The People Who Thrive With AI Think Differently

Jaime: Where I’m at right now is I think often we talk about the wrong thing. The conversation is often, “hey, are you an adopter or are you an AI resister?” And I actually think that’s the wrong question and the wrong framing. That’s the people who are going to thrive. Those who use it to…

Coby: Hey, Jamie, you want to go get a sweet?

Jaime: Yeah, let’s do it.

Coby: All right, let’s go.

Nicole: Hi! It’s producer Nicole Denson. Today we’re talking with Jamie Theler, Chief of Staff at Agency Brands. Jamie is a self-taught marketing powerhouse who has spent over 13 years bridging the gap between high level vision and tactical execution. Having managed more than 400 clients across industries like SaaS and entertainment, she’s a master at using the power of storytelling to drive analytical results. When she isn’t scaling marketing teams, she’s likely hitting the trails, running or writing her next fiction piece. Back to the show.

Jaime: So windy here. Yeah.

Coby: And cold and. But you know what I love about these kind of winter days? And winter finally hit us, right? I love the clear blue sky. After a storm, the inversion disappears for a bit, and it’s amazing.

Jaime: It is. It’s just- It tricks you into thinking it’s warmer outside than it is. I know.

Coby: I know it like. So have you ever lived in the Midwest or in a more humid part of the country?

Jaime: No.

Coby: Okay. I take this over that any day. I lived in Chicago for a few years. And in the in the 80s during, like, some really cold, like, record cold months. And, ooh, they used to keep us outside in elementary school in the mornings. Unless it was like. I think it had to be, like under 20 degrees in order for us to go in and with, like, a wind factor, you know.

Jaime: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Coby: Yeah. Turned it into, like, -400 Kelvin or something like, So what’s new?

Jaime: Well, I like I don’t relax very well, so I tackle big projects. I’ve got some home projects I’ve been doing.

Coby: Nice.

Jaime: My husband is really patient with me because he likes to relax. And I’m like, let’s do this.

Coby: So are you the one that does the projects? Are you the ones like let’s do this. And then he has to do the projects.

Jaime: We usually do them together. Oh that’s cool. Yeah. I typically don’t assign projects to him because I figure that’s not fair unless I’m also a doer.

Coby: Well that’s good. So the couples that paint together stay together.

Jaime: Depends on how well the painting goes.

Coby: Well, yeah, if the painting’s bad, that’s grounds for divorce right away, if you ask me.

Jaime: Yeah. So? So. And then at Big Leap a new position.

Coby: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So tell me about it. Yeah. So, yeah. How did that come about? I really actually, I mean, I, I like, you know, spoiler alert, like, I kind of. Yeah. Like, right. But like, in the week since you’ve been operating that way, I have loved it.

Jaime: Oh, good. That’s good to know.

Coby: I think it’s awesome. Yeah. But what was the impetus for that?

Jaime: Well, I think it was that we were arranging, you know, the new structure and figuring out where senior leadership lay, and I kind of live in this weird space where I’m a director. But I also do all of a lot of executive type stuff. And so they had to I think Brian had to decide where exactly he wanted me. And and then we just had a, it came out of the blue for me. Wasn’t what I was expecting at all. He just asked to have a meeting and then said, hey, this is what I think would work well for you. You’ve got a lot of organization. You try to keep things on track, talk about priorities. Communication’s a big thing and that’s an area he thinks that could really help to maximize our team.

Coby: Yeah.

Jaime: Having someone, you know, focused on those things and continue to do what I already sort of bring to the table, so.

Coby: With more of a mandate.

Jaime: Yeah.

Coby: Which, you know, if you’re given guns, you you got to have bullets, too, right? It’s a it’s not maybe the best analogy anymore, but it’s still one that’s apropos. Right.

Jaime: Yes.

Coby: Yeah. So I, I am on board 100%. If you weren’t doing that, like if you weren’t at Big Leap, what would you be doing?

Jaime: You know what I, I might be a full time author because I do write on the side. That’s a that’s a hard gig though, right. That’s a lot of work. Yeah. Or what I would really I’m good at, like, event planning, but I so I could probably do that. I’m not sure if I’d love it unless it was event planning for, like, relay races.

Coby: Oh, really? Oh you’re a runner?

Jaime: I’m a runner. Yeah. So, like Ragnar’s, things like Hood to Coast, where usually it’s a team of 6 or 12 and it goes, you know, 100 to 200 and something miles.

