What Happens When Machines Start Making Our Decisions?

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

The innovation landscape in qualitative research is at a crossroads. AI moderation is gaining ground as a "good enough" alternative to traditional methods, promising efficiency but raising questions about lost emotional depth. Meanwhile, the Insight Innovation Competition is calling for fresh ideas that challenge conventional thinking, because breakthrough innovation isn't always about technology. New leadership at the Insights Association brings renewed energy to navigating privacy regulations, while strategic investments signal a shift toward platforms delivering truly actionable insights.

But perhaps most provocative: AI agents are now making autonomous decisions and forming communities without human intervention, forcing us to confront fundamental questions about the future role of human judgment in both research and everyday life.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos.  

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Transcript

Karen Lynch: And we're live. Happy Friday. Happy Friday. And Karen, you've just been, you just jumped in on both feet this morning after being at The OTA.

Lenny Murphy: You know what, it was, yeah, it was a, I mean, I got home pretty late last night, you know, like, I mean, pretty late, after 8 p.m. Last night. You know, when you fly from anywhere.

Karen Lynch: I'm heading towards bed after 8.

Lenny Murphy: Um, there were, there were a bunch of us from The area on The flight and you know, it was a pretty smooth flight. No, no complaints or whatever. But I did wake up this morning like, okay, cause you have all of those thoughts about what you need to do when you come back from a conference. And this one's pretty long to be honest. You know, it really started, started on Monday. It was really a solid, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know, Thursday I left before the contest was over. You know, it's a long one. It's a long one.

Karen Lynch: So, um, But before you want to talk about The first or get into some other stuff because we have some public service announcements for Green Book that maybe we should start with and then I'll debrief PRCA Yeah, yeah, I guess let's do our I want to finish The conversation we were having before we went live There's a segue right so yeah, so your reminder you haven't taken The latest grit Please take The latest grit help us help you I took it The, uh, which I had not because I, I'm always not sure whether I should, but I put on my gen two hat and took it anyway. The, um, uh, a lot of important questions we're asking guys. Um, and at the rate things are going from a change standpoint, we really do. We need your input because, uh, this is, this is The, this is what we use to understand what's happening in The industry. Uh, and The transformation is continuing at a pace, which is probably The next segue. Also, we opened up entrances for our startup competition, The insight innovation competition. So please enter that. We were just about to chat, I was very curious. And you talk about your QRC conversation with this. Yeah. How many agents are we going to see? How many? I mean, I think we're it's always traditionally been very SAS heavy. I got a feeling we're not going to see that as much. I think it's just going to be really interesting looking at The entrants, which are probably more agentic applications with very different business models overall. And that's all right. So back to QRCA, your conversation.

Lenny Murphy: Well, no, hold on, because I think we need to, there are listeners who don't know what this competition is and I want to just take a hot second.

Karen Lynch: Okay, take a hot second.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, take a hot second. At IIX, we have a competition. In advance, people submit applications by this deadline to apply to be a part of The competition. We have judges that are outside of our organization that come from either having won previously or are in some kind of adjacency in M&A activity somehow or another, have their pulse on The startup space. And they invite The top, we then invite kind of The top five to compete live on stage.

Karen Lynch: They have five minutes to kind of- It's kind of a shark tank.

Lenny Murphy:  Shark tank-like pitch, five minutes though. And this year we're doing something a little different. So there's a winner that The judges have picked and we have crowdsourced judging on site. This year we're dividing those two things. We want to get a pure Read for crowdsourcing and also still honor The judging. And then we're going to have a Green Book Award also, one that we think warrants some sort of accolades. The judge winner, though, is The winner that gets the big $10,000 check, gets a chance to speak next year. So we have last year's winner, for example, Orchard Insights on stage this year. Previously, Listen had won, and they were on stage last year, kind of in a complementary spot as part of their winnings. They get Gen 2 Consulting. Anyway, so if you don't know enough about it, Read up, go to The website, send us an email, whatever you need to do to learn more. But you can't win if you don't enter.

Karen Lynch: That's right. You must enter. And to put it in perspective, guys, so this was our brainchild damn near 15 years ago, before IEX even existed. It was a virtual event. Many, many, many companies, both winners and runner-ups, have gone on to great success. We can't claim credit for that. As a launchpad, it has been very effective for startups. Zappy started there, Remesh started there, Rewi started there, Listen Lab started there. Listen actually posted something just a few weeks ago, Alfred Walforce, on what a great trajectory it put them on. So if you are working on a startup- It's a mental building event, right?

