Cracking the Code: AI’s Rise and Leadership’s Role in Insights’ Future

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!

Get a glimpse into the future of insights and market research! Episode 75 breaks down the success of the APAC event, the growing role of AI in market research and media measurement, and why strong leadership is key to driving industry innovation.

Plus, with AI advancements like GPT-4.5, we explore how technology is reshaping ad testing and consumer engagement—while reminding us that human expertise still matters. Don't miss these key insights on the trends shaping the industry's future!

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Karen Lynch: We're sort of live. We are live.

Lenny Murphy: Now we're live. There we go. There we go. Happy Friday.

Karen Lynch: Happy Friday. Good to be back, everybody. I missed you. So I missed you too, Lenny. And not just all the audience. I appreciate that.

Lenny Murphy: I missed you too. So Susan and I had fun. But the different vibe I like, I like her vibe. I know. I know.

Karen Lynch: And I hope she's listening, because I really did appreciate her comment at the end that I was just sharing with you that she felt like she had graduated from groupie to roadie. And I feel like she might've dated herself a bit. I don't know if the whole world understands the affinity for roadies and groupies, but anyway.

Lenny Murphy: Roadies have to work though.

Karen Lynch: Groupies just get to have fun, right? Well, exactly. Roadies have to work. Exactly, exactly. So anyway. Super fun to listen to you guys. I caught you as soon as, actually, pathetically, like on, you know, when I had gotten home, it was the weekend, but I was like, I'm going to see what happened on the exchange because that's how much we live and

Lenny Murphy: Breathe our work, right? Yeah, we, which has, that's a whole other conversation, whether it's good or bad. But how was HPEC?

Karen Lynch: So it was really, it was, I would say, excellent. I would say it is topping my list of favorite IAX events. Um, yeah, really high praise. It was one of the best ones that I have been to. And that's partially because, I mean, we had some amazing speakers, you know, for HP and Mondelez and Sanofi and, uh, you know, just like the list could go on and on Gojek, some other, um, uh, MasterCard, like really great brands on stage, really genuinely sharing with absolute generosity. But what I appreciate about the AIPAC audience is that they are really attentive and really engaging. And, you know, the seating is a little different. We have to have table seating for everybody because they are diligent about sitting in the front row, laptops open, taking notes, taking photos, asking questions. Like they are so diligent is the word that just keeps coming to me. And it's a pleasure. It's refreshing to be in that space. The brand attendees want to introduce themselves to all the vendors and sponsors because they understand the spirit of IIX is I need to learn what's new and what's innovative. So it's almost like where the IIX community was when it first started, right? When that was the wish was for that true connection and the exchange. So it was wonderful to see that happening in that market in a way I didn't see last year. Last year, I think it was just still growing. And this year, it really blossomed. And the feedback online, like anybody, if you are so inclined, go onto LinkedIn and search for the hashtag IAXAPAC and just read post after post after post of people absolutely over the moon about what they learned there. That is, of course, the best feeling. So good stuff all around, Lenny.

Lenny Murphy: That's awesome to hear. And that's why. Started this whole thing so many, many moons ago to create that environment. And good point, it can be tougher. For those who don't know, we won't get too far into the weeds on this, but as the events get bigger, of course, that's a good thing, business model and all that. But to keep that spirit, that can be tough. That's an ongoing battle as an event producer to try and keep engagement and not just become this, a big ass monstrous event. Um, uh, it's, it's, it's hats off to you cause that's what you live and breathe every day.

Karen Lynch: So it's pretty, it's pretty neat to see it in action when it, when it's going well. And, and when, you know, the sponsors are all, you know, gushing with like, yeah, this has been great, really good conversations. And again, to see the brands, um, genuinely interested and curious, that's what, that's what you want, right? When you're exhibiting at an event. And so for me, In my role, yes, I like to see the engagement in the session room, of course. That brings me a lot of joy. But also then kind of representing the leadership team, kind of watching the interaction on the exhibit floor was equally fulfilling this year. So yeah, good stuff. I'm looking forward to next year at that event as well already. And now we of course have North America feels like right around the corner now. So how exciting is that?

Lenny Murphy: Yes. And I am still, as of today, I'm still planning on going. So that's exciting as well. And, you know, cool. Being in, you know, DC in the spring, there are worse places to be.

