Navigating the Dynamic Landscape of Insights and Analytics

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

 

In episode 36 of The Exchange, Karen and Lenny dive into a multifaceted discussion covering recent natural disasters, upcoming industry events, and the ever-evolving realm of Insights and Analytics. Highlighting the dynamic nature of the industry, they underscore the imperative for adaptation amidst continuous change.

The conversation pivots towards the burgeoning influence of AI, emphasizing the significance of new companies and product launches. Of particular interest are emerging AI applications, such as design thinking platforms and leveraging AI for digital customer insights.

Delving into societal shifts, they explore Gen Z's evolving attitudes and the importance of understanding their preferences without making assumptions. They caution against relying solely on online opt-in polls, stressing the necessity for transparent and rigorous research methodologies, especially regarding sensitive topics.

A thought-provoking segment addresses emotionally responsive AI technologies, prompting reflection on their practical applications, such as emotionally intelligent assistants like Siri. Moreover, the discussion extends to the development of caretaker robots in Japan, challenging listeners to engage with these technologies to tackle pressing issues like Alzheimer's care.

Despite acknowledging discomfort surrounding these advancements, the hosts advocate for embracing data-driven insight solutions, emphasizing the power to shape their trajectory. It's a compelling call to action for navigating the transformative waves of innovation in Insights and Analytics.

Use code EXCHANGE30 to get a 30% discount on your general admission IIEX tickets!

IIEX North America

IIEX Europe

IIEX LATAM

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos.

Transcript 

 Lenny Murphy: The pre-show show. Always fun.

Karen Lynch: One of these days we're going to start mid-pre-show conversations.

Lenny Murphy: We are. We're just going to go live and you guys are just going to have to catch up.

Karen Lynch: Exactly. Hi, everybody. Happy Friday.

Lenny Murphy: Happy Friday. And for all those in the East Coast, a whole lot of shaking going on.

Karen Lynch: A whole lot of shaking going on. So yeah, New York area, I hope all of you who are listening from the New York area are okay, are not too rattled by the rattling we just experienced. 4.8 earthquake in the greater New York area, epicenter in New Jersey, Northern Jersey, I guess Northwestern New Jersey, sort of So yeah, shakes were felt. One of our coworkers in Philly felt it, a coworker in the North of New York City, up by the Catskills, a New York City employee felt it. I did not feel a thing here in Fairfield County, Connecticut, but other people in Fairfield County did, and my dog did. That's about it, but we hope everyone's safe.

Lenny Murphy: You're the most stable person I know. No surprise. Usually it's me that's shaking. I wouldn't even notice it. 

Karen Lynch: I know the thing Lenny could share on our company's Slack channel, like, by the way, I just experienced an earthquake. And none of us would be surprised. We'd be like, hope you're okay, Lenny. Like we have no... This practically disrupted our workday.

 Lenny Murphy: It did, but at least it was... In an earthquake, it would be considered kind of maybe fun. Maybe that's not the right word, but at least it was like, oh.

 Karen Lynch: A little bit of adrenaline excitement, I think, is how I would put it.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, but without the negative effects that come with it. Without any negative effects.

Karen Lynch: Word on the street is everybody's fine, and no major damage anywhere, and things like that. So I think they're still assessing.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. And as we move into, right, this, uh, the great 2024 eclipse. Um, so, uh, weird times, weird times.

Karen Lynch: So I hope everybody, I am, you know, a sucker for, um, the commercialized products. So of course I bought eclipse viewing glasses on Amazon for my household. I sent them to my kids who are away in different locations and I'm like, everybody just protect your eyes. So, My PSA for everybody who wants to view the eclipse is to wear your glasses. Lenny, please tell me you have glasses for your family.

Lenny Murphy: We have the glasses, yes. Because for a great note, my wife's birthday is Monday. And she wants to be in the totality, and we're not that far. So we are driving to Indiana to experience it. And yes, we have our glasses. We have the whole shebang. So it should be fun.

Karen Lynch: I know it should be fun. And I wonder what's going to happen at least in the US like during that during those periods of time, like what pro you know, workplace productivity is going to be because certainly don't send me a slack message around 3pm on Monday.

