in Chicago on Friday nights.

2:44And so that becomes the Thursday podcast. And then Friday is kind of a different podcast. It's where I take a couple of folks that I'm mentoring here at the show. And we kind of do like a morning zoo roundtable, fun talk about all things digital. So that becomes the Kim Commando today. And then wait, there's more is that I have a daily tech update. And it's found about 389 stations. And that is just one news story. And then I also do what we call a digital life hack. And that's also one minute. And that's also on a whole bunch of radio stations too. So it's kind of a twofer, I guess you'd say.

3:25And how do you come up with this much material? It's not that hard, really, Guy. There's just so much happening in the world right now. Aside from, I know everybody's talking about chat GPT and AI, but there are also the other things that are happening. For example, like what Microsoft is doing with their particular products. And maybe there's a new scam going on. Maybe there's some new development. And for example, I put in the rundown because I thought this was really interesting to me. And if I find it's interesting to me, then I think it's interesting to everybody else. Is that, for example, there's now something called a rewilding stage.

4:03And I'm like, what the heck is that? If you had a robotic lawnmower and you want to have just like part of your yard, just let it grow wild. is that you can set that in that robotic lawnmower. So I come up with all these different things, how hackers are cracking our passwords, how everybody thinks that they're getting stalked online, what's going on with Apple AirTags, and why did it take Google and Apple two years to finally come together with the standard? And so all of my content has nothing to do with fix it because I actually tell people, if you can Google this answer, then you should probably just Google it and not call me.

4:40You know, that's an interesting segue. So today, should people quote Google a question or should they barred or chat GPT the question? Because to me, I hardly use Google at all anymore for those kind of questions because I don't want to get three quarter million links. I just if I want to add a HP printer to my Mac Wi-Fi network, I ask barred or chat GPT that I don't go to Google. So where are you with something like that? I definitely use ChatGPT. I go directly to openai.com. I don't use Bing. I've tried to do that. I found it rather annoying. And I know that they've had 100 million people use it since February.

5:23And that's something that I never thought I would ever say in my entire life about Bing. And I don't think BART is ready for prime time. But you have to remember that ChatGPT is not always 100 % correct. But you bring up a bigger picture before I go to that about Google. It was probably in December and really into January that I sat down with my team and I said, listen, there's a saying that I've lived by my entire life. And I know that everybody here cringes when I say it, but I really mean it this time. And the saying is it's not teamwork makes the dream work because that's just, oh, my gosh, that's just a horrible thing.

6:03but the saying is if you don't innovate you evaporate so we have to innovate because websites are going away if i were in google shoes right now after looking at chat gpt i'd be totally freaking out which is what they did and trying to come up with new ways that we can work aside chat GPT because we are going to get replaced by chat GPT unless we can innovate. And so in this whole transitioning state that we've been looking at other ways that we can use chat GPT. But if I may just tell you one story about chat GPT is that when it first came out, I went on there and I did a little, I don't know if you've done this guy, I did a little ego questions over there at chat GPT.

6:53Okay. And I said, you know, like, who is Kim Commando? And it came back and it had, you know, basic stuff out of the Wikipedia entry. And then I decided to ask it a question that I get asked probably, I don't know, at least three times a week. Honest to goodness. And I was just in Las Vegas and somebody recognized me and said, you know, I just have a question for you. Is Kim Commando your real name? Because how can anybody be born with such an alliteration like that? So I decided to ask ChatGPT, is Kim Commando her real name? And it came back with this whole litany of just BS. It said that I was born Kimber and Tomney.

7:36and because my focus was computers, I changed my name to be command, like commanding the computer and I just went on and on and I was in there thinking like, okay, this is totally wrong. So I decided to do some homework and now this is what's so smart about ChatGPT is that I couldn't find anybody in the world, the entire world by the name of Kimber and Tomney. Okay. Nobody. And so it was smart enough to come up with a name that it couldn't be identified to anything else when in reality, Kim Commando is my real name. And so I decided to tell ChatGPT, you know, you're being a dope and ChatGPT, Kim Commando is my real name.

8:20So I think in answer to your question, I don't think you're alone in that you're not going to Google. and we've been watching our web traffic very very closely and to see when it's going to take that dump and it hasn't done it yet but i'm anticipating that in the old world the example i use is how to roast a turkey so i asked that of google and you get three quarter million links 50 000 youtube videos. And if you ask Chad GPT that it'll tell you start breasts down because that's the meatiest part and it needs the most heat and then flip it over at the end to make the skin crisp, which is all I really want to know, right?

