AI Revolution or Replacement? Critical Insights for Business Leaders

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AI is transforming everything from mental health care to market research, but it's not without its challenges. Dive into the latest advancements, like Google’s Gemini 2.5, and the growing debate around AI-generated art. Karen Lynch and Lenny Murphy also explore how AI can sharpen brand strategies and decision-making, while reminding ourselves that human intuition and critical thinking are more important than ever in an AI-driven world.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Lenny Murphy: And we're live.

Karen Lynch: And we're live.

Lenny Murphy: We got it that time.

Karen Lynch: We did. Isn't that awesome?

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. We were not in mid-sentence.

Karen Lynch: So good. We're so good going into Friday. That's awesome. Yeah. Yes. And on that note, happy Friday to everybody.

Lenny Murphy: And to you, Karen. Happy Friday. Yes. Thank you.

Karen Lynch: It's, um, I, you know what? I spent the night in New York City last night. Cause there was a New York AMA event that we went to and, um, literally just got back. Within the hour, I already feel like my weekend has begun because I woke up in the city.

Lenny Murphy: I have to, as soon as this is done, I have to pack for us to head to Atlanta.

Karen Lynch: So my wife has been side-eyeing me all morning, like, are you going to pack? Are you doing this?

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, so going into the weekend as well, which is probably a good segue, then we should jump into it. Yeah, let's jump in.

Karen Lynch: There's so much. I was really having a hard time when I was looking at everything. Scaling back. So, you know, we're doing the best we can here. But Lenny, I don't know if you saw this. I know I just shared it this morning. So I don't know if you had a chance to look at it. But research has come out, and this is kind of off-topic. However, we've talked about mental health before. And it's been, you know, kind of a theme in some of our podcasts. But it's like something that I think is really hopeful in the world of AI, and I felt like we should share it. You're cool with that?

Lenny Murphy: I guess I'm asking permission, even though we're going to do it anyway. Lenny Kravitz Yes. As long as it's about my mental health, we're fine.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, we're not going there. But no, the New England Journal of Medicine has published a study exploring how LLMs and in particular kind of gen AI chatbots are performing clinical diagnoses and giving cognitive behavioral therapy practices and advice for people who are turning to it in this study. And it's just very promising. When you think about the mental health crisis in our, certainly in our country, in our world, that there might actually be something that maybe would kind of be a plus side of all of this generative AI and all these tech developments. If more people, if you feel more comfortable talking to a chat bot and it actually helps your mental health, that feels somewhat brilliant to me. A lot of people resist going to therapy and talking to people, but maybe talking to a chat bot offers a path to better health that I just hadn't thought of before. That's very promising.

Lenny Murphy: My only concern, there was a thing that we shared that we didn't make it in, but I think it's just appropriate. There seems to be a lot of attention being paid right now to the models doing things differently based on the training set and even the assumptions built in. And I think that's becoming apparent and we just have to kind of recognize in any of these worlds where we're utilizing these tools to be very clear on what went into it. I would hate to be utilizing a chatbot therapist that was trained on some tainted data. So I think we just, there's almost a buyer beware component. You have to be really clear on how we adopt what went into building them. I liked the ingredients, right? I think we're that way, but to your point, the potential for scalability and for creating lots of new tools for so many people, I think is amazing. Let's just make sure that they're built right. They're built right.

Karen Lynch: Exactly. Pressure is on the developers there. But for real, I just thought it was hopeful because of the kind of the speed at which things are advancing, and I think, like I was like, let's just start with some of the big advancements this week because they're big. Because, you know, it's not slowing down for anybody. And then we'll get into some industry specific stuff. But I just think with everything that's advancing, I like when there's something that feels really hopeful because some of it, so much of it can get to a little bit of like, you know, unnerving and fearful, right? I haven't used Gemini 2.5. I haven't gone there yet, but Google launched Gemini 2.5. Have you experimented with that at all?

Lenny Murphy: I haven't yet, although I am looking forward to what I plan to experiment with within Google Sheets and Google Drive. I think that's a really interesting application. It appears, for instance, in Google Sheets that you can do analysis with it.

