The Quiet Shift Reshaping Market Research

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AI is quietly rewiring the research industry from the inside out, not through hype cycles but through everyday workflow integration. Episode 138 digs into what's actually changing: how platforms are embedding intelligence where people already work, why crowdsourced sampling is losing its grip, and why 92% of insights professionals are seeing unvetted AI outputs land in front of decision makers. The conversation moves from funding and M&A to a bigger question the industry can't avoid: who owns the value AI creates, and who's responsible for catching it when it gets things wrong.

Thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Lenny Murphy: And we're live.

Karen Lynch: We're live. It's so funny because we get this little message that says it's showtime, but it's not really showtime. It says it's showtime before live.

Lenny Murphy: So yeah, there's a little bit of a lag, but welcome back. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back, Karen. I just said I missed you. I missed all of you, all of our listeners. There's a long haul.

Karen Lynch: Oh my gosh, it really was. And we knew that was going to be the case, but it was funny when we were in Amsterdam for IIEX Europe, we had this grand master plan that was going to record a segment and I was going to record a segment after IIEX Europe. After silly me, after events, like you know, I crash, I crash hard. And Karley, who was overseas, you at the event with me, was like, Karen, it's okay. Like, I just was like, like, I went from, you know, we talk about going from zero to 60, but I went from 60 to zero. Right, right.

Lenny Murphy: And there you still have a voice, because I was saying. I mean I do not miss that, um, of going to events and by the end of the event, like I literally every time I could not talk.

Karen Lynch: Oh yeah, well I still had a voice but I, but I, but my energy I was pretty depleted, so um anyway and I was like I don't think I could articulate a damn thing at that point.

Lenny Murphy: So well well let's do the elephant in the room on that. So guys there looked like we just had to make a call there a lot over the past few weeks. Um, if you're following on LinkedIn, whatever, you know, maybe caught some of that, but then we focused on this week, so or else this would be a two-hour show, and we, you know, uh, so we're only covering this week. But that said, please, please do give a quick takeaway on IX Europe.

Karen Lynch: Uh, oh, yeah, I mean, well, it, you know, I think there's like there's a lot that I could share about it. Um, I think the if you go on like LinkedIn, oh, thanks, Matt. Yeah, thanks. You know, I could expand. You know, there are so many LinkedIn posts about it that of people summarizing, which I really appreciate because my head is in so many different places at the event that I took in a lot of people's summaries too. But big takeaway is that we are. We are really in a good place with AI. And what I mean by that is, we are at peace, is one of the phrases that I'll use for it. The industry has kind of reconciled all of our thoughts about it. We are integrating it into our workflows. We are using it in appropriate use cases. There is a place for it in our toolboxes. And we're kind of in this great place of yeah, it's in the mix, and um, the hype cycle is over, and we're talking about other things once again, too. So, it's really great to see that it is, you it's just in the mix, and other topics are back on top again. So, I think that was really for me very refreshing to see and hear about. And sure, it's you know, it's it's you know, first and foremost on a lot of people's minds because it is. The way of the world at the moment. But we're all really seeming to be in a good place with it. So super exciting. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: That is good to hear. I think there's still more, there's more structural changes coming, right? And we're sort of getting glimpses of that. We'll touch on some of that today. But the, but I'm glad that the resistance is futile as folks realize this. Here just like we don't need to waste our time with the online survey debate, right? That we did for so many years. Just let's go with it and find the value and go from there.

Karen Lynch: So, yeah. And, you know, and I think what's also interesting is, we had our two platforms to check out friends. We had our Insights Innovation competition over there and, you know, great new startup called Electric Twin. Won the Experts Choice Awards. So they're kind of our big winner. You'll be hearing a lot about them. They have a speaking spot for next year. So if you think digital twins and synthetic data is going away, that's not either. That's really that's also some acceptance there and certainly where we'll be talking about for. A significant portion of the future as well. And our panel of judges certainly see something worth putting money behind in that company. So we're really excited for them. And then the audience favorite and also Green Book leadership team put kind of our fingerprint, if you will, on the Industry Impact Award on VST virtual store trials because. What was interesting about them is they, they're doing they're doing really something really interesting with planograms. So, um, if anybody works in, like, you know, if anybody has ever looked at a planogram, um, and I think it resonated with a lot of people there who, work in retail level, whether they're a brand or working for a retail establishment, um, you know. Doing that kind of work about shelf placement or package design of any sort and trying to figure out how to get your brand to be seen and to move product, and what they're doing in terms of intelligence with their product right now is really exciting. So, check them out as well. The audience loved what they're doing and what they saw on screen with their again, intelligent platform for. That particular, very niche area of expertise. So, really exciting, cool work, very different from some of the other things that we saw. And what we liked about it was a very specific application of the new technologies that were out there. So, anyway, check them out as well. Congratulations. You'll be hearing from them too. So, it's cool to bring competitions back to Europe. It was great.

