Why Human Judgment Matters More Than Ever in the Age of AI

Check out the full episode below! Enjoy The Exchange? Don't forget to tune in live Friday at 12 pm EST on the Greenbook LinkedIn and Youtube Channel!

 

The market research world is being reshaped from every angle. Amazon's lawsuit over AI shopping agents, major CPG consolidation, and the death of traditional SaaS pricing models signal that the old playbook is obsolete. As specialized AI solutions take over and biometric-enabled robots scan shoppers, one question becomes urgent: what role does human judgment play?

Karen Lynch and Lenny Murphy explore why cultural intelligence and ethical oversight might be the most valuable skills in an increasingly automated industry.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

Use code EXCHANGE30 to get a 30% discount on your general admission IIEX tickets!

IIEX North America

IIEX APAC 

Stay Ahead of the Curve! Subscribe to The Exchange Newsletter on LinkedIn Today! 

Transcript

[00:02] Lenny Murphy: And there we go, we are live.

[00:05] Karen Lynch: Talking up to The minute, up to The second.

[00:07] Lenny Murphy: Yep, yep, right there. Then we switch now to a whole other topic.

[00:12] Karen Lynch: Oh my goodness, well happy, happy, I guess not happy. It's just November 7th, there's no day attached to this.

[00:19] Lenny Murphy: It's Friday, I mean that's, you know.

[00:21] Karen Lynch: Friday, I guess that's a thing we can wish for people. Yeah, here we are in November.

[00:27] Lenny Murphy: Yep, are you due to get snow? We get cold if we're on the East Coast.

[00:33] Karen Lynch: We're getting cold. We could look up tonight and perhaps see the northern lights if we could stay awake late enough. So that's kind of the hullabaloo in our area. I mean, it's cold, but I don't think it's snow cold. We'll probably get some rain, but I think it's like in the 40s where I am. So that's not really not quite. We're just going to be cold and miserable tomorrow.

[00:53] Lenny Murphy: So that's kind of where it's raining today, tomorrow night. But actually my wife is Head in town because we need to prepare for a hard freeze sooner than we anticipated.

[01:05] Karen Lynch: So it's like oh we gotta go get The stuff because anyway life on a farm Yeah, but yeah, so for anybody going into The weekend, maybe wet and cold for those on The East Coast But you know if podcast recording yesterday with somebody who happened to be down in Oklahoma City But um, you know had previously lived in you know, Southern California and I just every now and then like November hits hard and I'm like, man, like, what are we, what are we doing? Why do I, of all people who love beautiful weather and beaches and all that, why did I not live in Southern California?

[01:42] Lenny Murphy: Well, you know, you know what is, uh, what is nice and toasty is all The news this week. There was a lot of hot news this week.

[01:51] Karen Lynch: I was going to say like, we're going there.

[01:54] Lenny Murphy: You see what I did there?

[01:56] Karen Lynch: Oh, that's your segment. I was gonna say there was, but we're not talking about that. Anyway, okay, yes.

[02:05] Lenny Murphy: Now I'm curious though, what exactly were you thinking about? But anyway, we won't get into that. So whatever it was.

[02:11] Karen Lynch: Boundaries, boundaries. There was, but before we get into that, let's just do a shameless plug for your grit forum because that's coming up. And I think that last week we talked a bit about this. I just think it bears repeating for people to block their calendars. You've talked about how important this iteration is, and I know there's a lot of chatter about it. It's sort of an email thread around the world, so.

[02:40] Lenny Murphy: Truly is. I'll tell you, I spent The last week actually diving deep, thinking, actually before this started, drawing The implications for Green Uh, well then for all of our clients, um, uh, there are, yeah, it's, it's, it, there's a lot of change happening and, which again is probably The, you know, because it was, it was an interesting week and there's a lot that we didn't cover. Uh, we're not going to cover this. Uh, but if you're watching headlines, especially on the wall street journal and Bloomberg and those types of things, you'll get the stuff we're not going to cover. Um, uh, just pay attention to The news. Right tech, you know all of that stuff.

[03:22] Karen Lynch: It's just what a crazy week it was. Anyway, anyway, well, I don't know much about this Betsy Jane Peterson award. I know this all right, so applications are open for the Betsy Jane Peterson award. It's funny because even though you know it I saw that you knew, you had shared this I think you got in an email from MRI. I somebody shared it in my network and LinkedIn MRI I and UGA, they're giving five seats into their Principles of Market Research course. You know, it's worth checking out. You can nominate members or apply yourself. You know, I think it's, you know, it's an opportunity to maybe, you know, upskill on, you know, research methods. So very hot in The ring for that one.