Coby: Which one is that? Hood to coast?

Jaime: Hood to coast I haven’t actually run it. It’s one that I like, but that was one of the more original relay races than some of these other companies.

Coby: What’s the most, grueling race you’ve run, or do you find them grueling at all?

Jaime: Oh, yeah. One of, you know, the hardest relay I’ve run is probably the most grueling one. And that was it’s top of Zion. So that’s when that starts. It goes through mid central Utah. It starts at Capitol Reef National Park, and then you run up over Boulder Mountain, and that’s, you know, like one of the legs is seven miles up a mountain, but up over Boulder Mountain, you drop down into, you know, Escalante Pass just some gorgeous desert. So you go from mountain back to desert.

Coby: That’s cool.

Jaime: And then you kind of run through the backside, down into Zion National Park. So you run past Bryce, you go.

Coby: You trip a lot because you’re just taking in the scenery when that happens?

Jaime: Not when you’re running, but you get to when other people are running on, you get to get to look and watch. There was one on that race that I ran. I mean, it’s gorgeous. You there’s this one spot where you are, you’re on a road and it’s almost on a ridge, and then you’ve just got drop offs on either side, and then just amazing desert cliffs and everything. All right. So, yeah, I did slow down and just kind of gawk.

Coby: Yeah.

Jaime: Running that one. That one was amazing.

Coby: I used to run a lot. But I could never really, like, get down the not looking straight ahead when I’m running because I like trip. Same with hiking. Used to love to hike, but I’m like, I got to stop to enjoy where I’m hiking. Otherwise I’m going to trip. So most of my hiking is just looking at the rocks in front of me, right? Yeah. Oh, we need to do this. Yes. Okay, so this leads me to the question. This is what I want to know, right? Okay, so you you if you weren’t at Big Leap, you’d be writing full time. Kind of a tough gig right now. Like it’s on everybody’s mind. All this AI stuff, like. So do you think it really is a tough gig right now for writers?

Jaime: Oh, yeah.

Coby: So why?

Jaime: You know what? Interesting thing is I kind of have a foot in two worlds there, so I, you know, I’m in the marketing and the business world, and so you’ve got the, you know, the writing and the content production that comes with business and marketing and then-

Coby: Deadline oriented, it’s got a, it’s got to do a certain thing.

Jaime: It’s got to perform

Coby: Very objective-oriented. There’s a, there’s an agenda to it, all that kind of stuff.

Jaime: Yeah. And certain, you know, limitations you need to work within. And, the audience is huge. And then the other foot is of the creative writing. So when the, you know, author and publishing space I’ve been doing that very involved in the writing community, been doing that for oh, probably more years than I want to admit to, you know, been involved in that. And AI is very impactful for both. So I get this like dual perspective that’s very interesting. So on the business side you’ve got AI comes you know across the scene, and the reaction is really excitement. Oh look this is amazing. You know almost a silver bullet. In some cases it’s going to allow us to produce massive volumes of content. We can do it cheaper. We can do it faster. It’ll be more efficient.

Coby: But does anybody ever say we can do it better, though?

Jaime: Yeah, I’ve heard that. Yeah, okay. Especially at the beginning. Yeah. Because, you know, you go in and you play around with, particularly talking about LLMs and it can produce some pretty impressive stuff. On the surface, yeah.

Coby: It’s a so is it a it’s impressive because the expectation is at a certain point. And so I think it like outperforms expectations. Right?

Jaime: You’re like hey I just gave.

Coby: I didn’t know I could do this.

Jaime: I just gave all this random stuff to this machine and look what it produced. It sounds really good. You know, especially surface level. It looks pretty impressive. So, you know, so the business side is like, oh well we got to jump in. We’ve got to use it. There’s an element of FOMO. You know, if our competitors figure out how to utilize this technology then we’re going to be left behind. Yeah yeah. So it really was like a race to adoption, even if no one knew what that meant when it came to business. Then on the creative side, it was an opposite reaction. It was pure outrage. Yeah. Hey, this technology stole our work. It’s building off our work, and it’s making it so that someone can replicate all of the hard work that I’ve put in and my creativity, because you can say, hey, you know, write this in the style of Brandon Sanderson or something, and, and it can produce things. So there’s a lot of outrage, a lot of resistance. And just and I think a little on both sides when it comes to creatives is just a worry that it’s going to flood the market, whether that’s business or creative, just flood the market with garbage.

