436: The Disturbing Truth About ChatGPT And The Ugly Side Of AI

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today, I’m doing a solo episode and I’m going to be talking about AI and chat GPT. But this episode is not going to be about gushing about the features and how powerful it is. Instead, I’m going to talk about what you need to start doing right now in order to not go obsolete yourself. People are going to lose jobs because of chat GPT and companies are going to go out of business because of this and you need to prepare yourself now.

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But before we begin, want to let you know that tickets for the 2023 Seller Summit are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. It is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And you all probably know me well enough by now to know that my event has zero fluff. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business and not high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people and this is a small intimate event.

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Everyone eats together and everyone parties together every single night. I love smaller events and tickets always sell out far in advance. Now, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year, we also offer a special mastermind experience where we break up into small groups, lock ourselves in a room and help each other with our businesses. Now, the Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 23rd to May 25th. Go to sellersummit.com for more info. I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode.

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Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for ecommerce and it’s crushing it for me. I never thought that people will want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger. Postscript specializes in text message marketing for ecom and you can segment your audience just like email. It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-G-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve.

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And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner Tony. And unlike this one, where I interviewed successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. In this episode, I’m gonna talk about AI, chat GPT, and my thoughts on how AI is gonna disrupt this world. But specifically, I’m gonna talk about how AI can disrupt your business, your career, everything that you do to make money if you do not take these steps right now. Now, by now, you’ve probably all heard about chat GPT, and in case you haven’t, chat GPT is an artificial intelligence chat bot developed by OpenAI. Now, if you’re anything like my wife, you’re probably skeptical.

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But after playing with it for the past week, I can say wholeheartedly that ChatGPT is gonna disrupt major industries and possibly even upend Google in the coming years. It’s seriously that big. It’s literally as big as when the internet got started or when Google got started or when the iPhone came out. No joke. Here are just some practical applications that I’ve tried using it for this past week. Now, first off, ChatGPT just puts out amazingly well-written content.

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I actually recently used it to draft an email for my autoresponder sequence for Bumblebee linens and here’s what I asked it to do. I told it to write a brand story for Bumblebee linens, which is my online store that sells handkerchiefs and linens. And then I told Chad GPT to just mention that we started it because my wife cries a lot and we couldn’t find high quality hankies for our wedding anywhere. And then I told it that our value props so that you can add a monogram and a personal message and that we have the largest selection and we embroider everything in house. Now it took a couple of iterations of me teaching the robot.

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But for example, I told it to write it in first person. I told it to make it a little bit more heartfelt. I told it to make the language a little bit more casual and informal. And this is what it came up with. Hi, my name is Jennifer, the owner of Bumble Bee Linens. And I started this store out of my passion for creating meaningful keepsakes and gifts. Now, the original idea behind Bumble Bee Linens began when I was engaged to be married. Now I’m the type of gal who cries all the time. So I wanted something to drive my tears of joy at the altar. As a young bride to be,

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I spent countless hours searching for the perfect handkerchiefs for my own wedding, but no matter where I looked, I just couldn’t find anything that met my high standards for quality and design. That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands and create my own collection of handkerchiefs. I poured my heart and soul into sourcing each one using the best fabrics and the most intricate embroidery techniques. I also learned how to embroider in order to add monograms and personal messages to our linens. At Bumble Bee Linens, we offer the largest selection of handkerchiefs and linens on the internet. Our collection includes a wide variety of styles and designs,

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from traditional embroidery to modern prints. And you can customize our linens with a monogram or text of your choice. Because we embroider everything in-house in the US, we can offer fast turnaround times on personalized orders. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to share my passion for beautiful linens with others. I invite you to visit Bumblebee Linens and discover the beauty and significance of these special items for yourself. Thank you, Jennifer.

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Pretty amazing, right? Here’s what’s even more amazing. ChatGPT can even write code. Now, I was recently writing code for my website, and it had this weird compilation error where it wasn’t really obvious what the problem was. So what I did is I cut and pasted the code into ChatGPT, asked it what was wrong, and it told me the answer. And in fact, you can even use ChatGPT to write your code for you. I had it code up something quick and dirty that would make images spin on the screen, and it actually output code that worked.

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In fact, I saw a video on YouTube, I think, where a programmer had ChatGPT write code to track faces on video. This is nothing short of amazing. Anyway, so now that you have an idea of what ChatGPT can do, let’s talk about the implications and why it’s going to disrupt major industries. Right now, freelance writers are up in arms because ChatGPT does a pretty good job of writing articles. You know, and as a content creator who has writers, why pay 10 cents per word when you can have a robot write the post for you?

