Is Your AI Use Making You Lose Your Humanity? | Casual Babble #74

Speaker A: Today, I want to start with a confession. I use AI almost every single day. I use it to organize ideas, brainstorm, summarize articles, and even challenge the way that I typically think. So this is not an episode where I'm going to say AI is evil and it's ruining everything. Quite the opposite. I think AI is one of the best productivity tools we've ever had access to, but I also think it's exposing something really interesting. It's forcing us to ask a question that I think every entrepreneur, every creator and every young professional need to be able to answer. What makes someone worth listening to when suddenly everyone has access to the same words? Welcome to Casual Bab. Foreign this is Casual Babble. Hello and welcome back to Casual Babble, where entrepreneurship makes sense. On this show we discuss the trends, the ideas and the conversations shaping today's entrepreneurship and work it into a more casual conversation focus for you, the young professional and new entrepreneur. I'm um, your host, Brandon BC Babbles. Casiano Charlotte based entrepreneurial commentator, media correspondent and content strategist. If you're looking for a media and content partner, be sure to reach out to my business, casianacreative.com you can also connect with me on socials found on my beacons page. Beacons AI forward slash BCBabbles. Now. Recently I found this really cool article from Brains magazine. It's titled you're not AI and stop communicating like one. This is by David Fisher, a global public speaker and communications coach. Now in the article he talks about how, as we are in this consistent advent of AI's continued integration to pretty much every level of business, there is a phenomena happening within professional communication that helps us feel clear, clean, well structured, corporate, but also somehow completely devoid of humanity. Even though it has no typos, it covers all the key points. You're still finding it, leaving people feeling nothing once they've read it. Now a little bit more about David Fisher. He is a award winning, uh, international speaker. He's an executive, communications coach, actor and author. He was named one of LA Weekly's Top 30 Entrepreneurs to Watch and a Top 10 Speaking Coach by Yahoo. Finance. He brings with over two decades of experience to helping teams communicate and lead with passion, clarity and attention. You can learn more about him on his Brains Magazine portfolio and profile. I'll link that into my YouTube and substack posts so if you are subscribed to those two, you'll get the update when this comes out and check them out then. My substack is bcbabbles.subsack.com check out that content once you're done with the today's episode. Now to preview this a bit more. The article argues that AI isn't inherently dangerous because it exists. It is and can be dangerous when we allow it to replace authentic communication instead of simply enhancing it. Now, today we've reached a point where almost Anyone can use AI to generate a LinkedIn post, a proposal, a blog article, email, even a whole podcasting outline. And honestly, most of them are really, really good, high quality, they sound great, the structure looks great, but that's not the issue. The issue is that if everyone is using the same tools in the same way, then eventually everyone sounds remarkably similar. And that's where I want to introduce two ideas real quick. Firstly, technology democratizes execution, and perspective is what differentiates people. Now, from there, let's talk about how and why we like to outsource our thinking. Now, it's not because we're lazy, and I'm giving all of us the benefit of the doubt when I say that. But it's because typically we're super busy. Every entrepreneur that I know is in some way overwhelmed. Every creator is juggling multiple platforms. Professionals are trying to do more with less, and AI promises to save us that time. And that's wonderful until convenience starts replacing intention. Now, if someone asks for a networking email, AI can write it LinkedIn post, AI has it, someone wants to apply for a job. Now, granted, in this particular instance, I'm going to hop on a bit of a soapbox, because AI, I think in that particular instance should definitely be utilized. Because for those of you who are not aware, we are currently in the age where not only do you need a unique cover letter per job posting, you need a unique iteration of your resume. And companies nowadays utilize a lot of programs that use AI to search for special key terms or key phrases, but they don't tell us what those key terms or key phrases are. So using AI in that sense as many times as you need to to make sure that your resume is optimized for at least the wording of the job posting. No judgment. I've done the same thing. But when we use it for everything else, eventually you have to ask what is your voice? Not when it comes to the grammar, because again, AI is really good at that. But what's your perspective? The point here is that when communication is over polished, it can often lose the imperfections that make people relatable. Now, back in the article from, uh, Brains magazine, David talks a little bit about a roadmap that helps organizations better prepare for how they want to go in with AI. Now, he says, every organization is somewhere on the AI adoption curve. Some are sprinting, some are cautious, but most are somewhere in the middle. All of us, to some extent, are confused, because as soon as 10 is figured out or 1.0 is figured out, 2.0 arrives into the market. Our heads are spinning faster than Tarif Wars. And if you don't have a clear compass on when to use AI, you'll never figure out how to use it. Humans often tend toward a lower energy state where we like the path of least resistance, which means