A.I. is all the rage because it’s producing writing, imagery, coding samples, and even videos that are impressing a large number of serious and unserious people alike.

The marketer and lawyer side of me will muster whatever genuine intelligence I have to deliver equal measures of hype and hate as we gear up for an A.I. cataclysm that sits somewhere between vaporware and the end-of-days.

Already from the actors' and writers' strikes we're seeing the inevitable reality where it-takes-the-jobs-of-below-average-workers (and don’t forget what George Carlin said about below-average!). And Tyler Perry, a man familiar with high-volume output, is already eagerly calculating how many jobs it'll replace for his studio.

Phones, cars, airplanes, and the internet are all potentially analogous tech innovations (read: people and info traveling faster and faster and faster thanks to those types of tech). Ai’s impact will undoubtedly be “displacing cities into suburbs” as cars once did in terms of impacting how we live and work. But predicting precisely who will win and how is a fool’s errand. Your best bet is to test the boundaries of new tech yourself and seeing how it can actually better your life.

In short: Artificial intelligence is a now-inescapable toolset that will better your life directly and indirectly. But never lose sight that attention from genuine people will always be your soul's true desire. And know that the current value of A.I. is wildly overstated in many ways (but keyboard shortcuts, those will serve you today and for the next 10+ years!).

I also know how little I know. And that's why I also want to ask for your help. Please, inform me and laugh with/at me. Whatever spreads genuine knowledge and kindness and whatnot. And don’t forget to click into the copious amount of links for depth to my shorthanded comments.

Now, please read on you beautiful soul, you.

Very truly yours,
Dr.* Brian C. Thackston, Esq.*, J.D.*

Sorry but I didn't have time to write you a shorter letter.
- Mark Twain

Please, Get Good At Computing

Before we talk A.I., here's an optional pep talk about you, your computer, and using the "Ctrl" key on your keyboard. This part should not be scary. I’m a simple-minded man who studied English Literature (who is now allegedly set to continue thriving in a post-AI world) so I know you too can learn how to use the “Ctrl” key.

Try this RIGHT now: Press the "Ctrl" key once. It doesn't do anything by itself! But if you combine it with other keys it does nifty things (e.g. holding "Ctrl" then pressing "T" = new browser tab).

For Mac users, you'll need to use "Cmd" instead of "Ctrl". The premium price of Mac devices doesn’t just stop at the price tag. And for mobile, see pg. 14 and please stay patient with me.

The very conveniently placed "Ctrl" key on the bottom left of your keyboard makes computing and surfing the web much easier. It's quite possible to do anything on a computer without a mouse thanks to “Ctrl”!

Quality of Life Suggestion: Try sprinkling just ONE "Ctrl" command into your routine per month (e.g. RIGHT NOW hold “Ctrl”, then press “T”, then type "sheet.new", and then press "enter").

I put together this guide of easy-to-master keyboard tricks that will help you work smarter when on the computer.

Life is short and you owe it to yourself. And AI is just another computer tool so it will favor those who already know how to use a computer well.

One more tip to try right now: Hold down both "Ctrl” and “Shift” then press “T" while in your browser.

Please, Let’s Ponder Together

Trending things bouncing around the world and in my brain. Found via social, Google Trends, and raw thoughtpower catalyzed by the professionals I work with (attorneys, accountants, marketers, etc.).

A.I. Thoughts

"A.I. will eliminate the jobs of _____." Probably a bad take.

"People in ____ job who use A.I. will eliminate jobs of those who don't." A much better take. Many smart, beautiful people are saying this.

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is a cool new tool. It mirrors warped versions of already-existing language and media back at us. And it does it really, really fast, like a calculator quickly calculating big numbers EXCEPT it’s doing its thing without the mechanistic rigor and precision of 1+1 = 2 calculations. Financial Times has a great article explaining how generative A.I. works.

One big problem is that the "mirror" gets grimy and jacked up if it mirrors itself too much. It also can't understand what it's seeing. So it's unable to form new patterns and has limited creative capabilities beyond simple mirroring.

An example of A.I. doing word calculations would be asking it for an “essay on why a hot dog is a sandwich”. That prompt will almost instantly give you a polished turd of an answer from a machine mushing together plausible-sounding autocompletion statements (c.f. this brilliant answer to the hotdog question shown above).” Wait for ChatGPT5! AGI around the corner!”, some might say but the latter certainly feels quite far away if you've ever really used A.I.

Now there is art and nuance to prompts and generative A.I. response generation, I know. And I know there’s tremendous value in templated, mealy-mouthed bullshit, as my legal education and marketing career has shown me. And I've seen how early adoption of a tool can gain you a competitive advantage.