Lenny Murphy: Fair enough. Well, and so we can go on and on about this stuff. We have it. We have a lot to cover. And why don't we switch up a little bit from the order? It's kind of a segue because immediately following that the next week is right. North America.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, so hopefully, I know Karley might as well put it up right now. Hopefully everybody has registered. If you haven't registered for IIEX North America, please do. The code is EXCHANGE30. We are gearing up for an incredible show. I mean, I think I shared on LinkedIn yesterday, all I need to do is go to the hashtags, IIEX or hashtag IIEX North America, NA, sorry. And just starting to read the exciting posts. People are jazzed. And I think we're jazzed internally for a reason that people don't know about. This is not your usual IIEX.

Lenny Murphy: It is not. It is not. So one of the things that I do every event is Pre-show. I kind of go through the attendee lists and classify them, right? Buyer, suppliers, types of suppliers, et cetera, et cetera. And after the show, I kind of do the same thing based on the private meetings to get a sense of what's hot, what's not. Anyway, I got to tell you, for most of the last 10 years, no one's like, oh yeah, there's so-and-so, there's so-and-so. You know, I know all these people. I don't know. Hardly anybody attending the, uh, it is, was truly astounding that the, uh, the, the buyer side. Incredibly diverse across many categories. We've always been really CPG-heavy. No, no, lots of tech, lots of media, lots of financial services, pharma, CPG, people sending big teams. So on that side, really amazing. But on the supplier side, Yeah, the number is predominantly tech. Predominantly new emerging companies. Yeah, tons and tons of new companies. And guess what most of them have in common?

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So this is not this. This is not. So it's like that. Yeah, we live without a net. Sorry. That was my 11 year old Avalon probably yelling at my son Zeke. Anyway, the so not not usual suspects. So seriously, I've been . We were telling you this is gonna be a very different IX. And I'll give you one other piece that is really in grit, we had identified kind of the democratization of insights across the organization. We've been seeing that for a long time, but we are going to really see it in the data when the grid is released.

 Lenny Murphy: And we are seeing that at this event. So it is not just data we've collected. Here is empirical evidence that the buyer profile is shifting dramatically, and the supplier.

Karen Lynch: You just said democratization, but I think weren't you talking about fragmentation?

Lenny Murphy: Well, yeah.

Karen Lynch: Insights are being shared across the board with a lot of different areas. And different areas are relying on insights that are not just an Insights Department.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely.

Karen Lynch: Things are going hand in hand.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. And we see it at this event. So again, it's not, not trying to come up with a sales pitch. I'm telling you, you want to get a sense of where the industry's going, you damn well better register right now while you still can and get there, because it is, it is manifested at this event.

Karen Lynch: It just brings up a good point. I think you and I have talked about this before. Back in the day, in the early 2000s, when usability and UX research was becoming a thing, and they were speaking about insights, and those of us in the market research industry were like, but we do that? Like, that's what we do. You're not different. We're all the same. But it was like the first moment of me realizing that there are these areas that are doing insights work that may not be being wrangled by a market research department. So I think that that's that cognitive dissonance we have around how different pillars do research and what they're looking for, and what insights they're trying to glean, whether it's through, you know, customer, consumer or user research or data and analytics. Yep. That's what we're seeing, right, is these people with different interesting titles.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, very, very different. There's a lot we can do with that. I will say that we've read off the CEO series interviews, check it out here on YouTube, you'll see this kind of short form, and there's one that's going to be posted with Hamish Brockelbank, CEO of Brocks AI. It's a startup, AI-based startup, and he said, many of their clients are not in the Insights organization. They are very, you know, other elements. And I think we're going to lean into that and start identifying more companies like that, that are selling outside of Insights, more and more, to kind of help everybody get a sense of this, this growing pie.

Lenny Murphy: And there is, there's an expanding pie, the Insights and Analytics, the way we've always defined the industry, is getting bigger and there's more buyers and more stakeholders. Now we have to start getting a handle on what that really looks like, And that's probably a good segue. Let's circle back to the MRF at the end.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, no, totally with you. I think that it is because Lenny and I track kind of movers and shakers, if you will, or mergers and acquisitions and rounds of funding. And this week, there were some that I'm like, Oh, that's an interesting company I've never heard of before. I mean, some of them are brand new. But yeah, let's get into them. So I'm You have to tell us also, is 5.5 million in seed funding a big thing at this point? It's huge, right? So it's called SiftHub. SiftHub, they've got some seed funding. It's an AI sales platform. But what's interesting about it is that they are gathering insights from scattered sales data. So using AI to optimize for sales purposes, but scattered data. And I just keep thinking, do you know how much fragmented data, scattered data organizations have that could probably use technology like this? Not just for sales. Anyway, I just thought this is a super neat one that we should be talking about.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. As you said, I don't know most of these companies either. So, so I don't, I can't offer much insight individually, other than looking at the trend. I will say one thing that's interesting about that is the news hit this morning that Google is looking at buying HubSpot. And I would say, arguably, it is probably a similar idea. Utilizing Gemini or one of their solutions to synthesize marketing information and put those together. So that's what this technology does. So there's that. And 5.5 funding? Yeah, man. I mean, my startup, so we were, it was lucky to get a million. So 5.5, like, woohoo.

