Ep 142 AI: The hidden cost of plausible, almost-right work

0:00I feel like I can't be alone that in this new age of AI kind of infiltrating almost every part of what we do, that it just kind of feels like everybody feels like they can do everybody else's job. And look, the output from it, in a lot of cases, it doesn't look horrible. And I think, honestly, that's probably the problem. Because it looks real. It sounds real, right? Like it passes the meeting. But the problem is, I think, for too many of us, and I think it's going to be one of the biggest challenges for leaders and organizations, going forward is that sounding smart and being smart aren't the same thing, right?

0:36Sounding smart is a confidence. And I think for a lot of us, it's sort of breaking our teams and our brains and everything from the inside out, and we're not talking about it. And so I think I've recently sort of dealt with this phrase of like plausible noise. And plausible noise has dragged me back out of the semi-retirement I was in to be able to get this show going again. So welcome back to episode 142 of the Crazy One Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. This is a show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design, and all the things that matter to creative people. But look, let's get it out of the way first, right?

1:13It's not the first time I've said it. Probably won't be the last time I say it. I'd love to do the show more. I would. I'd love to be able to do it more. But the reality is for me over the last year or two, I am just in a heads down, print survival to keep my own thing going. It's a seven days a week, keeping work going out the door, keeping new work coming in the door. And at the end of the day, there isn't the energy or free space to do this show as much as I'd love to. I'd love to do the show. I'd love to keep it going. And just the reality has been something different. But look, I think this problem, like I said, has dragged me out of my semi-retirement to come back to do a new series of shows about AI and its impact on just business in general, creativity, all of it.

2:03Because the interesting thing is I think a lot of the concepts that we talked about on this show over the years are still relevant. And they're still the problems that are driving a lot of the problems that I'm seeing. But lately, I keep hearing the same story. I hear it from clients. I hear it from leaders. it's the marketing director that redesigned the deck it's the ceo that's rewriting copy it's the pm that mocked up a new ui and it's all done with confidence right through through ai whether it's a prompt or tanda or a template or clawed code or whatever it is and look at a lot of cases when you look at it the output's not horrible it's not embarrassing there's nothing kind of obviously wrong with it.

2:46It is, to use the word I used before, plausible. But I think the same is, and the thing that we need to start recognizing and reacting to is that plausible and great aren't the same thing. Plausible and strategic are not the same thing. And if nobody can tell the difference, if leadership doesn't know what good looks like, It's you don't value thinking and strategy. And at the end of the day, as we've talked about so many times here before on the show, you value output over outcome, then plausible wins. And I think my thing is that I haven't seen anybody put a name on this yet. So today, that's what I want to do.

3:31So let's just talk about it, right? Like for me, plausible noise is when kind of accessible tools, Claude, ChatGPT, Canva, new ones come out every 30 seconds. But when those tools let people produce something that looks like expertise without any real depth or thinking behind it, like this is why it's kind of a miracle I haven't broken my television yet. because every time I see a video on YouTube, it's like, we created a brand in 10 minutes or 24 hours or 72 hours and you watch the video and it's like a logo in three colors. You just want to start screaming at the TV. That's not a brand. But let me be clear, right?

4:13Like this isn't incompetence. Incompetence is obvious. This is more seductive. It passes that quick scan, right? It gets the not it sounds smart but i think noise is the key word here because it it's not one bad thing it's not one off somebody sending you that comp or screenshot or deck or whatever it is right it's that constant kind of low level hum that constant low level flow of almost right work And it's made by people who aren't wrong for trying to do it. And I want to be really clear about this. I love working with CEOs that have ideas. I love working with CMOs. I love working with people that want to challenge me.

5:05I love somebody who I've always loved, somebody in product or engineering who has an idea, who wants to be involved in the design process. So again, I think these are not people that are wrong for trying it. but I think it's the recognition that the output is not the outcome in a lot of cases I feel like it's starting to drown out what actually makes great work great work because it just it sounds and it feels a little bit different that the volume of output of those sort of things and look I think that whenever I sat down to think about it I think there is three ways that this is doing kind of real organizational damage.

5:45I think the first one is I'm seeing a lot of sort of just collapsing of accountability. Everybody touches everything. Nobody owns anything. Like quality just doesn't have a home. But in a lot of cases, it's just, again, we are valuing the output. And as I told a client the other day, doing bad ideas faster is a win. And it's that sort of collapsing of accountability that I think is a problem that I think in a lot of cases, this is also really devaluing expertise at the worst possible moment. Because if a leader can get a plausible answer in five minutes, they stop seeing why you need an expert that takes five days, we'll say, right?

6:27They think that expertise is the pace at which a problem is solved, not the quality with which it is solved. And look, I would say we can definitely like, look, I have a very small team that can produce work on a scale of a much, much bigger agency because of the way that we use AI. We are able to work much, much faster because of that. But there's also a lot of non-negotiables that go with that, that we are not going to devalue our expertise, we're not going to devalue our thinking. This is a concept that goes back to the very, very beginning of this show, talking about, for me, for every creative, for anybody that produces anything, that your value is not on the commoditized side of execution.