Coby: Yeah.

Jaime: That took little effort to do.

Coby: And that and it I think for me as a creative, right, my reaction is nobody’s going to care about even knowing the difference. And if they do, it’s not going to be they’re not going to care enough to not engage with it. Because financially, like the the economic layer of all of this is, is too compelling to stay true to, you know, to be old school or analog or whatever else. Right. So like, yeah, I can tell a difference, but it does the job and we just need the job done. It’s like, oh, well, you know crap.

Jaime: Yeah. And I might argue, you know, is it doing the job?

Coby: I don’t think it is.

Jaime: Yeah. It’s it’s having to really be clear on what the job is. Right. You know. So yeah, that’s that’s kind of an interesting response. You know, because I get both. Right. And I can see both.

Coby: So where do you where do you personally net out with that?

Jaime: I think where I’ve really landed and I’ve done a, I mean, since I first found out about ChatGPT, it just came in a conversation, a business meeting where I kind of. You heard about this, try it out. And we were playing with it. It was kind of fun. And then I was like, oh, I need this is going to directly impact my work, my team. Because I managed, you know, writers, editors, designers. And I said, I got to figure if I got to get in and figure this out, and I’m sorry, I forgot the question. What was it? Oh, where do I live? Okay, so I had to dig in and figure that out. And where I’m at right now is, I think often we talk about the wrong thing. I think often the conversation is often the AI question or divide is, hey, are you an adopter or are you an AI resister?

Coby: Okay.

Jaime: And I actually think that’s the wrong question and the wrong framing for it.

Coby: So what’s the right question? The right framing, Jaime?

Jaime: The right for me, the right question is it’s about effort. It’s

Coby: Where does AI-

Jaime: How you’re using AI.

Coby: Okay.

Jaime: Because,

Coby: So the question isn’t whether you should or not. You should. It’s how, but it’s how. You okay.

Jaime: Yeah. Because really you people are falling into to two main camps and how they use AI. And this, this goes even broader than AI is. Are you using AI to avoid thinking? Are you using it as an easy button. And that’s really tempting because on the surface it can produce something in seconds that looks pretty good.

Coby: I can get so much more done, and you know, it’s easy.

Jaime: So you’ve got those who are the, you know, the, using it to avoid thinking or as the easy way out. And then you’ve got those who use it to really deepen their thinking and, because when it comes to creative work, I think we especially on the business side, we’re looking at, okay, how can we do it faster? How can we be more efficient and so we’re optimizing for efficiency in an area where that friction and that inefficiency actually provides value to the output.

Coby: Right. Yes.

Jaime: So,if you’re using well, let me let me back up. So it’s that kind of wrestling with an idea or verbiage or design that elevates whatever you produce, and yourself. And at the same time in this, okay, this is where as a creative, you also find that value. So if we’re getting rid of all of the friction and it’s just simple and easy and thoughtless, then that feels more meaningless to the creative.

Coby: Right.

Jaime: And we’re finding it’s less effective.

Coby: It’s almost like there’s a, there’s there’s a deep sense of meaning or value that is only encoded into a piece of art, because whether it’s commercial art or art, it’s art that we that through the struggle, we actually encode the art with that value. And that is what’s passed on. I would call it, I mean, to use a term that maybe doesn’t make a ton of sense, but it does to me is that that there’s an inotropic value, right? That there is a high sense of organization that comes from, or that is translated from one person to another, from one person to many that is encoded by the struggle to create this thing.

Jaime: Yeah, I think some of that comes because as humans, we’re sort of wired for creation. Yeah. Now that can be you know, it’s very obvious when you’ve got artists or graphic designers or writers, but, there’s just a certain amount of satisfaction that we all get from taking nothing and creating something. Yes, out of it. And it and some of that value comes in the effort to do that. If it’s so easy and simple that it just takes a button, then even if we don’t articulate it as humans or understand it, I think we we know that that value is somehow less.

Coby: Yeah.

Jaime: You know, and so,

Coby: Along the lines of, like, AI can’t experience it for you. I love the point that you made, that we are inherently creative beings. I reference all the time, but John Cleese that, you know, and you can YouTube, or search on YouTube, an address that John Cleese gave about creativity and, like the premise of the address was that creativity is not a talent. It’s a state of working, it’s an operational state, and we can all achieve it. But what unlocks on the left or the right here?