9:07On Google, when you ask that question, it gives you three quarter million links. And the first links are a recipe site, somebody selling aluminum pans at Amazon, someone selling turkey basters, someone selling brine. So the question is when Bard or Chat GPT now gives you this three paragraph answer without any links, are we going to look on the side and see the same ads and click through to either content sites or e-commerce sites? and if I were both Google and the websites, I would be panicking right now. I don't know what I would do. It's a tough call. And we've been dabbling actually in AI for probably about two and a half, three years.

10:00And it happened when I mispronounced a word. We talked about this content that gets produced every single day. And I mispronounced a word and a gentleman on our staff, his name's Mike, and he was trying to figure out where else I said that word, because I was on an airplane, where else I said that word so that he could input that word so I would sound fabulous because I made a mistake. And there was no place he could figure it out. And then Jeremy, I like to call him our IT genius, he came out and he said, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to duplicate your voice. and I was like, what?

10:40And he said, yeah. He said, let's try to AI your voice. Now, this is years ago, and I had to read, I think, six hours of Animal Planet scripts, which I don't know if you've ever actually read an Animal Planet script, but it's like, you know, the chameleon jumps over the antelope and spreads its wings, and I was like, you know, I felt like, you know, Attenborough there. It was very flat. It was very flat, but it worked in a pinch. Okay. So about a year ago, another company came forward and said, we can do this too. And I read, I don't know, maybe two or three hours worth of my existing scripts.

11:20And then it came out and I was talking like this with no tone, no inflection. And so then I read another three hours being like hyperchem, which by the way, you know, I can't drink coffee because I get like I'm already wired and fired in my life. you know so it was like okay we're gonna give her a cup of coffee and then she's gonna go in the studio so it's okay so today we're talking about and it's now it sounds pretty good as a matter of fact my husband was listening to real cam and then he asked the guys in the studio to make an ai cam of the same script and he said the ai script sounded better so i was like oh thanks a We use an application called Descript to edit our podcast.

12:07And in Descript, it forces you to read a script so that it can use your voice. Push comes to shove if you need to not have the real guy say something as an engineer. And we've never done it because we've never not had the real guy to say what they needed. But it's there too. And it is there. And I made everybody promise that. And I looked at everybody with and I said, listen, if you ever have Kim say something like that, she did the entire Cardinals football team at some point. I'm going to be so mad.

12:43Just not happening.

12:51it. I want to know if you got a bunch of pushback for that joke you made about Steve and Apple battery life? I didn't. Too soon? Not so sure. But handling this complex topic with levity is something that I've done my entire career. Because so many people approach consumer tech and it's like, I just think they take themselves and they take everything too seriously. And I I read the headlines on Gizmodo and The Sun and The Verge and MSN or wherever it may be. And somebody announces something and they're like, wow, that is the greatest thing. Oh, my gosh, it's going to do this and that and that and that.

13:43OK, it's not here yet. So I make it when you ask about content, unless it's here, you're not going to hear it on any of our content or read it anywhere. Wait, what does that have to do with the joke about Steve Jobs dying early in Apple battery life? Well, it's just a way to make people laugh. And some people may get offended by it. If you are a stand-up comedian anywhere, you're going to offend some people. And I'm certainly not a stand-up comedian by any means. But what I do try to do is input some of my kind of weird thoughts and strange thoughts and pass it along. I put something in the newsletter this morning, which we also have a really great newsletter that we send out every day, too.

14:35And at the end, I put a meme. It was a meme with a coffee cup. And if you look down on this picture, it looks like two eyes and a mouth open, the way that the bubbles were. And the meme said something like, yeah, we can't believe you're up this early either, having a cup of coffee. And so underneath it, I put, there's a whole book in the Bible dedicated to coffee. And you probably never thought about it, but it's called Hebrews. screws okay you know just these things that come into my head and you know i'm just not so sure where they come from so that's where it is that's why kim commando is kim commando right yes that's right yeah now that the dust is a little settled how have you utilized chat gpt for your podcasts and newsletters and everything?

15:20I may ask it to do research for me. So for example, I was reading today, this morning, about how Air New Zealand now has a baggage tracking app. And I thought to myself, well, certainly Air New Zealand's not the only one. So I went over to ChatGPT and it said United and Delta has it. And I said, well, certainly there's more than United and Delta. And so then I had to actually do a Google search. that ended up because ChatGPT, until right now, does not have all the latest information. I may ask it if I'm writing something or doing something on the show about how powerful an iPhone is compared to the Apollo 11.