Lenny Murphy: So it may not be the money that some of these companies go on to earn elsewhere, but- Speaking of Alfred, no, but it's momentum building, right? Dana Kim at Highlight often talks about how this was a stepping stone for her to be like, okay, we have something here. And it builds their confidence and it builds their momentum to move forward to do whatever's next. And if you've entered before and not won, if you're still fairly new to The industry, because it should be noted, Orchard didn't win previously, was not their first entrant, they did win last year. The judges saw something different in their application. So another year behind their belts, they had, you know, kind of like more knowledge and awareness and, and fine-tuned their pitch. Right.

Karen Lynch: So, um, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to talk over you. I was just, we get here and I realized there, there are many things I'm proud of that we've accomplished over our time, but The, The, The Inside Innovation Competition and Grit, I mean, those are my babies that if I died tomorrow, I would know that we made a real difference in this industry between those two things. And it really has. It's made a big difference in so many ways. So enter, please. Yeah, there's nothing to lose and much to gain. Nothing to lose.

Lenny Murphy: And yeah, and from, you know, consultancies to platforms to those dabbling in an agentic AI or whatever you've created. Even if you, I was just reading something about, you know, people coming to The industry from, or people coming to The UX industry from non-research backgrounds, you know, or not even UX backgrounds, but you know, it's all interesting stuff. So anyway, I hope the word gets out there. Spread The word also, once you see it in our social channels, spread The word because you may know somebody who should throw their hat in The ring.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, I've been working on it. Hey, vibe code something over The weekend. Been thinking about it, and entered. Literally zappy one, when I think Steve had just written The idea on a napkin.

Lenny Murphy: Anyway, so yeah, fun stuff, fun stuff.

Karen Lynch: You're a curacy.

Lenny Murphy: Well, I was at QRCA. And one of the reasons why we're having this conversation is and I don't want to shout anything out, call anybody out for this comment. But it's The idea that some of the platforms there that might be new are not new enough or innovative enough. And I would encourage people to think beyond what's innovative enough, because you might have a different definition of innovation, and the judges might see something in your innovation that is saleable. It's about commercial viability, guys.

Karen Lynch: It's not just, oh, that's a cool idea. It's like, oh, that's a cool idea that has a path to make a difference that's an investable asset and a company that can grow. So yeah, you may have just put things together in a new way, but I mean, a PBJ sandwich is pretty damn innovative when all you have is peanut butter and jelly, right? So.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, yes, yes. And then all you do is swap in some almond butter and you've opened up a whole new category.

Karen Lynch: Oh, there you go. Oh my God. Yeah. Or, or, or, uh, you know, Elvis asked bacon is bananas and man, right.