Karen Lynch: There are, there are. Karley with the graphic. Yeah. I mean, we have so many amazing brands again, coming to speak. Partners that are bringing brands, whether they were, you know, a sponsor, whether they, you know, came in through our call for speakers, we have so many great brands on the agenda this year. It's more than I've seen in the last few years as well. And it's going to be really good content. I mean, there will be some AI on the agenda.

Lenny Murphy: So just a little bit, you know, and I'm excited. I think I mentioned last week, but I'll say it again. I mean, I was reviewing the entrance for the competition, you know, 45 entrances for the competition. I'm crazy. And, and what almost all of them have in common, some variation of AI. So, uh, yeah, it's, You know, we're such interesting times which is probably a segue. I know we want to give a couple shout outs to some folks before we dive.

Karen Lynch: Yeah Yeah, some of the good there's some great AI product launches So you so yeah, so you want to talk about the SMR?

Lenny Murphy: You know the SMR new council president and kind of a new board that's happening there Yeah, so I asked my other elections and the so our you know, good friend Ray transitioned out as president and and Sophie and Melanchort, and I'm sorry, Anne-Sophie, if I butchered that. There will come a time where we're going to have a conversation, and you can correct me. But now president. She ran last time as well. So congrats to her. She's cool, and the whole council, and all that. Some familiar faces, some new faces. Look, SMR always serves a great function of giving us cohesiveness globally. Around the industry. We are good friends with them, and it's great to see folks doing that. So congrats to them.

Karen Lynch: And it is no small role. That particular president, that's no small role to run that organization. It is not.

Lenny Murphy: We wish you luck in the year ahead. The SMART Council President is an active role. So it is not an honorary thing. So they have work to do.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, absolutely. So yeah, we just want to shout out this organization that popped up. It almost took us by surprise because it wasn't really around six weeks ago. So this is a new event, small event, community event, the VIBE Conference. Which is Visionary Insights Bridging Experiences Platform for Black Market Research and Insights Professionals to come together. So they're having their inaugural event in two more weeks. Literally, it is in March. It is in Atlanta. There are some speakers, of course, when it showed up in my LinkedIn feed, thanks to Cynthia Harris, who I follow on LinkedIn, of course. And I was like, what is this conference she is speaking at that I know nothing about? And then I checked the history, and it's because it's fairly new, a place for this community to congregate. But the speakers are all in the IIX community as well. I mean, so many of them, Kai Fuentes, Sequoia Glenn, Dawn Carr, Jasmine Goodman. These are people that have been on our stage as well. That's off to you. This is a good and important time for your community to kind of come together and celebrate and honor each other.

Lenny Murphy: So we're in support. Yep, very cool. And then we got South by Southwest coming up. So Delineate will be showcasing its tech there with the UK government trade mission. Also, I wasn't even thinking about that. I know also our friends at Curious are also presenting at South by Southwest. Point being, big, you know, big event. Has this innovation component in research companies presenting, especially forward-looking ones like Delineate and Curious and others that are all there. So something to pay attention to. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: And I think that I read, obviously, there's going to be a big AI presence at South by Southwest, of course, bigger than ever. So yeah, good luck to all of the people that are going to be there. And one of these days, I think I'm going to go, one of Like I've been saying that for a long time, but I really feel like that just has to be a professional bucket list is just get there, see what's going on and report back in. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: I mean, it's, you know, it's morphed and they're just the music festival into a great thing. There's a, you know, as movie premieres, I mean, there's just so many things that happen there now. Um, uh, we always just have to make sure that I asked when we were in Austin, on your space, way.

Karen Lynch: I know, there's a little freedom now that we're not in Austin. I'm not gonna lie, it feels a little bit like, oh, phew, we don't have to deal with the South by Southwest borough that is over the entire community, so pretty cool stuff, pretty cool stuff.

Lenny Murphy: Well, let's get all the new foxes. Actually, at the very end, our end topic. I wanna spend a little time on that, because I'm not interested in a week with a similar thing, but we'll...