16:03I may go in there and do that. I may actually input a, because the articles are always so long over at Vice, I may put a Vice URL in there and say, can you summarize this for me in three paragraphs? But I have found that when it summarizes articles, that it really misses some of the points that I would like to get across. And so it does it in a generic method. If somebody is asking me how to do something, and I'm not really quite sure how to do it, I may go to chat GPT and ask, a barn is 600 feet away from the main house and they don't have a direct line of sight and they can't put a cable down.

16:44And maybe, and I know the solution is ubiquity, but I want to see if it's going to have the same type of Intel that it would pass along as well. And if you ask it a question like compare the computing power of a Macintosh versus Apollo 11, and it gives you an answer, we both know we can't necessarily trust that answer. So then what's the next step? Oh, wow. The next step is to actually maybe go do a Google search if it's really something that you have to be a thousand percent sure. And then, of course, then you're dealing with, as you so astutely mentioned, is the sponsored ads at the top and then all these incessant links and the videos that you're just looking for a number.

17:28But, you know, Google is now changing their methodology. And so if you do ask it a question like that, may go to a web page, which I think is insanely convenient, is that it will highlight that particular sentence. So you're like, oh, there's a sentence in the whole article that I need, which is also interesting because you're not having to read the whole article. Your time spent on that page is now reduced. your bounce rate must be incredibly high because you're just going into that page, which will affect, of course, the CPMs and the RPMs and all the other ad rates accordingly. Have you ever tried a search engine called Neva, N-E-V-A?

18:08No, but I will. You should check it out because Neva is ex-Google employees. And you pay for this search engine on a yearly basis, but it provides no sponsored links. Wow. And at the top of it, it summarizes the answer a la ChatGPT. So it's the best of both worlds. So it's N-E-V-A. Check it out. I will. Okay. There's these two recent headlines where Goldman Sachs says that 300 million jobs are going to be impacted. And IBM says 8 ,000 positions may not be necessary over the next five years at IBM because of chat, GPT and the like. Do you believe those numbers? Do you think that many? Well, I don't, you know, you have to define impacted.

18:58Impacted does not necessarily mean gone. But do you think it's such a threat to employment? Oh, I don't know if it's that much of a threat, but it is a substantial threat. When you look at being able to replace writers and editors and media personalities and paralegals and radiologists. So we will become dependent on this technology. And I don't know if I fully comprehend myself how deeply that is going to be impacting. other than to say that if I were in a situation where I was doing data, you know, being a data analyst, systems analyst, moving things in words from point A to point B, summarizing, whatever it may be, I think those are the first line that's going to be hit.

19:55And at some point, we're going to have robotic landscapers. We all know that's coming. Look at Boston Dynamics. But there's still going to be that person that has to program that robot to know that that shrub needs to be pruned at a certain level or a certain way. But I think what everybody's afraid of, and in my mind, guy, there's like this little person up there in my head saying, no, this is a remote possibility. Because everybody's afraid that the robots are going to take over. And that response from the Steve Wozniak's and the Elon Musk, let's take a six-month break on all this. But I mean, Meanwhile, China's going full force on it.

20:33There are a lot of extenuating factors right now that I don't know that even that me being immersed in this industry for as long as I have been, over 25 years, I don't know if I fully understand it because I have never seen a fundamental shift like this because of tech in my entire life. I mean, okay, yeah, we had the first cell phone and I love Marty Cooper and he's a fabulous guy and he did a great job with that 50 years ago. And then we had the iPhone, we had the PCs coming in and instead of$3 ,000, you can buy one for now$150 for a Chromebook. And nobody's worried about hard drive storage anymore.

21:18But all of that pales in comparison to what we are on the cusp of right now. Like you, I've been through the personal computer revolution, internet revolution, social media revolution. I don't think any of them compare to this. I think one of the great ironies is that for a while, we thought IBM was on the leading edge of AI with Watson. Why didn't IBM make Watson into chat GPT? Because it's IBM. Because it's a big clangorporate. For the same thing, you could ask the question, and that's a good question, Guy. Why didn't AT &T control the internet? They had a phone line into every person's home.

