I’ve just come from my accountant’s office where I handed all my tax information to the lady at the front desk. The manilla envelope was much lighter this year than in years past.
Last week, I had a long talk with an AI guy out of Houston. He said he loved to find people like me – content experts with books and videos and training programs and blogs and podcasts and such. He wants to take all content I’ve created over my thirty years in business and feed it into an AI thing he’s created and create an on-demand Cam Marston kind-of-app. He told me I can read a couple paragraphs into a recorder, and the AI can duplicate my voice so very closely, no one will know the difference. Once all the content is fed in, and I’ve read my paragraphs, my clients can come to my website and ask me a question, and the app can answer the question in my own voice. I can charge a monthly subscription for my expertise and reach out to my clients who’ve used me repeatedly and let them know I’m now open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Thirty years of work, thirty years of research, five books, two training programs, three hundred podcasts, as many blogs and three million airline miles used to get all of it all turned into an app. Now I can create content by simply asking myself questions using the app, and my answer can be turned into a video of me talking as well as an article, a blog and a full-length podcast. All I have to do is format the output and promote it, promote artificial me. The AI guy really has no interest in whether anyone subscribes or how I use it, he simply wants the fee to set it up.
I’ve been thinking about this. There’s a lot that’s fascinating about all of it, and I can see the appeal, but I’m unsure if I want this. I’m unsure if I want to participate. I feels, for some reason that I can’t exactly explain, like a downward spiral. Ultimately, with the way things are going, it will become my client’s AI interacting with my AI – neither of us ever talking. I’m getting old and grumpy, but I don’t believe another app is going to solve anything anymore. More apps do not make life better, and so often when my clients ask me about their teams or employees, I learn that hidden in the heart of their question is a question about themselves. I don’t think an app can address this like eye contact and listening can.
Which may explain why my volume tax documents continue to get smaller. Where this is all heading leaves a distaste in my mouth, and rather than furiously try to keep up with this race to clone myself and quickly disgorge myself of my hard-won content through some app, I’m wondering if I’d rather not just walk away.
I’m Cam Marston, just trying to Keep it Real.