7:12your value is in your thinking your strategy your ability to see blue sky your ability to differentiate from the norm and i think that's where we are confusing that because an answer comes quickly and south smart that we aren't necessarily appreciating that in many cases a lot of the models are sort of taking the middle or the medium and it is not going to be that differentiated because i think that for me is probably the biggest damage that i'm seeing is that this is starting creating the lowest common denominator culture because it plausible gets a pre if people stop reaching for excellent or better right like why spend two weeks on something when you know you can get through 70 of it in an hour the standard drips nobody notices it nobody kind of speaks it out it just happens and then it gets really hard to reverse i think that's that And look, I think ultimately for me, that's the problem here is that what's going to happen isn't going to necessarily be about the tools.

8:16It's going to be about the culture. It's going to be about the standard of who is just going to take good enough versus who's going to see this as a force multiplier to do things faster and better. And again, I think that's going to be the problem. And look, and I think this is the part that stands. I'm going to include myself here, right? We as anybody, not just creatives, anybody, we like to show the output and we don't necessarily show the thinking. This is feedback I have given for 20 years on almost every portfolio I've seen, every creative career I got asked to comment on. We deliver the logo, the campaign, the product, but we don't talk about why the decisions were right.

9:03so when someone compares our work to what they got in 10 minutes the gap there feels smaller than what it is because the depth and the thinking becomes invisible and this is what seven years ago seven years ago where i was at envision we did the the the whole you know design frontier looking at the gap between the impact and creativity and the reality of its execution that was the warning sign out of that was like look we have got to get out of the executional space we have to demonstrate our value and honestly i think that's why so many creatives that i talk to hate ai they i think look you should everybody who thinks i'm innovative everybody who thinks i'm the lazy idiot for using ai you're both right i can see both perspectives but that i think that's that's the thing is that you know at the end of this we've made the depth to invisible.

9:57And this is not a new problem for our industry. And again, this is not about making the work slower. This is it making about more bureaucratic. It's about making the reasoning visible and legible. Because as long as expertise only lives in your head, anyone with a good enough tool can approximate your output. And nobody's going to be able to tell the difference. And look, I think this is going to be a real wake-up call for a lot of people in this industry, if it isn't already, that a lot of the anxiety you're feeling, a lot of the feel you're feeling is probably because too much of your career is based on the executional side and not enough on the creative side.

10:34And look, maybe I'm an idiot. God knows it wouldn't be the first time. But I think this is why I've embraced it. This is why I've done this. Because as a storyteller, as a strategist, as a creative, I love the speed at which we can move, the way we can think, the way we could use AI as a sparring firm. But for too many of us, this plausible noise trend has a real cost. I think that it is just a cost that is deferred, that we're not going to see come home to roost for a little bit yet. That, you know, look, the brands that drift from like six people that are writing copy in six different tones, that doesn't show up on a spreadsheet.

11:14But ideas that like so many of the AIs have turned into Yesmin that'll tell you that every idea is great. It's going to show in brands that start to get really generic. It's going to show up in customers that can't tell what you stand for. It's going to show up in a sales cycle that gets longer and nobody knows why. It's going to show up in these, you know, UX mock, UI mock-ups from like somebody who quote unquote figured out UX and the cost doesn't show up until like your adoption craters. And I think that this is the thing is that for so many companies, that feedback loop, that data loop, the ability to pull data that tells the story that we want is just going to make this damage slower and more invisible.

11:56But the reality is going to be it's going to accumulate. And when it surfaces, it's going to be almost like unrecognizable as an original problem, right? It's going to be almost impossible to fix. And that's why companies keep letting it happen, because there's no immediate consequence that once again, we're evaluating output over outcome. And here's the hard, here's the uncomfortable truth. And I think if you know me, I am genetically wired to say this stuff. But look, plausible noise is winning, not because the tools are too powerful. It's winning because leadership, I think in too many cases, doesn't know what good looks like.

12:35And if they don't know, they'll always choose fast and cheap. because for them, there's no perceived cost in doing that. That's why we're seeing so many companies are laying off all of these people. And look, in some cases, there are jobs that are 100 % going to be disrupted. There are teams that are going to be downsized. Like I said, that was the whole reason why I built the model that I built was because I generally believe that. But the hard truth for every expert out there is that you can't defend the value of expertise if you can't show the difference between plausible and great. And to do that in a term, in a way that sort of a non-expert can understand.

13:18That sort of idea, this is such a long joke for me, right? Like that idea of like designers sort of going off wearing a braid, doing a watercolor or a spirit animal, telling people like, oh no, trust me, this is better. And you don't understand design. That's not a strategy anymore. And like I said, I've been preaching for whatever, 10, 15, 20 years, then it never was. We spent decades asking clients to take our word for it. And this is a world where, again, they can get plausible in an hour, in 20 minutes, and then your expertise is dying. And I see it already, right? I have CEOs, I have clients that are like, oh, we took whatever the strategy was you did, but we passed it through Claude and asked to think like Seth Godin and this is what it said.

