January 23, 2025 • 30 mins
What if artificial intelligence could transform the way we communicate and create content? Join us as we uncover the intersection of AI and modern communication with our esteemed guest, Dr. Bo Bennett. Dr. Bennett shares his inspiring journey from self-publishing back in 2001 to developing platforms like ebookitcom and Bookmarketingpro, which have revolutionized the publishing landscape. We'll explore how AI is playing a pivotal role in book generation while discussing the enduring charm of traditional books and audiobooks. Plus, we'll compare the fluid nature of podcasting with the structured world of audiobooks and speculate on the future of these industries.
Our conversation sheds light on how AI is reshaping work by tackling mundane tasks and boosting productivity, allowing us to focus on what truly matters—creativity and meaningful engagement. Discover the secrets of effective AI communication, emphasizing the nuances of prompt engineering and the balance between human-like language understanding and ethical concerns. This episode isn't just about technology's potential but also its impact on our lives, striking a hopeful note on how AI could be a force for good. Dr. Bennett's insights are a testament to the transformative power of AI and its ethical implications, urging listeners to consider its benefits as well as its responsibilities.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Carl Richards (00:04):
Welcome to Communication Connection
Community the podcaster'spodcast.
This podcast takes a deep diveinto modern day communication
strategies in the podcastingspace.
We chat with interesting peoplewho make the podcasting and
speaking spaces exciting andvibrant.
We also dive into thepodcasting community with news
(00:24):
updates, latest trends andtopics from this ever-evolving
space.
So strap in, it's going to beone amazing ride.
Let's dive into today's episode.
Wow, do we ever have a lot ofground to cover today with our
guest, and it's on a topic thatwe haven't really touched on too
much, but I'm sure it willsurface.
It's going to come up more thanonce, I'm sure, over the next
(00:47):
several episodes select episodes, for sure and that's the topic
of artificial intelligence, or,as I like to call it, augmented
intelligence, and my guest todayhas quite a bit of experience
in this.
His inception into AI, though,was through the publishing space
, and I know there's a lot oftrepidation about AI.
It's going to take over theworld, and I can't wait to dive
(01:08):
into today's conversation withDr Bo Bennett, who has a PhD in
social psychology.
He currently runs over a dozenwebsites, has written over a
dozen books, mostly on thetopics of critical thinking, and
teaches several online courses.
He has been in theself-publishing industry for
over a decade and has writtenmultiple screenplays, and we're
(01:30):
so glad to be talking to himtoday.
We're going to cover a numberof different topics, bo.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you, so good to be here.
It's great to have you here.
So let's, let's start at thebeginning, maybe not the very
beginning, we don't necessarilyneed to go that far back in
history, but tell me whereyou're at right now.
How did you get into thepublishing?
Dr. Bo Bennett (01:46):
world.
I got into the publishing worldby creating my own book back in
2001.
It was right after I sold myfirst business of significant
value.
So I put together this 740 pagetome of basically principles,
success principles, ideas,business strategies called year
(02:08):
to success, and I really wantedto get it out there.
I had a lot of money at thetime, so I kind of went through
the more traditional publishingroute, pitching it to major
publishers, which all turned medown because they said nobody
wants to wait a year for success.
Redo your book, the seven tips,the three tips, and then we'll
consider it.
I'm like that's not how itworks though right, so it wasn't
(02:30):
very marketable in their view.
So I had to basically go theself-publishing route, and that
was a completely differentindustry back in 2001.
So I kind of navigated it.
It was real pain in the neck.
I eventually made it and got mybook out there and realized
that I could definitely clean upthis process for other people,
and that's essentially what Idid.
(02:51):
I built a business called myfirst business was called
ebookitcom and just helpingpeople with ebook publishing,
and then that eventually morphedinto what I run today,
bookmarketingpro, which is ebook, audiobook, print book all the
publishing, the creation andthen every kind of marketing you
could think about having to dowith that.
Plus, now we're into AI bookgeneration as well, which is a
(03:14):
completely fascinating area andspace to be in.
So that's how it evolved overthe past 20-something years.
Carl Richards (03:21):
It's funny you mentioned that it's it's changed
a lot in the last 20, some oddyears, because I mean, I, I've,
I've known people that back inearly two thousands like you,
wrote a book and became aninstant success.
I'm kidding, they didn't becomean instant success to be.
Unless you, as you say, you'regoing the traditional publishing
route, you have a probably havea better chance of of doing
(03:43):
that.
But they've definitely saidit's an extension of your
business card, it's.
You know there's all differentphilosophies behind it, but
definitely there's been anevolution there.
There's been an evolution inthe world of AI.
It's fascinating that that,with all the media out there,
that people are stillgravitating to the printed word.