Lenny Murphy: Very cool. I look forward to talking to him as well. That's probably a good segue, right? The Karley, if you want to bring up West, because that's the next big in-person event, brand new.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yes.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. So that is in the fall. There will be a competition round there as well. And the home of Silicon Valley. So it'll be interesting to see how that goes. What else do you want us to know about, Wes? I saw the announcement this morning about the speakers. It looks like a kick-ass event.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, we have some amazing speakers across all. Across all categories, of course. And some of the folks that I'm talking to are just really jazzed about not just getting out to the West Coast. Of course, there's some West Coast folks that I'm talking to that are really relieved that we're coming out there because they lose so much time traveling to the East Coast. So they're like, yes, thank you for recognizing that. But also just excited about who's in the mix, some of the brands that are just naturally. You whether it's entertainment or technology or, you kind of the food and beverage companies that are located CPG companies that are located out there, lots of platforms, lots of tech. Anyway, yeah, really excited. We're also going have in the exhibit hall, like a startup alley, which is really cool for some. Kind of newcomers to the industry as well. So, yeah, it's going to be a great show. Great roundtable discussions, which we've done at IIEX before. But I did bring in some ringers. Lots of qualitative researchers are going to be moderating those. So we are not going to be moderated by anybody who's got something to sell. All of the roundtables are. Be moderated. So that's going be, those are be some really great curated discussions. We chose the topics. So curated discussions moderated by prose. So looking forward to that. Different topics each day also. So they're not be repeat topics. Really great discussions that everybody could participate in. So I'm excited about it. Yeah, it's a really neat event.

Lenny Murphy: Well, and speaking of curated discussions, right? The GRIP forum. Did have to get rescheduled, my fault. But now we're doing it on July 21st. The great panel conversations with all of our commentary providers on the lace round of grit, processing, kind of go back to, you know, let's let's where we are as an industry, that conversation. So if you have not signed up yet, please do. It's always great as we kind of do this whirlwind. Whirlwind panel conversations, three in a row. Back really quickly, you know, with really smart people. So that'll be fun. And that's probably, we should get into the news.

Karen Lynch: Cause yeah, just one more thing, though, about grit. Because this I was tagged in a LinkedIn post. Melanie Soca tagged me in a LinkedIn post about something that she had read in the Grit Report that, you know, one of those things that made her say, hmm, you know, and kind of got her thinking Anyway, really great conversation. I don't have the link, Karley. I'm so sorry. If I come up with it, I'll add it to the post later today on LinkedIn at least. But anyway, if you come across something in the data that makes you say, hmm, go ahead and tag Lenny and I, tag Greenbook. And, you know, we're happy to have a conversation with you there as well as at the Grit Forum because. We love talking about this stuff. Lenny and I are nerds for the research that we do. So, um, so yeah, so dig into the data, uh, whatever, whatever strikes your um strikes your fancy there and catches your eye, go ahead and tag us in that online. So, and thanks, Melanie, for doing that for us because it's um, it's so interesting, and I love the conversations that you um provoke online.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, 100%, 100%. We love drinking our own Kool-Aid.

Karen Lynch: All right. Well, why don't we dive in?

Lenny Murphy: Cause not, we haven't reminded everybody, the decision a few weeks ago to, so we wouldn't be doing two-hour shows. We're limited to just the top, top few from each category. So by no means does it mean this is all of the news. It is not. There are so many things that are left on the cutting room floor. But we have tried to prioritize what we think are the most important.

Karen Lynch: And this one came in via email, didn't it? Right to the exchangeacre.org? It came to you.

Lenny Murphy: I didn't even see it.