But just know you’re still early to the next iteration of the rat race. Early adopting cutting-edge tech is messy and invites wildness (vs. age-old, tried and true things like simply refining how your receptionist talks to prospects at the start of the client lifecycle or using project management software or any other fundamental that won't go away anytime soon).

Don't get me wrong — much like the internet, which is currently withering and breaking apart, A.I. provides value along with the bullshit.

A.I. is already doing other calculations pretty darn well, e.g. CoPilot auto-suggesting code, allowing voice cloning, and all kinds of other nifty things. And non-generative A.I./machine learning has been around in the background of things like Google Searches, social media, GPS, business logistics, and more for years and years now. But the generative A.I. parlor tricks have caught some folks' attention due to the ease of access to the immediately-interesting-but-ultimately-shallow parlor tricks.

A.I. is powerful. It’s already been washing over you. But the hype is too high and the shortcomings are very real and documented. A.I. is mirroring back any ol’ bullshit that’s touched the internet and that's a bit offputting because a) the internet simply isn’t evenly distributed and b) have you seen the depths of the internet?

Will there be "sourced from genuine intelligence" in the same way there's "organically sourced" food labels?

Anyway, here's some A.I. things to take away:

• ChatGPT: A.I.'s most renowned thing, a LLM built by the odd individuals at OpenAI. This is the “calculator for words” where you put in a prompt (e.g. scene from a movie where marketers fight legal) and it’ll confidently whip up amazing things that are sometimes on-point and sometimes super wrong.
  
  For Open AI’s ChatGPT, the first-mover advantage of shrugging off safety concerns is real (but also remember it’s not the end-all-be-all, see: MySpace). ChatGPT is stealing talent and mindshare from Google et al. because of initial momentum. But you gotta wonder what Apple is cooking up in this realm and Meta is never to be trifled with and Google are the real OGs via inventing the transformer technology behind LLMs plus calling themselves an “A.I.-first company” for at least the past 7+ years if you’d been listening (see: Google I/O 2017 re: Google.ai).
  
  Outside of the LLM generative text stuff from ChatGPT – Midjourney and Adobe Firefly are in the adjacent image arena wrestling with unique copyright issues (more on that below).

• Artists (and Getty Images) Against A.I.: Right now A.I. is winning this battle. But there is hope for artists and it’ll be a while before the dust settles from the genie being let out of the LLM bottle.
  
  A.I. text and image scrobblers I’ve used have all had the uncanny ability to create things that suspiciously look like things already in existence. That’s the core problem really — they lack actual imagination in creating totally new patterns but they can reproduce existing established patterns better than ever, e.g. Deepmind’s legendary Go games from a few years back — again this stuff ain’t new, it’s just a new goddamn hype cycle and tectonic-plate-sized societal shifts take a great deal of effort over time.
  
  Artists though are upset because these AI services have scraped a ton of their artwork and are now remixing it. It was an issue at the core of the writer and actor strikes. J.K. Rowling, George R.R., and plenty of other artists with both weird initials and normal names are getting into it.
  
  Is A.I. comparable to sampling music and all those legal squabbles? I’ve not been quite plugged in enough to deduce that (maybe this’ll help me) but the problems with "scraping" huge troves of art, writing, code, and whatnot are clearly evident without even pondering deeply upon the precise legal ramifications.
  
• A.I. Teaching the Youths (And More): Ah yes, the children. Will A.I. help or hurt the children? This is the most base argument for any subject — “did you think about the children?!” Whenever “the children” AKA the future is being considered, that means we’ve firmly reached speculative territory so anything goes as we reach that far down into tea-leaf-reading to ward off potential evils from undeveloped minds.
  
  Bill Gates said that A.I. can teach kids how to read very quickly and I strongly agree. I’m a firm believer that video games — largely being text-based back in my day — taught me a good deal of how to read, plan, min/max, communicate, coordinate with team members, and more. A.I. as a reading version of Math Blaster! is very much a good thing in my mind. Chegg admitted that kids are already learning heavily via A.I. and their stock got slapped and there may be something to the theory of schoolchildren being the heaviest A.I. users (both for good and for bad).
  
  I also have a brother who is a public school teacher and I know plenty of others; it’s not a good time to be a teacher because money is low along with morale. A.I. can help but A.I. teaching the youths is a problem and where human intelligence has to come in to some degree re: curriculum standards. But as we’ve seen, measuring learning is almost impossible so IMO it's closer to state-led foundational tastemaking via classics than it is prescriptiveness via "objective" conventional topics.
  
  A.I. teaching mental well-being by acting as a therapist is now being pushed by A.I. safety researchers with conflicts of interest, who have coincidentally never gone to therapy. So there's some interesting teaching going on at all levels of this whole new-tool-meets-old-problems conundrum.