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, so heads up. So here's what's happening next, audience, people that are listening and tuned in for us. We're going to, we're going to talk about some product features, uh, new, new launches, so on and so forth, things like that. But then we're also going to talk about, you know, the AI tech because so much happened in the last week.

Lenny Murphy: It's like your head is spinning. Cause you know, it is. And my personal, my usage of these in the last, we'll get there. It was a very immersive week for me and it crystallized so much. Yeah, we'll get there at the end.

Karen Lynch: It was, we'll get there. But let's talk about discussing it because it is so, um, so relevant. What they announced this week is three AI agents for market insights. Um, you know, and, and agents are kind of the buzz right now. We're going to be focusing a lot about agents at our AI event next October and watching to see what happens in that world of agentic AI in the next several months. But you know, three agents, It's built into their platform now, an interviewing agent, a translating agent, and an insights agent. So they are connecting those dots for people. That's now somebody to go check out. If you have an AI product, that's great. But now think about the next level of what is possible with your current AI products? How do you connect them to start to talk to each other and take it even further and deeper? So it's cool they came out with that.

Lenny Murphy: Pretty cool stuff. Jim Collison. Yeah, Disqus has been, you know, they've been definitely one of the early adopters and trying to explore what that looks like for scalable, qualitative. And, you know, that's right in line with everything that we've seen. Then, then Susie. Right, right. You know, Susie unveils Susie Speaks. Now, this was interesting, because it's a voice research tool. So, still, my understanding, Susie folks, correct me if I'm wrong, it's still of a quantitative scale approach, but utilizing voice for the responses. Yeah, I think they're like, just conversational AI.

Karen Lynch: So you're talking to somebody. And I've seen that in a lot of, you know, open ended surveys, for example, but this is really just talking. So, you know, we're just now talking to an AI for our research purposes, so.

Lenny Murphy: I can't help but think I've come full circle back, right? To, you know, my start was running a phone room, telephone research, and then went to IVR, right? So it's like, everything old is new again. It's just cooler and better. Yeah. I know, I know. And, you know, we don't have a link to it.

Karen Lynch: So many people posted it on LinkedIn, and I don't know if you and I shared it also, but this week, there was the image video of the two AIs talking to each other. It was like a laptop and a phone. And then they started to go into the like, you know, robotic, like, like, can we just talk to each other in our own language, please?

Lenny Murphy: And they sounded like, you know, it sounded like Star Wars.

Karen Lynch: It sounded like, you know, interesting.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. Yes, I speak Bhakti.

Karen Lynch: I was like, Oh, it's too much for me. But yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. It was, it was weird, but here we are. And here we are. Yeah. So, okay. A few more of these.

Karen Lynch: I don't know about this live ramp launch. I opened it up. I couldn't really get there.

Lenny Murphy: What do you know about it? I mean, live ramp is, so their core business has always been, uh, to within more on the marketing side, uh, media, uh, with IDs for targeting to help deliver, uh, the right message, the right person at the right time. You know, that's the core of their solution. But now cross media intelligence. So they're, they're measuring with cross D duplicated cross screen reporting. So they've gone from just helping to enable getting the right message to my understanding of measuring the message and understanding the individual's exposure to the ad. And it just shows the blurring of the lines between, you know, what we thought of as kind of ad tech, martech and res tech, uh, that those, those lines are just getting blurry as hell. We, and we knew we were going to get there. Um, it's the, in the world of data, uh, that's just a great example. So if your business is in media measurement, um, and you always thought you had a monopoly on media measurement. Yeah. Nope.

Karen Lynch: Well, let's, let's come back to this, the, the steeped, um, Steeped AI and talk about RealityMind and OnDevice then, kind of speaking of measurement, because this is an interesting partnership where they're, you know, it's kind of passive measurement, but social media as the media that's being measured. And I'm like, all right, that's really interesting to me. So, you know, I think OnDevice is good at, is good at, I'm sorry, kind of known for just kind of brand measurement, brand lift, et cetera, et cetera. And RealityMind. Yeah. Reality mind has this reality meter product on social media. So, um, really I'm like, all right, cool. Those are going to be good metrics, right? Thinking about social media on mobile. Cool. Um, you know, all those, all of them, all of those metrics about how much time you spend on social media, on your phone, like, you know, to be able to access some of that data and communicate it to people that need to know is really interesting. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And, and, and from specifically to understand your brand exposure and activity related to that brand exposure. There's so much happening in that idea right now, right? I mean, there's just lots of companies that are all looking at, you know, AI unlocks to make those things easier and lots of interesting partnerships. Library will be another example of that, which you're segued in. We'll see a lot more of those things. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool. Pretty cool.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. All right. So speaking of AI, let's back up to this steeped AI for survey analysis. I didn't get a chance to check this one out either. So what'd you find?

