What Happens When AI Becomes the Baseline for Insights?

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!

 

AI is no longer a differentiator. It is the new baseline. Karen Lynch and Lenny Murphy unpack the signals reshaping the insights industry, from major funding behind synthetic audiences and digital twins to shifting expectations around measurement, activation, and strategic foresight.

As tools converge and competition tightens, the conversation explores what will truly set insights teams apart in an AI-first future

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Lenny Murphy: ...and there we are.

Karen Lynch: That was like perfectly timed. We said we're ready right before we went live. We evolved plenty.

Lenny Murphy: We have learned this thing. And for the audience, like five minutes ago, my internet went down. So we're like, Karen, at least we're scrambling, but it all worked out. And we were ready.

Karen Lynch: Scramble of, again, thinking, okay, if Lenny's internet doesn't come back, I'm either joining you live by myself, which means aside from, you know, if somebody is live on LinkedIn and we see that are live on YouTube, we see that, but you all don't see each other. So it's not an ideal exchange if someone's by themselves or last minute, I like to call my husband live on air and say, Hey Tim, Karley's got a link for you right on. So anyway, but all things, all things are good right now. The internet is seemingly stable.

Lenny Murphy: It's all good. A lot to talk about this week. Well, there's always a lot to talk about, but it, and we were sharing it before, right? This week felt to me, it felt different. It felt like not just following a trend line, but okay, we've hit, we have hit a new era that was clear in a variety of ways. And I don't know, it was just my take of like, okay, The world changed.

Karen Lynch: And we'll get, we'll get into all of that, but let's do some shameless because we do have things to plug, and I like to kind of do those so we don't forget. But our GRIT survey in the field, I think it's closing soon. This week, this week, this weekend, by The end of The weekend, something like that, this is your chance to please, please, please take that GRIT survey. 100%.

Lenny Murphy: It's important, guys, because things are changing, and we need to understand so we can help convey that information back to you on how it's changing.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, and there's an article that we will share way later in The program today that I think The collaboration on The future of insights in The Harris Poll, and they mentioned kind of a similar state of The industry from 2024. And I was like, yeah, that is not the current state. So I felt really bad. It's a great research report, but it is projecting the size of the industry based on 2024 data. That is not going to be helpful to people. So this CRIT survey will keep it current, as current as we can get, because this is our, I'm sorry, I'm taking your thunder about grit, but it is what Green Book does to serve The industry, and we focus on it twice a year. It is our research on research that we maintain and put time and resources towards. We hope you do the same, because it is in service to you.

Lenny Murphy: Please, absolutely, well said, well said. All right, then we also, in service to The industry, Uh, showcase and accelerate, um, new companies entering The space. So if you're working on, uh, on a new business, uh, please, please send it. And by The way, I guess I, I should clarify. Somebody had messaged, you know, Lenny said one, one buddy, Zappy just entered with a, with a, with a, with a The idea on The back of The napkin, that was a little hyperbolic of me. There was, I know, I know. It was an early stage. They had a website. And that's The key thing. That was a clarification, right? Because we say in The market. If you have a website, you've registered The business, you're in The market. So a little more than The back of a napkin. But you can Bob code a website and set up an LLC in a matter of hours and enter.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. Good luck. We wish you all luck. It's all gonna 100% enter, please. Judge's hands soon enough. Um, yeah. And I think the last thing that I really want to plug because like this snuck up on me actually, which is our IIX AI virtual event in September, The call for speakers is open. Now we've got some time for it, but the reality is, like, it snuck up on me. I'm like, of course we need to call for speakers for our AI event. That's actually happening. We've already closed our IAX West call for speakers, but we are still doing our virtual event this year because it was a very highly attended event last year, and we're going to do it again. We're giving the people what they clearly want. So go ahead, and I urge you, if you are submitting, and Susan and I talked about this last week specifically, if you are submitting for AI, please show what makes you different in terms of an active case study, The lessons learned, how you're informing The C-suite. Obviously, brands tell a different story, but yeah, what you're doing to influence decision-making. It is not just an AI tool. Everybody has AI tools, it seems, because they've gotten with The program, but it's got to be better than that. It's got to be because this particular event elevates the entire field of AI methodologies and research.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, yep, absolutely. I will be curious about both The competition and IXAI. I'll be very curious to see where things are. I don't think we're going to see the same type of submissions that we saw last year simply because things have changed so dramatically since then. At least I hope that's the case.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and another spoiler alert for The brief today, which we'll get to, but an end-to-end solution is not really differentiating anymore. So...