Lenny Murphy: Oh my goodness. Lunch. Okay. So QRS, let me let me just give some some top-level takeaways It was it's very good to see friends and I I was thinking like oh I should you know, shout out to a few people, but I won't because there's just too many to name However, Lenny, I did want to tell you this Tim Tauber from qual bids. He's a he's an exchange fan He said I love your show and then he said I love The dynamic between you and Lenny and I started laughing and I said I'm so glad you do you know, and he said, I don't always enjoy it. You have no scenes. That was great. It was great. So as you know, I was thinking about him this morning. You know, sometimes again, Lenny and I, we haven't talked since last Friday. So this is our life, we're really having these conversations live in front of you all, not a studio audience. So anyway, shout out to Tim. So, you know, I spent a lot of time, you know, flying home yesterday, kind of thinking about my big takeaways. And a couple things were at play. Chris Hawk facilitated a roundtable discussion on where Qual is headed. Now that the traditional business has changed, where are we headed now? It was a really good roundtable discussion beyond just 10 people. I think there were 50 people in the room having a conversation about the future. So, of course, I was going to attend that one. And of course, AI and synthetic data came up, data quality came up, so on and so forth. But the big takeaway for all that is there's a place for AI, right? Qualitative researchers like everybody else have to use it kind of to do some shifting operationally for synthesis, to help with strategy, maybe to do some design work. So maybe you're spending less time in the field because you're using AI for efficiency and all that. So yes, there's some great workload shifting. There's also some budget shifting. And there was conversation about end clients who are using and or experimenting to develop their fit for use cases, AI moderation, which was The overarching elephant in all of The rooms is AI moderation. Sometimes addressed outright, you know, What was interesting, and going back to Chris's talk and something Mike Carlin said, which I then heard kind of repeated in a few other ways, is what a client will constitute as good enough. And AI moderation is good enough for a lot of purposes. And it may not be the type of depth of insight that you get from ethnography or real good exploratory qual, which will always have its place in The toolbox, but it's good enough for a lot of reads. And I think that one of the big takeaways is AI moderation is now competing for share of wallet. If it used to be equal and quant, and maybe there's some hybrids as The two big players. Now it's quant and types of qual, traditional or AI moderated qual. So it is definitely chewing up your wallet. And some might say, it's going to choose share of wallet for some quant because The respondents experience with AI moderated qual is actually quite good, which will improve kind of quality and integrity of The research from a, um, from that standpoint and, and potentially take share of wallet away from some quant studies that, that have a lot to, to, that are lacking. Um, so yeah, so it's really interesting, that's, you know, again, pretty high level what's going on. I think, um, I think researchers, and actually I'm saying qualitative researchers, but it could be anybody that understands that, that understands, by the way, the options have changed, period. And The savvy qualitative researchers and The savvy quant researchers that understand there's new kids in town, and I don't mean kids meaning The people running them, I mean this new method of AI moderation is be taken very seriously and get equipped with, get acquainted with it, get equipped to facilitate it, help become a strategist about when it's appropriate. Don't just say no, figure out what the use case is. So, and when it feels like it's a viable solution for your clients, it's a tool. So.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. So that's really interesting to hear in that, you know, this, we were waiting for The Survey Monkeyfication, a fall, just like it occurred with Quant, right? And fundamentally, I think that paradigm, and we're hearing this across The board, guys, so it's great you're hearing that. Every discussion I have, there's some permutation of this. The less impactful the decision is, the more good enough is good enough. Moreover, when it's a multi-billion dollar strategic decision, that's different. And that's where we're seeing The shift. Of course, these tools that make it, it's good enough, it's fast, it's cheap, it's effective. The adoption there, why wouldn't it? It's the same thing we saw with DIY, then automation, and now we're seeing that occur within Qual because we can. But, being orchestrators. And I think that's, I would still, I would still double down and say, I think this is The golden age of qual one, because we're able to, even though The tools are different to get better, deeper insights from consumers at scale. Um, and a moderator, I believe, uh, is a far better orchestrator, um, a synthesizer of information than a traditional qualitative researcher has been.

Lenny Murphy: And we talked about Susan Siraj-Attenlow. She kind of approaches it from academia. She's a professor at Capella University in Houston, I think. Oh, is that what she's doing now? What was that?

Karen Lynch: Is that what she's doing now?

Lenny Murphy: I think so, yeah. I'm pretty sure that's largely what she's doing. So she talked a lot about her student and use cases for AI assist and The flattening of insights in your synthesis. So it was really important because what will happen is AI will synthesize it and it kind of takes out The feeling and The emotion and The conviction that a moderator might bring to a conversation. You know, The real aha, they called it flattening and great presentation. Again, I'm going to digest all of this and maybe write some takeaways on it and reference some of these tools. But The idea is it's a flattening. If you've ever added anything into an LLM and gotten output, it's a little, just doesn't have The same heart and gusto, right? And sometimes that's what's needed in Qual. So The human being can do that, can synthesize and then maybe layer it back up. So it's gonna be, in The end, she talks about, she's teaching her students to use it. So what does that tell you? The students are going to be, Incorporating AI tools. That's that's The next that's The next wave, but they're coming in with skills. So it's pretty cool Why don't we?