14:03Looks good. Usually it does like 15 pages of output. Read smart. But that's the thing. Where the rubber meets the road and the difference between sounding smart and being smart, there's a difference there. And here's the stuff that I think we have got to start thinking about and doing. One is that we need to name this problem. We need to give plausible noise a word inside of your organization. Use that one. Use another one. Right. Like, and again, this isn't being condescending about it. It's being more diagnostic. Right. But in saying things like, look, this is plausible. Don't fight it. Don't run away from it.

14:42Don't like act scared because then again, you're just going to feed into the problem. But to sit down and look at it and say, look, this is really good, but here's what we're going to lose if we ship this. because then I think, and again, this is such a longstanding theme on this show, there's a difference between thinking and behavior. Most organizations cannot change. 75 % of them fail to change because they just triage behavior. The way people talk and little things like that, they aren't changing the underlying culture and they aren't changing the thinking. You've got to name the pattern and you've got to interpret it.

15:16I think you've got to make your thinking visible. you've got to show that brief before you show the work you've got to show the journey you've got to talk about right like what you're solving for what did you try why didn't you make this called make your judgment visible make it legible right because again i think that's what's going to separate you and the ability to experiment and and that's my thing right like prototype fast and then be able to go out there and kill slow like that ability to define what your standard is out loud, right? What does, and I think for most organizations, this is the part that they're going to have to do that in too many cases, this is going to be what's going to separate the companies that really excel and the ones that sort of fall back into this generic mess is how do you define that standard out loud, right?

16:07Like what does great actually mean in your company and in your world? Can you write it down? Can you be specific? Because I've done this work for 15 or 20 years. What the output of that is, is never rocket science, right? When we do the pink elephants exercise, the stuff I've talked about on stages for forever, none of it is rocket science. It never is and it never will be. The rocket science comes from writing it down, being specific, articulating it, defending it, evolving it. Because if you can't defend it, then somebody with a faster tool is going to make that call for you. and i think that this is going to be the the challenge of where we are not just for creatives right i think allotting creative and marketing we're in the cross areas more than kind of maybe a lot of other professions but this is it this plausible noise is only going to get louder the tools are only going to get better but look this is what i see is that there's an opening for people that are willing to hold the standard there are people and look this isn't going to be the defining point, I think, we're going to see who's really creative and who's been pretended.

17:12There's going to be the storytellers and there's going to be the copycats. We have to make our thinking visible. We have to be willing to open up and be the person in the room that knows the difference and can explain the difference between plausible and great. And if you can be that person, I think you're going to succeed. If you can't be that person, and that, again, you're going to allow for what you do to become commoditized and run over and let the speed win and think that people will know the difference? Should they know the difference? Yes. Should our work be valued more? Yes. Has that been true in the last couple hundred years?

17:46No. You've got to be that person because that's the thing. I mean, this is the current that's underneath. We're all caught up in the tools and we're all caught up in all this other stuff, but it's this. It's this plausible noise that, again, is going to be the thing that defines us. It's going to be the thing that defines you, your career, your organization, is how you deal with this. And can you step up and bring the idea? Can you bring the results? Can you curate and do what that is? If you can, I think you're going to succeed. If you can't, it's not going to get easier. And I think all that anxiety is going to come home to roost.

18:27And I just, like I said, I think for me, this is the thing that I'm just seeing time and time again that we need to think about. But again, right? You've got to name it inside your organization. You've got to make your thinking visible and you've got to define that standard out loud, right? Don't accept a brief unless there is KPIs or something attached to it. Don't like, again, that just going through the motions, the output, if you're going to define what you do by the output, you're screwed. You've got to get to the outcome. I don't know another way to say it. Maybe I haven't done the show in too long.

19:00Maybe I've just become a lot more battle-hardened by doing my own thing and separated from all the corporate BS. Right? But like, this is going to be that defining moment of where we're going to figure out what the new jobs look like going forward. So, I don't know. Was this a lightning? It felt like more of a soapbox rant maybe than what some of these normally are, but I just, I'm seeing it every day and nobody's talking about it. We've got to start getting our shit together on this. Like, I just, I don't want another way to say it. So look, I'd love to hear from you, right? If you found great solutions from that, let me know.

19:35Like let's, let's do, we can do a kind of a, you know, listener show of like, what are the problems that you're seeing? What are the solutions that you're finding? You found a great way through it? Let me know. I'll share that back out with everybody but there's gonna be a few more things to come come back on the cell i'm fired up i'm pissed off and always in the place that i love to be kind of sharing this stuff out but again i think um times are a change i'm excited about it like i'm i'm i don't know i'm having a lot of fun with it but i don't know let me know where you're at with it and hey um same thing as always same thing it's you know as it always is like you know look do me a favor the same old thing leave a review tell a friend share it subscribe to the youtube channel like all that sort of stuff and you know too shameless plug like if you if you if your team needs some help with this whether it's a talk whether it's consulting you got a project to work on reach out i'm doing this every single day and you know lord knows i think uh i got another spirit of speaking truth to power but um hey it's good to be back feels good feels fun and hey as always stay crazy