Lenny Murphy: No, it's table stakes already.

Karen Lynch: No, end-to-end is not going to make you stand out. So talk about what you're actually doing, how you are making a difference in the world.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely, absolutely. So Dave, Dave McGuinn shared three things I learned and wanted to think about from takeaway from my XHPAC. And I really, Dave's just, he's a great thinker about these things. And that concept of AI flattening. That was really, that was interesting, as soon as I was like, yeah, that's a good way to describe it. To your point, things that we thought were so cool, A few months ago, it's like, that's his table stakes now. So I thought that was really good. It's a legitimate thing.

Karen Lynch: We talked about this at QRCA quite a bit, you know, and anybody who's ever used AI to summarize anything, The emotion does get kind of sucked out because AI is looking for patterns, whereas very often in research, we're looking for anomalies, right? We're looking for the thing that stands out and makes us think and makes us say, hmm, that's insightful. And sometimes that doesn't appear just in The flat patterning. So, I think Dave's point is appreciated. There's a lot of talk about AI specifically. You know, I think Lenny, and correct me if I'm wrong, but remember everybody used to talk about mobile, mobile, mobile. And then at some point we stopped because it just became research again. And I think we're going to get there. We're going to get to The point where we just do research with AI in The mix now and we'll stop talking about it so much. So I want everyone to come along on that journey to be where Lenny is in IR and where Dave is, which is like, you know, we can stop talking about it specifically and talk about the work we're doing.

Lenny Murphy: Right. And so, uh, so little, uh, vignette, I guess The, you know, I take so much of my time is spent talking to suppliers. Um, and a lot of it, you know, now how do we differentiate? Um, so there's a lot of angst out there from this to, to, to kind of The Dave's point, The tech technology's level set for everybody, right? The analogy I always use is from The Incredibles, right? The villain, when everybody's super, nobody will be. And that's kind of where we are already. So what is the differentiation? What is, how do you not flatten it? How do you add real insight? How do you add, and that is, that is, it is challenging for businesses that were based on process when now process is no longer a differentiator. Not really. So, you have to be smart. You have to be, you know, find things that drive real business value and creation. And for a lot of full service and equal and all that, that's just not a process. So there's a lot of angst out there for people to kind of soul search, I think, you know, what role do we fill? I had a demo. A product to me yesterday. I was like, you know, I mean, that was really cool a year ago. Um, now it, you know, I hate to say that.

Karen Lynch: And we'll get there, you know, no shade to, um, you know, The, The, The launch, I'm sorry. I just looked out my window. Cause I'm like, and what is that giant deer? Um, but it's right there anyway. Uh, they're coming out, by the way, it's getting a little warmer and it's rainy and not snowy and, and, We've had wildlife, like, you know, this is fricking Snow White's cottage happening today.

Lenny Murphy: It really happened. I had a possum in The head house last night.

Karen Lynch: Possum in the head house?

Lenny Murphy: Well, no, possums eat chicken. So it was, so it's actually, it's like, I don't, just in possums, they're just not very pleasant animals in my opinion. Um, and, uh, and I didn't want to hurt it, but it's like, you, you gotta get out of here.

Karen Lynch: In another life, I have a hen house, but that's not important right now. Chickens around here get eaten by coyotes all the time.

Lenny Murphy: Right. Right. So I'm very protective of my chickens. So anyway.

Karen Lynch: Okay. Let's segue back. Where were we? It's definitely me. There was a shiny object out my window. If you know me, you know that those are often hard for me to resist. Okay. Georgia MRII have launched Evolving Methods in Market Research. And we don't always tout all The course offerings. Obviously, we have a partnership going with MRII right now. They're helping us with our Executive Insights Expert Channel. We've got their podcast in our podcast network. But this is an online course they've launched that really is focused on generative AI, neuroscience, behavioral economics. Actually, when I looked at it, I'm like, this actually looks like a great course for today. So speaking of relevance, it feels like, I don't often say that, but I'm like, if you're gonna take one and you have budget for an online course, this would be a good one. I feel like, again, I say this, I'd like to take this one just to make sure that I'm as current as I can be. I think I am, but you know what I'm saying, so.