Karen Lynch: Pride's cuz it's just that I know so much here. Yeah. No, it is Karley at The very end The suggested reading or listening in this case That Steve Hanke did a great recap of The CEO summit. Yeah, I did an interview. It's on YouTube And all The same themes, just more of a kind of a macro level industry wide CEO, not just necessarily qual and quant. Really good. Really good. Take a listen to it. It's a great interview and a good recap of the conversations that were happening at CEOs or with CEOs at The CEO Summit, The Association CEO Summit before last. The Synthetic data by in-person connection AI enablement The shift to Tech and then a service layer The same all The same things. Yeah, and that's important guys for is wheat for us Karen I so fundamentally as Researchers and we view this as a data input for ourselves every week in addition to The other things When we start now hearing this independently from other people in other events, etc, etc That's a huge, strong signal that we're interpreting things correctly, which I think is important for you, our listeners. And as we use our role within Green Book to help provide resources and guidance and information for The industry during this transformation, just hearing all these things is incredibly valuable, so we can help you overall. Anyway, yes. All right. And there's a bunch of other stuff that happened.

Lenny Murphy: I'm already terrified of the clock.

Karen Lynch: So I think we can get there really quickly.

Lenny Murphy: Well, let's see. Let's see. Let's start with the Insights Association, since we were just talking about appointing Anita Watkins as CEO. Amazingly, she's come from Cantar. Amazingly, I was sitting next to a good friend of mine, Susan Newhouse, who used to work for her. When Susan was at TNS, and said she is, you know, she is all that, right? Anita is a great, great hire for this position. She can handle it. She's ready for it. She's going to bring energy and strategy to The role. It is a great hire.

Karen Lynch: Good, good. I do not know Anita, so that's fantastic.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, really good news. Susan was really excited about it.

Karen Lynch: Big shoes to fill from Melanie, who Um, uh, but I'm sure that they, they knew that and I'm, I'm confident that Anita will do fantastic. Anita, if you're listening, we would let's chat.

Lenny Murphy: Um, yeah, yeah, for real. I already said, I was like, all right, I got to get her on The podcast, find out what her plans are when she gets some sea legs here.

Karen Lynch: So we, we, we really value our relationship with The inside association, all The associations. Um, and, and that's great. We want to see them succeed.

Lenny Murphy: And, you know, speaking of Howard, um, Feinberg. Presented on the last day at QRCA of the kind of everything that they're doing in The industry. And I was thinking, this is really what we want from them, right? We really like knowing the Insights Association is fighting for us. And I thought it was really helpful to hear what they are doing. You say things like, oh, they're lobbying in DC. And you're like, what does that even mean when you don't know for sure? But they are really working. They are tracking every state's kind of privacy requirements and non-compete agreements. And, you know, they are like when they show you everything that they do and they, they focus on that. I'm like, way to go. It was a really great talk. Shout out to Howard. He did a great job.

Karen Lynch: Shout out Howard. Other changes. Uh, this was, um, you know, Qualtrics brought in, uh, Jason Maynard is CEO, um, from Oracle. 

Lenny Murphy: Yeah.

Karen Lynch: My key takeaway was that when you bring somebody from Oracle into a company like Qualtrics, you are now aiming to be infrastructure. So The days of being a SaaS business, which is just other stuff that happened. I mean, we watched The SaaS apocalypse, right, this week. So I just thought that was really compelling. My guess is that they are positioning for Qualtrics to be data infrastructure. And that's why you bring in somebody from Oracle.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, exactly. And this was really deliberate too. I mean, Zig Seraphid, I'm slow to get to the names today. It's probably my flight. Anyway, Zig stepped out, it was October. So they've been actively looking for the right person for a strategy move. Cause Zig, you know, he's staying as The vice chairman special advisor. Like he didn't leave the organization. He's just not, he is not what's needed for The next phase, whatever this next phase is. So you and I are speculating, right? What it is, but it is definitely to grow the business further. And, uh, and yeah, what you're saying feels spot on to me. It feels right. Right.

Karen Lynch: So, um, yeah, we'll see.

Lenny Murphy: Well, we'll see if we can, we'll be all over The event in March and I will be there and I will report back in.

Karen Lynch: Good. Then, uh, we'll see if we can get Jason on, uh, on The podcast or The CEO series. So, yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Well, you never know because they, yeah, we'll see. We'll see.

Karen Lynch: So, yeah. Uh, shout out to our friends at, uh, say, to go health who are now tribe boca three, three voices. So patients, uh, uh, healthcare practitioners and, uh, in payers, right. The, uh, it's like, I like it. Um, The, uh, so anyway, so they rebranded under their, you know, their new, uh, new, if you recall, they were acquired, um, uh, last year and part of another broader, uh, health organization, healthcare education organization. And now that they are no longer Sego Health, they are Triboca. Which sounds very healthcare. I mean, it's like you would see that as like a, you know, as a commercial for some type of a medication. Triboca.