Karen Lynch: That'd be great.

Lenny Murphy: So, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, that's one to try. I mean, for people, you know, at Green Book, we use the Google ecosystem, whereas, you know, there's so much of the corporate world that is in, you know, kind of co-pilot in the Microsoft ecosystem. So I just think it's going to be interesting to see how these tools just have to keep getting better and better in either, in whichever ecosystem you are operating in.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. Although I would say it's all for that comparison, because I've been very disappointed with the co-pilot. Copilot has not been an aid to me because I use both, right? I still like just having my hard drive and whatever anyway but it has not been very useful in doing things. It's been more like search on steroids has been my experience with copilot. I'm hoping that Gemini 2.5 is more integrated as an assistant to do things.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, super interesting to watch. You know, another big story. I wish I had an example to share with you.

Lenny Murphy: Not that one.

Karen Lynch: Open AI introduced GPT for its image generation capabilities this week. So it's been all over the internet, lots, you know, shared on LinkedIn and all that have different outputs, image outputs, that are, you know, better than we've had so far. And it's cool if you ever played around with image generation, like it's cool what you can get for free, you know, or with your subscription now, you know, without having to go to an app for it. Even though it's like right here, it's very interesting. It's like this era of, you know, I don't want to call it free intelligence, but there's something about this idea that it's like, gosh, it's right here.

Lenny Murphy: I could do this and don't design and don't have to pay the creator . Anyway, the interesting point though is that what I saw a lot was Studio Ghibli. If you've ever watched, you know, Ponyo and Spirited Away, those types of movies. Anyway, it's a very specific anime style. Yeah And just saw people creating every you know image, you know with that style. Yeah Really cool. I saw an interview with the Korean of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki, who was aghast. He was horrified. With the standpoint of, that's not art. And so it brings up an interesting point. My wife made the bet last night, we were talking about this. She's like, I think that the more we see AI image creation, the more we'll increase the value of human generated art. The AI stuff is the easy right everybody can do it but it will cheapen it I guess right. So the real Sweat, you know, painters , that type of stuff that will become more valuable is just interesting . I wouldn't debate that, I think that that's just interesting. You've given everybody the same powers. Yeah and God, if I was a designer, I would be really scared. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: I was speaking to somebody just speaking to somebody last night whose, you know, child is an artist and trying to think about, you know, they're the career ahead of them. And it's like, well, you know, well, let's let's discuss that. You know, there's got to be an avenue where you can channel all of that creative energy that doesn't feel under siege right now.

Lenny Murphy: So. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: That's pretty, pretty interesting.

Lenny Murphy: That's the flip side, because as fun as it is, there's also something.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: You know, kind of like, you know.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. We all know what we're saying, right? We all don't want to say, is it going to replace human beings in any way, shape or form? And you know, we have some stuff to read later on. We'll share some recommendations about, you know, what's to come. But, you know, it's good to track all things, right? So that people are aware of where we're headed. And we encourage people to have their own thought processes going on and do some critical thinking about what you think it means. Because right now there is a lot of speculation on all of this. I mean, we can come in here and say this, and you can share what your wife is speculating about, and we can share what this person I met at this event last night was talking about. But it is really, we do not have certainty. At this point, there is no pure crystal ball of what the future is going to bring.

Lenny Murphy: We're just along for the ride now, right? And I think that's probably the operative takeaway here. We bring up these things, so these new advances, literally every week, it's not just a marginal increase, it's kind of a step change. So yeah, pay attention, guys.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, so another thing, you know, this, again, this talk that I'm going to keep referencing, it was the New York AMA and it was inclusive leadership in the age of AI. So kind of breaking barriers, it was a lot of women in leadership primarily. But talking about the age of AI. So of course things came up, including agentic AI and what is possible right now. And these are, you know, these are chief marketing officers at large brands talking about agentic AI. And so I think even if you're slow to the agent conversation, get on board that one, right? Because that is also here. And I think, you know, CB Insights mapped out the AI agent market. Great resource to share. Carla can share this link too. But if you just want to start to look at, again, kind of a map of who's playing in the agent space, it's a good find.