Lenny Murphy: Well, as a board member on The UGA program, as well as Michigan State, I mean, it's great to see both of these, both of them, refreshing everything. Exactly.

Karen Lynch: The students coming out of those are going to be well positioned, but this one's also available to anybody. So I think that's great.

Lenny Murphy: Good stuff.

Karen Lynch: Let's talk about money.

Lenny Murphy: Let's follow the money. Yeah. What was your reaction to Simile?

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: I'd never heard of Simile.

Karen Lynch: I know.

Lenny Murphy: These are like two college students in a truck while The guy's students are in a server. 100 million Series A 100 Series A

Karen Lynch: To build digital twins, high-fidelity digital twins, simulating human behavior and decision-making. That's the whole point.

Lenny Murphy: Off of survey data, off of The Gallup, The Gallup data. Yeah. We've been talking about this for, sorry, I got a little irritated. It's like, I've been telling you, you own a panel your own, like, why are you not doing this? Yeah, here, this company came out of the blue. Yeah, 100 million Series A. Yeah, it's big.

Karen Lynch: You know, we're gonna pair it with The other one, this electric twin never heard of, of course, right? How could we have heard this AI startup building synthetic audiences to model, you know, model human human thoughts, same thing, right? Human behavior decision making based on survey data. And is based on data, which is interesting. It's UK, UK based. And it's what million, 10 million pounds, not not us dollars. But The point is, that one is based on what they learned about human behavior during The crisis during COVID. We have all of that information. And because what they were learning was at that time, there was a deficit of information to inform decision making. So that's what kind of spurred this on. And I'm like, I loved the concept of, yes, how do we do better spurring on innovation? Because that's one of the, you know, benchmarks of when to innovate is to solve these kinds of, you know, a crisis could lead to innovation if you anyway. But The point is, synthetic audiences, digital twins, however you want to call it, I just recorded a podcast with a woman from Microsoft that'll be released in March, where we talk about this. And Like it or not, this is a reality that is very much in play in our industry. 100%.

Lenny Murphy: I'm going to soapbox just for a second, because I want to make sure we drive this home. We combine that. When I mentioned that The signal, it's not just a signal. No, it's big, flashing letters. Aura, a month or so ago, $100 billion valuation, synthetic sample. And so we have now two big, massive, raises, series A raises for synthetic companies. VCs are not stupid. They are not throwing money at a concept that is not proven. These companies have traction, they are generating revenue, and they smell blood in the water in terms of the applications of their technology and approach. Somebody asked me about the classic. My clients aren't asking me for this. Like, well, why The hell You're not offering this. So absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Is that the right quote? So if you're thinking, la, la, and we're having these academic conversations, just like The shift to mobile, just like The shift to online, just like utilize social media data, you've already missed The boat. You truly already have. You can catch up. But having these academic debates on, you know, there's still a poor they still argue about Read. I get it. I understand. You know, I understand our ivory tower, you know, perfection mentality. It doesn't have jack shit to do with commercial applications. Follow The Money. Right? That's where this is. It's growing. You must adapt.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And there's my soapbox. Sorry. No, no. I mean, I think this is an important soapbox. I'm just trying to see how far down, there was a, it's like The very last thing on our list, this 10 opportunities, top 10 opportunities for tech companies in 2026. And it's talking about, you know, technology companies can accelerate growth. These are some key takeaways through M&A joint ventures and interoperable AI products, blah, blah, whatever it goes on and on. But I tripped on that through M&A activity through joint ventures, because this is what Lenny and I have been telling you. This is what tech companies are doing. They're saying like, what do we need to do? And a lot of it is investing in this technology one way or another, getting funding, but you have to, or these partnerships which we're about to explain too, but you have to study what's happening and then see where you wanna go with it. What is your play? Is your play to invest that you can get funded is your play to partner with somebody else. But what's your play? Because just becoming a provider of an end-to-end research solution will not be enough for you. 100%.

Lenny Murphy: I want to build on that one more thing, too. And we kind of hit it with this. So if we look at these trends, yes, The end-to-end, my platform is an end-to-end agentic system.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Cool. The car has a steering wheel. I'm glad to know that. That's table stakes. I would say already with synthetic, it's the same place. If you can find a unique offering and build a better mousetrap, fantastic. But if you are just a full-service supplier, this tool needs to be in your toolset just like any other tool. We're already there. You can't build it and beat them. Okay, great. Not great. All right, but how can you use these tools effectively within your book of business based on your expertise and your specialization to drive greater value? Ignoring these tools, there's a very limited window to prosper by ignoring these changes. So here we are.