Jaime: It’s right here on the left.

Coby: Oh, there is. Okay. But what unlocks it ultimately is, effort. He makes this really cool observation. And, he worked in concert with a researcher at Oxford to pull all these insights. But he said that, like, according to the research, that the outcomes of a creative exercise and he’s like, think he says things like it takes 30 minutes to 45 minutes to get into this creative zone and, and.

Jaime: The flow state.

Coby: The flow state and that once you are in the flow state and it starts to come in and whatever, and you get like a great idea and whatever, and it’s the temptation because getting into the flow state is difficult. There is an ambiguity. There’s an unknown he he defines creativity is the opportunity to play and and that it’s play in discovery and that what puts you into that is an absence of a fear of making a mistake. But it’s still an uncomfortable place to be. And many folks will go with their first gut. They’ll go with the first. I do this all the time, like it comes. I feel a little bit of flow. Something kind of hits me. I’m like, that’s it, and I go off with it. But he said, the research shows that if you can go and that’s okay, but you can wait around in that state. You can prolong the uncomfortableness. The outcomes are always better, like the first kind of, oh, that’s awesome. Our first great idea or first thing that you kind of fall in love with, that is usually a stepping stone to something else.

Jaime: Yeah, you kind of have to weed through the initial you do idea, which.

Coby: You do, which just speaks to that there is a process of discovering and putting yourself in the unknown, that ultimately, this is what I want to say ultimately, is antithesis to really the whole the whole thing of letting AI do it for you. But this is the point I wanted to and get your take on. AI is a dressed up word predictor. It’s what it is. It’s a word predictor. So you’re never going to get original output?

Jaime: Nope.

Coby: But so this is the but yeah. So this is where okay okay.

Jaime: So you’re never going to get original output. But it can really it can act as a thought partner if you use it in a different way. Okay. To for you to get there.

Coby: For you to do original. All right. So it is a good angel on your shoulder. Yeah. But it is not an oracle.

Jaime: Yeah. It can help you think deeper. Yeah. And it can be a great way to help you think deeper. But you have to resist the temptation to just use it as an easy button. Yeah I use AI all the time, but I don’t use it to produce anything. I use it to challenge me to, be a devil’s advocate or just, hey, what am I not thinking of?

Coby: See, I don’t do that at all, because honestly, I’m kind of afraid of being challenged, right? Like, so I think it speaks to your creative maturity as well. It really does that, that in the process. And you have to do this as a CD, like, right. You, you have to be able to divorce your value from the creative output. And that’s, that’s a very I think I think the inability to do that is, is ultimately what leads to an overdependence on the AI or not using AI at all either way. Right. It’s I’m not going to use it all because I’m special in it and I’m insecure about it, or I’m going to use it all because I don’t, you know, I’m going to totally use it because, you know, I don’t think I could do this, and I don’t want to find out that I really can’t do it. But to go, no, I’m intrinsically, inherently a creative person, as we all are. And and I and I, I want to go on this discovery. I want to create something. I want to do something original. I want to challenge myself. And I’m going to use this to challenge me. That’s like, but this is kind of your whole thing. That’s like, I want to put myself through something hard because I want to grow from it.

Jaime: And kind of paradoxically, AI because you’re saying you feel uncomfortable about that AI is almost a safer way to do it because it’s just a machine. Yeah. It’s it it’s not judging you. It’s not. You know.

Coby: It sure feels like it is because it’s always super happy with my output. Oh Coby, that’s amazing. You should rule the world.

Jaime: It’s a little bit like a puppy dog. You have to be like, okay, now stop being so effusively and like, back off a little. Sometimes I’ll even say that. Yeah, okay. I need you to. Not when.

Coby: Is it like, because I’ve, I actually have done that a couple times. I’m like, I don’t want you to be super positive. I just want that. And it’s like it got mad at me because it totally changed.

Jaime: Oh, I’m sorry.

Coby: Let’s go get the stuff, and then we’ll be back.

Coby: So, where are we going today?

Jaime: We’re going to go to Lehi Bakery. Coby: Okay, why? Jaime: Square donuts.

Coby: So talk to me about the Square Donut because everybody’s obsessed with these square donuts.

Jaime: Yeah. Well, I don’t eat a lot of desserts or a lot of sugar, but I really like bread, so donuts are kind of my weak spot.

Coby: Isn’t bread sugar, basically. In like a fancy format?