Lenny Murphy: They are, and increasingly powering everything, right? So yeah. And CB Insights, by the way, if you don't subscribe to CB Insights, you should. It's one of the daily newsletters I look forward to. They're usually actually very entertaining and insightful. Good information, because this is what they do. They do what Karen and I do on steroids. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Now, speaking of agents, speaking of agents, yes, go right ahead. Oh, well, so Qualtrics Edge, you know, last week was their X4 event. And we already talked about, you know, FOMO of that. But Qualtrics Edge, a market intelligence platform enhanced with AI for next Gen Insights. Here's the thing, there's an edge stage at IIEX. Traditionally, Qualtrics has kind of flirted with the traditional market research industry. You know, they're getting, they're getting engaged now, right? There's no flirting. This, this, yes, yes, this suite of solutions, it's full-on courting, right? The suite of solutions designed for much broader use cases within the research space, not just kind of the CX space. They always have that capability, but they're really paying attention to building a platform and a series and organizationally, the resources to support insights organizations, and they're making a big push into, into the industry. And yeah, and AI is baked into all of this. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: So if you're coming to You will see them there. They will have a very unique space and be actually kind of putting on some of their content, you know, kind of to complement ours. So it'll be, they'll be, we'll be adding their stuff right onto the agenda as well. So it's great news, a great partnership for us at this point, but also look for them. You can't miss them and see what they're doing because they are making moves, making moves.

Lenny Murphy: They are making moves. And now they're competitive.

Karen Lynch: So whose event was this week, this past week, Medallia, their event was this week. So two, you know, kind of CX competitors in that space specifically, but Medallia also unveiling new AI features for their CX platform and work. So, you know, keeping it real for anybody who's tracking CX, like this is just, this is table stakes, right? Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Well, and here comes another one. Right, the, you know, Meltwater, which has been, you know, more of a social media listening type of platform. In general, they do more than that. But that's kind of just part of Nice. Nice is one of the big CRM platform, enterprise platforms. So if you call in a call center, they're probably utilizing Nice, right. And they're probably integrated with either Medallia or Qualtrics at the Nice level. Now, uh, the meltwater, uh, integrating social insights. So somebody calls in, well, so the monitoring I've, I've had success for this, by the way, I've had a problem and I wasn't getting satisfaction through, through, uh, uh, calling into customer service and I would, would tweet about it or whatever it'd be social. Uh, and I would get a response that satisfied me. So they're integrating that into the ecosystem, uh, into the tech stack. So. So organizations can track all these different touch points with the brand and the customer through social platforms, as well as direct contact, et cetera, et cetera.

Karen Lynch: So it's all converging. It's all coming together. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah.

Karen Lynch: And what's interesting, more and more, whether it's social intelligence or customer intelligence or business intelligence or artificial intelligence, There's a key word that keeps coming up, friends, and it's just intelligence. Like all of this stuff, for lack of a better word, all of this stuff is making us all smarter, hopefully smarter researchers and smarter business leaders and all that, because we have access to so much that is helping grow our intelligence. So anyway. Hopefully. Hopefully. I think so. I think so. I think so. I think we have to get smarter to know how to use everything that's at our disposal right now. We have to be smarter, otherwise we won't be able to access it.

Lenny Murphy: I still worry about dependency, even for myself. There was something that didn't make it in, and that's fine, but it was a Microsoft study on whether people were losing some critical thinking skills. It was enough to say that it's a concern. It is something that we do have to keep recognizing. That it should make us smarter, not dumber, but take it either way.

Karen Lynch: I think that critical thinking skills are required to use all these, to analyze all of the different options that are available, to phrase your wording of prompts, to maximize the output that you get. Garbage in, garbage out goes for the user as well. So critical thinking is being applied just in a different way. So that's where I would say like, I don't have that same feeling because I think that, you know, that we're going to be able to see the results of people who are still skilled in that area because they're not only actively using and trying, but experimenting and changing the way they ask and changing the way they prompt and changing the way they build using the critical thinking skills.