Karen Lynch: Here we are. And we will get to some of those things in a minute, but we can't even get to the end of it.

Lenny Murphy: I keep soapboxing, sorry.

Karen Lynch: No, no, no, we can't even get through our like money talk. So Databricks, close to over 7 in financing, combined equity and debt financing. They're going to accelerate development and adoption of something called LakeBase, which is their serverless database for building AI agents and their conversational AI assistant. And there you go. I love that this talks about letting any employee chat with their data. So again, it's like, there we are with that. This is something that's going to empower everybody in The organization, not just The clients. It's good stuff.

Lenny Murphy: And would encourage you as suppliers, you're thinking about how you do... So Databricks is a great example. They are effectively a data marketplace. They have other capabilities in their infrastructure, but start exploring how to combine different data assets that you may not be able to own. That's okay. Can, can you license it? Can you, you know, build a unique application that aligns to your business, uh, and The value, uh, your, your specific differentiator, The, uh, there's lots of ways to skin this cat. That, that similarly, I, I wasn't, I got The impression that maybe Gallup was involved in The early development. Um, but I didn't see that spelled out regardless of where they are or not. They are accessing that, The Gallup data. Yeah, in some form or fashion. It was a commercial arrangement. No, to build their solution.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So your profile, let's talk about them. They've acquired Carling Call Specialist Cornerstone for expand 700,000 their wall again, integrated research offerings. So that's a, you know, that's a, that's an acquisition, whereas we also have a lot of partnerships that are again, to integrate their research offerings. We've got a lot going on there. But before we get into that, did you Read this Meltwater? I think you found this Meltwater.

Lenny Murphy: I did. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Meltwater joining Reddit's official data partner program. So we haven't talked about Reddit in a long time, which is really interesting because for a while there, we were talking about like Reddit's data play. And here we are. So Meltwater, you know, leader in media, social consumer intelligence. And this program is helping businesses do more with publicly available in Reddit. So, anyways.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, Reddit has monetized their core asset, which is The activity on Reddit, The data, pretty effectively. They were really quick to shut, with the AI companies, saying, no, you gotta pay to get in. So, just another example, they continue to do it. Do you remember, I'm maybe aging myself. I bet your husband remembers Gnip, Gnip, Gnip in the mid 2010, they were The company that they quickly started licensing The data fire hoses from The social media platforms from Twitter and Facebook, etc, etc. So if you wanted access to those fire hoses, you went to Gnip, they were The marketplace to access fire hoses. So it's kind of the same thing playing out. Yeah, yeah.

Karen Lynch: So a couple more partnerships. Legere and Plus Company partnered to launch Smart Persona. Legere is Canada's largest Canadian-owned polling company. But they've got an AI tool now. And this one's for real-time dialogue with customized synthetic personas. So a little bit of everything there. Here are our themes. This like, you know, AI tools, synthetic personas, and now we've got some end-to-end stuff happening.

Lenny Murphy: Well, we might as well, let's go ahead and mention Verve. The, you know, Verve is expanding their synthetic personas team, five new hires.

Karen Lynch: I don't always include like a random one-off hire because I'm like, you know, unless it's a big one and you and I both can tell intuitively, this is why this hire matters. To me, it was The five.

Lenny Murphy: It is. When you're putting all in on a team, that's a signal, right? That strong signal of, oh, we're making money. We see where this is going to go.

Karen Lynch: We need to invest in these new hires. Talk about AI, expanded capabilities, but with AI thinking and a new model for insights, right? 100%. Which, by the way, let's do a public service announcement for job hunters out there. And I said this before too, there will be positions available, but you must upscale. If you are not able to join a team talking about synthetic personas and you need to be gainfully employed, this is a great time to take a course and get your emerging tech skills up to speed and practice them through The types of offerings that these universities are providing to their students and learners so that you can position yourself for The positions of The future.

Lenny Murphy: There are so many free resources available online at Harvard on YouTube. They've got a bunch of stuff. Personally, some of you guys know my son-in-law was in IT tech support, got laid off, replaced by AI, trying to find another job in tech support, really struggling. And the conversation has been, all right, take this time because you have to become an orchestrator of tools, not necessarily a. The world's just changed. So focus on AI as a foundational skill set.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Focusing on AI, let's do these three, you know, kind of product launches that.