Karen Lynch: So this one came in. Remember that because if you haven't tuned in for a while, the exchange at grimbook.org is a way to get us press releases. We don't share everything. We can't possibly share everything. But if you have some news that you want to know about for consideration on the show, please send it to us. But Cincinnati-based qualitative specialist firm Felton Buford has acquired another full-service 30-year qual quant firm they'll just research, tripling its size in doing so. So now they've got an integrated independent research firm. So they're serving both. They're serving insurance, financial service, education publishing. So pretty cool, pretty cool acquisition, if you ask me. Thanks for letting us know about it. Pretty cool. Yep.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. This was the, this kind of reminded me of what we've seen in the past. Weeks of a few plays that were happening in the UK of some smaller agencies coming together to, with, I assume without private equity, you involved in combining forces and not necessarily trying to be the end-all, be-all to everything, but to really build kind of domain depth and capability. If we look at it, the way I thought about this, like here's another, here's the trust layer again. So, right, that these, I look at these companies and think these are trusted experts with domain expertise. They're not getting into the fight around capability because that's not what the business is based on. The business is based on that consultative and domain expertise, doubling down, combining that. I thought it made a lot of sense. I think we'll see more of those kind of small to mid-size. Companies go in a similar route because that's their moat. It's not the tech, it's not the methodology. It's not the no, the domain expertise.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. They're not all, they're not all in the game for $100 million to add on top of each other.

Lenny Murphy: Like our next one. Yeah I think I I did the background here we're gonna we're about about 12 labs friends and I I did the background 12 labs is now up to 207 million so so yeah take it away let's let's go yeah this 12 labs raised 100 million series b um for human like video intelligence and when I first saw this I was like we've been in video analytics for a long time what what jumped out at this was that this was around contextual comprehension, not just kind of the tactical structural analysis, but really interpreting the video. And which is, that's cool. And I mean, the applications are immense from a research standpoint.

Karen Lynch: In this press release, it says users can describe a moment in words and be taken straight to the relevant scene. What? What? Thinking about the research applications for that. So, okay, so I'm describing, you the ideal something or other, and now. I can be there and I can be talking about it. Say I'm, say, I'm a, oh my gosh, say I'm a design firm and I'm literally creating furniture and I want to design my ideal living room. Or say I'm creating a new bank or, you know, I work for a banking company and I want to design my ideal banking lobby. Or, you I mean, we could go on because I'm an ideator, but even if I'm, I work for Kroger and to design my ideal checkout counter, you like I can start describing it. And thing, I'm there and I can say, no, that's not exactly where I want the, you know, impulse buys to be. I'd like them around the corner. Like, what? Like, people can literally be telling you what they want for like, you know, the customer experience and they can be designing it. And then show up there and start to, you can see what's inside people's brains. What?

Lenny Murphy: That's amazing. It's amazing. It is amazing. So, you know, if you're doing, well, back to the VST, right? The thing about that application of, you know, to test that we're test shelf designs and understand what people, how they're reacting to it from I didn't spell this out that there was an emotional component to this. I'm willing to bet there is, that there's some type of model built in around that. So, how do you get context on understanding the subtext of non-conscious? Anyway, very cool stuff.

Karen Lynch: So, that this technology exists, right? The point is that it's possible. Like, we can suddenly see what's possible in this type of technology. And if 12 Labs isn't doing it, you know, others can. So, you know, we'll have to see that tech. So cool.

Lenny Murphy: Well, this next one mentioned, you know, before that, thinking about this now, how's the world, how's the industry being restructured?

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And here's an example. Accenture invested in AlphaSense for a Genetic Market Intelligence. Now, AlphaSense, what, just raised a bajillion dollars, you know. A few weeks ago.