But you indicated that it's notjust a printed word because
(04:05):
you're in the not just the ebookworld, rather, but the uh, the
audio book world which.
I thought would have gone theway of the dodo by now.
Dr. Bo Bennett (04:13):
No, no, definitely not.
Uh, you think about how manypeople are active and exercise
and go on hikes and go on walksand what do they do?
They listen to things.
They take their iPhone out ortheir smartphone, plug in their
headphones and start listening.
What do they listen to?
Well, a lot of times theylisten to podcasts and a lot of
times they listen to audiobookssomething a little bit more
(04:33):
structured, something a littlebit more targeted, something
where you know you're not goingto get bombarded with ads and so
forth.
So they tend to enjoy it.
Audiobooks do extremely well.
Books in general are stilldoing extremely well.
Carl Richards (04:46):
Wait a minute, bo are you suggesting that we are
not structured in the podcastingspace here?
Dr. Bo Bennett (04:51):
Podcasting is great.
Put it this way there are somany people with a lot of
attention to give that there'senough for everybody.
Carl Richards (04:58):
I'm just pulling your leg there.
There's definitely a wild wildwest still philosophy to the
podcasting space, and I thinkwe'll see some changes in that
space in the next.
I don't know.
I gaze into my crystal ball andI say, oh, the next two to five
years, but I said that two tofive years ago and it's still a
wide open playing field.
So it's great to see thatpublishing in multiple forms is
(05:21):
still alive and well.
You did mention something,though, that I know, when I saw
your request come through to bea guest on the show, that I
thought you know.
I'd really have to dive intothis, because you've indicated
off the top that one of thethings that you're working on
now is, if I'm understandingcorrectly, ai publishing.
Like you're basically puttinginstructions into AI and it's
(05:41):
publishing a book.
Do I understand that to be thatway instructions into AI and
it's publishing?
Dr. Bo Bennett (05:45):
a book.
Do I understand that to be thatway?
Yeah, it creates the book.
Imagine this.
Imagine you have an idea for abook which, let's face it,
everybody does right.
And I hear, for the last 20something years since I've been
in this space, I hear frompeople like, oh, I got this
amazing idea for a book, I justnever got around to it, I never
(06:05):
sat down, I never had the time,whatever it may be.
So now you can just take thisidea any nonfiction book you
want and you just basically typethe idea in and AI.
Well, through our system, we aska certain number of poignant
questions based on the kind ofinformation you put in the kind
of book you want to generate,and all of this creates certain
prompts and we do a lot of stuffon the back end and the end
result is a fully written, fullsize nonfiction book.
(06:29):
So you just basically answersome questions and, within the
do it yourself system that wehave, within like an hour or so
you can have, like, your bookwritten and ready to go, ready
to publish, your book writtenand ready to go ready to publish
.
But we even updated that.
We have this new program nowwhere it literally takes you two
minutes.
That's all it takes on yourpart.
(06:50):
Two minutes, you put it in, wedo the rest, and then you get a
full book back.
It's already published with allthe distributors.
It's on Amazon, google, apple,like everywhere.
So that's what AI can do.
I guess it's a combination ofAI and the technology, the
programming, our knowledge ofthe publishing industry to be
able to put all of this together.
So people ask me like well,aren't you with all AI stuff?
(07:11):
Aren't you concerned thatsomebody else will just do the
same thing?
Well, no, I'm not, because Iput 20 years of book publishing
experience in there, plus I'm aprofessional programmer and
that's what I do I create, Icode, and putting all those
three things together, we'reable to build this system.
Carl Richards (07:30):
Does it still go through at least a final or an
editing process or a proofread,to make sure?
Dr. Bo Bennett (07:38):
that the author is usually the one that does the
final proofread, and then, orif we're doing the audio book,
we'll listen to the audio bookand do the proof proving of the
audio.
And then if we pick up someredundancies because it's one
thing that AI does sometimesit's redundant and it just like,
oh, they already talked aboutthis, so we've removed that.
So there is a little bit ofediting, but really, if you
(08:00):
don't do any editing, your bookis still going to be far better
off than the average book thatthe average new author writes,
and that's just like mindblowing and very upsetting to a
lot of people too.
Carl Richards (08:10):
I think that, when it comes to content
creation, we we hold it verydear to us because it's our
content Right, so we don't wantto think that a computer or some
type of program or I don't likethe word artificial
intelligence, I like augmentedintelligence, I think it's.
It's a better display of theword that that it can actually
do better than we can becausewe're so personally attached to
(08:32):
it, but it sounds like it's ayou know.
What you end up getting, though, is a.
You get to the end result morequickly, and, to a point, I wish
this had been around years ago.