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Here are some nefarious ways that ChatGPT is being used right now in the content space. Some people are taking an existing blog post written by a human, copying and pasting it into ChatGPT, and simply asking it to just rewrite the article in a different tone. For example, you could just take a New York Times post, ask ChatGPT to break it down into bullet points, and then ask it to generate an entire article covering these exact points in an authoritative tone. And this works surprisingly well.

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Is this plagiarism? It’s definitely a gray area, but you can see why authors are furious over this. And it’s only a matter time before the web becomes cluttered with just a bunch of regurgitated junk. And in fact, arguably it already is. And Google has put out a statement saying that all AI content will be penalized. Artists all over the world are also angry because AI-generated images are being generated from the techniques of human artists. Recently, someone submitted an AI-generated piece of art

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that actually won an art contest against humans. So is AI-generated art plagiarism, since it mimics techniques that were invented by humans? Again, this is another gray area. This past week, I used ChatGPD to write jokes, write scripts for certain sections of my YouTube videos. I even had it draft a heartfelt note to my wife, just for fun. And it takes a while to get it right, but the AI eventually outputs something that is pretty darn good. And what’s scary is that you can even have it create content in the style

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of someone else. So for example, you can ask to write a joke about math in the style of Louis CK and it does a pretty good job. In terms of code, millions of people have been uploading code snippets and answering questions on the popular tech site Stack Overflow, which has flooded that site with regurgitated junk. Now are the lives of content creators, artists and software engineers in trouble of becoming obsolete? Well, the answer is yes and no.

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So first off, AI is still a ways away from replacing humans. The content that it spits out is often inaccurate. So for example, in a post on strategicre.com, the author used ChatGPT for fun to help his daughter with her term paper on Thomas Hobbes. Now, even though the essay created by ChatGPT was written very well and in an authoritative tone, it was actually completely factually incorrect. And incidentally, education is honestly where I’m most scared about ChatGPT right now.

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What if every kid starts using chat GPT to write essays and term papers? It is literally going to make our next generation incapable of thinking for themselves. Anyway, that’s a topic for another podcast probably. And the reason I think about it is because, you know, I have two kids and myself, but let’s fast forward five years when this technology becomes much better and more accurate. Are we all destined to become couch potatoes with screens over our eyes hanging out in the metaverse? Now to give you my point of view,

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I want to tell you a couple stories based on my own experiences. Now, in the early part of my career, I was an electrical engineer in the Silicon Valley. And during the early part of the 21st century, there was actually a huge movement towards outsourcing engineering work to India, where you could literally say between five and five to 10 X on your costs. Now slowly, but surely companies in the Silicon Valley started moving their entire teams to India, entire engineering teams, I should say. And my company,

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we nearly stopped hiring people in the US at that time. And we focused our efforts in building a team in Pune and Bangalore. Now people at my company were worried that we’d all be outsourced to cheaper labor overseas. But me, I was actually never worried about getting outsourced. And here’s why. Even though the engineers in India could do some of the work on my plate, I had the knowledge and the relationships in my company to get things done far faster than anyone in India. Now in the engineering world,

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I’m pretty sure not many of you guys listening to this are engineers, but it’s actually rare that you can lock yourself in a room, code, and develop in silence. To get things done, you often have to communicate with your peers, work together, and a lot of times it’s give and take. So for example, I might say something like, hey man, I’ll get this part done for you quickly, but I need you to do this for me. Plus, because I was at headquarters, I could actually move much quicker than anyone in India. And furthermore, and this is not really to brag, but I simply put out better work.

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Not because I was necessarily smarter, but because the communication was better. Now, when I started Bumblebee Linens back in 2007, it was extremely difficult to start an online store. There was no Shopify, no BigCommerce, no Amazon. If you wanted to shop, you had to jump through some hoops, be familiar with code to a certain extent, and integrate all of your own apps. Now today, companies like Shopify and Amazon make it way easier to get started. And today, you’ll find hundreds of…

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thousands of independent shops selling random things online. Sellers from China routinely copy and rip off products and sell them at lower prices and there’s rampant competition. I’ve even had people start competing sites to Bumblebee linens. The one I can think of right off hand is called Hummingbird linens where they knocked off our site completely. But am I worried about the competition? Now the answer is yes to a certain extent, but I have confidence that I can adjust quickly and be a step ahead of the competition.