[04:07] Lenny Murphy: Yeah, 100%. That's exactly why I thought we should show that. You know, I am on the board of The UGA program as well as The Michigan State program. They're both fantastic. This is something that MRI does with UGA. I even thought about doing it myself, but I decided not. But definitely a good opportunity for somebody who wants to upskill for free.

[04:29] Karen Lynch: And you might have seen in The news, in The Green Book news, our partnership with MRII has leveled up. They're now in our podcast network. Their podcast is now in The Green Book podcast. So we are distributing their podcasts for them as well. They are hosting one of our expert channels now, Executive Insights. And so our two organizations have kind of just, again, leveled up our partnership quite a bit. So hats off to them and what they're doing. And thank them for what they're doing for us, bringing us content, too.

[05:09] Lenny Murphy: They do good stuff. And everybody knows Pam Bracken. Uh, The, I mean The whole team, they've just always, they're, they're just good folks. So, um, it was, uh, I guess the next just general news, cause somebody wasn't aware. Um, The, uh, Kimberly Clark acquired Kenview, um, which was J and J basically The, The CPG arm of J and J. So, uh, I don't, I've Kenview has been a client over The years. I know that it's been for many suppliers, it's been interesting transitioning from J&J to Kenview. Well, now it's Kimberly Clark as well. Be prepared for more change.

[05:53] Karen Lynch: I just think that is a huge portfolio then. That's a huge portfolio that's now a grown database or set of data information. I, I don't know what else that kind of, you know, that, that The expanded portfolio might deliver for The industry or bring to The industry. But certainly if, if you're working in that category, this is something to be aware of. Think about, think about how many brands are now under that umbrella. It's mind blowing to me.

[06:30] Lenny Murphy: And, you know, and they were already transforming just kind of insider perspective, but people know this, that as they transitioned from J&J into Kenview, they were, their model was a very flat and decentralized organization. They were changing, they were rejecting The DIY solution, were very focused on having, you know, partners and suppliers, focused on the science of the brand growth model. So a lot of non-conscious measurement and behavior are really into those things. We'll see what happens now as they now integrate into Kimberly-Clark, but it should be a good opportunity for a lot of suppliers. If you're already engaged with either one of those or both, great. But it's going to be crazy for the next one.

[07:24] Karen Lynch: It reminds me of GSK spinning off Halion. Did I say that right? Oh, my gosh. Is that right? They did the same thing with them, I might be saying it wrong. Anyway, with their CPG division, right? Or OTC division. And years ago, I had worked with them on a switch team, right? So for people who are switching between The pharma business and The OTC business. And I would be thinking that there's this great benefit of having both. And now I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Selling it off, interesting. Because maybe that benefit of having both in your organization is not the strategy at the moment. So anyway.

[08:06] Lenny Murphy: Well, you know, I mean, $48.7 billion. So there's certainly some benefit in that. Somebody's benefiting. True, true. But I'm glad you brought this up because it also, you know, we spend most of our time talking about changes happening in The supplier. Space and you know consolidation and mid-market and but I mean, oh my goodness. We're going to see more deals like this happen particularly in CPG etc, etc, and And of course underneath all of it is going to be looking for synergies and technology efficiencies and all of those good things Yeah, which is just part of The ongoing transformation of The world and how that impacts our industry.

[08:59] Karen Lynch: I do know we do have some brand side listeners too. So I'm sure, you know, the brand marketers that I knew were always, you know, tracking brands at play as it, you know, as, as their own entities to be paying attention to. So it's a big time to be on brand tracking work. I mean, let's see how some of those, you know, how those different brands do in, in this kind of a transition.

[09:23] Lenny Murphy: Well, and The impact, which I think we get to a little bit here. I mean, there's some, you know, conception or perception around brand versus product. I mean, there's so many interesting permutations. I think particularly as we get into The news around The lawsuit with Amazon perplexity that, yeah, there's just- I can't wait.

[09:42] Karen Lynch: I feel like, should we just go there before the product launches?

[09:45] Lenny Murphy: Let's go there. Let's go there. Because that was profoundly interesting.