Karen Lynch: My first thought was, wait, is that our AlphaSense? Like, I had to do this. I had to think through this for a minute because I'm like, are there other AlphaSensees? Like, I had to think for a minute. Like, are we, are we, are they playing? Are they literally playing in? Or are they literally playing in our sandbox? Like, I, I, like, they are playing. Now I'm taking it personally. I was like, we've been dabbling, but now they're jumping in our game. Cause yes, Alpha Sense. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: This whole idea of the decision intelligence stack, right? Whenever we've been talking about these concepts and the, and here's a great example of that with Accenture, consulting and their enterprise deployment capability. I mean, basically, and take Accenture, McKinsey, Deloitte, I mean, any of these guys, it's the same model. Built on a data flow now, you know, a data infrastructure. Um, and yeah, I mean, they're no surprise seeing, you know, this is now just seeing who does this stuff. And that was my thought. It's like, okay, well, they already bought Inner Public Group, right? Central has been making acquisitions that are around data and marketing and advertising and all of those things for a while. Yeah. Now we're seeing them putting in the infrastructure layer. So yeah, it was interesting.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And I think, you know, again, these press releases and the way they're coming out with the news, just take note of all of them, all of these keywords. When we're talking about agentic market intelligence and workflows, like that is it, folks. Like, this is pretty much like, yes. Like that is what we are systematically building towards very deliberately and mindfully, a world where we have, you know, we have, you know, intelligent platforms, intelligent dashboards where we are, you know, everything is on demand. Lenny and I are saying the same thing week after week after week. It's getting bigger and stronger, and more people are in that game. And we'll talk more about it again in a little bit because you'll hear more of this.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, because it's a big conversation. It's not just, it's changing. This model is changing how we think, how AI shifted from a tool to infrastructure. And what are the real implications of that? And there's big, big implications on how all it's playing out. So yeah. And speaking of which, right, here's another example.

Karen Lynch: So, product launches.

Lenny Murphy: YouGov launched their Parallax, which is, I love the book, The Parallax View. Anyway, so is that term. Anyway, AI twins plus real human validation. We had not yet baked in. Just think about a company like YouGov, right? They own their panel. They own syndicated products. That's always been kind of the core of their business, they do custom, but of their own stuff. So a lot of data. Now they built digital twins, not synthetic, right? Real digital twins off of the profiles and then baked in automatic validation. So you explore the concept and then you validate with a real panel automatically. Is one baked in workflow. So they own the system, they own the infrastructure of the human data, the exploration, and now that. So I hadn't seen that happen yet. We will see others do it now, right?

Karen Lynch: But so how about that? I think we've been talking about that for a long time, too. Like, that's what needs we knew that's need to happen. They're need to validate all that stuff. What I like in their positioning of it is they literally, again, you reading these releases, two distinct perspectives on any research question, each compensating for the limitations of the other, providing. And depth of speech. So they're recognizing that each has limitations. And I love that they're calling that out. They're like, yeah, we know, that, you know, the digital twins or the AI twins is not ideal. We, we get that. And we also know that, you we that, you know, the survey isn't always, perfect. Like, we get that there are limitations with both. So let's. Let's do both, and I, I just really appreciated that positioning.

Lenny Murphy: I was like yeah, it's the flywheel, right? Yeah, the um so the always on, I mean it can be, right it's a licensing model and you know it makes an awful lot of sense. Well I, I suspect we will see very quickly the uh either conversations to companies like Electric Twin partnering with whatever AYTN, right? Whatever, right? I just don't know how to put wool down my butt, but, you know, we'll see partnerships to duplicate that cycle, or we'll see, you know, more companies that are doing that. I suspect I haven't seen Qualtrics call this out specifically, but I'll bet with their synthetic into survey that that's probably, if it's not already happening, it's on the roadmap. I just haven't heard them talk about it explicitly.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, when I came back from X4, and I wrote a few articles about it. So they were pretty clear, and Jordan Harper at was pretty clear about the ongoing research that they were going to be doing to make sure that their synthetic data was kind of always up to snuff, because they're like, that's going to be their flywheel, basically. It's only accurate, their synthetic samples accurate up to the immediate point in time because evolves and behaviors evolve and people evolve. So they have a flywheel in place internally to make sure that everything is continuously updated. So, yeah. So, we had talked about that at the time, and I quoted him in a few pieces saying something similar. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: When I was speaking to Flywheel, the competition, right? Zappy, one of the originals. The Amplify AI and Amplify Hub, which they'd already baked a lot of AI, you know, into all of this, but it's going from insight into activation, right? Combining those two. So being a hub, being a flywheel, you know, focused on what they do. And that's it's platform play.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, what about what they're doing, though, and I think they spelled it out in this: the need for the need for kind of the word amplify with AI, stay with me, folks. The need for this amplification. In the world of ad testing because of the quantity of assets that have to be out there across the hundreds of digital and social assets that now make up, they call it, modern campaigns. You know, gone are the days of, you know, here's your print ad and here's your television ad that some of you may recall, right? Like the sheer number of assets in one given campaign. They are, you exponentially higher than they were ago, even. So, I really like the use of the word amplify because it really brings to life what we're dealing with today. So, anyway, so I just thought, again, good wording. You know, I'm a words person, but I really do really read these press releases and I, I like when what they say in them really makes sense to me and it feels really logical. So they need. They need to do this fast and they need to execute at scale for that full creative pipeline.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. The workflow.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Right.