Lenny Murphy: You know, as a liberal arts major, I would love to, you know, I took philosophy and, you know, debate and all of those things. And I would love to see those make a comeback. Because that's fundamentally where we're getting to where we need to be. One last point on that. It didn't make it in. It was just an aside. I saw- There was a lot.

Karen Lynch: There was a lot. There was a lot. I'll never get through it all.

Lenny Murphy: I didn't even share this one. I just saw a post from the CEO of some tech company, and I forget what it was, saying, look, six months ago, I would have said, everybody needs to learn how to code. Now I'm saying, nah, don't waste time. Learn how to think. Learn how to think. Learn how to write. Learn how to think critically. Learn how to guide and ask questions. Because the tools do the grunt work. And I thought that was very telling and good advice on the same topic.

Karen Lynch: But I mean, for fun, for sport, you could pull up your favorite GPT and say, engage me in, you know, in a critical thinking debate on topic X, Y, or Z, like literally engage me. And it will, it will, it will start to challenge you and pose questions for you to consider. Like, you can ask it to do anything. You can be in charge of your own growth in this space and your own learning. And, you know, hey, help me think critically about this. Like, I don't want to just rely on you. Help me crit, crit, think critically about what I'm asking you to do. And it will do that.

Lenny Murphy: Like, it really wants to please us. Yep, yep, yep.

Karen Lynch: All right.

Lenny Murphy: Speaking of pleasing. Yes. Pure Profile, whom we've had a long time, I personally have had a very long relationship without Australia. And they've been on a tear lately, just launching new product after new product. This week did, launched a series of AI tools in a part with Quilt.ai, whom we have mentioned before, to analyze online conversation, consumer sentiment, and emerging trends. And so it's really cool to see that convergence of a, you know, its core panel platform with a variety of data collection tools and solutions enabled, now leading in with kind of the AI non, non research data tools as part of the offering to just kind of broaden the kit, I think we're just going to see more and more. It's kind of like the meltwater and nice thing, right? We're just converging these solutions into one place to give us access to lots of different perspectives and data to drive better decisions.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Well, I mean, this Pulsar launch, so we have another kind of launch. Pulsar has narrative AI, and it's kind of a search engine designed to uncover hidden public opinion, right? That's like the summary there. But there's a quote from this press release that Karley’s sharing. While everyone obsesses over analytics on things like sentiment and topics, the real competitive edge lies in spotting and leveraging the narratives flowing through public opinion. And it's like, oh, that's interesting. So again, it's more of that like, it's like social intelligence with a little bit of storytelling in there because we're talking about narratives, but what are the pre-existing narratives? It's analyzing billions of posts and stories from social and news media. So this is a tool that if I were still executing research, I'd be like, I really want to be checking this out to kind of validate, to corroborate stories I was telling, to bring stories to life. I would be thinking of all the ways I could start to see what else already exists out there. If I'm getting a hint of something through qualitative research, for example, how is it? How is it backed up if it's backed up in what people are already saying?

Lenny Murphy: I love this tool, Narrative AI. Yeah, the Pulse R team, they've been doing cool stuff for a long time. Hats off and shout out to Francesco and his team. It is interesting. I mean, the very cynical component is narrative shape perspective, period. And that's an uncomfortable thing to admit sometimes, but understanding that, and if you want to combat those narratives change perspective, these are the types of tools that help us do that. So yeah, it's, uh, it's pretty cool.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Um, uh, speaking of, of narratives changing, yeah, movers and shakers, right.

Karen Lynch: Let's, uh, let's talk about it. Uh, to Toluna is, is, is bringing brands together under their umbrella, Harris interactive gut check and metrics lab all under a single identity now moving forward. So, all right.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, I think most people don't even know that Toluna owns Harris Interactive, got checked in the metrics lab, right? Right, right.