[09:50] Karen Lynch: So Karley, we're jumping. We're jumping way down to The story. It's in our brief, you'll find it. But Amazon has now made moves to stop Perplexity's agent from making purchases on Amazon's platform. And of course, Lenny, we've been talking about that agentic buying for several weeks now. I just think this is so interesting because I was like, all right, let me read about this. And some of The things, what they're claiming degrading The Amazon shopping experience. It introduced privacy, you know, vulnerabilities. And I'm sitting here thinking, no, it's stopping people from browsing on your site. Literally stopping impulse buying. One thing, and my agent's gonna help me find it versus what else can I put in my Amazon cart, The whole Amazon feature of like, buying things together, I forget what The feature is called. But like, you can, you can put something in And it's like, or do you want to buy these?

[10:51] Lenny Murphy: Yes, 100% that and now Amazon would want their own agent, right? Because it's optimized for that, that process. So yes, I think that was what jumped out of like, we've talked about The battle for The browser, right? And in The battle for search, and this is The same, it's a variation of that same issue. And when we have agents that we've empowered, to just, nope, this is all I want. Just go execute this task. I'm not, I'm not browsing. I just want this thing that impacts the business models of retailers that, you know, it's like, it's The equivalent of, you know, The end cap in The store, right? Or The checkout, right? That was the candy at the checkout.

[11:38] Karen Lynch: I know there is something. And you know, what's interesting is, you know, The Amazon experience, I don't hate it, right? I like going to Amazon for inspiration. It's the one-stop shopping nature of it. I enjoy what I'm looking for, if I'm ideating around shopping. I don't mind the idea. I was okay with doing some of that ideating in The browser. I think we talked last week where I was talking about, I was going to, I was pulling up Etsy and stuff like that. Like, all right, like I'm ready for this to be broader, but the retailers are not ready for it to be broader.

[12:19] Lenny Murphy: So it's just indicative of the profound, you know, these profound changes. And that was kind of a hit again. Look at the news this week, right? The following: The money, The, uh, you know, The, we ain't seen nothing yet. I mean, this is like a preliminary shot across The bow of incredibly profound changes that are being fast-tracked at The consumer level, The effect that has just so many ripple effects. Let's go ahead and while we're there, The technicals talk about AI as a service and AI affecting SaaS, because it's a very similar thing, right? This agentic focused process is no longer about big-ass seat licenses for, you know, huge platforms that do a lot, because it's a very specific function, right? It's a verticalized specific function, whether it's shopping for consumers, or analyzing social media data, or whatever the case may be. The business model impacts of these technologies are really coming to the fore, right?

[13:37] Karen Lynch: It's probably destructive. Go ahead. In this Tech Buzz article that you found, there's a quote from it. New 85% workflows and a majority of VC money flows are now going, or are going AI first and industry specific in The rush to vertical AI. So, you know, we've kind of talked about, you know, SaaS products being, you know, buh-bye. Like, it's not where it's all at. Big deal.

[14:01] Lenny Murphy: And that vertical, I think that was really interesting is my first thought was what CPG, pharma? No, no, this definition of vertical AI is business function specific. That's The vertical. So I mean, we have there's levels of it that can include, you know, specific functions for pharma or CPG or whatever. But that's really talking about a, a, a business function process. Yeah, but you think about it. I mean, some of it, so some of that's really minute, you know, procurement.

[14:38] Karen Lynch: I was going to say big procurement implications. And Lenny, I think as we're sitting here talking, I'm like, I think we have to take a step back because, um, for people listening, I don't want, I feel like this could be, I don't mean to condescend, but slightly over people's heads. And what I mean by that is, you know, when we first started doing The show and we were talking about The platform of vacation of research, right. Everything's been a platform and we've you know, we are aware like you all have platforms This was The platforms all of The vendors in our ecosystem are like we've got a platform for this We've got a platform for this. That's what we're talking about. The model that has been The way of life in our industry is getting turned from this vertical, this horizontal Platforming to verticals where there's layers and agents in The middle That is what is inherently different. I don't know how else we can explain it to people, but I want them to understand we're talking about a change from that platform. Wasn't that, I think, a word, platformification?

[15:39] Lenny Murphy: Yes, yes.

[15:41] Karen Lynch: To something else.

[15:43] Lenny Murphy: Well, so that next article, and we'll just put that in there, Karley, from The VC corner, argues that AI is forcing SAS to abandon seat-based pricing for hybrid or outcome-based models as AI agents compress labor and introduce volatile compute costs. Anyway, it's about what argues about how you price value and outcome. I mean, what a radically different concept for technology, right? I mean, we would calculate, all right, what is the value to me in paying for this? And time efficiency, all of those things. But it's kind of spun on its head now. Because the time is being compressed, and so therefore the cost should be compressed. And then how do we calculate value? So from a business you're used to, you're paying $20,000 a year for a license for a data collection platform. You've got 10 seats in doing that. This changes that calculus. Why am I paying that much when this is just more efficient for me now? How do you do if you're-?

