Benji’s LoCo Perspective: AI Could Ruin Your Business

Great to “meet” you! 

I’m Ben “Benji” Holtz, the new Director of Growth and Operations here at LoCo Think Tank. Three weeks into the role, I’m growing increasingly excited about how I can bring value to you, and would love to meet you very soon. 

Who am I? I’m an accidental marketer who took a copywriting job at 18 years old… but I’ve since built three successful businesses, one failed business, worked at 2 Fortune 5 companies, led the top store on all of Shopify (at the time, it’s only near-9 figure store)... and I’ve made plenty of bad investments and mistakes along the way. I’m excited to be able to share what (little) knowledge I’ve gained with you. Reach out any time: ben@locothinktank.com

I’ll start today with my slightly sarcastic, provocative headline: I’m an AI software co-founder who deeply believes that AI could ruin your business and your life. 

The “informed workforce revolution” is coming, no doubt. There are 162 million employed folks in the US, and some reports estimate as much as 30% of that workforce could be replaced by AI tools in the next 5 years. Of course, there will be personal and economic resistance, and I’m excited to see a healthy pivot back to young people entering the trades, replacing some retiring boomers’ roles, and encouraging young folks to get their hands physically dirty will keep these numbers at a more palatable level. Still, let’s take a look at the tech revolutions of the past…

I think of typists in the 80s, people who had developed a specific skill in the technological space to perform data input, suddenly completely eliminated by the QWERTY keyboard and a general push for typing proficiency once the PC hit the mass market. Nonetheless, those typists mostly simply went on to become analysts, copywriters, data entry, and more: all worthy jobs within the revolution of the web, and largely still relevant today. There will surely be thousands of equivalent roles like this that AI will eliminate: personal assistants, customer service representatives, and more will begin to disappear since AI can be trained on SOPs and perform many digital tasks. 

While there may be short term pains, it’s reasonable to expect that some jobs will disappear and others will evolve in this changing-of-the-guard season within informed workers. That’s hopefully all fine… but how does it affect you here-and-now, especially as an individual?

MIT recently released the first brain-scan study on the effects of AI during an individual’s use. The results are absolutely insane… when asked to research and then write on a simple topic, the subjects who used books or internet searches had 89% recall about the topic when surveyed later, but those that used ChatGPT to research and write retained only 17% of the information, even when asked within just minutes after. Neural connections firing within the brain dropped from 79 to just 42 when using an AI helper. That’s a 47% decrease in brain activity. Perhaps more terrifying, their essays were assessed and graded, and then they were asked to research and write again on the same topic, and their scores dropped even further than before. The cognitive decline and brainrotting happens almost instantly.

So why am I still pro-AI?

There are a million little reasons that I believe evolution and technology is good for us even here at the local level over time. In the last 15 years as a consultant, I’ve discovered probably close to $20 million of completely wasted spend across my clients, mostly in terrible performance marketing practices. I’m excited that technology is changing the way that we’re doing some of this to avoid these potentially catastrophic mistakes and eliminating a lot of human error in otherwise straightforward ideas.

My M.O. when it comes to marketing and branding strategy is the format should always fit the content. Meaning, whatever it is that you’re selling or whatever story you’re telling, the way it’s presented must feel natural and organic to the content. 

Humor can have its place in business, vulnerability can have its place in business, morality can have its place in business. But, being the morality police at the wrong time leads to disconnection among people with different ideas. Vulnerability at the wrong time can make us seem disingenuous. Humor at the wrong time can make us look like clowns.

My thoughts about AI and its application for you and your business stay within this same idea…

Here at LoCo, and likely for many of you here in this community, service and interpersonal connection is the heart of what we do. Why on earth would we let AI attempt to fabricate interpersonal connection? The form has to fit the content: when dealing person-to-person, bring your whole damn person.

At their core, AI tools fabricate an illusion of intelligence by collating data. That’s it. For generative AI and artwork, it copies what it can find elsewhere and our brains can absolutely tell the difference. It cannot create meaning, it can only create the illusion of meaning. It cannot create connection, it can only create the illusion of connection. I have watched many well-meaning and lovely, relational folks start to compose emails and messages, automatic responses, and even company, mission, visions, and values simply by pushing the button with AI and saying “here’s my business, tell me what to do.” 

And still, I use it every day… but I have built a personal set of guardrails of what I will, and will not, utilize it for. My sincere recommendation is that you should build your own guardrails, as well.

So my questions for you:

• Do you provide a personalized service to your customers? (I’m not talking about product customer service as in returns, warranties, or FAQs, I’m talking about solving their specific problems.)
• Do your clients or employees count on a specific perspective from you on any topic?
• Do you deal with complex legal or innovation issues as it relates to your clients and products?

If you’re a lifelong learner, it will ruin your knowledge retention. If you’re an artist, it will suck the soul out of your work, and if you’re a relational person or a service provider, it will be clear that you don’t actually know your clients, your friends, even your family the way that you think. You’ll just be fabricating the illusion of a relationship.

And still, I use AI every single day. I use it to analyze mundane data. I use it to search my emails to put together highlights and make sure that I’m not missing something. I use it to plan my calendar. It helps me synthesize data that otherwise did not feel quite important in the moment, but was still business or mission-critical. I use it to remind me of things that otherwise I might fumble with, even if those things are personal… events, milestones to celebrate, folks to follow up with, and more. 

I see the way that it can add an incredible amount of value to keep me on task, but as soon as it does some of those interpersonal tasks for me, I am no longer completing my human duties.

It comes down to a much larger question: What makes us human?

Anthropologists have decided to define the separation between humanity and animals by identifying a few characteristics: complex reasoning, abstract thinking, development of culture, and… get this… the use of tools.

Herein lies the line I’m hoping we’ll all agree to draw in the sand…

1. That human tasks require humans. That we rely on our own research, our own ideas, our own cultures and communities to steer us, and that we avoid the temptation to have our questions simply answered for us. That when it comes to connection and communication, we choose our own words, make up our own minds, and 

2. That AI is a tool to be utilized to complete tasks more efficiently and with a desire to have either a greater individual output or to simply expand our personal bandwidths. 

I deeply desire to see us cut our work lives down, not just walk away with greater profits. I hope to see a 3 day work week for the average person. It’s easy to imagine that the evolution of tech will either lead to the fruition of these desires or to our demise… but likely it’s just somewhere in between. 

Regardless, the world we know will not exist soon. Let’s at least make the new one as humane and as good as possible, for all of us.

0% of this blog was written by AI.

If you’re still here, great! Thanks for hearing my (incomplete) musings about the future. I truly do want to meet you if possible and look forward to getting to know you, your business, and your ideas for our communities and towns.

Godspeed!