Jaime: It’s just not as refined as okay, desserts and that sort of thing.

Coby: So why do you like the square donut so much?

Jaime: I like them because they have more substance to them. Okay, so they are sweet but not overly sweet like crisp Krispy Kreme. You like light fluffy. It’s almost like you’re eating.

Coby: Powdered sugar.

Jaime: Or baked cotton candy kind of thing. And the Lehi Bakery donuts just have more substance to them. Okay, so I really like that.

Coby: Okay. When’s the first time you went to Lehi Bakery?

Jaime: Oh, it’s been a few years, probably 5 or 6 years. And someone brought them, into the office.

Coby: Here?

Jaime: Yeah, it was. I think it was Big Leap.

Coby: Okay.

Jaime: I love these. These are great.

Coby: So which one are we going to? Are we going to go to the original one?

Jaime: That’s what I was thinking. The original.

Coby: One, which doesn’t have a drive through. So we get to go in and say hi and all the stuff. Awesome. Okay. So and what are you going to get? You’re going to get the square.

Jaime: At the square. And I might get if they tempt me with something else that looks really good, I might have to try. And do they have crullers? I’m not sure.

Coby: I hope they do. Crullers are my favorite.

Jaime: I don’t know what’s a cruller?

Coby: Cruller is so Winchell’s made Crullers famous. Remember Winchell’s? Yeah. Okay. I’m. That’s how I’m given my age away and where I lived in the country. Dunkin donuts right now does a cruller, but, it’s like a glazed thing. Anyway, a good friend of mine, we went to Lehi recently. Good friend of mine. It was Jared, right? And he, like, loves them, you know, and he’s a donut connoisseur. He’s, like, the three best donut places in the country. Lehi is one of them. So, if if I would never been there before, what would you recommend? The first thing I try.

Jaime: Oh, I think you got to try the square.

Coby: The square glazed. Just plain glazed square. Okay. That’s what we’re going to do. And we’re going to have a good conversation on the way too, Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Okay. Awesome. All right. Cool. Can’t wait. All right. When it comes to AI, we were talking about this in there like it, it looks like and it sounds like you use it instead of where, where most people are looking at AI as a labor saving technology. And that’s kind of how it’s build. The way you’re talking about using it actually is another step in the process. It feels like it’s a labor adding activity, but you’re doing it because it improves the output.

Jaime: Yes. So I guess you could consider it a second layer, but I often use it as really as a thought partner or collaborator. If you could sit there and talk through things with someone who has all the time in the world, doesn’t, you know, get tired of talking about all the details, doesn’t get offended if you say, no, that’s not right. Or let’s go out in a different way, or let’s keep talking about this. I mean, wouldn’t you want to use it? Wouldn’t you want someone on demand to just bounce things back?

Coby: Jaime that’s how I treat you. That’s why I had it with you four times a day.

Jaime: This is.

Coby: I mean, literally this whole thing is an elaborate ruse to get me to quit huddling you on slack.

Jaime: Well, there are family members who I have introduced AI to that has kind of helped. Look at this. I think you’d like this because I’m not as available all the time.

Coby: I love that.

Jaime: So. Yeah. So really, it’s, I think using AI as a as a thinking, I don’t know, deepener, thought deepener. I guess not deep inner is perhaps where more of the value will be. That’s the people who are going to thrive, okay. Those who use it I think to enhance augment what they already have or what they can already do because it can be great at that. I mean, there are times where I just have messy thoughts and it’s just jumbled, and I just kind of vomit it out and throw it out to ChatGPT and be like, okay, help me make sense of what it is that I’m thinking here or trying to process here. And so it can do that. I’m not looking at it to tell me what to think, but I use it sometimes to help clarify so that I can make decisions or move forward or or be more creative, because I’m still going through the the messiness of it. But AI can help add, you know, clarity or.Or just help. It just helps me think through it.

Coby: Yeah. So do you have a, Kind of a family of or a set of prompts that you have developed in this thinking to, in this thinking process, or do you kind of just let every conversation be an organic conversation with ChatGPT or Claude or whatever else you use. And also, what lens do you like to use?

Jaime: Yeah, that’s a good question. So I use ChatGPT. Claude and Gemini are the primary LMS that I use, okay. And I use them for different things. So, Claude, from my experience with Claude is it’s a little bit more creative, but it can also get.

Coby: So it hallucinates more too.