Lenny Murphy: So with AI powering to make all this fast and easy and effective. Speaking of which, right, this next one, global data. Analysts, Ava, into Microsoft 365 via MCP. We're seeing more and more of this, right? This integration into the workflow where the user is instead of where asking the user to come to you. It's directly there. So Global Data has tons of data resources. They do basically syndicated products, licensing on all types of topics and categories. And now building that, you have to have a license, of course, but you build that into 365. So you could access that when you're building a report, whatever, access the secondary data, the sector category information, whatever the case may be, making that seamless, easy where the user is in their workflow.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: I would like to ask.

Karen Lynch: The last time we met, like we talked about the integration with Claude. Like, this is the way. This is the way right now. We're going to see more of these companies integrating which tool into their workflow. So, um, and like we've seen Anava before, not to throw shade at you, global data. That's not my intention. It's good. You're doing what you need to be doing. So that's not my point. But I guess my point is really that, yes, good for you. And I expect that we'll see more of this, like who is integrating what into their system so that we can get this market intelligence because, because you need it.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. 100%.

Karen Lynch: 100%. And I think that this, this, there's the other aspect of, as we were talking about, these intelligent platforms that you can query as a user, you know, to get kind of your, you know, that data on demand or that, not the, not just data on demand, but get the, um, get the answers that you need on demand from the, uh, from the information that's available through your research. Like it's. Yeah. This is what we're doing. The wave of this is the wave of insights that we're in right now is you know on-demand answers based on what you have collected in the system that you're in.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. And for the user to determine what is their kind of internal home operating system, right? I mean, a lot of folks live in Notion or in Slack or in Office or within their AI system. Like I spend more time now on perplexity than I do any other application, well, other than Outlook. So, but yeah, because it's convenient.

Karen Lynch: So yeah. Well, Gemini and I are becoming like this, you know, and I didn't really think that would happen, but it is baked into all of our tools. Like, I'm cheating, I'm cheating on Open AI right now. Sorry about that. For real, Gemini is becoming so useful for me because we're in a Google, you know, we at Green Book are in a Google ecosystem. That's all there is to it. So I understand why, you know, co-pilot, of course, if you're in the Microsoft ecosystem, that just makes so much sense. So, yeah.

Lenny Murphy: But I, I am, I, I'm. I use Office. I only use Google when I have to because other people are using it, right? But the, um, but I do not, I have not found Copilot to be particularly an enterprise that is insisting upon it, right?

Karen Lynch: Like, you know, that's, I think, you have, you have freedom, which is what we expect for you.

Lenny Murphy: Expect nothing less than you being a pain in the ass, Lenny. Uh, um, well, speaking of Microsoft, because this was. A few weeks ago, right? We saw the OpenAI and Anthropic launching their forward deployed. Now, Microsoft did too. The Frontier company, $2.5 billion, 6,000 engineers. Also, I should mention AWS did as well. So, the right. So, this whole thing of the big tech companies now putting a trust layer, a human judgment layer, a consulting layer on top of deploying on these tools. There we go. And they're taking clients' data and building cool stuff with them. They may not be looking at the insights industry directly. But we're definitely getting blowback on this. There's ripple effects. There's no if, ands, buts about it. I actually heard from the CTO of a large research company that the example of the agentic buying, this is accelerating what they're getting from clients, right? So the procurement, so even just kind of very nuts and bolts.

Karen Lynch: Functional aspects of the business are being impacted by things like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and this they were talking about their launch clients, uh, including Unilever. So, you know, like if you, if you, yeah, I'm talking about the speaking industry, Nova Nordisk, um, as well. But, Unilever certainly speaks to, um, you know. Your insights function is paying close attention if they're deeply involved in this as well. So, um, yeah, yep, yep. Interesting time. Interesting times.