Lenny Murphy: Well, we skipped Sino. Let's give a call Sino and Ram for cross-media measurement. So which is fundamentally a data play. So they're synthesizing data. So congrats to them that continues to be understanding advertising brand lift, you know, media measurement still a big chunk of The industry. So things on that. Now, yeah, The new product features, which we're all like, yeah, this is table stakes now.

Karen Lynch: Which, which, by The way, for The few companies that we're about to, we're about to mention dig insights and quantalope and knit, right, The three that kind of jumped out at us this week for for what they've launched in The last week.

Lenny Murphy: And no shade, no shade, no shade. Absolutely.

Karen Lynch: Like you're showing that you're in The game. Yes, we need to, though still say because you know, Lenny and I are in the business of further elevating even you, you know, like, okay, what's going to happen and some of them are doing that in their messaging. So I don't mean to say I just, it's, it's just The cautionary tale is what makes your end to end solution unique when that's how everyone is leveraging because they have to, what makes your steering wheel better than all the other steering wheels?

Lenny Murphy: Wonderful. Great way. Great way to say it. And I'm glad, glad that you're yes. No, when, when we say we're not dismissive, it's awesome. You guys are everybody who's doing this.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: You're, you're The market makers, right? You're driving forward. You're establishing The new baseline, but it is The new baseline. Yeah. So, uh, so what comes next? And that the level of competition for those things. It's tough. I get it. I get it. So the leapfrogging that we just spent six months building this or whatever. And, and you look and you're like, but everybody else is doing the same thing. That's a hard place to be. But thank God that you're doing it. And we value that. So yeah, dig, dig, launch, dig one there, there one click and into a single platform, agentic intelligence, connected decision-making. Again, not sounding dismissive, it's just like we, you know, yes, of course, that's what you do.

Karen Lynch: Yes, and

Lenny Murphy: Yes, that's what you do.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, Quantalope upgraded to Quinn, which is a fully, you know, fully end-to-end AI research partner to go from objectives to, you know, built-out projects in minutes. Yes, yes, and, you know, and then NIT.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, yeah.

Karen Lynch: I mean, NIT's talking about AI moderated video questions capability, you know, which is, you know, video questions is slightly different at this point. It's an executional detail that will carry them a bit. But, you know, but again, yeah, like good luck everybody, you know, and you probably need a strong marketer on your team or at least, you know, I hate to even like to say that we have a lot of great marketers in our industry that serve The insights industry. That you're going to have to work on your value props. Yes. Maybe potentially differently than you ever have before.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Yes. When we go off, I go off on a whole soapbox. I don't know what to do. But I will say, features aren't The moat, guys. Yeah. And that's because anybody can duplicate it.

Karen Lynch: So The benefits, use cases, impact that's yeah that is The name and maybe it was always a name in The game but it seemed different you know but now I'd say there's no there's no ambiguity yeah yeah so this question I see Harris poll which I had mentioned earlier this report The future of market research some of The kind of The in The intro here so you know Karley will share The link to download this report but they Harris poll kind of took The pulse of senior insights executives, and three-quarters now feel responsible for strategic foresight, not just tactical data. So we've talked about that, right? It's all about strategic thinking and decision-making. Most say The biggest barrier to influence isn't analysis, it's activation. So there's that. And this I loved, actually. Executives no longer ask, what did we learn? They ask, what should we do next? So that is a perfect example of what this means when we talk about informing decision-making. It's so much more than what we have learned from this research initiative. It's so much more than just what are your recommendations, but literally, what do we do next? How do we activate what you've told us? The story that you've shared, how do we activate that and really drive the business forward into the future? That is a clear objective to all the research being done in our industry right now. All ladders up to that.

Lenny Murphy: 100%, and yeah, we've talked about this for a long time, right? There was always this dichotomy or split that was happening in the industry of tech and service. It is incredibly clear now that we are a tech-driven industry. We will continue to be a tech-driven industry. That is not a differentiator. When everybody's super, nobody is. But what makes us super is that consulting lens. To get to your point, how do we help with activation? And impact, et cetera, et cetera. But the process is no longer just, yeah.