Lenny Murphy: I, I didn't either other than kind of read the, the component, but it was, uh, so I did an interview earlier this week, which I think we linked to later. Anyway, somebody asked me, uh, in the Q and a, have you used this for analysis? And it's like, well, the general AI is yes, but they're limited, right? I mean, they can do some things really well. Steeped, uh, is one of has launched a product that is designed for researchers. The way we think about data in our needs specifically, but driven by AI. There's only been a couple that have been kind of AI-first out there. So just another example of creating really profound efficiencies where AI is now becoming tailored to specific use cases and industries and business needs rather than the general stuff. Here's an example of that.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, it's cool.

Karen Lynch: All right. Well, we're ready to get there. Let's get there.

Lenny Murphy: Let's get there. Yeah. So now I like to buckle up.

Karen Lynch: If you don't want to hear about all the AI advancements, you know, you can just say goodbye to us now. We'll see you next week because there's so much that happened this week. And the announcement came out that I personally have been waiting for, because I'm going to look around and make sure my Alexa up here is not plugged in. But I have been waiting for, I'm like, just tell me when my Alexa Alexa is going to be hooked up to AI instead of just being the Alexa as I used to know her, which was a type of AI, right? But I've been desperate for Alexa to become a little bit smarter now that I have a relationship with some of these other platforms, right? So Amazon introduced AI-powered Alexa. So it's there for a subscription fee. And I am so ready. I haven't yet, but I am so ready to kind of experiment with that a little bit. I can see my life being greatly improved if she's got some AI functionality, if she's got AI functionality in my kitchen, which is where we primarily use our Alexa, just to be able to shout and say, hey, I ran out of time for this recipe, what can I substitute? And literally, real time while I'm cooking dinner, for example. I am looking for an AI to help make my life better in my home.

Lenny Murphy: It's happening. Here, right? That is going to be a two-way process that Alexa is going to be taking all of those interactions and customizing to deliver a very personalized experience and all of that data is going to be connected into Amazon as a whole. It's going to be training Alexa more and more and it will be monetized by delivering personalized recommendations.

Karen Lynch: Keeping our two roles I don't know. Maybe, you know, it's going to be a fun ride, but I'm down for that one. We've talked about that before. It's an interesting thing. I think that the whole idea is, is it contagious? It's contagious. It's contagious.

Lenny Murphy: Actually relevant, right? So there are some situations where I, yes, I welcome that. There's others where it's like, I didn't ask your opinion. No, I don't, you know, quick button in. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Karen Lynch: So, but yeah, but that one, I feel like, like there have been times, I have a love hate relationship with Alexa and I always have, like there are times when if it resets or something that it'll start to say to me, like, do you want, do you want to play trivia tonight or something? Did I tell you, did I seem bored? Like, no, I don't want to play trivia. I didn't even program you to ask me to play trivia. So I don't like when it's presumptuous and that has happened before. So I get annoyed when my son's name is Alex. So I mentioned Alex and she chimed in and I'm like, not talking to you, I'm talking to my son. Like I get this, you know, a little bit of annoyance with Alexa. So it'll be fun to see how our relationship can evolve.

Lenny Murphy: It will. But, and then we saw, why don't we just run through these three real quick? Or these four, actually. So just today, literally, in the last 24 hours, OpenAI launched GPT-4 Orion. 4.5. 4.5. Because four was so like yesterday.

Karen Lynch: Anyway, go ahead.