Lenny Murphy: Now, the end of an era. Have you ever used a mechanical turk? I never recruited.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, no, I mean, not personally, no. Okay. I don't like the people that I partnered with. Who knows?

Lenny Murphy: Use it occasionally, but the Mechanical Turk, which was always the crowdsourced task approach that Amazon had baked in, it could be, hey, transcribe this for me and here's a buck, you or participate in research, right? But it's always kind of messy and, you know, it was early, but they've, they stopped.

Karen Lynch: Yep.

Lenny Murphy: It's when they've gone into maintenance mode. And I think that's because the model was very commoditized.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And, they've shifted. So I decided on that type of commoditized sample, which if it's more than that from a use case standpoint, but let's call it that.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Was not particularly, doesn't meet the needs for the era.

Karen Lynch: So there you go. Yep.

Lenny Murphy: So I thought that was a really interesting signal, kind of a bookend, right, of the just where things are going.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: All right. What do you mean about this meta? This meta thing, because this was like, man, I had so many reactions to this.

Karen Lynch: So many reactions to this. I mean, talk about changing times. So. And there's no good segue to this from, you know, talking about talking about what we're just talking to.

Lenny Murphy: But well, it's crowdsourced data.

Karen Lynch: Yes. So, Meta, you know, we every now and then we talk about what Meta's doing with smart glasses. And this week, Meta, Meta is working on smart glasses that record all the time. Always on recording, super sensing AI, continuous capture. They will watch and listen all day. And the idea is that the wearer can ask, hey, what was that restaurant I just passed? Or where did I leave my keys? And the glasses have the intel. It's based on one of the articles because I did a deep dive. So, what's interesting about it is concurrently, an article that came out that I didn't share just because I did a deep dive here. But, like, New York State is already banning recording-capable eyewear from its courtware from its courtrooms. And there's all sorts of privacy that people are starting to say, Wait, hell no, right?

Lenny Murphy: Lots of privacy issues.

Karen Lynch: This is as if the other glasses weren't bad enough. This always on is a massive problem.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. But

Karen Lynch: The ad machine, as one of the articles that I read, the ad machine is like, this is, this is a really good idea.

Lenny Murphy: That's right. We talk about delivering real-time ads right there, contextual involvement.

Karen Lynch: You know how like, I don't know if you use Waze, but on your GPS, on your phone, like, you know, like every now and then you'd be at a red light and it'd be like, which of these? Coffee shops did you just pass? And it'll be like, Did the Dunkin' Donuts or the Starbucks or the McDonald's or the Burger King? And like, every now and then, I'm Didn't notice any of them because I'm driving, or like, every now and then, Oh, yeah, I Duncan or whatever. Like, you know, imagine if it's like, which of these fast food restaurants did you just walk past? And you know, like, like the ad. Potential alone is really cool. Or imagine you're walking down the street and an ad pops up because you're a block Starbucks. If you're in the window of Starbucks, there's one a block away. I might actually turn right to go to that Starbucks. Like the potential for this is huge. Anyway, anyway, the idea that you can observe behavior like, the glasses can observe behavior real time. That advertising, as we know it, can radically change. Anyway, um, there's so much here. I don't even know.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, there is. I defaulted to the tracking and privacy and you know, all of those still recognizing all everything you said, like, yeah, that's that's really cool. But man, a little too big, brother for me. So, you know, but yeah, we shall see the value if people want.

Karen Lynch: I'm sharing that because this is what my husband just shared. And I'm sharing that. I think he shared it on YouTube. So I'm sharing that for everyone on LinkedIn to see because everybody should see that.

Lenny Murphy: Just the same thing would go for my wife, Tim. So yeah absolutely um any coffee actually um yeah interesting time they also we didn't pull this in but they did uh there was another thing on meta this week that around uh a settings here's a psa right they that they now use your instagram any picture any in instagram they changed it so it can be used to create as fodder for AI. There's a setting. So, but with the new update, it defaulted to, yes, we can use your images for AI generation. If you don't like that, go into your settings and Instagram, change it so they don't have permission to use your data, your images.

Karen Lynch: Anyway, I know, man. We have to be careful. We have to be careful.

Lenny Murphy: Check the terms of service.