Karen Lynch: I would have been like, oh, that's interesting. But OK, like I didn't realize, you know, this if you had told me this was an acquisition, I would have said, cool. But now I'm like, oh, I didn't really realize that those were unique brands under that umbrella. So good for them bringing it all together.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's important. Look, we say from the grip 50, the four, I'll even tell the story. When we started really doing it at 50, Kantar had a problem, because it was T&S and Miller-Brown, and they were like, But wait, wait, but we're Kantar. It's like, Well, no, you're not. And your, your, your customers think of you as these pieces, not as a whole. And, and because of that, they shifted and tried to bring it all into Kantar. And they were largely successful, although for years, and even still to this day, we will still get people saying Miller-Brown because in their brains, that's the brand, it's Miller-Brown. So it is important when you're building an integrated brand and you're consolidating to go through that process if you want the brand perception and mindshare to the core brand, not to the sub-product. Anyway, yeah, it was fun trying to figure out how to do all that. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Well, and on some level, um, you know, we have that here at green book with, you know, we have grit, which I think people are all like, yep, that's Greenbook. And then we have a, IIEX, which some people say is less clear. Um, so you know, not a different brand IIEX or not a different company. It is a green book, but, um, but some people need that link to be made for them. So we're just like Toluna, really?

Lenny Murphy: We are just like a saloon. Frederick, we're like brothers.

Karen Lynch: We're twins, twinsies.

Lenny Murphy: So speaking of which, I was at Quest Group. Now, this is interesting. You and Keith, shout out to you and Keith. So their strategy is buying companies and creating an integrated whole. They just bought Jay Reckner Associates, Qual, Pharma, Sensory, that's what Reckner is always, uh, uh, and they really, really wanted the panel, uh, particularly their, their kind of healthcare panel. Uh, so it'd be interesting to see whether they, uh, keep those sub brands or they all start rolling up into Acquiesce or something else. And a big shout out. Um, the Acquiesce group is sponsoring the award for the insight innovation competition at IIEX. Um, which is, they're the perfect company to do that because they are investing in acquiring companies and building their business. So thank you, Hugh and Keith, for that award money to give to their companies.

Karen Lynch: And I personally am so excited because I'll get to welcome them to the stage.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, it's your old buddies here, all hanging out at the bar, buddies.

Karen Lynch: So yeah, no, it feels like a big win all around. And even that they'll be tuned in for our five finalists to recognize the gift of having this group paying attention to your pitches. No pressure, right? But yes, pressure. Like, that's a big deal. They're going to be attentively paying attention to those five pitches, which feels like it just brought a different, just brings a different vibe to the competition itself. So I'm really excited about that because these men certainly know what they're doing. So they will be there. And they will be ready to, to see what happens on a related note.

Lenny Murphy: I heard yesterday through the grapevine, uh, I was talking to, to a good friend of ours. Um, and she said, you know, I am hearing from so many clients. Well, I'll just meet you at IX. Um, the, uh, like sending whole groups, you know, big brands sending whole groups of clients. Um, like we'll just, we'll just meet there. It also, uh, so that she was hearing lots of investors, um, and that has always been one of the differentiators because of the competition and the level of startups and early stage companies that are there. Um, so just we'll, we'll, we'll see. Um, but, uh, it's going to be fun. Yeah, it is going to be fun.

Karen Lynch: I'm getting very excited about that. So yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. A month out.

Karen Lynch: I mean, we're hitting our, we're hitting our, um, our incredibly busy times. So I, I asked the audience to give us some grace and get back to, So back to emails, we work really hard at that. But you might start to see a delay in getting back to people, because this is when it's on. We've got just a couple weeks left. But it's really going to be fantastic.

Lenny Murphy: I'm so excited about it personally, really excited about it. Yeah, very cool.