[17:13] Karen Lynch: I don't need 10 seats.

[17:15] Lenny Murphy: I don't need 10 seats. Sorry, I haven't talked to anybody about this yet, Karen. So we're getting a stream of consciousness because I've been excited to talk about this.

[17:24] Karen Lynch: No, but I think it's the beginning. We've talked loosely around this, you know, this, like, we're disrupting The fast model. And now we've got two kinds of articles that are saying, hey, we're disrupting The fast model. So I'm like, we have proof points to what we've been saying, which, and this other, this article, The one we're talking about now, you know, they talk in there that now we have to start to treat pricing strategy as an extension of product strategy. They're very much, this is all a part of it. And some people might say, well, yeah, we've had pricing strategy in The mix, but it's different now because it's tied to how users are now going to be expecting to use your service and in conjunction with what else, and how is it bundled for procurement departments?

[18:16] Lenny Murphy: That's the outcome, right? So what is that outcome based pricing? Yeah, I get it as a consultant, right for service, having some at risk compensation, you know, based upon impact. Yeah, but that is a really different model for technology. And then think about if there's more there is a very What does that do if you're a VC, right, an investor? Hell, even a business owner. The, you know, ARR is, you know, that, that's the number that you look at when you're building a technology platform. Because it's predictable, and you know, yeah, I sell 100 licenses at 20 grand a pop. Here's my annual revenue. Here's, you know, and you break it down from there. Adding variabilities into that, it just has, again, profound ripple effect implications across The board in thinking of how we value, how we assign value to things. So, which ultimately drives pricing.

[19:27] Karen Lynch: And all of these, and we'll get back to, you know, The product and The feature launch as I think it's time, but everybody who's introducing agents into their workflows and thinking of all of these incremental time savings or, you know, these, I don't know, The savings that is going to happen, like, of how these agents are going to serve your clients well, if you're doing that work, which we hope that everybody is, because we have said, you know, AI in your platform is some table stakes, but you also have to think about how you're pricing your products, you're pricing your platforms right now, because that is changing as perceived value starts changing. And as procurement is going to start to demand a different model.

[20:14] Lenny Murphy: They already are. I mean, I'm hearing that consistently. And you know, I think six months ago, we thought that the price of computers was going to increase, etc, etc. It is not price computers coming down that these engineering scale problems around power and compute and all that, you know, that's being solved on a daily basis. So it's just an implementation. You know, McKinsey, you know, I mean, we all know, McKinsey could charge a million dollars for a segmentation project. But yeah, Lenny Murphy consulting cannot charge a million dollars for a segmentation project, because I'm not McKinsey. And the perception is that the value is less, the value production is less. Yeah, whether it's true or not, And we're, we're kind of in that world now, where technology platforms have to, you know, sell on value creation, as well as consultants. And it's just, it's just so interesting, guys. These are profound. They impact the business model of our industry. Everybody is listening. That's why we're doing that.

[21:22] Karen Lynch: So to your point, let's, let's get into The, some of The launches, because all of you that we're about to mention all of your new features or new products that you've launched. I hope you are all listening and hearing The first, you know, 20 minutes of The show and what you might need to do with your pricing, but

[21:39] Lenny Murphy: And they're all examples of this process that we're talking about.

[21:42] Karen Lynch: So you talk about GWI, you know them better.

[21:46] Lenny Murphy: I mean, that's something we expected to see something like that. So GWI, uh, primarily global web index built, uh, brand tracking syndicated, uh, solution. One of The big players along with Morning Consult and Miller Brown and Cantor and YouGov, anyway. And it's a survey-driven process. Basically, they conduct a buttload of surveys and then they syndicate all The brand tracking. Now, similar to what Morning Consult announced just a couple weeks ago about their APIs, it was more specific that they are integrating their audience data, survey data into Cloud and Salesforce and chat GPT. So bringing real data from real people into AI assistance. How long have we been talking about that, right? So this is not quite as far as what I still expect to see one of those companies buying a panel, but directionally very, very similar. Getting research data directly feeding into AI systems, not as an adjunct, but as a direct feed into The AI to help inform it from a training standpoint. It's a brand new revenue stream for GWI and an augmentation and asset to The AI platform. So big, big deal, right? Hint, yeah, if you're listening, especially if you own data assets, you really need to be doing this, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[23:39] Karen Lynch: So Peak Gator revamped their survey platform, keyword platform, anyway. So they've added question types, they've added AI probing, some auto-coding, one-click PowerPoint, which, you know, you and I were talking about, like, what, two years ago, like, we like that. We like the one-click to our output. It's gonna be, look, quicker study setup, quicker synthesis, streamline your process there so your deliverables can happen faster. Like, to me, this is a speed move, a necessary speed move, to do what their platform is doing and saying, yeah, look, we can do things more efficiently now, period.