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After all, I have a couple of things that my competitors do not. I have a strong following and a solid customer list to market to and people who are loyal to the brand. So what is the point in me telling you all this? After all, outsourcing to India and Chinese knockoffs isn’t exactly like AI, but it’s actually pretty close. The key point is that we are all humans and AI can’t take that away. And as humans, we all feel the need to connect with one another.

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Now, at my day job as an engineering director, I wasn’t worried about getting replaced because I developed real human relationships with the people at my company. I had the necessary people skills to get things done far faster than employee tens of thousands of miles away. Now, even if the engineering staff over there could code better than me, which was possibly the case, they would never be able to replace the human aspects of my job. Now, how do you get a whole bunch of disparate groups in a company to work together? You got to take them out to eat, you got to do them favors.

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You get them to like you and you kinda have to grease the wheels. Now in terms of e-commerce, it’s extremely difficult to replace your brand and the community that you’ve created. So for example, the other day I was looking at buying wireless microphones. am I gonna buy the cheap Chinese knockoffs that are half the price or am I gonna go with a Rode or a Schanheiser? I ended up spending 2X the cost to get the Rode microphone and not the cheap Chinese knockoffs. So overall,

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Chat GPT is going to disrupt people who are either not great at their work to begin with, or people who aren’t making connections with real people. My buddy Jim Wang recently introduced me to the blog, strategery.com, which is a blog that I highly recommend that everyone check out. And if you read this guy’s writing, there’s no way in a million years that an AI robot will be able to replace his writing. Now for myself, I think I’m going to be okay. Not necessarily because my content is better than anyone else’s in particular.

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but because of the real relationships that I’ve developed over the years with all of you who are listening to this podcast and all of you guys who read my blog or watch my YouTube videos. Everyone who I personally met at the Seller Summit, which my annual e-commerce event or every event that I’ve ever attended will continue to follow me because of our connection. So whether you’re a coder, a writer or a podcaster, it doesn’t really matter what you do. You’re a human with connections. And even if AI were to copy you,

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They can’t copy the community that you’ve built up over time. All right, so how do you compete with AI as an e-commerce store owner or a content creator? Number one, you need to establish real human connections with your audience. If you run an e-commerce store, start taking phone calls, provide great customer service, put out videos, TikToks and blog posts to get people to follow you. And I would say of the three videos, probably the best medium, you know, out of blogging and podcasting.

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Number two, don’t hide behind your computer all day. Actually go out and talk to people. Build a community. Recently, I’ve actually started going down my phone book and randomly texting people to reconnect. Take Zoom calls with people who follow you or buy from you. Create a group, whether it be Facebook, Discord, or Forum, where people can hang out and chat. So bottom line, in order to succeed in the AI world, you have to leverage your strengths as a human.

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And since humans are the ones programming the bots, you’ll technically always be one step ahead, but you must adapt to the circumstances as they change. Recently, I was in a mastermind group meeting, and we were talking about AI. And one person was like, ah, you know, I’m always going to be one step ahead, and I know how to rank in Google compared to other people, so I’ll be OK. And my response to that was, what if Chat GPT replaces Google, and all of a sudden, people are just getting their answers without having to click on any links?

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You’re going to be completely disrupted at that point. Anyway, I started out in my own journey as a blogger, but I’ve evolved to podcasting and YouTube because I feel that those mediums are better for establishing connections with others. Now in the world of e-commerce, I focus all my efforts on building an email and an SMS list. Your customer data is the lifeblood and the secret to longevity for any business. And for those of you guys selling on Amazon,

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Selling on Amazon is just a short-term fix and just a place to generate cash flow. And in fact, the best comparison that I can think of for AI is how Amazon disrupted e-commerce in the past decade or so. Focus on being a real person and you’ll never go obsolete. By the way, this entire episode was written by AI. I’m just kidding. Anyway, now that you know what you need to know to stay ahead, make sure you start getting yourself out there, putting yourself out there.

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And if you can, and if you had the courage, use video. Hope you enjoyed that episode, and I hope it provided you with some clarity on where the world is going and what you need to do to prepare. Next year is going to be crazy as this tech proliferates to different applications. For more information about this episode, go to mywebcuderjob.com slash episode 436. And once again, I want to remind you that my annual e-commerce conference will be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on May 23rd to the 25th of 2023. I really want to hang out with you guys in person next year.

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and this is kind of in the vein of this episode, so let’s meet up. Go to Sellersummit.com. That’s S-E-L-L-E-R-S-S-U-M-M-I-T.com. I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. Now, when I talk about how I these tools on my blog,

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And if you are interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to mywifequaterjob.com and sign up for my free 16 mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.