I've been writing a book for 15years, so if I had, you know,
had the resources for this, itdefinitely would have saved a
lot of steps, and I wouldn't besitting there going am I ever
(08:53):
going to publish that book?
Am I ever going to get that tofruition?
It could have happened by now.
Dr. Bo Bennett (08:58):
Yeah, Yours is the typical story.
It really is.
People have been publishingbooks for years, like or writing
a book for years and notpublishing it.
I'm still working on it.
I got a couple of chapters down.
It's just a long process andit's usually one of those things
that ends up on the back burner.
Carl Richards (09:12):
It's not on top of people's list, and it's one
of those things that, let's faceit, writing, writing a book is
work.
I think there's the there's apopulation of people who believe
that I'll just wait for theright moment to be inspired and
then that'll just.
You know, the book writing,heavens will open and everything
will be great, but in thetraditional book writing sense,
no.
You schedule time to write andyou do that for as long as
(09:37):
you're supposed to.
Anyways, you're that from whatI.
I had a book writing coachyears ago who explained that to
me, and she said yeah, even thefolks like Stephen King, it's
work, it's a job, that's whatyou do.
So it sounds like this makesthe process easier, especially
for those of us who are businessowners.
We're not necessarily writers tobegin with.
(09:58):
A lot of us are not writers.
We're business owners.
We have ideas, we have thingsthat we want to express.
We don't necessarily know theright way to express them.
This, at least, allows us tohave a chance of getting our
messaging out there veryefficiently.
What are some of the challenges, though, that you run up
against in the AI space?
What are some of the pushbacks?
Dr. Bo Bennett (10:18):
Well, people don't like the idea as we talked
about.
As you mentioned, people don'tlike the idea of being replaced,
and writing is one of thosethings where people feel it's
extremely personal and it'ssomething that they really want
to do.
It's not something that theywant AI to do for them and they
take it extremely personally.
And it's funny too, becausewhen I place ads, sometimes I'll
(10:39):
put an ad on Facebook regardingthis and the like, nasty
comments and hates and the youknow the, the hate emoji,
because people just don't likeit.
I mean, let's, let me rephrasethat Some people just don't like
it.
Other people will will see thevalue in it and see how much it
could help them and they willlove it.
(11:00):
But, yeah, there are definitelysome people who just absolutely
hate it.
And that's the challenge.
And it's sort of like when I wastrying to sell people on the
internet this concept of theinternet back in 1994, when I
started my first web hostingcompany, I'd have to tell people
what the internet was and tellthem why they needed it.
And it's new, it's newtechnology.
(11:22):
They were afraid of it, theydidn't understand it.
Therefore, they didn't like itand that was my challenge.
I had to try to try to getpeople to one, just to be
positive of the internet ingeneral, and that's kind of how
I feel.
Where I am right now, I'mselling AI a lot more than I'm
selling bookbudai, and that'sthe nature of things right now.
Carl Richards (11:46):
That's a very good parallel.
Thinking back to, I mean, 1994,we barely had computers.
In college I studied radiobroadcasting and I think we had
one or two computers for studios, but then we had a computer lab
computers for studios, but thenwe had a computer lab, a
computer lab with eight or 10computers in it.
Nine pin dot matrix printerthat everyone printed their
assignments out on took 86 hoursto print the anyways.
(12:09):
Uh, you're right, it was.
That's just what.
What it was like back then.
You know, on the informationsuper highway, nobody would have
thought, or those who had someforward thinking didn't realize
how far, how far that was goingto go with information.
I mean, I would never havethought back in the early 90s
that there would be a day whereI wouldn't need a wall full or a
(12:31):
shelf full of encyclopedias,because I grew up with them
right, as did you, I'm assuming.
And now your encyclopedia is.
Well, your encyclopedia now ispretty much on your phone that
you carry in your pocket, butit's in your computer.
So I can see the trepidationaround AI and not seeing it
replacing people.
(12:51):
I mean, we run up against ittoo in the podcasting space
because people automaticallythink that, well, ai, are you
concerned?
It's going to replace you, andI'm like, well, no, it's going
to enhance what we do and we'llbe able to do more of it and do
it better than we do, and ourproduction team is already doing
that.
We don't have any services yetthat click a button and it does
it for you, but I'm sure thatday will come.
(13:13):
We're still in a world, though,where people will invest in.
If they want to.
They'll invest in a handmade orpartly made product, a
person-made product.
The auto industry still hasvehicles, not mainstream ones,
but vehicles that are.
A lot of them are assembled byhumans, not machines, and there
(13:33):
are other examples of that, too.