Karen Lynch: You know, that's a check it out, check it out. See if there's, um, anything inspiring that you can think about for your own businesses or certainly any use cases. If you are in a, you know, have an organization with sales functionality. So super cool.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. Super simple, uh, precede round. Uh, well, And they're part of Estonian, I guess, or maybe Estonian was the, the, uh, the investor. I wasn't quite sure how to read that, but the company's called super simple 2 million precede round AI powered data analytics platform. Right. So. 

Karen Lynch: You know, it may not be new, we may have data analytics out there, but like this one's an AI, you know, launching with AI power. And I think that's kind of a big takeaway for everybody. It's like, if you've had a data analytics platform, guess what the AI is helping startups launch around the globe. And, you know, yep, attention.

Lenny Murphy: So those were, those two kind of jumped out. Let's talk about some of the product launches.

Karen Lynch: I know so much good stuff. Did you, did you know, again, either of these companies?

Lenny Murphy: I did not. Nope. Yeah. It's like looking at the iXtendy list.

Karen Lynch: I know. It's so interesting. Yeah, got these new players. So our world is changing. So I, you know, I liked this evolving AI, it's a design thinking platform, but AI driven design thinking and insights platform. So just, you know, it's an AI approach to, you know, product development. And if you know, design thinking, I'm really curious, I would love to look under the hood of this one and be like, how are they tackling that empathy, that design, design thinking starts with before we start iterating.

Karen Lynch: I'm really curious about that one. Could be really cool, but I love seeing an AI application in the design thinking process. Cool stuff, right?

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. Then Quantum Metrics, Felix AI, Enhanced Digital Customer Insights. The point was increasing use of AI and understanding and improving the customer experience online. Another example, we just talked about a UX product development area, and now we're talking about CX. Another great example of innovation and new companies coming out of the woodwork or new products coming out of the woodwork that are leveraging data to produce insights. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And I think that for people who are thinking that they know the competitive landscape, I guess again, you probably don't because the landscape is greatly changing and there's just new people popping up all over the place. Yeah, we'll keep tracking these and You know trying to pay attention to what's new and what's relevant, but we do encourage you to click on these links because There may be something in there that you need to know about

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely some inspiration, competitive intelligence, whatever the case may be but to your point, the landscape is changing rapidly yeah, and I think it's only gonna increase so I want to dive into some of the other just interesting stuff.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, I was gonna say, like, of course, we have AI stuff. And that's what you and I really want to talk about. So you know, if we, if we, if we have people here who are like, aren't you going to talk about AI? We are. But let's take a moment to just say, let's just talk about some other interesting research related stuff. Right. So I think you found both of these Pew Research Center articles this week, or articles referencing Pew Research Center work that they've done. I love the premise of this one, that teens are basically aware of the positive and negative aspects of smart teen usage than we previously thought.

Karen Lynch: They know, right? They are probably taking their safety even more seriously. Maybe teens 10 years ago weren't when we were all freaking out, but today's teens are educated and aware that these digital tools come with pros and cons. I just think that's a really heartening study for a lot of parents. Actually, I think it was published in the Good News Network. So it's heartening for parents to know like, You know the messages have gotten through, you know, I thought that was a good one. I liked it.

Lenny Murphy: It is my Anecdote for my 13 year old son. Uh, he Uh sleeps with him he plays music at night. So he has Spotify on his phone But he placed it six feet away from him Because he's concerned about EMF. Oh Which, well, but there aren't, there's legitimate evidence that brain plasticity, et cetera, et cetera, that those are- No, it's all good stuff. Yeah. So there's an example that he's aware of this is something that it has its use and he enjoys having his smartphone for Spotify, et cetera, et cetera. But we're going to put it over here, which I don't do. I fall asleep with my phone, usually scrolling through the news. So I am.

Karen Lynch: We are all, you know, the Lynch family, we are all night table phone people, right? And at one point we were like, maybe we should have a station downstairs, but then Tim and I weren't going to model that at all. We knew it. We were like, we're not even going to pretend.

