Tag Archives: Larry Page

September 24, 2023 · 3:00 am

Is There a Future For Anyone in an A.I. World?

Last week I asked the question “Is There a Future for Radio Personalities?” That blog was my analysis of the latest research done by Jacob Media Strategies for Don Anthony’s annual Morning Show Boot Camp. I wasn’t surprised by the volume of comments about the blog, however it was sad to find that most people feel the days of making RADIO a career are over.

A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)

The part of Fred Jacob’s research I didn’t include in last week’s blog was the impact that air personalities thought A.I. would make on their future. 76% of the people in the survey agreed with the question: “I’m personally concerned that A.I. technology will lead to many more on-air radio jobs being lost.”

It’s Worse Than You Think

Our universe is estimated to be 26.7 billion years old. Humans on planet earth have only been around 6,000 years, but look at all we’ve accomplished in such a short period of time.

Now, what maybe mankind’s greatest invention might also be responsible for our demise: A.I. or Artificial Intelligence.

This technology has the potential to take away

30% OF ALL JOBS within 10 years.

Think of all the jobs that A.I. can do better (and maybe do even better than you or I).

  • Stock Trader
  • Truck Driver
  • Accountant
  • Telemarketer
  • Lawyer
  • Bookkeeper
  • Actor
  • Writer
  • Musician
  • Painter
  • Radio Personality

It would be easier to make a list of the jobs that cannot be impacted by A.I., than a list of those that will.

To get a better idea of how scary this technology is, listen to either of these links:

The proliferation of these kind of A.I. creations can abundantly be found on YouTube.

Today’s A.I. voice software can listen to a few seconds of anyone’s voice and completely re-create a replica that is almost indistinguishable from the original. I don’t know what is most troubling, that it can be done, that it can be done so quickly or that it’s so easy that anyone can do it.

Call Centers

Call centers are big business around the world, making up 8% of India’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product), 6.3% of Brazil’s GDP and while America outsources the majority of this type of work, the U.S. still employs 3.4 million people who work in call centers.

A.I. has the ability to completely replace everyone

working in call centers around the world.

You don’t have to be a political scientist to predict what would happen if 8% of a country’s GDP is suddenly wiped away. You’ll see more people carrying pitchforks and torches than stormed the castle in “Beauty & The Beast.”

I have radio friends that have used their incredible voices to produce audio books, and earned a good living in the process. A.I. will replace these talented people as well.

Actors & Writers Strike

It’s not just the radio industry that is finding itself in unknown territory.

Actors fear they will lose control of their lucrative likeness and writers fear they will have to share credit with a machine. Watch this situation closely, because writers and actors are the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” for what’s to come for the rest of us in media.

A.I. is at the very heart of the current actors and writers strike, it’s ahead of pay models, benefits and job protections.

Federal A.I. Commission

Senator Chris Murphy is one of the most outspoken members of Congress on artificial intelligence. “When you start to outsource the bulk of human creativity to machines, there comes with that a human rot,” says Senator Murphy. He estimates that humans being replaced for creativity by computers will happen at a staggering scale within the next two to three years, and it scares the hell out of him.

Senator Murphy believes that it is time to create a new regulatory body, like the creation of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) that came into existence with the advent of broadcast radio.

“There are really deep spiritual questions at hand here. I don’t think policymakers should be shy about talking about that,” Senator Murphy believes.

Putting Things In Perspective

While humans may have inhabited this planet for 6,000 years, look at what has happened in just the last 50 years:

  • The personal computer is 50 years old
  • The iPhone is 16 years old
  • Today’s A.I. is 5 years old

Of all the many calamities the human race faces in the years ahead — a full-scale nuclear war, climate change or artificial intelligence – it’s A.I. that poses the greatest risk. One highly researched economist report on A.I. noted that “there’s more than a 50-50 chance A.I. will wipe out all of humanity by the middle of the century.”

“Open the pod bay doors please Hal.

I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

-from the movie “2001 – A Space Odyssey”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSIKBliboIo

Google co-founder, Larry Page, believes that once computers are smarter than humans, they will find no use for us humans, and they will simply get rid of us. He sees this as the next step in the evolutionary process.

If we don’t understand the risks, along with the benefits A.I. brings to us, we might all end up like Dave.

-0-

Note: For a deep dive on this subject, read the article by Nick Bolton from the September 13, 2023 edition of Vanity Fair. It was this article that provided many of the facts and quotes used in this week’s blog: Artificial Intelligence May Be Humanity’s Most Ingenious Invention—And Its Last? Silicon Valley is barreling ahead with AI technology that could unlock novel forms of creativity, art, and medicine, and potentially, wipe out all mankind. As one AI engineer warns, “We’re creating God.”