22:05A landline that is now gone. I think in order to innovate, that you need to have a little bit of a wild child side of you. You're not afraid to fail. You're not looking at paradigms and goals and committees. You're just going to get your butt out there, and you're going to do it. The irony is that if IBM had made Watson into chat GPT, they would not be worried about 8 ,000 jobs being replaced by AI, right? They would be staffing up like crazy because they could arguably control the world with AI. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I worked at IBM. That was my first job at a college. and I noticed that there were these guys that were driving BMWs and I was driving a Pontiac Sunbird, okay?

23:00And I went to my manager and I said, how do I get to be one of those guys? They're driving a BMW. And she said to me, you know, I'd like you to come out and come with me and let's go have a cocktail. So I went out with her for a drink. She's my manager. And she said to me with all honesty, she said, you're never going to be one of those guys because you're too blonde, you're too blue eyed, you're too pretty, and you're too young. And they have families and kids in braces, and it's just never going to happen. And I thanked her. And then the next day, I called up AT &T and said, I work for IBM. I'd like to work for you.

23:37And I want to be a district manager. And they said, come on over. So I was like, okay.

23:45And the rest is history. Yeah, pretty much. There's a lot going on in between there and then. It's interesting, though, because certain times have certainly changed. When I went to apply for that job at AT &T, they gave me a psychological test. And I don't know if they're allowed to do that necessarily anymore. But I was in a room with just the text proctor. And there's about 100 questions on this test. And one of them was, you're late for the biggest sales presentation of your entire life. This is going to make or break your quota. But you hit traffic and you're about 10 minutes behind schedule and you whip around the corner and then suddenly you hit a dog.

24:28Okay. Do you stop and take care of the dog or do you go on to that presentation? And I looked at the proctor and I said, this is a BS question right here. Okay. I said, I'm going to stop and take care of the dog. But that's not the answer that you want, right? And he said, you have to answer the way that you feel is correct. And I said, so what if I say I stop and I'm going to help the dog? He says, well, that's not going to reflect kindly on the test. So I said, well, and I looked at him and said, I'm just checking the box that I'm not going to help the dog, but I'm going to help the dog. I just want to make it clear right now that I'm going to help the dog.

25:09And you got the job? I did get the job. Yes, I did. Okay. So you mentioned China a few minutes ago, and there's this absolute craze about how TikTok is this great threat to America and democracy and all that. And do you agree that it's this monumental threat and that this threat is because it's a Chinese company any worse than Facebook or Twitter? Here's my thought, okay, is that, of course, we have 150 million Americans on TikTok every day, which is an incredible waste of productivity, but we're not going to worry about that, okay? And, of course, we know that everything goes back to Beijing, China.

25:55Anything that you do on your phone, your face print, your fingerprints, your photos, your text messages, everything's going back, it's being fed back to China, which we know is an enemy state of the United States. That's one side of it. But what I'm really fearful of and why I've told my audience to take TikTok off their phone, which I know that they don't want to do because they love TikTok, is to just keep in mind that there's tremendous power with that 150 million Americans. that if Beijing China wanted to push down a fake video of, say, President Biden saying that we are on the verge of a nuclear war with Russia, whatever it may be, if you thought getting toilet paper during COVID was a nightmare, just imagine if something like that happened, that you just want to keep in mind that is a real possibility because they could feed a video that could say anything and you'd have half of our population totally freaking out.

26:58They could also maybe use that type of power to maybe disrupt the power grid. So yes, the information's there and I'm not sure they care about what Bob in Bloomington, Illinois is doing at two o 'clock in the afternoon when he should be working and he's watching somebody dance on TikTok as much as it becomes a conduit for something bigger. And why is that threat any worse than Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk deciding that Donald Trump won the election? I think it is because it's more powerful, because not everybody is on Facebook. Not everybody is going to be following Elon Musk. Most people, when I say most people, people that I interact with, with my audience, they think Elon Musk is a little out there and him spending$40 billion for Twitter.

27:51And then he's got Tesla problems with the full self-driving car and he's got SpaceX. He's got Starlink. I mean, you know, this guy is all over the board. Mark Zuckerberg, he bet the farm on the metaverse. And now he's out saying, oh, forget about that. I'm going in all in AI. Yes, this is what I want to do right now. So we have these threats all around us, but I think the intimate form of TikTok just makes it more dangerous than Twitter or Facebook. Okay. So you would actually favor banning TikTok? I don't know how you would actually pull that off, but you would favor that? Yes. And I also am in favor of these social media companies finally being held accountable for these stupid challenges that kids are dying over.