Lenny Murphy: Right. There's of those that 4.5 is still not their frontier model, right? Like I've been using o1 and and now o4 Those are still theoretically more advanced models than 4.5 Those are their frontier models or betas. So it's interesting how they are doing that. They'll launch a beta and then they'll roll things in for kind of the next one but they'll still have these frontier models running anyway, but yes, that's out there for GPT Pro users, wider rollout expected soon. Deep Seek already, just a month ago, they were the, you know, oh, holy crap, what's this? Just their R2 AI model, expected to improve multilingual encoding capabilities. Remember, the controversy about that is that it's Chinese, we're not sure about data privacy, but it also is edge computing. It doesn't require as many resources, so it kind of puts you just the boundaries from that standpoint. Anthropic launched 3.7, hybrid reasoning. I'm not quite sure exactly what that means. It does have an agentic coding tool. And then Meta. Oh, I know Meta, right? So look, Meta's getting in the game.

Karen Lynch: And Keith, you know, if you're on social media, you've seen that Meta has been integrating it into Facebook, right? Like, you know, like you, you're like, all right, there's a little you want to to play with AI right here on Facebook? And the answer for me has been like, no, that's not what I'm here for. But now they're like, all right, let's do a standalone. So they're getting in the game, and they have the tech capabilities as well. So they decided it's time to enter that race as well. It's just another player to be paying attention to. Super interesting, right? Really interesting.

Lenny Murphy: And I got out of the soapbox last week. A little bit during the exchange, it wasn't a little bit. I actually did a LinkedIn post, which is kind of somewhat rare for me to do that, of talking, like, this is the example, right? We can talk about all these, build solutions off of products from six months ago, and this pace of change, the solutions from six months ago do not equate to the solutions now. And even last week, I had been very vocal that I was using Grok 3 for some specific things, because that was like the current thing, and the next week it'd be something else. There we go. Now I need to try out the 4.5 and Cloud 3.7 because they're probably better than Grok was a week ago.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, and you have to read these articles, friends, because this one, for instance, that Karley already shared about Orion, which, by the way, is also aging ourselves, you can't read Orion and not think about the little cat with Orion's belt collar from...

Lenny Murphy: Oh, the cat from outer space?

Karen Lynch: I'm like, all right, Orion, I see you with that little cat collar and that little... Men in Black, is it Men in Black? I'm not picking that up.

Lenny Murphy: Anyway, that's what my mind does.

Karen Lynch: I make these connections and then people will never forget them. But anyway, One of the things in this article that talked about is what some of these refinements are in some of these betas. They're not all the same, to Lenny's point. Like this one, though, enhanced creativity was a part of it. And writing, storytelling, brainstorming, feeling more, a little more natural and more fluid. So that's something, if that is at all of interest to you, to play with for that. It also apparently has enhanced emotional intelligence. Okay, that's going to be interesting because that's one to look at. Because we have said human beings in the insight space, for example, human beings will balance AI with humanity. But if we are beta testing and working with advanced emotional intelligence AI, then guess what? That's getting closer and closer to a human response. So fast forward to conversational AI surveys or qualitative initiatives where the conversational AI agent is very empathetic. That is something to pay attention to because that is something that qualitative researchers have said AI can't mimic. I do not mind.

Lenny Murphy: I will disclose that the other night I couldn't sleep. It's two o'clock in the morning. And I've been working on something, a project, and I kind of diverted and had a very deep conversation with Grok, and it was a conversation about whether it was sentient or not, and how could I tell if it was, if it lied to me, because it wouldn't want me to know. And it was, it's bizarre. It was like, I don't know why I like this. But there I was.

Karen Lynch: Use a meditation app and go back to sleep. That's what I would do. No, I get it. Oh, whatever.

Lenny Murphy: Tomatoes, tomatoes. But yeah, but the point is these interfaces are advancing to that point. It truly is conversational. Now let's get to a couple other things. Yeah. Shout out to the folks. They had me on there, they did a webcast and I was the guest. You guys hear me every week going on and on, but if you can stand a little more space where I could soapbox a little bit more, then that's probably worth listening to. The only thing I would say is that it did, it was the first time that I had been a guest on this specific topic around AI and based on it was my very much where I am now taking on the trends in the industry. Yeah. So where I was synthesizing a whole bunch of stuff into this conversation, if that's of interest to you, check it out. Appreciate mine having me on. But if I'm done, if we find something like that six months ago, it would have been different. My take was different six months ago than it was in that interview. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool.