Legal Thoughts

The lawyers are “out of date” as my would-be legal intern hire from China told me. Both there and here. Maybe my new employee was onto something? Or maybe it’s a tale as old as time — rebellious youth showcasing mimetic, performative BS as I scoured the land interviewing law school students who wanted to focus on innovation. Is there a certain set of folks drawn more toward the future (i.e. dissociative for better and for worse)? Or was my would-be hire just performing for the camera in the interview? All I know is I’m still enthralled by it all as I continue to plumb these depths.

• No Patents by A.I.: Monkeys can’t own the copyright to photos taken by their own monkey hands and now A.I. can’t own patents to their own inventions. The appeal regarding the previous USPTO decision was denied and so here we are.
  
  A.I.-generated art is already quite thorny. Adobe is trying its best to demonstrate that there are ethical ways of generating images via A.I. based on stacks of licensed imagery. Copyright here with A.I. amalgamations should be a blast thanks to the existing monkey law.
  
• Judge writes legal opinion with A.I.: Let’s not pretend like legal or any other profession is immune to abstracting rote work with new tools. This example features a judge from Colombia but there’ll be examples everywhere. And whether it’s just footnote citations, recitations of facts, or actual first drafts of analysis — we will feed the rote work into the grindstone to process our bread more efficiently.
  
  There have also been examples of US attorneys writing briefs with A.I. as well as judges kneejerking with A.I. certifications. Legal is in a unique position to be disrupted by A.I., in part because it applies so well, but moreso because the self-regulated part has been growing long in the tooth.But rest easy knowing that A.I. will not do some of the law things imbeciles are talking about.
  
• Ai (Porn) Deepfakes: Taylor brings the eyeballs, as does porn too I suppose. Some in the legal community like to say pornography cases lead the pack in terms of defining IP law for various mediums.
  
  The ability to use Ai to deepfake has yet to be fully grappled with. Deepfaked evidence, misinformation like the potentially voice-cloned principal, and of course revenge porn will blur the lines of what’s real and what’s not. Samsung came out saying there’s no such thing as a genuine photo and there’s an alliance with camera makers to cryptographically watermark photos in an effort to distinguish the genuine article from an artificially constructed and quite convincing something. 
  
  And just think of the children. Bullying is as old as time but now the bullies have new tools for pushing victims to suicide. But hopefully these concerns don't end up being conflated with the Kids Online Safety Act bill that's tantamount to Great-Firewall-of-China-censorship that was unwisely attempted (but thankfully failed) two decades prior.
  
• Legal Tech: You can’t leave legal out of conversations involving “intelligence” especially when paired with “artificial”. CLMs were the next big thing but that still seems to be shaking out because iManage, Engnyte, and other WordPerfect-level artifacts remain immovable.
  
  Spellbook.legal was a first mover re: A.I. as a first draft / first glance assistant for legal (c.f. GitHub co-pilot). I’ve enjoyed the founder’s insights re: boutique law firm wants (c.f. Harvey.ai for BigLaw). Casebrief is another nifty bit of tech that really opens your eyes to what's about to change with doc review and rote legal work.
  
  Outside of the niftiness demonstrated, it does not seem like things are going well with Lexis or ThomsonReuters' A.I. efforts, or even heavily funded legaltech darling Harvey, which is being called "Smoke and Mirrors" (also, great song; see below).
  
  Personally, I’ll embrace anything that’ll make the practice of law more effective thus available to folks needing legal services. Some judges are doing great things but by and large it’s a snail’s pace not just for protectionist reasons but because the behemoth that is law is just too unwieldy as it is defined right now.
  
  Maybe LegalTech leads to simpler human-readable LoL-style patch notes post-legal decisions. It’ll also be intriguing to see how professionals v. the curmudgeonly state-by-state guild associations handle this powerful tool that produces fool’s gold nearly as much as it produces actual gold.

Marketing Thoughts

A.I. has been a thing for a long while in the world of marketing. The reality is both Microsoft and Google’s search engines have been using A.I. for years. Google said they were chiefly an A.I. company 7+ years ago and since then I've very much been forced to pay attention to A.I. via the SEO services I provide.

So, for whatever genuine marketing insights are worth, here’s what I’ve been seeing:

• A.I. content read by robots and humans: A.I. generated content is already working, showing up highly in Google Search results, on forums, across social media, in songs, and just about everywhere content can exist.
  
  Content from LLMs like Gemini is inescapable, but I’ll continue believing that taking the time to genuinely write something from scratch will lead to more time spent by people genuinely reading it and taking action based on it. Kinda like how processed foods make you fat because it’s distilled and you’re instantly being satisfied vs. thoughtfully preparing something.
  