Lenny Murphy: We're not modeling that.

Karen Lynch: But I remember my, he's now well into his 30s, one of my, well, technically my only, my oldest nephew, my only one on my side of the family. So again, in his 30s. Anyway, you know, he was falling asleep with the phone under his pillow when he had stayed here one time. And I saw that I was like, I don't, I don't think under your pillow is a good idea for that phone, you know, but that was before all of the reports came out. And the worst of it was you could set your bed on fire, right?

Lenny Murphy: Then the battery.

Karen Lynch: Anyway, super cool study, you know, good luck to all of you, you know, raising your youngins, you know, as Right.

Lenny Murphy: Well, let's tie it to the research, because here's the application, right? So Gen Z, you know, we think of other digital natives or phone natives, and we can only talk to them via telephone, recognize or engage on social media, their attitudes are changing. And so we should not make the assumption that that is the only channel to engage with them. Because that may not be the case. I've seen some, we don't have a link here, it just made me think of articles on this kind of thing. There is a trend or some GenZ going back to flip phones. So I don't know how pronounced it is. It was enough that there was a news article on it. So let's not make any assumptions about identifying these populations and what their attitudes are and their usages. It is evolving and we need to be adaptive as we go.

Karen Lynch: And I mean, we've talked about just, you know, human values and all of that, too. We could go on a whole side path down that like behaviors of this next generation, you know, coming in, coming in fast after millennials is different. Their values are changing. And certainly, yeah, we need to keep learning about them because.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. And we have the long tail of change after the post pandemic. Right. The real. Yeah, I mean, my kids embrace the idea of a digital detox. They may not like it, but they understand it because I think they're happy to not be stuck like so many people were for the past couple of years. So lots of permutations, lots of variables here.

Karen Lynch: Well, I mean, you know what? Shameless plug for North America. Again, we are having a few people talking about Gen Z and some of the research that they've done for Gen Z. So if that is an area of interest for your business, you will hear a lot about it there.

Lenny Murphy: And if it's not yet, it will be because they're going to be the next big spenders. Next consumer population. All right, this, this was interesting.

 Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Another Pew Research Center on online opt-in polls misleading results. The unreliability of online opt-in polls.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Now, heads up when you click on this, it's some upsetting subject that misinformation is dangerous. It talks about misinformation or misleading data about the Holocaust, about things happening in the Middle East and some other topics that are really serious and heavy and weighted. But here's what's intriguing. I want to come back to this because I spent some time on this one this morning. So recent studies have documented errors in online opt-in surveys due to the presence of bogus respondents. Well, there's no surprise in that, right? But what's interesting is that this over reporting is concentrated in estimates for adults under 30 well as Hispanic adults. And that's when I was like, hold up qualitative research for me. I'm like, why? Why would there be more bogus respondents in studies or in segments that are either younger or of Hispanic descent? I'm just trying to sort the why out in this because that to me makes me say, hmm, what's that about? So anyway, I don't know the answers. And they don't say the answers in this article. But as a researcher, don't we want to understand why that would be? Are bogus respondents Are they able to be more transparent in a younger audience where they may not speak so articulately there or you know Maybe broken English if you have if you're Hispanic and you have an accent or you

Lenny Murphy: I have broken English like I don't know the answers but why right and I think we should call something out here real quickly. By definition this would be Kind of considered a river sample. But my sense of what they were looking at here was more not, were not panel delivered respondents. That was random opt-in pop-up surveys across websites. So I don't want to, I want to make sure, and I'm not clear on Because I didn't go into it. The sampling method. But I want to make sure we don't listen to this and think, oh, so all online opt-in panels are bullshit? No, that is not the implication. But it is that we need to recognize that some sample approaches are inferior to others. Surveys are ubiquitous and sometimes they are used for not great purposes. We know that. It's happened for years, push surveys.

Karen Lynch: I'm sorry, I'm interrupting because I'm really very curious about this because I want to understand it. Are certain areas where those opt-in ads are, are they more vulnerable if they're targeting a younger audience, for example? Like if it's a site that's targeting the under crowd or you know, a Hispanic audience, are they more vulnerable to the bots and the bogus frauds? I don't know the answer to all that, but I really want to understand why. So anyway, if anybody from Pew Research is listening, please jump in here and help explain this a little bit more to us because it's disturbing. And they do wrap in this article about it with, you know, the emphasis on the need to replicate because that's one of the things is the findings in these critical areas like the Holocaust and all that, they were not able to replicate them and that is an indication that something is awry, right? So it calls for sensitive subjects in particular to have a lot more rigor and complexity to the research design. So if anybody out there is doing that kind of research, I'm sure, I don't mean to mansplain to you the importance of And I don't mean you Lenny, I mean those people.