[24:25] Lenny Murphy: Yep, yep, better user experience. They talked about that, you know, actually using words like beautiful, which you don't think about often with, I mean, there's a few platforms out there that have leaned into that, but yeah, so good, good for them. SideX, similar, right? Platform, they are advanced automated segmentation. Speaking of segmentation, dollars segmentation projects. Well, not anymore. Mackenzie, if you're using side X, you might want to rethink your pricing.

[25:00] Karen Lynch: Again, this is our caution. Like, sorry. We want you all to look at your pricing. And that's, we want you to do that so that you can be strategic about it and not not lose this race that you are in, right? Because your pricing model doesn't fit the future.

[25:15] Karen Lynch: So right.

[25:16] Lenny Murphy: I'll just streamline the process and a great example with that. With side X. This next now this was interesting. This is next to The cursories brisk platform which I have not seen. Neither yeah, but building ethical AI compliance in guardrails around PII detection anonymization. But it wasn't just that it was like the type of questions you can ask. So it's just interesting. I am still very much personally on the fence on this whole AI nanny. I'm not, I just, by personality, I don't particularly care for that. But I understand the value. I understand the value. And this is the first company I've seen in our space, that is building that in like, no, you can't do certain things where this is too powerful. We're putting limits on what you can do overall. I think it's probably inherently a good thing, even though it's just an interesting thought process to think about, oh. Sorry, that was my take. If you.

[26:24] Karen Lynch: No, and I'm going to bounce, sorry, Karley, to Tom Woodnut's LinkedIn piece about becoming guardians of validity. So we have that down at The bottom of The brief, just so you can track Karley. But in this kind of thought piece that he's written. He's doing it like it's a call to action for everybody to take responsibility. These are like literally taking responsibility for your developments. This is right in his LinkedIn post there. Develop a playful relationship with experimenting with AI, which, you know, full support. Position yourself as guardians of validity. And that phrase, that guardianship, you know, bouncing back to why this cursories program shouts at me and probably to you is the maintenance of this oversight, this ethical compliance, like let's not forget that that matters greatly right now. We'll speak to users who are still holding that in their heart and not necessarily throwing caution to The wind. And they're really into that. I think that's a strong move. Reducing privacy and audit headaches and all of this other stuff that could come out of the use of platforms, hats off to them. I think it's interesting.

[27:43] Lenny Murphy: Yes, I think we, so even though I'm still personally challenged with some of these concepts, it needs to be discussed. It needs to be out there and we need to be addressing it. Because ultimately for The research industry, I would say that we do have an ethical obligation for truth. Right that is what that traditionally is our role And we are dealing with technologies that we don't fully understand right there sometimes Can twist that? Inadvertently and to Tom's point, you know that it reiterates the need for human management and intervention so that we can keep ensuring that we are providing truth that empowers appropriate decision-making and whether you're a business or a government.

[28:33] Karen Lynch: And, you know, so thank you, Tom, for putting this one out there because I, I feel like what we don't want is, um, a quality scandal, The way we just had a quality scandal. Like we want to avoid that. Let's learn from this current, like data quality, uh, ecosystem, right. That we're in right now, which is like, Holy cow, things are really messed up in The world of data quality because we have so much fraud. Let's get ahead of that for this AI journey that we're on and make sure we are being transparent, we're doing our bias checks, and we can defend the work that is coming out of our systems that's integrated AI.

[29:19] Lenny Murphy: That is a wonderful point, Karen, and I really appreciate you going, because I hadn't even quite made that connection in my own head.

[29:28] Karen Lynch: Yes, no scandals. Let's be scandal free.

[29:30] Lenny Murphy: Let's be scandal free.

[29:31] Karen Lynch: We have enough to worry about with The disruption.