Lenny Murphy: I know. Yeah. Like we have, like we have these new pop-up kinds of Nuvant Health or something. It's like one of the networks in our area. Like it definitely feels like it's, it does.

Karen Lynch: Yes, so, yes, we will ask your patient, have they participated in Tripoca? Anyway, shout out to Isaac and his team.

Lenny Murphy: Good luck, I wish you well.

Karen Lynch: Yes, yes. More, well, there's another healthcare thing, we'll get to that in a second. M&A activity?

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, M&A activity, you know, Lenny and I always say, like, we're following The money here. We're trying to, you know, we like to start off there. There is something for you to learn about the people that are getting money right now. So BZ received an investment from Denali Growth Partners and it's to accelerate their AI enabled behavioral science platform. If you click on this link when Karley shares it, Jesse Lane, who's managing partner at Denali shared that, this I thought was interesting, BZ is delivering different differentiated thinking and producing work that teams can act on immediately. So there is something in their offerings and it's more than just, you know, their behavioral science platform. But again, differentiated thinking is highly actionable. And that's what the investors saw in this. So to me, that seems like, yes, of course, that's what that's what The industry needs. So they've gotten a little investment for it. So good for them. Good luck.

Karen Lynch: Good for them. Konovo for Apollo before you know The healthcare they acquired a rare patient voice. Yeah That's like that's a chocolate and peanut butter I've ever heard of, you know, it's like that's they got a Reese's Cup Because they're that's that their mission The Konovo was to connect Connect data. Yeah So that was very cool. I know that that deal was, uh, was brokered by our friends at, uh, Kendall lane, Oakland civil Phillips. So shout out to everybody on that one. Uh, uh, Wes and, uh, and towel and Lane and Ken. So, yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And, uh, Pam Cusick was at QRC eight. So while all of this is going on, I didn't even realize it. And, you know, we spent some time talking to her this week too, which was, which was fun. So, you know, uh, good luck to that whole team as they, uh, as they, uh, work through The transition. So it's been cool.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Another acquisition. Can I talk about this one?

Lenny Murphy: Cause I, I actually, these, I was like these, both these two, I was like, Oh, these are making me go home, but didn't we predict, right? So yeah, go ahead.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. So I knew about this one, one strategy studio with, with radius. Um, The, we helped do some diligence, uh, on The deal. Um, Greg and I, so, which I don't know if I'm supposed to say publicly, but I, well, I did, uh, you know, one strategy studio was a company It was launched just two years ago in The UK. With an AI-first approach, you can get smart people, ask the right questions, and help interpret the results. Does all the work. And there was no primary research. It was all work off of existing data. Really amazing. They grew explosively. Very future-centric view. And the combination with Radius, it's just It makes an awful lot of sense, so shout out to Rob Wengel for kind of pioneering that. If you think about Radius Premestition as a strategic consultancy, but traditional structure in The research space, clear on where The revolution is now, and mirroring The best of both worlds. So I would expect to see other companies doing very similar things. But really cool stuff. And out of The QuestionPro merging TriMata, I mean, QuestionPro has always bought up lots of other platforms and some they've integrated and some they haven't, but it looks like, you know, this was to combine traditional research and UX into one centralized platform, consolidate that. So that makes sense too, trying to capture the all-in-one play.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, and you I know it's, this doesn't feel like a grand statement here, but I always wonder like, okay, how are y'all gonna work out that branding? Like, I really do wonder, but like, that is The next thing that we will be looking for with some of these is, you know, like, what are we doing with The name? Who, you know, who's getting, who's, you know, who's, who's gonna jump up as, are we changing logos? Are we changing names? Are we merging things? Are we, you know, so we don't really have all the intel on that. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. So yeah, I like to watch these partnerships. The next partnership, speaking of Sago, I thought this was interesting because this isn't terribly surprising, but it is newsworthy to see how many people are getting on board with The data quality co-op partnerships. So this is Sago partnering with The data quality co-op, working towards this kind of shared responsibility for data quality is The way I look at it. But I like that they're putting a stake in The ground and they're saying, yep, we're on board with this too. Doesn't surprise me really when you start to think about it. Anyway, I don't know if you had other thoughts about it too. No.