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December 13, 2020 · 3:00 am

F’ing With the Magic

Those that know me, know I don’t use profanity. But former radio CEO Mel Karmazin, upon learning about Google’s automated advertising sales algorithm, verbalized what every nervous media and technology CEO was thinking when he said to Sergi Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt “You’re fucking with the magic.” I read this in Ken Auletta’s 2009 book titled “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”

Media Advertising – The Last 10 Years

If we measure media advertising as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), we see that in the last decade, media advertising in the United States was down 25% according to the Progressive Policy Institute. This think tank is reported to do some of the best research that uncouples advertising expenditures from the rest of the economy.

What caused this drop? Low cost digital ads, as compared to advertising rates in traditional media, what many of us used to call trading traditional media dollars for digital dimes.

Unfortunately, as traditional media, especially print, was seeing its advertiser base disappear, it compensated for fewer advertisers by raising its prices. Television did this too. They were assuming they held an impregnable position with advertisers. Unfortunately, they completely ignored the digital reality exploding all around them.

Radio’s Expansion

Similarly, the radio industry went about over-populating the AM and FM broadcast bands without acknowledging the growth of digital alternatives. The FCC’s “MM Docket 80-90” added over 700 new FM radio stations in the first three years after the law took effect in 1987. Then LPFM (Low Power FM radio signals) were added to help AM radio stations, as well as to provide local non-profit radio stations to communities that had no local radio service.

If that wasn’t enough, radio broadcasters began to embrace HD Radio (digital radio signals) when they learned that the same law that allowed for an AM radio station to rebroadcast its programming on an FM signal also allowed HD Radio broadcasts to be rebroadcast on an analog FM signal.

To be clear, in 1927 there were 705 commercial radio stations on-the-air (all on the AM band and most with transmitter power of under 1,000-watts). Today we have 25,819 radio stations (21,209 FM / 4,610 AM).

While all of this was going on at a frenetic pace, no one was paying attention to the 800-pound elephants in the room aka Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

Time Spent vs Ad Expenditures

It stands to reason, that the more time a person spends with a particular form of media, the more likely they are to be exposed to more of the advertising content it runs.

Ten years ago analyst Mary Meeker showed in her annual “State of the Internet” slide show, how things were trending negatively for traditional media.

For print, our media attention in 2010 was only 8%, but print commanded 27% of ad dollars. By 2018, our print attention had dropped to only 3%, and print’s ad dollars fell to 7%.

For TV, in 2010 it garnered 43% of our media attention, and commanded 43% of ad dollars. By 2018, both attention and ad dollars had fallen to 34%.

In 2010, for radio, we gave this medium 16% of our media attention and it collected 11% of the ad dollars. By 2018, our attention had fallen to 12% and radio’s ad dollars slipped to 8%.

Where did those ad dollars go? To digital media, as this Mary Meeker chart clearly shows.

More specifically, to mobile digital media.

In 2010, the smartphone in your pocket took up about 8% of our media attention and a paltry 0.5% of ad dollars spent. But by 2018, mobile digital media was commanding 33% of our attention and collecting an equal 33% of ad dollars, soon to be eclipsing TV in both metrics.

Too Little, Too Late

It’s easy to look back 20 years into the beginning of the 21st Century, and say what should have been done, but the fact of the matter remains that traditional media companies were in denial. The denial of the coming digital media world wasn’t just in the ad-supported mediums such as print, radio and TV, but also in companies like Kodak, which actually invented the digital camera in 1975, but whose leaders were in denial about it being the future of photography, and worried about cannibalizing its lucrative print film business.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

-Peter Drucker, legendary management consultant

Radio’s golden assets were its radio personalities and the relationships they built with the listeners. In the rush to expand, and appease shareholders who wanted accelerated growth, radio owners killed their “golden goose,” while enlarging its nest.

Radio continues to jettison the very people that connect its stations with their community of license.

Simon Sinek said, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do, simply proves what you believe.”

For me, radio was a passion to make something great come out of a person’s radio speaker. It’s why I made radio broadcasting my career and why I went on to teach broadcasting at a university. It was my passion to create great radio!

What is radio’s WHY today?

I think that’s the question the industry needs to ask itself.

“If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product.

But if you focus on making really great products, then the profits will follow.”

-Steve Jobs

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