[29:36] Lenny Murphy: We do. Let's shout to our friends system one, The test your competitive edge expands is creative testing offerings. So they, you know, they continue to do that. I would argue, you know, there's a race to see who's data currency in specific areas. System one certainly has a viable stake in The ground to be that around that testing. And boy, what an industry that is being impacted, right? So glad to see that I'm continuing to lean in and say, you know, we still need to test this stuff. So that was cool. Our friends at iMotion, version 11 of iMotion expanded their biosensor eye tracking support. Look, they may see all the news this week around robots. You think all those robots are not equipped with cameras that are doing facial coding and tracking? I mean, of course they are. It's built in. It's companies like iMotions that are helping to pioneer that and deploy it across other use cases. So all of the biometric, non-conscious measurement stuff is just baked into the tech that we use every day.

[30:53] Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you think about what's The guy in Stop and Shop's name, The little robot that's walking around all The time? I don't know if you... What's his name? I think he has a name. Anyway, I haven't really thought about the fact that the robot who is scanning the aisles for messes is also scanning us as shoppers. Oh, hell yeah. I'm like, wait a minute, I didn't opt in. But maybe you do opt in to being recorded by The Just by showing up in The store about that.

[31:24] Lenny Murphy: Yeah Anybody search look at The viral videos this week around The China The launch in China of some of The robot There's like robot week in China. I don't know what the hell is going on. But I mean in some of the stuff there was just like Here we are here we are It really is so interesting so we're gonna see him in stores. If so, maybe we're not. I don't know which one you're talking about. But by the end of next year, if they have deer.

[31:53] Karen Lynch: He's like a, he doesn't even look like a thing. He's like, it's fine. Like a cute little thing. Tall and thin. He just has eyes at the top. He's like this metal, metal pole on wheels, but he has eyes or something. Anybody who knows The one that I'm talking about, I hope you're laughing right now because I'm sure there's, I think it is The name and I'm sure there's a better description than like a gray metal pole with eyes, but that Maybe, although let's put out there, all right, here's a challenge, Karen.

[32:19] Lenny Murphy: I'm gonna make a bet, will you accept a bet? Let's make a bet.

[32:23] Karen Lynch: Oh, a bet? I don't get a bet for money, very rarely.

[32:26] Lenny Murphy: Okay, well, it won't be money. It'll be, we'll figure out what the stakes are.

[32:28] Karen Lynch: Okay, okay.

[32:29] Lenny Murphy: But here's my overall bet. This time next year. They must have big holiday gifts.

[32:38] Karen Lynch: It's a little robot, you think, little robot.

[32:40] Lenny Murphy: It's gonna be some type of robot. Yeah, yeah. Some type of robot.

[32:45] Karen Lynch: But I mean, look, I think I've said this now week after week, like I picture a Roomba and I'm like, it's not a big leap for me to, I don't have a Roomba by the way, because we have a lot of stairs.

[32:55] Lenny Murphy: And dogs.

[33:00] Karen Lynch: I have seen dogs that sit on them and cats that sit on them. But I don't have a Roomba, but I could picture a Roomba like thing, a little bigger than that, where I can be like, oh, you know, can you, like I have this coffee cup right here, right? The coffee's cold. Sure would have liked to put that on a Roomba and have it like bring it right to my kitchen for me Like these are these tiny little use cases in my house where I'm down for The Yeah assistance Yeah, although it was interesting.

[33:28] Lenny Murphy: I know we're out of time but this was interesting. The Chinese thing for the base of one wrapped in it was like in cloth and it walked just like a human and people. That's a human in the costume and they cut it. I was like, no, it's a robot. It was interesting that they said this is not for home use because the home use is too complex. The environment's too different, et cetera, et cetera. And it's not for manufacturing, because the way it's made, the hands wear out. Instead, their use case for this very humanoid robot was working in a store, customer service, those types of things. So it was just an interesting thought to your point.

[34:08] Karen Lynch: It's going to be refolding the clothes that we take off the shelves. When we're shopping for clothes. Do you know what, if you have ever worked in clothes retail, which I did when I was like,

[34:18] Lenny Murphy: I did as well, it's a pain in the butt.

[34:21] Karen Lynch: Every now and then when I have a bad day at work and I'm like, I could just go to The Gap and start refolding sweaters. Just go refold some sweaters. But that task, yeah, let a robot do that. I think that's a great use for that.