So cabinet makers still exist,because your you know, large
furniture warehouses thateverything's basically assembled
by a machine or a robot isn'tof the same quality that what
some people want.
So, but the AI discussion Iknow it opens a can of worms.
How is AI changing our world,though?
(13:54):
What's your?
What's your perspective?
Dr. Bo Bennett (13:55):
Well, in the broader sense, it is doing a lot
of the work.
Well, in the broader sense, itis doing a lot of the work that
we typically have to do, that wedon't want to do, which is a
really good thing.
And I don't think people seethat.
They tend to gloss over thebenefits and just look at the
potential downside, like, ooh,it's going to take my job, but
really, I mean, that's what'sgoing on right now.
(14:17):
It's doing some of the stuffthat we just don't want to do.
We don't need to do.
It's so much better for us, forhuman beings.
We are creative creatures,we're smart, we have this level
of intelligence.
Let's use it right and let'slet AI take care of all these
mundane tasks that we typicallyspend a lot of our day doing
(14:42):
mundane tasks that we typicallyspend a lot of our day doing.
So I think if, first of all, ifand by you I mean the general
you if we as people embrace AI,that's the first step.
You have to embrace it and thenyou'll be able to use it, use
it to your advantage, and onceyou could do that, then you're
going to be ahead of everybodyelse who is basically fearful of
it or doesn't want to use it.
So it really is changing us, inthat those of us who are using
(15:06):
it can focus on more importantthings.
I can't even tell you how muchmore productive I have been
since AI, since I've beenadopting AI, because all of
those things on my to-do listthat I just never got to Now I
could finally get to.
It's so many mundane things,like.
I'll give you just one example.
We had a book descriptionwriting service where I would
(15:28):
basically write the descriptionof the book.
So I'd have to get somebody'sbook and I wouldn't read the
whole thing and this was notthat I'm scamming anybody.
I told him, like you don't haveto read the whole book, but you
, basically I read the forward,the front section, the first
chapter, and I kind of perusethe rest of the book enough to
really get a sense of how towrite a good, marketable book
(15:49):
description for it.
So this whole thing took aboutmaybe like two or three hours,
sometimes a little bit more,sometimes a little bit less, and
now AI does that for us in likeliterally six seconds.
I mean it's crazy.
And then you say, okay, well,probably doesn't do as good.
No, no, it does a much betterjob than I ever did.
Why?
(16:10):
Because it reads the entirebook.
I mean, you just upload the PDF, it'll read the whole thing,
it'll get a full understandingof the book and you just have to
give it the right prompts.
You have to tell it what youwant precisely and what it's for
, and it'll write a description,will do the formatting and
again it.
It takes like seconds as opposedto hours, and now that's
(16:31):
something that I don't have todo and, yes, I don't charge as
much money for it anymore.
In fact, it's a free service weoffer, but, uh, it's.
It's just things that I kind ofhad to do, that I really didn't
want to do, but it was kind ofpart of the business.
So I think that if everybodykind of looks for those type of
things that they could pass offto AI and then put their time
(16:56):
and their energy into somethingmore productive, something
hopefully that's morefinancially productive for them,
then that would be great andthat's what you need to start
thinking about.
Carl Richards (17:05):
I think that's a really good example, too is it's
a time saver.
It's not a job eliminator.
It allows you to do differentthings.
It allows you to redefine yourservices.
It's funny as you're talkingabout the time it would take to
previously to do that.
I can remember working in radioand editing on reel-to-reel tape
(17:26):
.
Now it's digital Well, evenbeyond digital, because there
are AI tools that can do a lotof the work for you as well, or
at least make the editingprocess easier.
We still use some high-endediting programs and tools to to
make sure everything is exactlythe way we want it, but I can't
imagine going back to editingon reel-to-reel tape to try and
(17:51):
do the job that now is done in afraction of the time, because I
don't have to stop the recorder, cut, pull out a piece of
editing tape, make sure it'sstuck together, back the tape up
, play it, make sure it soundsright.
It's just.
The process is way, way simpler, and I can see that too with
with with writing and certainlywith content creation in general
(18:14):
.
What are some quick tips forpeople who are maybe trying out
AI and they're not successfulwith it?
What are, what are some of thetips that you can suggest to
them as far as finding those andI can't recall the, the exact
terminology you use but but the,the things that you tell AI to
do.
I think that's one of thehangups that some people have is
(18:34):
I'm trying that, but I'm notgetting the results I want.
What are some tips to helppeople on their journey, so the
term is called promptengineering.
Dr. Bo Bennett (18:42):
Thank you, that is going to be a big term in the
future.
You mean like internet is now abig term, sort of yeah, it's
(19:12):
sort of like, I guess, some jobassociated with the internet.