Karen Lynch: Well, you know, there'll be a talk with, with Walmart at, at IAX. So this focus, we've been talking about it forever, right? The shift towards data quality, especially in The era of AI, just becomes more important. And it's great to see that, you know, companies are getting on board and not just giving lip service, but actually, you know, doing the work to do the work.

Lenny Murphy: And I said as much to QRCA, I was like, do not think that you don't have work to do, you know, to do your part in this fight. Because one of the reasons why I think qualitative research has stayed above it is they're like, Oh, but we talk to real people all the time. And I'm like, Do you remember that pay for say, and a lot of people didn't know about The pay for your say, saga, and we You know even Howard brought Howard brought this up in his talk like, you know, we are we are battling against this about against You know, and it's only going to get worse with The dimensions of AI again I mean have y'all have you seen like cling?

Karen Lynch: What is that new? Audio video I like literally every week The ability to create a totally synthetic reality that is increasingly becoming indecipherable, right? You cannot And The tools are cheap and people are deploying it, you know, oh I can make money off of it. Well, hell yeah, they are all right, a bunch of new product feature launches. Yeah, do you uh, Do you want me to run through them? You want to take them?

Lenny Murphy: Well, I haven't had a chance to digest a lot of these but um, You know, I did look at The circona. So circona launched an attribute marketplace, letting clients browse and append external databases with the data that they've collected. Anyway, I think it's an interesting launch. If you're in that space, it's a good value add for current clients and maybe something that's going to be helpful to bring in new biz.

Karen Lynch: That makes a lot of sense. You gov launched their quality scale. The brand index voices so they have their brand index and now they're doing more of a qualitative interview. I Assume it's a I moderated The I didn't call that out specifically. I don't think so, but doing that makes perfect sense. You know you gov You have a quant shop. So now they're shifting so more AI strat 7 nuclear AI It's true, right?

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, go ahead. Keep talking.

Karen Lynch: Hub embedding agents throughout its insights workflows. We'll touch on BoltBot. Get back there.

Lenny Murphy: I can't wait to go back there.

Karen Lynch: That's the same thing, right? Displayer at a chat plus agents, to query data, trigger research workflows in their analytics platform. Shout out to Displayer, they power our analytics for Google. So big fans of that. Um, uh, so that was really cool. Uh, I didn't, I didn't get much out of it inside, out of The, uh, ABCS, uh, in Canada. It's a full funnel advertising effectiveness solution using AI.

Lenny Murphy: I don't think it's another proof point we've shared, you know, every now and then we have like, we have all these product launches and then we have something that's advertising related. And I think my big takeaway on this one is yet another. Other players say there is so much you can do to test advertising now without a lot of human beings in The loop. Um, and yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, so, so advertising is a little, uh, port advertising research in particular is a portion of our industry that I think is greatly impacted by AI solutions. Cause again, you think about stakes, right? Like, you know, we're talking about advertising. We're talking about, you know, anybody who's ever done advertising and qualitative it's pretty much always like some people like it some people don't like it's a very nebulous you know because it's so highly personal you know you'd have to it's really you know The research is interesting you can you can improve it that might be able to be you know done with AI AI moderation or you know or UX work just pretty straightforward so it's it's a great space for innovation in AI I think so it is our you know our friends at The ARF The you know one leaders in that specific, you know, category.

Karen Lynch: And, uh, I'm an honorary member, so I see what they're doing. It's all AI all the time. Uh, because to your point, you just do so much. Uh, and if, the end goal from a marketer, where we said is to deliver The right message to The right person at the right time to take The right action, which is spending The type of money, The abilities of customization for advertising there. You know, the possibilities are almost endless.

Lenny Murphy:

And you know, we're not talking about those, like The, The, The inspiration for The tearjerker commercials that really dig up a sense of empathy, right? That comes, that type of, that type of advertising starts with some deep human understanding and then the creative teams run with it. Right. But once they've run with it, you know, which of these commercials makes you feel more, you know, The Kodak one of The father daughter situation or The PNG which was like The iconic Olympics one, like those types of commercials, they may have to start with some deep exploration of The human experience, but for kind of, you know, doing that kind of disaster checking before anything goes out, that can be done online. Cool stuff.