Jaime: Yeah. It it and it can go like purple prose or, it can go off the rails a little bit. It’s, it’s a little bit more your, your, know, your artist in the attic and.

Coby: It’s the Johnny Depp of LLMs Yes. Okay. That’s cool. Yeah.

Jaime: But it can get some really good stuff. ChatGPT is a little bit more middle of the road. And it also, one interesting thing about LLMs I would say ChatGPT in particular, is that it just almost gives you too much.

Coby: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

Jaime: So it’s like, yeah, you have to kind of weed through.

Coby: And that’s actually where it got pissed at me once. Like I was like, you know, don’t, don’t suggest anything else anymore. And so it became super didactic, like really sparse. I think I heard it’s feelings. I’m pretty sure I hear it anyway, so. Okay. And then and then and then Gemini.

Jaime: I use Gemini if I need something that I want it to access the internet. Okay, so that’s something. I mean, I probably use Gemini a little bit more. Well, now I use it for work and personal but so personal personally I’ll use it like we were, doing some car shopping for it. We needed to replace a used car for my daughter, and so I’m like, okay, these are the used cars I’m looking at.I want you to analyze consumer, you know, reviews and they, you know, give me recommendations based off of, you know, performance and longevity. And because it can pull from all of those sources, whereas Claude and ChatGPT.

Coby: Are closed.

Jaime: Are closed, yeah. So I want I want real time things. And for work, I’ll often use it when I’m trying to help troubleshoot. Like I’m trying to do something in a platform and I don’t know how. And so I’ll go to Gemini because I figure it has access to the most recent tutorials or from that. So,

Coby: Do you are you concerned, Jamie, that, you know, when when Google first kind of launched, I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but they had an internal mantra. Do you know what the mantra was? Do no evil.

Jaime: You know, I don’t know if they’re still sticking to that. No.

Coby: No, but my point exactly, they recognize that they are now not the source of information, but because they are the curator and the indexer of information, they might as well be the source of all information. And the power that granted them. Are you ever concerned that although ostensibly LLMs are supposed to be based on billions of words and data points and all this kind of stuff, but that ultimately, you know, it’s it’s just the next level of giving you the information that certain powers that be wants you to have, that it’s not really know access to all of it. It’s, it’s.

Jaime: It could be used kind of for propaganda or behavior.

Coby: Yeah. And in such subtly nefarious ways. Are you ever concerned about that?

Jaime: Yeah, definitely. That’s why I think you can’t farm out your thinking. You have to approach it with critical thinking and maybe a good dose of skepticism.

Coby: A good dose of skepticism.

Jaime: You know,

Coby: That’s a fine line to walk.

Jaime: It is is tricky and it takes effort. And people don’t want to do that sometimes.

Coby: Well, as, who was it that said, oh, Carl Jung, one of my favorites. Thinking is hard. That’s why people judge, right? So, yeah. Okay. Well, all right, so.

Jaime: I didn’t answer your prompt question.

Coby: Yeah. Prompt question, my bad.

Jaime: I don’t have really a set set of prompts, if that makes sense. It’s often an organic conversation, but some of them can sound similar. Like, I might start it the same way, but you have to add context.

Coby: Yes.

Jaime: Which also sometimes feels like, if I got to explain everything to I, that’s just more work.

Coby: Right? Which which then if you’re having that reaction that tells you everything you need to know about why you’re using it in the first place, right? Yeah. Okay.

Jaime: Yeah. So it’s a bit more of an organic conversation, but I will often give it the context and tell it what I want it to do and then say, ask me any questions that you need to clarify or to have the full context, or that I may not have told you, so that we can then do what I’ve highlighted.

Coby: I like that a lot, I’m going to incorporate that. I’m going to use that.

Jaime: Yeah. Because in answering those questions, that’s another layer that sometimes that gets me where I want to go. Yeah. Because I’ll be like, oh yeah, I didn’t think about that. What is the answer to that? Oh that’s and sometimes I’ll even say, I don’t know the answer to that. That’s a great question. Let’s explore that first.

Coby: Awesome. Have you named your do you have a name for yours? I don’t have a name for mine.

Jaime: I know my my creative team. One of my team members has named his

Coby: What?

Jaime: He calls it Shnelburt or Shnelly.

Coby: Is that is that who I think it is?

Jaime: Probably. Yeah. Okay.

Coby: Okay, cool. That’s cool. I’ve never mind. Cipher. Oh, okay.