[34:33] Lenny Murphy: Hey, look, I'm skeptical of all that and my wife is as well, but I'm willing to bet that if we like, this is just The laundry robot, we would, or The dishwasher robot, we would probably both be like, okay, that's good. That one's hard to resist. The laundry folding robot in particular. Yes, the laundry is folding and putting away, putting away.

[34:55] Karen Lynch: Anyway, we digress, but it's just, I really want to talk about, um, and, and, you know, here we are 34 minutes, but I want to talk about Grant's class and it's a bit of a plug, but I have not been I have not Read a course description that I'm like, damn, I want to take that course in a long time, like really think it would be interesting. So what we're talking about is Grant McCracken, who you've had on The podcast, back in The day, a masterclass called Culture Camp. It just sounds so interesting. And there, it's like for people that need to see culture clearly and act fast. And, you know, there was, you know, caught my eye when you go to this website, there's a picture of, you know, Timothee Chalamet on there, which is, you know, I mean, a million, million hearts for Timothee Chalamet. But like, I'm like, Oh, yeah, I'm, I'm in I want to know what's The cultural impact of tracking someone's career like a Timothee Chalamet or a Cardi B or, you know, gosh, even just anybody in pop culture, like, what is it you need to Like, what is he going to be teaching to kind of decode cultural icons or cultural moments, and what it means for your brand, and how this culture analysis is going to be critical in kind of an AI-led world. I'm like, I am so interested in this class, so. Sign me up, Grant, and I am in.

[36:35] Lenny Murphy: Well, you know, it just so happens. I may have a hookup for you. Oh, will you hook me up?

[36:43] Karen Lynch: If you hook me up, then I may let us feature more about robots in a future Episode.

[36:51] Lenny Murphy: But yeah, you guys, follow The link. Grant's awesome. Cultural anthropologist, professor at The University of Chicago. Blah, blah, blah. But a specific thing is kind of looking at the future lens through data. And I love that about grants while we've been buddies over the years. But to your point, that's also all the stuff we're talking about. There's massive, profound changes that affect not just business, but humans. So...

[37:20] Karen Lynch: And to me, I'm like cultural anthropology lens speaks to me as somebody who has earned a living talking to people and understanding people, and then also just, you know, having done plenty of anthropology myself, or in The world of ethnography, not really anthropology, but, you know, adjacencies. Anyway, my point is, it's a really cool course. I'd love to get in on this one. I'd love to hear if you're getting in on this one, too. Like, if that sounds appealing to you, like, shoot me a LinkedIn message or something, because we can, like, talk about it together, because I think that is one of The coolest offerings to come out in The last year. So I'm psyched for you, I think so, too.

[37:58] Lenny Murphy: And I will follow up with Grant and Steve.

[38:02] Karen Lynch: Unexpected, but something. No, that's OK.

[38:05] Lenny Murphy: I think it's helpful, right? And that's also the last thing, and we keep going on and on. For us as researchers, as we expand our value and all this process becomes automated, it's this type of stuff that helps us increase our value that is innately human. And make sure that we still have jobs.

[38:32] Karen Lynch: Also indulge some curiosity at the same time.

[38:36] Lenny Murphy: Hey, we should have fun with what we're doing no matter what. But here's a great example.

[38:40] Karen Lynch: Well, but it's it to me, I see, you know, stepping out of myself for a minute with this offering. I see it as if I were to work on a brand. And again, I know a lot of brand marketers. So I think I think about them a lot on the brand side. If I were a brand marketer, I'd wanna know which of these cultural moments we need to like, yes, that's a bandwagon we have to hop on or let that one pass, we're gonna look like idiots if we go after it. And I think that just The ability to discern would be an expectation in a course like this to start to figure out how do I know which, I've done a lot of work with brands over The years talking about who can be a brand investor, who's a fit for our brand, and that sort of thing. In ideation, it always comes up. What celeb can we partner with to kind of elevate our brand to The next level on a lot of beauty brands and others, other food and beverage brands? But being able to discern this is an icon we should affiliate with, this is one we shouldn't, this is a moment we should just let walk right on by, or this is a moment we should stop and invest in. I just think that would be hugely valuable to brands.

[39:50] Lenny Murphy: And that predictive element, which is The other side of what we do. I wouldn't say it this way to advertise The exchange, but this is what we do every week. We look at this stuff and we're trying to predict. Now, to an extent, we're trying to put these together and predict in a fairly narrow focus. Yeah, I think about first and second and third order effects and potentials which You know Brands need to adapt. So when that moment comes, oh, yes. Karen said that this was a possibility. Well shit. Here we are now but we don't want to test that one Right, right.