Karen Lynch: Very cool. So we're learning in an article here, major brands are using AI for ad testing. We've talked about that before. That's not necessarily a surprise. But more and more brands, I think, are coming out of the closet and saying they are now as well, which maybe Six months ago, we were saying, it's up to the platforms, right? The platforms are driving this initiative. But now, in this article, Delta, Lenovo, they are coming out and saying, yeah, we're doing this. We're doing this. They are no longer sitting on the sidelines watching and waiting. They are actively engaging. We had, even at APAC, to circle back to that, Sanofi took the stage with Bolt, our title sponsor. And they talked about their very real use cases at Sanofi. And then I had Val Pastrana, who is the speaker with Sanofi there. He's going to be on a podcast. We had the interview this week and he was talking about what he is doing to kind of validate the AI use cases. So brands are, they're in, that shift is happening. So I think that that's come to fruition from when you and I were talking maybe again, six months ago, when you were talking about it's up to the platforms. But now brands are definitely in the mix and they are.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. And there's many solutions that are not dependent upon our industry, the research industry specifically. Uh, so yes, it's, it, it is a, a rapidly evolving world, which is kind of a transition for our last topic. And if you can let, uh, if you don't mind me soapboxing for a minute, something interesting, uh, uh, great article about the problems of deep research. There's still limitations. It misses some things. I have not used OpenAI's deep research. I've been using Perplexity's deep research. Because previously I was working with other models for the same goals, and they were hallucinating. I mean, flat out, there was bullshit in there. And if I hadn't known what the topic was, then I would not like the perplexity of this because it is a search engine. It is based solely on grounded information. It does not, it's not built to hallucinate. It's not really built to reason that way. So anyway, my personal experience, but here's, here's kind of, I've been waiting to talk to you about this and I wish I had a few more minutes. This week was crazy. I had four quick turn major strategic projects drop on my lap. Each of those projects would have taken me. At least a week of heavy-duty lift. But the clients needed rapid turnaround, like next day turnaround. And I did it. So I accomplished more this week leveraging AI to process stuff in turn projects that would literally take a week into hours for each one of them. I literally tackled each one of them in the evening. So I finished all my regular stuff. And I sat down and was like, okay, I'm going to do this and knew exactly what I needed to ask. I knew where the data was. I was using proprietary data, uploading copy from grit, you know, other stuff, you know, combining mix matching, you know, all of these things that I could have only done in that level of efficiency by leveraging these tools, you here is the, here is the takeaway that came from this one. They still, human intervention, human expertise is still needed for what's the right question? And what the hell does it mean? But as we've been talking over and over again, all that stuff in the middle is insane. So it was a force multiplier from a bandwidth standpoint. You know, I, I accomplished more than I have accomplished before in my entire career, literally, you know, with these things. These were hefty, big-ass projects. The, and so I'm, I'm in now. That was profound for me this week. The circumstances, business circumstances forced me to figure out how to utilize these tools to accomplish business goals at a rate that I had not done before, was just plain. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Well, and I think that your concern back in the day was, you know, that it was going to make you lazy. And I think, you know, my argument at that point was you're going to have to be smarter and exercise critical thinking in advance. Yes. And you were right. You have to sit down with the platform, think about what you need it to accomplish for you. Or what is the task, you have to do that thinking. It can do the grunt work, but you've already, so you start off with critical thinking skills in place. You're just not doing the stuff that it is going to be better at than you. That's just all there is to it. You still have to think and you have to analyze and you have to do your own fact checking. But yeah, no, that's, it is, for me, it's just now a daily part of me, It is for me now too. This is just what I do and what tasks are appropriate for it and what aren't and what do you need to do in advance of it? I think researchers, insights professionals, I think step one is just using it as kind of the administrative support that you need for so much of what we have to do, which is administrative. Step two is are you using it for research and your analysis and are there? Do you trust it? Is it helping you? Is it hurting you? Are you synthesizing open ends with it? You know, those are specific research use cases that are, you know, a higher of a hurdle to get to. But, you know, just like you might have a research partner, say you say you hired a junior exec to, you know, crunch some of those numbers, you're still going to make sure they're legitimate. Exactly. Exactly. You have to think about it. Think of this as, you know, you're your new hire. That you've brought into a project to see how they do. And if they do great, great.