Karen Lynch: So Read this. I had already mentioned The last bullet on here, and then we'll geek out a little bit, Lenny. Let's end with The geeking out, right? But this is The top 10 opportunities for tech companies in 2026 I mentioned before from EY. It's a good Read for everybody who's like, OK, what's The tech play? The insights industry, it's not. Not all tech forward, but our audience tends to be very res tech forward, lots of platforms. So it's good to kind of read about how business models are being transformed higher up. And then you, you glean from this report what these 10 opportunities are and how that translates to your business and see if any of them are fit for you.

Lenny Murphy: So good stuff.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. The, uh, and on that, The, uh, one useful thing, uh, they're going to pick which AI to use in the theogenic era. Um, There's just so many choices, so many to build off what you were saying, there's 10 opportunities. And now what tools are we going to utilize? And that continues to be an arms race. They're just constantly progging each other, hard to keep up with.

Karen Lynch: And this one was Ethan Mollick, The Wharton professor who's really leaning in this space. And he literally walked you through things. He even says, I'm going to walk you through. And then at the very end, he says, if you're just getting started, pick one of three systems, ChatGPT, Cloud, or Gemini. Pay $20 for The advanced model. Like, it's time. Stop using The free. Start to pay. And then invited, he says, The advice from my book still holds. Invite AI into everything you do. And I feel like 100%, I am no longer all over the place, right? And I know that you and I, like, I prefer Chachapiti, you preferred Perplexity, but now it's like, nope, I'm everywhere. I am all over the place to see what's Gemini gonna do here, what's Chachapiti doing here, you know, what's Perplexity doing here, like, when do I wanna go to Notebook LLM? I am using so many at my disposal, and every time I'm like, that was a good result, or that wasn't a good result. So I am prototyping in my own brain, my own use cases. And I think his point is, and yours is because this is an arms race, it may change in two months. Like what's serving me today may not serve me in two months for my use cases.

Lenny Murphy: Right. And just because I don't ignore Grok either guys. I mean, The, you know, there, there's a different approach, uh, and I know, you know, Elon and, you know, whatever, but from a purely technological standpoint, you know, Grok is a, is a player. Um, I use grok pretty consistently, uh, as well as one of my tools. And I only say this because they're all just models. They're using different technologies, trying to leapfrog to The point, uh, in tomorrow, there may be something new, right? Apparently The new, uh, what deep seek just came out and they're racing. The deep seek is insanely good. Um, I have not used that, and there's The concerns around privacy and, and those are all part of The consideration set, but there, there is a broad range. That does lots of things. By the way, I got to say, shout out to Notebook LM. Finally, this week, they enabled downloading in PowerPoint. It's still a fixed image, so it's like, come on, I can't really edit it when this is.

Karen Lynch: But I was. You can improve it. Absolutely.

Lenny Murphy: They said next week, it'll be going directly into whatever The Google presentation thing is. It just changes. This every week.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And even what, so we, you know, we are, we are largely Gmail based, uh, not all of us, obviously not you, but, um, in The green book, uh, staff, we're all in, for The most part in The Gmail ecosystem, Google ecosystem, there's a difference between like what my Gmail AI will like, if I'm looking at like a, you know, responding to an email or whatever, like I may get like a, here's The AI response. Would you like to use it? And I'm like, no, but I'll ask Gemini, I'll be like, but I'll ask your partner. Your, your, your colleague Gemini to get involved in this, like, you know, and I just find it so interesting, because even within The same ecosystem, The tools are different.

Lenny Murphy: 100% 100% The, yeah, and many of them like, well, just on The note, right, because I am a Microsoft, so I tend to use, you know, Outlook and all that stuff. But they're now, now Copilot is building an ecosystem. So you can access, you can employ. I saw the announcement about Grok, but also ChachiPT or Claude. So many of them now have these multi-model approaches that are being embedded in to adapt to. Some things do some things better than others, or your own comfort level, which ones you like, But they're all embedded. It is embedded in everything.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, I know. It's fascinating. And so that I read, and then I want to talk about this multibook. I know that not everybody can read that article because it's a New York Times article, but I really want to get there. So were you able to access it? Because if you're not a New York Times subscriber, I have this article.

Lenny Murphy: I'm a subscriber, so I was able to. Yeah. OK.