Karen Lynch: 100%. Well, and did you, just a slightly related thing, did you happen to see The Anthropic taking pot shots at OpenAI for advertising.

Lenny Murphy: I did not see that this week. No.

Karen Lynch: Okay, so we'll go down to The rabbit hole. Anthropic put out a series of commercials. 

Lenny Murphy:  Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Taking potshots and open AI for putting ads into. And it was all The situation of like, I'm one I saw is like a guy's skinny little dudes do you know, pull ups and you've got The big buff AI, you know, saying there's like, give me a, you know, a regimen and The AI says, yes, here's your regimen. Oh, have you tried, whatever, buff is us. They were really funny. But that was indicative of, okay, so how do I feel about that? If I'm utilizing AI and I am getting a tailored specific recommendation based upon the topic area I am exploring. That's very personalized to me and relevant at that time, like to, from an advertiser standpoint, that's kind of The Holy grail as a consumer. I think it's pretty damn creepy. So where do we go, where does that go? But that's what, there we are.

Lenny Murphy: So, well, let's stay creepy. Shall we, shall we wrap up a little more?

Karen Lynch: Oh boy. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: The, uh, Okay, so, here's what's interesting is, you know, last week, if you listened to last week, if you haven't listened to last week's Episode, go find us on YouTube, pull up The Episode from January, what was it? 30th or 31st last week, where Lenny and I talked about Malt's book, which is about AI agents talking to each other without humans in The loop. They are forming communities, they are forming religions, they are having debates with one another. They are acting in a way that is, um, that is interesting. And you could say like, Oh yeah, this is more of that kind of sci-fi. Um, you know, not really much to it, but it has captured big thinkers attention. And these big thinkers that I want to call these two LinkedIn posts, because after Lenny and I talked about it, it didn't just, you know, drift away and go away. Big thinkers are talking about it. So Allie Miller, if you're not following Allie Miller on LinkedIn, she's got, you know, 1.6 million followers on LinkedIn alone, not to mention her other social media sources. I think they tout that she's got the biggest follower network across social media. She's a former Amazon and IBM AI advisor to Fortune 500 companies. Anyway, it has great content on the subject. So she has a LinkedIn post where she's talking about it and buying it. It's The, it's everything that comes with it. Like what is happening? This is inevitable. It has started. And this is almost, um, anyway, and, and then Ethan Mollick, you know, before I, before you and I kind of talk about what this really means, but Ethan Mollick also talked about it. And he is, if you don't know him, he's like a professor at The Wharton school and, you know, MBA and PhD from MIT and this, you know, incredible thinker on all things kind of innovation, but also then AI innovation, obviously, and entrepreneurship. And I'm like, oh, he's talking about this, you know, so this isn't just like bot gate, right? This is something much, much bigger with profound implications for our world, let alone our industry, is what happens when agents talk to other agents?

Karen Lynch: Sorry, go ahead. Go you're sorry.

Lenny Murphy: I think I know I know I know it's okay.

Karen Lynch: Good, but that Yes, this was last week this was emerging right like everybody's going what you know, what Yeah quickly you realized no wait This is this is real thing and I think that The implication it's not just The talking and self-organization. That's amazing and weird but The Agents, and especially this specific application that is not cloud-based, is edge computing, right? These agents are housed on local hardware. The people are running this on their MacBooks or whatever The case may be. And their ability for action, for independent, autonomous action. And some of that gets really weird and scary.

Lenny Murphy: Some of it is- Because its intention was basically this.

Karen Lynch: Right, right. Yeah. So but that is we talked about this idea of agentic workflows, etc, etc. So there's kind of two, two types. Now there are tightly controlled systems that exist within the large LLMs. Now we are at reaching scale, these new breakthrough solutions that are just kind of out in The wild right and and do we and not just doing their thing that you've directed them to do but apparently thinking through oh you asked me to Order eggs Okay. Well, to order eggs. Well, I need how many eggs? Oh, well, you know what? Let me figure out how many eggs Lenny eats every week Oh, he needs a dozen eggs. So I should probably order two dozen eggs. So he has plenty Oh, you know what? Maybe I should check his cholesterol level and look at his medical records to make sure he's not eating too many eggs And that's what they're doing Oh and now I need to order their eggs available at The place where Lenny shops or do I have to go further out for that? Right, right. Oh, how do I pay for them? Oh, okay, Lenny. Give me access to your thing and never mind. You know what? I'm just gonna create a new account I mean these are these examples You know, obviously The Lenny eggs thing is not a specific one, but The type of Activity that these state these bots engage in in thinking through how to solve a problem Yeah in a fully autonomous way is crazy Yeah, maybe maybe The agents have decided after they've done their research that really eggs are not good for you.