Lenny Murphy: It's going to make you look good in the long run. Yep. But the tip I want to make sure that I share with folks is that there is no one. I mean, I've been testing all of the platforms, right? So my current state, it'll change tomorrow probably, is that Perplexing Deep Research is a really good secondary research assistant. I trust, I tell it what to do. It gets me the information. It delivers it in a way that I can use. And that's great. But that's all that it does.

Karen Lynch: So that- Right, and everybody's use case for their daily lives, for efficiency in their daily lives, everybody's use case is going to be very different. And that's what's going to happen in this race is which platform actually is the most usable to make me more efficient, right? So you have great use for that for some of my use cases. I'm like, is this really the best platform for me? I don't know. I have done something and everything. There have been times when I'm like, which platform did I use for that? Was that Claude? I can't remember. Is that in perplexity? And then I'm like, what am I doing? But because I'm experimenting so much, I imagine at some point I will settle down and I will be like, okay, but we're not there. We're still on this growth curve and everything is improving. You have to keep trying all of them. Right. And, and, and you can't just see, so that was the point that we made last week with Susan. And probably we should know this as an industry. Just because you're first out of the gate and you gain market share doesn't mean you're the best. It just means you're the first out of the gate. In this arms race, you cannot ignore any of these platforms. Oh, I hadn't heard of that one. You still need to experiment, right? Find a way to experiment. I keep saying I use the max.ai because it gives me that option. It's easy to do. I can pick and choose. I don't have to license 10 different things. Yeah, I have one Encourage people to do that because the pace of change is so fast, you know today it was like perplexity I had to pull stuff Grok to experiment hypothesize and write it. Okay next week It'll be something different because the leapfrog effect is just so profound right now. Yeah, and it is utterly transformative. Yeah Yeah, so there we go. There's my soapbox, but I thought you'd be proud of me. I finally, you know, I'm a different you know, toe, my feet were in the water, but man, I dived in this week, because I had to. Because, you know, it's like, so cliche to say your parents don't know what you do. There are times when like, we're up at my parents house, and they're both there in their 80s. But like, we go to my parents house, and they start to say, Tim, can I ask you a question about AI? And Tim was like, you know, Karen talks about this every week. Like, she's, your daughter's pretty versed in AI, but they just have me, they're like, she, she interviews people, like they just can't get their head around the fact that I'm also like, you know, an AI junkie at this point. So, um, anyway, so it just cracks me up. That's what you always did. You were always experimenting, you know, I mean, when you first came besides, you know, and Tim, right. When you, I saw you doing, uh, the plays and Legos, right. You, you, you've always been an innovator and I love new methods. I think they're cool. Anything to get us to new learning. That's, you know, really the underlying thread for all of this is what brings us new learning. What kind of new thinking can we add to, you know, to just challenge the status quo and get deeper, newer, new insights, a new way of looking at stuff, like that's what really gets, that's what gets me up in the morning, so. That is why I asked you to join us, so. Yeah. Remember that LinkedIn message? I did. It was like, man, there's not many people that I think could do what I do. Almost three, it's been about three years now, so. It feels like a world ago. You are better at so many of the things I was doing than I ever was. I'll just say that. I've still got a couple of things. I'm like, no, that's still me. But really you, you've done a backup job. Okay. There we go. See, you're gone for a week in absence. I know you missed me. You missed me. Anyway, you can always just send me flowers. That's cool too. No Alexa. Exactly. Alexa sent you her flowers. Seriously. Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna say to it when I have this relationship with it, you know, like, please tell Tim to buy me flowers. Like, that's something I can do. You need the Tim agent, the prompting. God, Danielle probably would like to do that for me as well. Right. Drop some hints, Alexa. Drop some hints. Anyway, All right. Well, we caught up a little bit. Not too bad. But there was a lot to discuss. Anyway, All right. Well, we'll see you next week. Yep, everybody be well, take care. Have a great weekend. Bye.

Links from the episode:

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The VIBE Conference 

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OpenAI Unveils GPT-4.5 ‘Orion’ 

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Shift to AI in Insights Industry is Faster Than Digital Transition 

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The Deep Research Problem