You mean like internet is now abig term, still this middleman,
if you will.
And the middleman is the textand the communication, or even
the verbal, the speech thatinstructs AI, artificial
intelligence, to give somedesired outcome.
So you need to know what thatis and you need to know how to
talk to it.
So it is sort of like alanguage and people will think,
well, yeah, it understandsEnglish, it understands any
language basically.
(19:32):
So you just talk to it like youtalk to a human.
That's ideally how AI issupposed to become right.
You're supposed to be able totalk to it like a human and it
should understand you as a human.
However, it's not.
I don't know if it's ever goingto be there, or maybe I should
say that it's only going to getas good as human language.
(19:54):
And what I mean by that is eventoday.
We've all been speaking forhowever long we've been alive,
minus a few years, andwe'reinterpret people.
There are cognitive biasesinvolved, logical fallacies.
(20:14):
There's a lot of communicationmissteps that basically takes
what's in my head and themessage that ends up in your
head is not the same.
There's a lot of distortionthere.
So when you're talking to acomputer, like via computer
programming, there's like thisfiltration process which is the
(20:35):
computer language where you cantell it exactly.
It's like a common language andthere's no misunderstanding.
So, like when I'm programmingand something goes wrong, I
don't say, oh, it misunderstoodme, I say, oh, I screwed up.
Right, I screwed up the code.
And this is really importantbecause there's that common code
(20:55):
.
And when we have like promptengineering, if you can
effectively figure out the code,like how to communicate with AI
correctly, then that's themiddleman.
In a sense you can tell it todo exactly what you mean,
exactly what you're looking for.
And this is a little bit trickybecause there's no book that
(21:17):
you could buy on how exactlyChatGPT understands what is the
code.
It doesn't work that way.
It's still human language andit's prompts.
But getting around to yourquestion, how could people get
better at this?
And that is, start researchingprompt engineering.
There are books on promptengineering.
There are books on promptengineering, there are websites
on it.
There's like the top 10 promptsand this is basically a lot of
trial and error right now.
(21:38):
It's people understanding howto talk to different LLMs.
The language models, so likeChatGPT, may have different set
of prompts than the other onesout there.
The point is that they all havedifferent ones.
So which large language modelare you going to be using Like
Claude is the other one that Iuse a lot and then look up and
(21:59):
do some research on promptengineering for that and start
to learn it, and then you couldstart playing around with it and
then you could start to teachit and you can, through trial
and error, get it to do exactlywhat you want it to do.
And that's essentially what Idid with bookbudai.
Like with the book publishingindustry, after so much trial
and error, I know exactly whatto tell it to get exactly what I
(22:22):
want back and for the commonperson.
This is a lot of work thatthey're probably not going to
deal with and they don't have to.
Carl Richards (22:29):
They can just come to us if they want, like a
book ready this sounds similarto just as you were talking
there, how individuals will do asearch on the internet on a, on
a, on a search.
If you're not putting in theright information, you'll get
some very interesting searchresults so it's so.
It's about putting in the rightinformation, and I know there's
(22:50):
a.
Obviously it's a little bitmore in depth, but but I like
your suggestion of of actuallydoing your due diligence, doing
some homework and andresearching the best way to go
about asking the questions or orinputting the information that
the artificial or augmentedintelligence needs to be able to
give you the result that you'relooking for.
(23:12):
Yep Philosophical question.
Then AI your friend or your foe?
Your friend.
Dr. Bo Bennett (23:17):
It should be your friend, but I think a lot
of people kind of see it as thefriend who's doing extremely
well and very successful andthey don't like it for that
reason, or the friend that theydon't know very well and they're
afraid of.
So I think, again, you need toget to know it a little bit,
play around with it and see howit can be your friend in many
ways.
Let's address the big, scarymonster in the closet like will
(23:41):
AI turn on us and launch nuclearwar or somehow empty our bank
accounts or do somethingnefarious like that?
It's extremely doubtful,because think of artificial
intelligence.
Like intelligence, we havesmart people who are good and
smart people who are bad.
Right, we do good things and dobad things.
(24:03):
And there's always this balancewithin humanity of, like hackers
.
You have hackers trying to likerip people off, rip off old
ladies, and then you haveethical hackers who fight that
and who leave traps for them andwho expose them.
And that's the way it is andthat's the way it's always been
predating computer stuff.
So when we're talking aboutartificial intelligence, you're
(24:25):
going to have people who use itethically and people who use it
unethically, and so far inhistory the ethical people have
been winning.
Call me the positive thinker,but I really am the optimist.
But I tend to believe thathumanity is a lot more good than
we are bad, and the good willprevail.
So we're not going to get an AIthat's going to destroy
(24:48):
humanity.