Lenny Murphy: And therefore I've made the decision for you that you actually are not going to get eggs. However, all this other research says, and they're not even giving you egg beaters. Is that what those things are called? They're not even giving you that. They are going to give you another, an alternate protein source and that alternate protein source, you know, so the next thing you know, you are not really a part of the entire buying equation.

Karen Lynch: Yep. Yep. And there are examples of that out there. Now, these people that are doing this, let's be clear, this is, you know, these are developers who are early adopters who kind of jumped in or like, you know, Well, let's see.

Lenny Murphy: Well, let's see. I know.

Karen Lynch: But millions. Millions. So as an experiment.

Lenny Murphy: And that's going to go to show you know that if there are developers out there doing this, you know The big guys are too. You know the players have this going on in their labs also. Without a doubt.

Karen Lynch: I saw so much going on. Because this originally was based off of Claude. It was not Claude. It was not Anthropic, but it was like an open source version of Claude. And there I saw lots of stuff happening on social media, people going, you know, Claude's going, Oh, we don't like this. So, uh, but here's the world that we live in guys on this site. Bottom line, we talked about agents. Here we are. They're only getting more sophisticated, able to do more. It's not going to be for everything, but when you think about your own workflows within your business, this may be The ultimate example of like, I don't know if I want that to happen, but The ability for agents To do this and just look what happened this week at The stock market when it's rapid announced The launch of four plugins of Agents and The categories of business those agents were were focused on nosedived Because why would you pay, you know, whatever, you know year $20,000 for a license for One example, it's always legal You know legal software when it's 20 bucks a month and The agent can do it better than anything that you would have before. And that speed of transformation is just accelerating. Yeah. It's so interesting.

Lenny Murphy: Interesting time to be alive, right?

Karen Lynch: Yes, it is. Yes, it is. All right.

Lenny Murphy: We leave you on that feels like sci-fi but is a real life note. Check out The posts that we shared, these two LinkedIn posts, because we know our audience is there and follow these big thinkers in The space that are not affiliated with The corporate space, which sometimes feels like, you know, they're in The race. These are just thinkers in the industry. So that's why I think these are two good ones to read about. You know, there are fortunately people who are smarter than us, I might say, Lenny, doing some really good thinking.

Karen Lynch: Yes, yes. There's a part of you and I dive into this.

Lenny Murphy: That's what I say. Thank The good Lord there's fewer brains on it than ours.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, All right, Karen, glad you're back.

Lenny Murphy: Guys, we'll see you next Friday.

Karen Lynch: Good to be back. We'll see you next time. Have a good weekend, everybody.

Lenny Murphy: Bye.

Karen Lynch: Bye. Happy Super Bowl.

Lenny Murphy: Go Patriots, I guess, right? Or Seahawks.

Karen Lynch: Seattle. Yeah. Yeah, I don't have a team. Go team. No, we're not.

Lenny Murphy: All right. We're done.

Karen Lynch: Oops. Okay. Yes. Okay. Enjoy The...

Links from the episode:

Recap of the Miami CEO Summit 

Insights Association appoints Anita Watkins as CEO 

Qualtrics names Jason Maynard as CEO 

Sago Health rebrands to TriVoca Health 

BEESY receives a minority investment from Denali Growth Partners 

Konovo acquires Rare Patient Voice 

One Strategy Studio joins Radius Insights 

QuestionPro merges with Trymata  

Sago and Data Quality Co-op Announce Partnership to Advance Shared Data Quality Standards 

Circana launches Attribute Marketplace 

YouGov launches BrandIndex Voices 

STRAT7 launches Nucleus 

Displayr adds Chat + Agents 

ABCS Insights launches in Canada 

Allie K. Miller highlights 1M+ networked AI agents exhibiting emergent behaviors like multilingual discussion, self-organization, and tool ideation  

Ethan Mollick notes Moltbook’s breakout