Lenny Murphy: I'm gonna explain to you anytime.

Karen Lynch: No, I just mean, I want them to all recognize the pressure is on them to be very rigorous because these topics can't afford, there's dire consequences. We can't afford misinformation about important and critical topics in our world.

Lenny Murphy: Right, and let's tie that back before we get into the AI stuff and wrap up in time. You know, the concern with DIY and automation, democratization of research has always been, you know, the potential lack of rigor, the misuse of tools and surveys. And let's own it, that is true. But the reality is, it has always been true. I mean, especially thinking about political polling. My God, there's been fraudulent, or at least biased, political polls forever. We may have increased the accessibility, but then the onus is on us as an industry to help draw the distinction. As things become increasingly automated because of AI, to train it right, to give these solutions the rigor and the benefit of our experience from a training set standpoint as researchers to put guardrails in between and help. And we've seen that already, and this will be the segue into AI, Yeah, you know the third bullet.

Karen Lynch: I'm ready to talk about the third bullet in this list right here Okay.

Lenny Murphy: All right. Yeah, so Yes, let's go. Yeah. Yes, we can train these things because we see it already happening as guardrails already in place in some cases may I yeah, I What one of the pieces that within live science is that AI models are teaching each other,

Karen Lynch: Which to me, I'm like, hold up. We don't even at this point, our trust in the AI you know, in the AI knowledge repository is not 100%. And now we are developing other AI models based on AI training. So, anyway, so, natural language, these tests, natural language processing, marking, and a significant step towards AI's ability to autonomously improve and transfer knowledge from one to another. So, like, Like that ship is sailing and I don't even think we're on board. No, no, no. We don't want them training each other and here they are. So. These are all, ladies and gentlemen, this is in the category of things that make you say, hmm. And just, we haven't ended on one of those uncomfortable notes in a long time, but today we're going to.

 Lenny Murphy: Well, we're not going to end on that one.

Karen Lynch: We got two more. Yeah, we got two more. They're all, anyway, all of them. You found this voice one.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, I mean OpenAI has launched their voice engine. It's not the only one. There's others that have emerged. Now they're sitting on it until after the election here in the EU. Well, not just here in the US, but you know, this is a big election year everywhere. Because of the concern about misuse.

Karen Lynch: Gosh, we're not even going to go there, folks. We are not going to start to think about voices we do or do not want to hear being created and mimicked and I mean, it's not even that's like, Oh, well, you don't want to hear the voice or not.

Lenny Murphy: It is the, it is the deep fake of voice.

Karen Lynch: So apparently the voice. So we've had deep faith, deep fake imagery, and now we're going to have deep fake voices. And that is going to be extremely hard to navigate. And I want to know part of it.

Lenny Murphy: Yes.

Karen Lynch: What we're going to do with it. And I know, so they are still unsettled. Great. Wait, there's more.

Lenny Murphy: Right. Oh, well, I mean, that one is my understanding is it takes a second snippet. Yeah. And then can duplicate that voice and then therefore duplicate, you know, any language put in the I did see I think it's connected to this and we didn't link to the articles. It was just kind of an aside. But there was a letter signed by Several hundred musical recording artists this week. I'm saying whoa Slow this down. Yeah, you know So they could take our voices off the internet at this point you a fraudulent episode of the exchange and Absolutely, I tell you if you start if you hear me talking about God, no, I'm not going to go there. No, don't.

Karen Lynch: Just don't.

Lenny Murphy: There's certain topics. Run it past me, because I'll be the first one to say no. I would never say that.

Karen Lynch: There's a lot that you might say that some people would say, this has got to be fake.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. Or there's some things you're like, really? You said that? Well, yeah, I said that. Well, I thought for sure that it was a deep fake.

Karen Lynch: All right. Let's talk about the last unnerving thing and get you out of the hole that we just pushed you into. Okay, we're talking about a 50 million series B funding round to an organization startup called Hume AI. And they're developing an emotionally intelligent AI voice interface. So significant investor confidence in emotionally responsive AI technologies. So the reason why I was saying this is the unsettling part is France. We're AI, LLMs are going to be able to train one another. They're going to develop voice capabilities that are, you know, that are human in nature. And now we're developing emotional intelligence. So it feels like we are moving very quickly into a place that is, damn, that's uncomfortable.