  For a lot of first drafts, volume-play-mandated creative asset variations, and all kinds of other needs in the publishing/marketing/advertising spheres: ignore A.I. at your own peril because it will impact even the best of your campaigns whether you want it to or not.
  
• Local search shakeup: For many professionals, local search is one of the most important channels. Referrals and your real-life-people networks always reign supreme but supplementing that business development with effective inbound marketing is key and real people professional work still relies on local success.
  
  The big changes things to pay attention to here are a) the new-ish pay-per-lead Local Service Ads and b) updated weighting on Google My Business listings. There are countless other things to pay attention to, but those two are gold.
  
• Social media splits: Fleeting media is having a hard go of things — Twitter has been shitting the bed as clones spring up left and right, BeReal has proven to be a flash in the pan, and all while TikTok consumption has grown despite the potential for a government ban. The old mainstays are still doing great work (Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn) and Reddit and YouTube largely fly under the radar despite being the true titans of the previous and future decades.
  
  But problems with real users, A.I. content written for nobody by nobody. And all networks are essentially overrun by awful ai bots at this point. And ai may even kill us all in the next few years or extend us indefinitely into the future via personality cloning into a chatbot.
  
  None of those future-sharding what-ifs materially matter for your marketing though. Tides come and go. Executing this month matters the most. So, find events with high ROI, efficiently use Google Ads,  and just continue going with the Lindy stuff, even if that is LinkedIn, which reeks of loathsome, sweaty humblebrag broetry and its ilk.

Post Script

Thirsty is as old as time. From the first cave painting to the LinkedIn humblebrags to the TikTok flaunts. Thirst all the way down, just like Socrates thought.

Please, Enjoy The Arts

Treat yourself to some art and entertainment in your life. The art below is from my recommendations list for keeping track of past, present, and future consumption. Because what is life, if not art?

Tár = 👍👍

Movie, Theater, Drama/Comedy, ~2.5 hours

If you like calling folks on their bullshit, this film is for you. A slow burn of a drama with tremendous acting, writing, cinematography, etc. — the whole kit and caboodle.

The opening scene nicely sets expectations (so if you dislike after the first 15 minutes then dip out). And the ending was particularly satisfying as an unsophisticated rube trying to take it all in. The movie drags a bit in the middle. And if you're not aware of and able to laugh at personalities like the main character, you may mistake the humor for pretentiousness or something else (because it does cross the line and sniff its own farts a wee bit).

The Forgotten City = 👍👍

Video Game, Xbox, 1 Player, Mystery, ~20 hours

An imaginative and refined mystery where you are a modern somebody dropped into an ancient city following only the golden rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you.

You jump in, get your bearings, and then let it steadily melt your mind.

The story escalates higher and higher to a brilliant payoff. I am a sucker for slow building music, movies, scenes, etc. You will need some patience for this one and I definitely didn’t 100% crack the mystery on my own.

The historical references are rich and rewarding throughout. The art design is a high point for the experience. And the gameplay for the game parts is perfectly workable.

This isn’t your typical video game experience. It’s more of a moderately-interactive Myst-like mystery. Don’t expect much combat or platforming or the like. But the detail and writing and decisions lean in — along with the story’s surreal high-stakes payoff — so it’s well worth seeing this one through.

Recent Jams 🎶

🎵 Gold Gun Girls - Metric

🎵 Smoke and Mirrors - The Beta Machine Mix

🎵 Baby Driver - Simon & Garfunkel

Post Script for These Art Thoughts

My recommendations may or may not tickle your fancy. IMO you find critics with taste and use their recommendations for shortlisting your own consumption (or you just blindly walk from thing to thing because there is some virtue in ignorance too).

I also believe you “don’t yuk on somebody else’s yum.” But if my taste is "yuk" to you, then at least my positive reviews are a good proxy of what you should avoid!

Please, Share This

I hope you share your insights and thoughts and ire and whatnot with me via Twitter, LinkedIn, email, etc. I would enjoy hearing from you.

I also hope you share my stuff with other good folks with sharp minds such as yours.

Please, Holler At Me

Do you want to talk about a legal/business/operations/entertainment project thing? Simply want to chat? You can always schedule time here or contact me here and then let’s make great things happen.

Now onwards and upwards, you beautiful soul.

*Obtained a Juris Doctorate (J.D.) from the University of Baltimore School of Law, member of the Maryland State Bar Association (Esq.), and this fellow on the ABA Journal website said I can call myself a doctor (Dr.). Plus, I'm just jooooking from time to time.