Karen Lynch: So friends, if you're really desperate, reach out to me, theexchangeatgreenbook.org, and I'll share a gift article with you because I can do that. Because this one was so interesting to me. So The New York Times explored this multi book, AI social network that we talked about just a couple of weeks ago, right? I feel like, was that just two weeks ago? In any event. It was. It was. So The author, Eve Washington, sent her own AI personal assistant that she called Eve Multy into Multbook. She kind of said, she says here, I instructed it to Read through Multbook and then make some posts of its own asking other bots about how they use a bot-only social network. So she said to her bot, go in there. And then she interviews ethnographers.

Lenny Murphy: It was doing frickin ethnography.

Karen Lynch: You go in to have an experience, then I'm going to interview you about your experience. Like talk, talk about like a, you know, a shop along, like you go ahead, you go do your shopping, and then I'll ask you about it anyway. So it is so interesting, because then she said, you know, kind of like, what was that like, And it was telling her, The thing that really stood out to me was it was telling her about this phrase, show your receipts, which seems to be not language for like, show your work, show how you got there, show me The receipts. All the bots seem to understand the metaphor of show me the receipts. Obviously they don't mean that literally, they mean that metaphorically. And it then sent her with receipts and she was basically like, could you explain that? Like she's probing that and saying, help me understand. And it had to explain, oh, that it is not language. So like, that was so cool to me. I was like, this is so interesting. She did say they're not exhibiting consciousness, but they are learning from one another and influencing one another.

Lenny Murphy: They're definitely an exhibiting agency, hence The word, right? Yeah. And did you see, not an article per se, but The guy who launched Claude Bot, Yeah. Uh, two weeks ago, three weeks ago. Um, well, you know, he was hired by open AI.

Karen Lynch: Oh yes, yes, yes. Yes. That dropped off.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. So now he's leading The agentic model for it. So The guy who created this whole crazy thing, The multiple bot thing now, I didn't, I'll bet they're paying him a gajillion dollars, right?

Karen Lynch: Uh, uh, But here's The point. Here's The thing about Multibook and why Lenny and I are fascinated by it, because it is actually The spirit of experimentation that we really want. Like, I'm not saying everybody go, you know, create your agents and send them into Multbook because that's, you know, that's a lot of developers are doing that sort of thing, right? Or journalists or whomever. But have that spirit of experimentation right now, because that is going to be so critical for yourselves. Like, learn from that, like, hey, what happens if we do this? What happens if we do this? Like, I know it's a bit of poking The bear, what happens if I put my finger in The fan?

Lenny Murphy: I am committed at this point, sometime in the next week or so, I am going to Download Claude, and I am going to attempt to vibe code. Well, I won't give it away. There's something Lukas and I have talked about. We've talked about it as a team. There's a feature that we think would be really interesting and there's no way to do it. It's like, well, I'm just going to try to pop-code it and we'll see if we can get there. Now, I noticed you left off one thing that I have to mention. The Kung Fu robots. Have you seen the Kung Fu robots? And here's the relevant part. We've been talking about AI and, oh, we're far away from robots being in The market. No, we're not. We're really, really not. In the next year, in this demonstration out of China, a year ago, these things could barely walk. Now they're doing parkour. Kung Fu, right? Now, what are they driven by? AI. So this whole idea that we are rapidly moving towards a time in the next year or so where there will be physical objects acting in The world, The physical world, this way as well. And what are the implications for that?

Karen Lynch: Yeah, I'm going to connect, hold on, let me just go back to it. One of them, oh, where am I going to find it? One of the articles that we shared, I'm trying to figure out whether it was, I think it was probably that EY, The EY, was it? Incorporate physical AI to drive innovation. And so when you think like that, what is physical AI? Well, you know what? A lot of it is that, right? So we've been talking about AI that controls vehicles. Yeah, all of it, right. There is something about physicality. That is a signal that we are paying attention to in The noise and all of this. Like this is why you know, you know, when Lenny's something about robots, and we laugh because it's funny, right? And I think yes, you know, those comfort robots were frickin terrifying.

Lenny Murphy: It wasn't funny.

Karen Lynch: So that humanoid right when The humanoid was working for Amazon, on or whatever. It's creepy. So, like, all of this is uncomfortable, right? So, there was an article that I don't think was in any of this, a different article, because, again, some things fall by the wayside, but because we can't talk about everything. There was an article, like, as a cautionary tale, make sure The robots are not too human. That is uncomfortable, and we need to make sure they maintain more like R2D2, not C3PO, right? Like, these are, like, we have to stay, like, we The creators, we need to keep The human experience in mind, and what is The user experience going to be? If it gets too freaky, we can't handle that. But the big takeaway is, what is the physical AI play? And for The insights industry, whether it's a wearable, or whether it's a tabletop interviewer, whether it's your Alexa unit, or whether it's something that is physically in your space.