[40:38] Karen Lynch: Yeah, they know they have more skills to discern human skills, right? If I should jump on a bandwagon, AI is going to say, what a great idea. Here's how you can do it. Because AI doesn't think critically about that sort of thing. Would you think, if you say, what about this? It'll say, oh, yes, here are the pros and cons. It's not going to tell you, yeah, that's a good winning idea. You still have to have those skills.

[41:06] Lenny Murphy: Let's wrap up this last thing, because it ties all this up. University of Quinnipiac built a multi-agent virtual town to simulate real marketing behavior and word-of-mouth effects. This was a paper, so it's an academic paper. It really is intensely interesting. From The idea of early, we're talking about using LLMs to do early stage ideation and concept testing.

[41:36] Lenny Murphy: Well, this is setting up a system of agents that have personas and are reacting to multiple variables in a simulated, kind of a Sims kind of world, I guess.

[41:52] Lenny Murphy: For early stage prediction and testing, right? So not a replacement for what we do, but an augmentation in the very early stages, let's just see what happens. It's a really interesting paper, really encouraging folks to, I guarantee you we're going to see a commercial launch or something like this here real soon.

[42:11] Karen Lynch: And then when, didn't we talk, I think it was either last week or The week before where we're like, you know, gosh, if, if you, if you, if you want to, if you want to, you know, do a little more than we're bringing to you on Fridays, like check out what The universities are doing. Cause man, student researchers are cool or, or PhD academics are cool. Just cool stuff.

[42:32] Lenny Murphy: IV. I don't know how to pronounce it. So that's how I'm just going to put it down. Uh, I mean, you can get lost in there. There are so many cool papers to be looked at in there. It's amazing. But yeah, so there we go.

[42:50] Karen Lynch: Yeah, there we go. That's just a short episode today.

[42:55] Lenny Murphy: You know what, guys? Let us know, because we keep freaking out thinking we got to get back shorter. But we seem to have a hard time doing that, and probably because I run my mouth too much.

[43:03] Karen Lynch: No, no, no, no. No, it is what it is. We could use feedback. We could use an email exchange at greenbook.org, little feedback on whether you guys are too long winded, tighten it up. We don't have time for 45 minutes, let alone, you know, 40, let alone 30. I can barely do 30. So let us know what you think. We're always welcome. Um, or you're always welcome to, to give us that feedback in our, in our inbox.

[43:28] Lenny Murphy: You will hurt our feelings. Um, or if you love it and you're like, no, keep on going. All right. Let us know that too.

[43:34] Karen Lynch: Yeah, look, if I do that, it shows. There we go. It's my favorite thing. Whenever you do that, Karley, I'm always like, ooh, and I can show it.

[43:40] Lenny Murphy: Very cool.

[43:42] Karen Lynch: Let us know. We'd welcome feedback. And in the meantime, we'll see you next week.

[43:48] Lenny Murphy: Everybody take care.

[43:49] Karen Lynch: The 14th, I think, is Friday the 14th. We're still ahead of Thanksgiving. That's all I know. I just have to keep up.

[43:55] Lenny Murphy: Thank goodness.

[43:56] Karen Lynch: We'll see you all next week. Have a great weekend. Stay warm, et cetera.

[44:01] Lenny Murphy: Bye, everybody.

Links from the episode:

Betsy Jane Peterson Award 

Kimberly-Clark agreed to acquire Kenvue for $48.7B 

Amazon is seeking to stop Perplexity’s AI agent from making purchases on its platform 

Tech Buzz argues “AI as a Service” and vertical AI are encroaching on traditional SaaS models. 

The $100B Question: How SaaS Giants Are Rewriting the Rules of Value with AI in 2025 

GWI announced an integration connecting its bias-checked audience data to Anthropic’s Claude 

Peekator unveiled a new survey platform with 20 question types 

SightX launched Advanced Automated Segmentation 

Cursory’s Brisk platform added built-in Ethical AI Compliance and configurable guardrails 

Tom Woodnutt argues independent researchers must act as “Guardians of Validity” 

System1 introduced “Test Your Ad Competitive Edge” 

iMotions released version 11 with expanded biosensor/eye-tracking support 

Grant McCracken launched “Master Class Culture Camp” 

Researchers from Clark University and Quinnipiac proposed an LLM-based multi-agent “virtual town”