Karen Lynch: All right, these last two, we may actually end on time. Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, close, right? But I think this e-book by JD, it's a fantastic read. It's about whether to talk about SAS, Software as a Service, and, you know, kind of how it is a part of this kind of research transformation. I haven't read it cover to cover yet, but much of our company has, and you have as well. So a pretty good link to share here to read up and see what J.D. Has put together, because it's good thinking about our industry and the intersection of software as a service in general, and the market research industry, so.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, yep. Again, details we've mentioned before, HFS and their service as a software concept. Yeah, yeah, yep. They dovetail. Bottom line, guys, tech removes processes, humans are still necessary. Yeah. That JD goes into much greater depth than that. Yeah. So I'm not trying to give away the punchline. Yeah. From his experience, working in SaaS companies, I think is really valuable. So good stuff.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, good stuff there, good stuff there. And I haven't read this Research Live one there, but it seems like something that we should be talking about because it is about human judgment. So AI plus human judgment equals the future, really. Or the immediate future, that's where we are now. So did you get a chance to read this one, too?

Lenny Murphy: I did. Moving Beyond Algorithmic Loops. Into it love it's what we've been talking about right the Even that here will tie things together. So we've brought up this kind of concern throughout this conversation of you know AI could be as much a force for good as as much and bad depending upon how we utilize it and adapt to it. Yeah, right The and that's the bottom line of this of it's assuming that it's all good. It is going to replace process it is going to replace many things that that manually we do today already is but is the human understanding what really is an insight what is the insight mean how does it move the business right what is the impact those things are human elements that you know we're the we're the mix masters right we're the DJs so we're putting all those things together and And that was the gist of it. And we need to keep that in mind. Yeah. Not just to give it all to the machine.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Because it's missing what's needed, which is human intuition and experience. And, you know, that aha moment. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Well, you know, last night, one more thing about this event, the one of the interviews they had, they featured on stage is her name is Marie and she is the SVP Global Brand and Consumer Marketing for the NFL. And they, amazing woman, amazing story, amazing role that she is in right now. And not just a woman working for the NFL as an organization, but what she talked about when it comes to AI and humanity is much about, much of the work they did for the Super Bowl. And she said, you know, that they had individuals, they had, you know, of course, using AI internally for a lot of things. But it's the human beings that brought something as iconic as the Super Bowl to life. It won't have the same panache if you take away a human artist who's connected, in this case, to the New Orleans community, for example, who understood the nature of what it is to be from New Orleans. And if you lose that ability to connect what AI AI is creating with the people themselves, it will not be as successful. So she was a great advocate for the fact that it is. It's human plus AI working in tandem, leveraging one for its strengths, but recognizing where humanity has to stay in your processes. Because otherwise, you won't make magic, right? And certainly, the whole goal for the Super Bowl is magic on some level. So maybe the whole goal is a win. But for the marketing team, it's magic. So anyway, yeah. Yeah. Well, there we go. We managed to go through a whole lot and connect a whole bunch of dots. Yeah. Cause that's what we do. Yeah. Um, and it's right at 12:30. Awesome. Awesome. So good for us. Good for us. Thank you everybody for being here with us each week. And, um, we'll see you next week. Yeah. Thank you, Karley. Um, as well for, uh, for keeping us, you know, all together here. So, uh, everybody. Take care. Yeah, we'll talk next Friday. All right. Bye. Bye everyone. Bye everybody Still here.

Links from the episode:

Randomized Trial of a Generative AI Chatbot for Mental Health Treatment

Gemini 2.5: Our most intelligent AI model

Introducing 4o Image Generation

The AI agent market map

Qualtrics Introduces New Market Intelligence Capabilities for the Next Generation of Market Insights

Medallia Unveils Vision for Future of Customer Experience and 7 AI-Powered Capabilities

Meltwater Partners with NICE for Real-Time Social Customer Insights

Pureprofile Adds Three New AI Tools

Pulsar Launches Narratives AI - the First Search Engine for Public Opinion

Toluna Unifies Its Global Brands to Power the Future of Insights

ACKWEST Group Completes Strategic Acquisition of J. Reckner Associates

Will AI Finally Make Insights a SaaS Industry? JD Deitch

Breaking free from algorithmic loops - Research Live