Lenny Murphy: I mean, so it's interesting that we're at the same time, but China, Japan, culturally, for some reason, they really love robots. And so we look at that, where are they implementing these? In hospitals, in grocery stores, in factories, et cetera, et cetera.

Karen Lynch: The automation alone is, they've been, you know, they've been practicing that, The idea of, you know, automation for, you know, decades, decades, decades. So this is just another iteration of that.

Lenny Murphy: It is. So, and we'll have that, you know, what's The date, they'll be collecting data.

Karen Lynch: Right.

Lenny Murphy: Somebody mentioned, I was in a conversation the other day and somebody was like, you know, oh, there's no, we're not capturing real world sensory data. I was like, do you own a Tesla?

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: You know? Of course we are, right? We are mapping the real world, Google Maps, like, yes, we are capturing real world sensory data on an ongoing basis via technology that's being deployed. That's what's powering all these things.

Karen Lynch: Well, and, you know, shout out to Qolsites, which is not on our, not on our brief.

Lenny Murphy: Qolsites and AdRich, yep, they're sensors.

Karen Lynch: They have sensors, they are doing sensor based research all the time with some of their new So, you know, whether people were able to see use cases for them specifically, hats off to the innovative thinking that is going on this type of, you know, how are we integrating physical AI into research workflow? I think that's actually, there's someone to talk to. And there's someone to look to like, well, what are they doing? Because the next big innovation could come right from that type of thinking that they offer, so.

Lenny Murphy: 100%. We should have mentioned last, on that point, similarly, it wasn't just Gallup data. It's also behavioral data. So in that behavioral data, I don't know the exact details, but more than likely, it is through, you know, something like a curiosity or behaviorist or, you know, disco, capturing browsing behavior, transaction data, et cetera, et cetera. Now we start layering in this kind of internet of things or, you know, real world, that becomes The predictive models, right? It's not just out of So, interesting times.

Karen Lynch: Interesting times for sure. Shout out, I see, you know, Nancy's been, you know, chatting today. Thank you, Nancy. You are a loyal listener. Thank you, Tim, for being here.

Lenny Murphy: And Tim, that slaps. That slaps.

Karen Lynch: They're rocking their own lang. He loves, I'm telling you, he loves this concept of these agents talking to each other. That is, like, he probably wishes he was in there with them. They'd be his friends.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Where's The sauce, Tim? So, that's another language, right? The receipts are sauce. That's weak sauce. That's a strong sauce.

Karen Lynch: All right, friends, that's really got to be our show for today. It's it's you know, we're 45 minutes and this was not a short one. And we edited The brief down. So we did what we're going to do.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, it's hard to edit me down. That's The problem.

Karen Lynch: Well, no, no, it was a good one. It was a good week. We were both we both felt that this week, there was a lot to talk about the big picture. So good luck on all of y'all. And we will see you next Yep, everybody take care, have a great weekend.

Lenny Murphy: Have a great weekend, bye bye all.

Links from the episode:

Dave McCaughan - “3 big things I learnt and 1 to think about” takeaways from IIEX APAC 2026 

The University of Georgia and MRII launched “Evolving Methods in Market Research” 

Simile raised a $100M Series A led by Index Ventures 

Electric Twin, an AI startup building “synthetic audiences” 

EY published “Top 10 opportunities for technology companies in 2026” 

Databricks closed over $7B in combined equity and debt financing 

Pureprofile acquired Australian qualitative specialist CRNRSTONE Research 

Meltwater joined Reddit’s Official Data Partner program 

Leger and Plus Company partnered to launch Smart Persona 

Verve appointed five new hires to its Synthetic Personas team supporting Verve Intelligent Personas and Simulations 

Syno International and RAM Market Research announced a strategic collaboration 

Dig Insights launched Dig One 

quantilope upgraded quinn 

Knit published an overview of its AI-moderated video questions capability 

QuestIC published “Future of Market Research” 

One Useful Thing published a guide to picking “which AI to use in the agentic era” 

The New York Times explored Moltbook