Carl Richards (24:49):
I think we should save that for Hollywood or a
throwback to iRobot you know, Ithink it makes great movies
wonderful movies?
Yeah, exactly 100%.
But to your point, it can dowhat it's told to do.
So if somebody tells it to dothat, then maybe.
But what are?
Dr. Bo Bennett (25:06):
the odds.
The question is will itprogress to have wants and
desires?
Because right now we don'tthink artificial intelligence
has wants or desires.
Like you said, it just doeswhat we tell it to do.
But what if it does get to thepoint where it does start having
desires, have some kind ofartificial intelligence that
(25:31):
develops these evil desires?
I think somewhere in the worldwe're going to have this
artificial intelligence that hasethical desires and maybe, and
again, it's going to be this,this fight or whatever.
I don't know this.
I'm not a fight, but more oflike a like a struggle, like a
constant struggle betweenhackers and ethical hackers and
scammers and scambaiters and soforth.
Carl Richards (25:52):
Like you said, that's been around for years.
Right, it's not like it'sanything new and as far as
technology or evolution inindustry, that's been around too
.
I'm assuming those people whomake buggy whips probably aren't
that busy anymore than theywere, say, maybe 150 or 200
years ago, because we don'ttypically drive horse and buggy
(26:16):
in mass quantities like we didback then.
Dr. Bo Bennett (26:20):
Yeah, it's a whole idea of not worrying about
things that you can't control,and that's another huge aspect
of it.
I mean, maybe this is just aphilosophy, it's just again a
way of thinking.
I mean, maybe this is just aphilosophy, it's just again a
way of thinking.
But yeah, why worry about it?
There's nothing that I could doabout it.
Like if let's say that I didbelieve that artificial
intelligence was going to evolveand kill everybody, if I really
(26:41):
believe that, I'd be worried,I'd be losing sleep, I'd be
panicking and maybe I couldstart a website or a social
media account and attract a fewthousand people.
But I mean, that's the extentof what I could do.
It's not going anywhere, you'renot.
It's just not, so don't worryabout it.
And if it does happen and killsus all one day, then I was
(27:03):
wrong and too bad.
But again, there's nothing wecould do.
We might as well live a goodlife until that point.
Carl Richards (27:09):
I think that's a great place to shift the
conversation a little bit.
So, friend, I like that, yeah,and I agree, because I think at
a bird's eye view, it's like oh,there's a lot of trepidation,
but when you actually start todig in a little bit deeper and
not just look at it and listento the rhetoric, because a lot
of the rhetoric that you'reseeing in social media or even
(27:30):
in conventional media, it isbased on fear or based on a
single or not too many opinions.
When you break it down, itreally has the ability.
As you've said, you're a primeexample.
You're a business owner andyou're very effective more
effective than you were as abusiness owner who helps people
in the publishing space be moreeffective, serve more clients,
(27:54):
make more money as a result ofhaving some fantastic tools and
AI at your disposal that you'vecreated.
What would you like to sharewith people?
Do you have any resources thatyou'd like to pass on to
individuals to assist themeither with learning more about
what you do in publishing orsomething that will help them in
the AI space?
What would you like to passalong?
Dr. Bo Bennett (28:16):
I could definitely help people who are
interested in using artificialintelligence for book publishing
, whether it's finishing a bookthat they started to write or
just starting from scratch, orjust publishing literally a book
a day like a new book, andstarting a publishing empire.
We have people who have donethat, so if you are interested
in that, just check out mywebsite.
(28:36):
It's called bookbudai and wehave a full course, an online
course with videos where youcould really educate yourself
and see how it works and you cantry out.
Get your hands wet, feet wet,whatever you want to get wet.
Give it a shot, see how itworks for you.
Try out.
Get your hands wet, feet wet,whatever you want to get wet.
Give it a shot, see how itworks for you and, if you like
it, keep doing it and if youdon't, don't, just don't get the
(28:58):
ai wet, because then it mightturn on you.
Carl Richards (29:00):
No, it might.
You know, bo bennett, it's beena fantastic conversation.
Thank you so much for being myguest today.
Before I turn you loose to gopublish 86 more books in the
next 86 minutes, or to helpsomebody get into the publishing
space, like myself, who's beentrying to do it for the last
almost 20 years, I'll leave youwith the final thought.
Dr. Bo Bennett (29:17):
Final thought is something we've already
mentioned, and that is toembrace AI.
I think that's so important toembrace it.
Don't be afraid of it.
It's not going anywhere and themore you embrace it, the more
you learn about it the least,the less you'll fear it and the
more you will profit from it.
Carl Richards (29:32):
All right, great place to leave it.