Karen Lynch: Always, always, always tell your kids, check the terms of service.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, the settings do change regularly, they do, and if it's free, you're the product.

Karen Lynch: Uh, so anyway, on that note, let's talk about a couple interesting reads before we wrap. Um, I didn't get through all of these, I did skim the AI trust index. But you're going to have to talk about the other ones. So, good research. 92% of insights professionals say unvetted AI insights are already reaching decision makers. So I think that was another, another conversation at IIEX Europe that I didn't really talk about is just the idea that. That human oversight over AI insights is mandatory now, and everybody knows it. The human in the loop part of the conversation. And sometimes I think it was a big kind of a universal agree, just make sure that we are not putting unvetted insights out there. Make sure we're double-checking everything. Because big decisions are being made. We have to be careful so we know what's happening, but it's up to the insights professional to really use the time, the time that they save using AI, apply that time to making sure we're being smarter about it. And I think that that's really what's happening right now is that. Time, the efficiencies gained applied to the thinking, and on the tail end to make sure that we're being smart on the other side. Yeah, yep.

Lenny Murphy: Well, good segue. This article: um, uh, own the outer loop. Uh, the uh, this is more from a developer's perspective, no, that sure, you write the code, but the human needs to be involved to check it, you know, QA. Um, make sure that it, you know, fits the, it's fit for purpose, etc, etc. Uh, the audit loop and the ownership loop as they call it, the outer loop, um, because human judgment is the ultimate moat, um, so that apply exactly the same thing, right, anytime that we are utilizing these tools, whether to make sure it's the right input and the right output, um, we may not always have visibility into the, you know, how it was all put together, but we definitely have visibility into those things. And that's what we own. And that is the, you know, that's the difference between the orchestration layer and the judgment layer on these tools. So cool to see more people talk about that.

Karen Lynch: A lot of people were talking about that. It came up in a lot of talks. Yeah. And actually, you one of our first, one of our first talks was. One of our future list honorees is talking about, you know, when is AI good enough, or when is AI enough, actually, and good enough, and when is it not? And the insights professionals need to discern, because there are times when AI, you know, AI insights are actually good enough. But you should map out criteria in advance and know, like, here's when it's good enough, here's what use it for, here's what I can't, and you have your guardrails up and say, not use it on this kind of a decision, or I should not use it on this kind of an analysis, or uh, I should not use it on this type of a deliverable. Like, just make sure you are clear in advance: where is it acceptable, where is it not, what type of decision is it good for, what type is it not for, what type of research is it good for, what type is it not, and just you know, map that all out for yourself or your team or your company.

Lenny Murphy: Cool stuff. Yeah. So, did you get a chance? We'll wrap up with this one because this was the, have you, but I, I'm, I'm intrigued by it. So, last week, last week, uh, Alex Carp, CEO Palantir, right, um, was on one of the new one of the business shows. Um, and some oh, a meltdown. I don't think he had a meltdown. He had a, he said, he said the emperor has no clothes. Now, this was self-serving for Palantir. But basically, the position was if you're using these other AI companies, you're giving away the value because they're learning off of your data. Their position was, if you are a brand or an enterprise, this is your data. This is your value. Use an open source solution. Run on the right infrastructure, and you capture what the term was, the alpha, right? The compounding value of the information. I'm nodding along, you like, yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. Here's the interesting part. So they released a, but they said their sovereign, AI sovereign manifesto. And it was like social media was like a few points. Now they have released a whole white paper. Really going going into it again set aside the self-serving aspect that yes palantir wants to be your infrastructure partner palantir and nvidia the um but aws and microsoft both said buy open ai and anthropic in the last week as well they've they've stopped the integrating with them um so there there is a change happening now that is underway of brands realizing AI is one thing, the specific model that's been deployed for some of the leaders, that's another thing. And that maybe open source solutions housed on your own technology or a licensed platform, like anything else, with your own developers, is a better bet to own the value. Than just giving it away to a company that can probably create a competitor to your whole category off of what you're learning. That was the gist. So, really, really interesting, like big inflection point conversation, right? About these things. It's something, I don't know, this sounds self-serving me that way, but like, I've been kind of, saying for a few years, don't get you dependent on one application for a variety of reasons. And I wouldn't bet that these companies be awesome in the next couple of years. The rest of the world is saying, yeah, where does value accrue? Who owns the value? And that's the fundamentals of business. And that's an important thing to think about. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Well, yeah. And again, it's interesting for individual users, but it's another thing when you're, you say you're well, yeah, when you're on the corporate side or even, owning the tech stack at a small business, what does that mean for your small business? If you've paid for the year for, you know, a number of seats, like, you know, if you're in ChatGPT and you've paid for a number of seats for your you know, for your small business, but maybe do to shake it up from year to year because you've paid for seats. You know, what do you do? Do you renew them annually or do you shake it up?