Jaime: I want to keep treating it as a tool, so I haven’t given it a name.

Coby: So you don’t anthropomorphize it. Yeah, that’s really smart. That’s that’s I think that’s that’s a good I. That’s good. It keeps that delineation. It it helps. Yeah. It reminds you that okay. This is a tool I can’t I can’t give it personality.

Jaime: Yeah. And I think in going and using AI, if you just ask yourself before you start why am I using this. Am I using it to do something faster or to save effort, or am I using it to do to better understand something or to, you know, have a better direction or, you know, because if even if you’re using it to, let’s say, even though I’m against it, using it to produce content, okay, there’s some content where it would do just fine because you don’t need original thinking, you just need to hit some, you know, certain boxes. But, I forgot where I was going with.

Coby: Why you’re using it.

Jaime: Oh, yes. Why are. Yeah. Are you using it just because you don’t want to put in the thought and do something fast? Or are you using it to do something better?

Coby: See, I’m so uncomfortable with the idea of sending anything out that I don’t know everything about. If it has my fingerprint on it, I have to know all of it. I have to be able to answer those questions. So. But you. What about this one of this I if I don’t have an answer, I feel like I’ve given somebody something that’s not fully baked.

Jaime: But it’s a machine if you’re using it as something to figure that out.

Coby: No, no, that’s why I’m saying, like, I dig that, like that is a good so like building kind of brand narratives and stuff, right. Like like the the initial tension that I believe exists at the center of any great story, you know, that you’re familiar with it, right? Like, I would never outsource that. But applying that tension and that perspective to what’s going on in the news right now, I will I have used and like using AI for that because it I’m actually not that well informed.

Coby: That gives me a starting point. I often will go back with no, that’s wrong and you’re wrong because of this. And I start lecturing AI which is really satisfying for me. And I it’s terrible.

Jaime: Again, it’s not a person.

Coby: So so, you know, they can take some abuse. Early on I was part of as I start up and, that it’s still hanging out and doing good and all that kind of stuff. But like some of our initial research, we found that one of the reasons folks like using it and like the early adopters is because they could berate it. It just be cruel to it. I thought that if that’s not.

Jaime: Without the guilt and.

Coby: Without the guilt, that’s not an insight into, you know, as a mirror to who you are.

Jaime: Oh, that’s funny. I don’t know what else is. Yeah, I don’t know that I’ve really berated it, but I have told it. It’s wrong, you know? Okay, stop all that. Ignore.

Coby: And like, so what’s a question you wish people asked you more?

Jaime: That’s a good question, I think. Why is a good one? Why do you think that? Because usually I have reasons.

Coby: That you don’t get to tell people what your great thought process has been.

Jaime: That’s one of the great things about Eric is he always asks.

Coby: He always asks.

Jaime: So I just, you know, okay, I’m going to come in prepared. And that helps me because I got I have to, you know, examine my own self. Okay. Why why am I thinking this or why am I doing this.

Coby: Now I times I love that about him, by the way. I love that he does that. I love working with that guy, I love it, I love being there and then looking over and he’s just like this, and he’s just got this wry smile on his face and, you know, all sorts of things are going through his head. And they they cut to the quick like his thinking is.

Jaime: Yeah, he asks good questions.

Coby: He ask good questions, which tells me that he sees through a lot of stuff, which means his mind’s like a steel trap, which means it, it can be very critical and cold. His thinking can be very cold.

Jaime: It can come across that way. Yeah.

Coby: I don’t think he’s cold at all. I think he has the capacity to divorce and cut away all the fat and get to what, like the meat? Like what matters. And he has. I think that’s probably his natural way of thinking. And he’s learned to temper that and to position it the right way and to let it be a tool without it coming across and hurting people’s feelings.

Coby: Right. And that’s one of the things I love most about that guy is that he he can think very logically. But but he doesn’t dismiss all of the other, pertinent stuff in that thinking. He still gives that honor because he knows it’s important to others as well. Right? And it’s just like, that’s cool. Anyway, all right.

Coby: Well, this is really fun. Yeah. I really loved this.

Jaime: Yeah it was a great conversation. We were enjoying it so much. We drove right past the bakery. Alright, thanks Coby!

Coby: Alright, let’s get back to work.

Jaime: Yep. I’m taking this with me though.

Nicole: Thanks for coming along for the ride. If you enjoy Sweet Takes, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. Join us next time! There’s more sweetness ahead.