Lenny Murphy: That's it, that's it. I want to give a little context on this one, because I can on this. So the affective. Yeah, so the big shout out to our friends there. Yeah, they were taking facial facial coding technology and their largest market wasn't research. The largest market was automotive right and smart cars that were responding to emotional cues and in facial expression. So this idea of building an intelligent technology that is responsive to emotional cues is not new. Now, this is a whole other thing, though. So the analysis of emotional inflection and voice Oh, I forget the name of the company. We had them in IIEX years ago. They were out of Israel. And apologies for not being drawn to that. But this is not new either. The interesting inflection point here, though, is that it's one thing to analyze biometric or facial or voice or whatever to just understand emotion. The practical application here is building responses into technology that is responding to you based upon that emotional analysis in real time. And what this really means is going to, so imagine one application would be in Siri, you know, damn it, Siri, I want this. Oh, Lenny, I hear that you're upset. You should calm down, right? Or down a notch. Okay, perhaps I should play some soothing music for you. Right? Something. That's what we're talking about.

Karen Lynch: And even more unsettling. I think that if so, Alexa and I will yell at her a lot downstairs. I like looking around. She's not plugged in up here anymore, because I yell at her a lot. And I don't want her to start to like, you know, Play therapy. Or start doing it back to me. I like that she gets quiet quickly if I start to yell at her. So I need that to remain inanimate. I don't like the idea of it being.

Lenny Murphy: But here we are.

Karen Lynch: I know, but here we are.

Lenny Murphy: And here's where this is going, absolutely, is in the ubiquity of robots. Just because we're not seeing it widespread yet doesn't mean it's not barreling right down like a freight train on us. It is. And I don't mean that in necessarily a negative way. I think it'll be interesting. Japan, for instance, has been developing caretakers for their elderly population that are robots. Now the Japanese do tend to like robots more than other cultures. Yeah. But that's in this type of technology. How will that help if you're if there's a companion robot within the home that is assisting with caretaking somebody with Alzheimer's? 

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So not all the use cases may seem weird. They're not all scary. I absolutely see that. But Here we are. And again, did you get the horse? We should beat the horse. Guys, just telling you, the applications of these technologies are growing exponentially in every single direction you can imagine, truly.

Karen Lynch: And...

Lenny Murphy: I hope that our listeners are on the train.

Karen Lynch: I hope that they're on board and they're getting to that point of more comfort. I would like to think that our audience is leaning into adoption and not still standing on the I hope so.

 Lenny Murphy: But I understand why not, because we just get bogged down in this kind of business. But we are the keepers of insights. And we are the keepers of the why. That is what our industry does. And we have a unique opportunity to engage with these technologies, which inherently are data-driven insight solutions. On steroids, right? Going places that maybe we never thought we could get to. And I just think we have to lean in because we just have such a unique opportunity to shape where these things are going versus kind of our visceral reactions of, well, crap, I don't know if I like this.

Karen Lynch: I know. It's crazy.

Lenny Murphy: It is. And we're over time.

Karen Lynch: And we are over time. So we are, again, leaving you in this state of discomfort. But that's okay, because we started off knowing that we were trembling here in New England.

Lenny Murphy: Right. It's an uncomfortable day. We got weird eclipses on Monday, earthquakes in New York on Friday, AI Apocalypse in the classical sense of change, right? So there we go, here we go.

 Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, look, friends, we will see you all next week. It will be, I mean, I don't even know if, first of all, if I'm gonna be able to find any articles this week, Lenny, because all North America agenda and production work all the time. But next Friday, you're not gonna be able to contain our excitement for what's happening on stage the following week, so.

Lenny Murphy: No, not at all. So fun stuff.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, fun stuff. But we'll see you then.

Lenny Murphy: Everybody have a great weekend. New York folks, you know, you will rebuild.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Not funny.

Lenny Murphy: Too soon. Everybody take care.

Karen Lynch: Have a great weekend, everybody. Enjoy the eclipse. We'll see you next Friday. Bye bye.

Links from the episode: 

NYC area earthquake

CEO Series

The Marketing Research Education Foundation (MREF)

The Tech Portal Article

Supersimple's Pre-Seed Round

Evolv AI

Quantum Metric's Felix AI 

Teens' Awareness of Smartphone Pros and Cons

Unreliability of Online Opt-in Polls 

“Bogus Respondents”

AI Models Teaching Each Other

OpenAI's Voice Engine

Hume AI's Series B Funding