Bo Bennett, thank you for beingmy guest today.
All right, thank you.
And thank you for joining ustoday.
Special thanks to our producerand production lead, Dom
Carrillo, our music guru, NathanSimon, and the person who works
the arms all of our arms,actually, my trust.
All of our arms, actually mytrusty assistant, Stephanie
Gafour.
If you like what you heard today, leave us a comment and a
(29:53):
review and be sure to share itwith your friends.
If you don't like what youheard, please share it with your
enemies.
Oh, and if you have asuggestion of someone who you
think would make an amazingguest on the show, let us know
about it.
Drop us an email, ask Carl atcarlspeaksca.
Don't forget to follow us onLinkedIn and Twitter as well.
You'll find all those links inthe show notes, and if you're
(30:14):
ready to take the plunge andjoin the over 3 million people
who have said yes to podcasting,let's have a conversation.
We'll show you the simplest wayto get into the podcasting
space because, after all, we'repodcast solutions made simple.
We'll catch you next time.
Welcome to Communication Connection
Community the podcaster'spodcast.
This podcast takes a deep diveinto modern day communication
strategies in the podcastingspace.
We chat with interesting peoplewho make the podcasting and
speaking spaces exciting andvibrant.
We also dive into thepodcasting community with news
(00:24):
updates, latest trends andtopics from this ever-evolving
space.
So strap in, it's going to beone amazing ride.
Let's dive into today's episode.
Wow, do we ever have a lot ofground to cover today with our
guest, and it's on a topic thatwe haven't really touched on too
much, but I'm sure it willsurface.
It's going to come up more thanonce, I'm sure, over the next
(00:47):
several episodes select episodes, for sure and that's the topic
of artificial intelligence, or,as I like to call it, augmented
intelligence, and my guest todayhas quite a bit of experience
in this.
His inception into AI, though,was through the publishing space
, and I know there's a lot oftrepidation about AI.
It's going to take over theworld, and I can't wait to dive
(01:08):
into today's conversation withDr Bo Bennett, who has a PhD in
social psychology.
He currently runs over a dozenwebsites, has written over a
dozen books, mostly on thetopics of critical thinking, and
teaches several online courses.
He has been in theself-publishing industry for
over a decade and has writtenmultiple screenplays, and we're
(01:30):
so glad to be talking to himtoday.
We're going to cover a numberof different topics, bo.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you, so good to be here.
It's great to have you here.
So let's, let's start at thebeginning, maybe not the very
beginning, we don't necessarilyneed to go that far back in
history, but tell me whereyou're at right now.
How did you get into thepublishing?
Dr. Bo Bennett (01:46):
world.
I got into the publishing worldby creating my own book back in
2001.
It was right after I sold myfirst business of significant
value.
So I put together this 740 pagetome of basically principles,
success principles, ideas,business strategies called year
(02:08):
to success, and I really wantedto get it out there.
I had a lot of money at thetime, so I kind of went through
the more traditional publishingroute, pitching it to major
publishers, which all turned medown because they said nobody
wants to wait a year for success.
Redo your book, the seven tips,the three tips, and then we'll
consider it.
I'm like that's not how itworks though right, so it wasn't
(02:30):
very marketable in their view.
So I had to basically go theself-publishing route, and that
was a completely differentindustry back in 2001.
So I kind of navigated it.
It was real pain in the neck.
I eventually made it and got mybook out there and realized
that I could definitely clean upthis process for other people,
and that's essentially what Idid.
(02:51):
I built a business called myfirst business was called
ebookitcom and just helpingpeople with ebook publishing,
and then that eventually morphedinto what I run today,
bookmarketingpro, which is ebook, audiobook, print book all the
publishing, the creation andthen every kind of marketing you
could think about having to dowith that.
Plus, now we're into AI bookgeneration as well, which is a
(03:14):
completely fascinating area andspace to be in.
So that's how it evolved overthe past 20-something years.
Carl Richards (03:21):
It's funny you mentioned that it's it's changed
a lot in the last 20, some oddyears, because I mean, I, I've,
I've known people that back inearly two thousands like you,
wrote a book and became aninstant success.
I'm kidding, they didn't becomean instant success to be.
Unless you, as you say, you'regoing the traditional publishing
route, you have a probably havea better chance of of doing
(03:43):
that.
But they've definitely saidit's an extension of your
business card, it's.
You know there's all differentphilosophies behind it, but
definitely there's been anevolution there.
There's been an evolution inthe world of AI.
It's fascinating that that,with all the media out there,
that people are stillgravitating to the printed word.
But you indicated that it's notjust a printed word because
(04:05):
you're in the not just the ebookworld, rather, but the uh, the
audio book world which.