Lenny Murphy: You know, right.

Karen Lynch: Again, situations I don't envy people being in.

Lenny Murphy: 100%. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: So it's just conversations to have, though, and consult with your tech team about. Absolutely.

Lenny Murphy: Big, big, big conversations. I'd sum it up with ultimately, we should always be thinking about what's remote.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And who owns the value?

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Any business. Any business. That's it. And if technology is the enabler of those things, then these are conversations just have to be had. So structural big things are shifting, you know, we'll see. I don't think that Anthropic and OpenAI or anybody else is going to own the world.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And because we do.

Lenny Murphy: That's right. Because we do. That's re I mean, they, men of us own the data of the world, obviously. So at all times, 24 seven, you have a flock camera on your face, uh, did you imagine?

Karen Lynch: I just, anyway, I just keep thinking about it. I'm like, do I want, you somebody, I just can't even imagine it, like somebody recording every minute of my life, like, you know. Walking down the street in New York City, who's filming me? Like, you know, like it's like the Truman show.

Lenny Murphy: Are we all? Are we all in the Truman show?

Karen Lynch: No, like, I'm sitting in a doctor's office, like, waiting for my appointment. I feel like crap, and like, somebody's filming me potentially. Like, I just, I, you I like there's that side of it, but then there's also, you know, I don't know what are the implications if. You know your symptoms are being recorded live. Like, there could be great health, you there's it's it's really interesting, it's really interesting, Meta.

Lenny Murphy: Interesting, it is, it is. Well, Meta, go back to Google or talk to Tim and be glass holes, right? Um, because we were the early experiments on this, and it was messy.

Karen Lynch: One of the pieces that I read said, you know, there are going to be investors in this technology because the ad benefits might be so beneficial that they will fund the experiments.

Lenny Murphy: Could be. Remember what Jeff said in the movie Minority Report, Tom Cruise?

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: So I used to talk about this a lot when we're talking about big data, but that's the walk through the mall, right? Yeah. And there's all the ads popping up based upon his data, right? Oh, we, you, we see you haven't bought underwear in six months and you need to buy new underwear, whatever. Uh, it's the same idea.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, crazy, crazy, crazy.

Lenny Murphy: What's also crazy is we went at 12:40. It's 46 minutes. We knew we were going to go a little bit long because we had to catch up.

Karen Lynch: But we didn't go an hour, so there's that.

Lenny Murphy: We didn't go an hour and we will be back next week.

Karen Lynch: Week, yes. Hopefully, I'll be back in my office and not here.

Lenny Murphy: It's a lovely background.

Karen Lynch: Yes, it is. If you define lovely in the way that this is defined as lovely, it's a parental 70s, 80s type for design. Anyway, yes, what generation were my parents born, and what generation was this house furnished? It's all good. Anyway, I'll see you all next week. Lenny, I see you probably either later today or certainly on Monday. Have a weekend, everybody. And yeah, take care. Thanks, Karley, for all the bye, everybody. Bye.

Links from the episode:

TwelveLabs Raises $100M Series B for Human-Like Video Intelligence 

Accenture Invests in AlphaSense for Agentic Market Intelligence 

YouGov Parallax: AI Twins + Real Human Validation 

Zappi Launches Amplify AI and the Amplify Hub 

GlobalData Embeds AI Analyst Ava into Microsoft 365 Copilot via MCP 

Microsoft Launches Frontier Company: $2.5B, 6,000 Engineers for Enterprise AI Deployment 

Amazon Mechanical Turk Closes to New Customers July 30  

Meta is Reportedly Working on Smart Glasses That Record All the Time 

Knit AI Trust Index 

Own the Outer Loop 

Palantir Institutional Sovereignty in the Age of AI