without a plan, we'll lean toward automation over connection. And that's where the danger lies. AI is fast, cheap, and available 24 hours a day and appears friendly. Of course, it's tempting because of that to let it do more. Besides, you don't want to be left behind as all of your competitors surge ahead. Now, he says here also that massive losses despite the use of AI come in the form of your greatest asset, your people. They're just slower and harder to see. But here's what makes them important. That experience and research both suggest that AI anxiety in organizations don't primarily come from the technology itself. It comes from the absence of clear thinking about when to use it and when not to. Teams that have that clarity feel less anxious, not more. We know what AI is for, they know what it isn't for. And that knowledge is enormously stabilizing. So in practice, what does it look like you use AI for? Transactional tasks, scheduling, reporting, first drafts, data synthesis, and routine communication. These are tasks with clear inputs and outputs. They're where speed and accuracy matter more than the human nuance. It is when you want to refine those things into something that then goes out to the world where you want to make sure human nuance has taken effect. Now let's talk about how this, how AI can really cause a flattening in communication. So have you noticed personally how much content online feels technically correct, professionally written? It might even somehow, at the same time, though, feel forgettable. And that's because we've optimized our experiences for what's polished and fast and what feels and or is efficient. But in that same breadth, we often kind of lose out on what's curious, what has personality, what might seem vulnerable, what has conviction. And earlier, like I said, um, now, in an earlier conversation with West Towers, we talked about how in marketing, the jargoning of that industry can create barriers. Well, in this instance, AI can do more, and the barrier can become bigger, and not because it's inaccurate, but because it often removes the humanity within that communication. Now, where do I see this myself? I've actually been wrestling with this a lot personally, because I've spent the past several months trying to refine what casual babble is to become, and I've been contemplating its purpose for years. Eventually, I realized I wasn't struggling because I lacked any ideas for the show, but. But I was struggling because I wanted every episode to be perfect. But then I came to a point, thankfully, finally, where I asked a different question. I was no longer asking, can AI, uh, help me produce more content? More importantly, what kind of conversations can only happen if they come from me? Now, recently I read from a creator who said something that really stuck with me, and he said that the Internet doesn't reward perfect information. It rewards a recognizable point of view. Now, that's really important as well, because in today's market, one of the biggest commodities any brand, any company, any organization can really try to nurture is trust in findability, in, uh, trustworthiness and credibility. So really, that comes down to how well, or how easily both your audience and even AI tools themselves can understand what it is you offer, and then from there, how well you're known to actually follow through on what it is you say you offer. And if that's not easily understood, if you're not able to really establish that point of view, then it becomes hard for your audience, your potential consumers and clients, to understand how it is you're trying to connect with them. And from there, everything else just kind of falters, and then you're not only not thriving in the market, you're faltering. And we want to make sure we have the foundation, especially as you are early into this world, to make sure that is less likely to happen. Now, because the main focus of this conversation is about how AI can make everything seem too similar, we have to consider what it is that becomes more valuable when that AI usage becomes ordinary. Not less valuable, more valuable. And that can include, like I said previously, trust. It could be judgment, context. If you're a podcaster, it might be storytelling, it could be the curiosity of what you talk about, maybe even relationships and experience. Nobody hires a consultant per se because they can generate information. You hire a consultant because you trust how that person interprets the information they gather. No one chooses a business because it has the most polished website, though that can play a factor. But more importantly, they choose businesses they believe understand them, and again, that are easy in themselves to understand. And when it comes to creators who have huge following, it's not because they publish stuff randomly. They follow the creators because the perspective, the point of view they have consistently teaches them something new. That's the importance of trust. Now, in closing, I want to give you a bit of a challenge. And the challenge is not stop using AI. Don't worry about it. But the next time you ask AI to do something or write something, don't ask if it's good enough. Ask yourself instead. Would someone who knows me recognize that I wrote this? Because in a world where everyone has access to the same technology, your greatest competitive advantage isn't your ability to make words appear. It's your ability to communicate a perspective that no one else has lived. Thank you for joining me on today's episode of Casual Babble. All links, including the referenced article and the author, will be in my substack and YouTube posts again. Check those out. My substack is bcbabbles.subset.com connect with me on socials through beacons AI forward slash bcbabbles and we will see you on the next episode. Have a great day.