I thought would have gone theway of the dodo by now.
Dr. Bo Bennett (04:13):
No, no, definitely not.
Uh, you think about how manypeople are active and exercise
and go on hikes and go on walksand what do they do?
They listen to things.
They take their iPhone out ortheir smartphone, plug in their
headphones and start listening.
What do they listen to?
Well, a lot of times theylisten to podcasts and a lot of
times they listen to audiobookssomething a little bit more
(04:33):
structured, something a littlebit more targeted, something
where you know you're not goingto get bombarded with ads and so
forth.
So they tend to enjoy it.
Audiobooks do extremely well.
Books in general are stilldoing extremely well.
Carl Richards (04:46):
Wait a minute, bo are you suggesting that we are
not structured in the podcastingspace here?
Dr. Bo Bennett (04:51):
Podcasting is great.
Put it this way there are somany people with a lot of
attention to give that there'senough for everybody.
Carl Richards (04:58):
I'm just pulling your leg there.
There's definitely a wild wildwest still philosophy to the
podcasting space, and I thinkwe'll see some changes in that
space in the next.
I don't know.
I gaze into my crystal ball andI say, oh, the next two to five
years, but I said that two tofive years ago and it's still a
wide open playing field.
So it's great to see thatpublishing in multiple forms is
(05:21):
still alive and well.
You did mention something,though, that I know, when I saw
your request come through to bea guest on the show, that I
thought you know.
I'd really have to dive intothis, because you've indicated
off the top that one of thethings that you're working on
now is, if I'm understandingcorrectly, ai publishing.
Like you're basically puttinginstructions into AI and it's
(05:41):
publishing a book.
Do I understand that to be thatway instructions into AI and
it's publishing?
Dr. Bo Bennett (05:45):
a book.
Do I understand that to be thatway?
Yeah, it creates the book.
Imagine this.
Imagine you have an idea for abook which, let's face it,
everybody does right.
And I hear, for the last 20something years since I've been
in this space, I hear frompeople like, oh, I got this
amazing idea for a book, I justnever got around to it, I never
(06:05):
sat down, I never had the time,whatever it may be.
So now you can just take thisidea any nonfiction book you
want and you just basically typethe idea in and AI.
Well, through our system, we aska certain number of poignant
questions based on the kind ofinformation you put in the kind
of book you want to generate,and all of this creates certain
prompts and we do a lot of stuffon the back end and the end
result is a fully written, fullsize nonfiction book.
(06:29):
So you just basically answersome questions and, within the
do it yourself system that wehave, within like an hour or so
you can have, like, your bookwritten and ready to go, ready
to publish, your book writtenand ready to go ready to publish
.
But we even updated that.
We have this new program nowwhere it literally takes you two
minutes.
That's all it takes on yourpart.
(06:50):
Two minutes, you put it in, wedo the rest, and then you get a
full book back.
It's already published with allthe distributors.
It's on Amazon, google, apple,like everywhere.
So that's what AI can do.
I guess it's a combination ofAI and the technology, the
programming, our knowledge ofthe publishing industry to be
able to put all of this together.
So people ask me like well,aren't you with all AI stuff?
(07:11):
Aren't you concerned thatsomebody else will just do the
same thing?
Well, no, I'm not, because Iput 20 years of book publishing
experience in there, plus I'm aprofessional programmer and
that's what I do I create, Icode, and putting all those
three things together, we'reable to build this system.
Carl Richards (07:30):
Does it still go through at least a final or an
editing process or a proofread,to make sure?
Dr. Bo Bennett (07:38):
that the author is usually the one that does the
final proofread, and then, orif we're doing the audio book,
we'll listen to the audio bookand do the proof proving of the
audio.
And then if we pick up someredundancies because it's one
thing that AI does sometimesit's redundant and it just like,
oh, they already talked aboutthis, so we've removed that.
So there is a little bit ofediting, but really, if you
(08:00):
don't do any editing, your bookis still going to be far better
off than the average book thatthe average new author writes,
and that's just like mindblowing and very upsetting to a
lot of people too.
Carl Richards (08:10):
I think that, when it comes to content
creation, we we hold it verydear to us because it's our
content Right, so we don't wantto think that a computer or some
type of program or I don't likethe word artificial
intelligence, I like augmentedintelligence, I think it's.
It's a better display of theword that that it can actually
do better than we can becausewe're so personally attached to
(08:32):
it, but it sounds like it's ayou know.
What you end up getting, though, is a.
You get to the end result morequickly, and, to a point, I wish
this had been around years ago.
I've been writing a book for 15years, so if I had, you know,
had the resources for this, itdefinitely would have saved a
lot of steps, and I wouldn't besitting there going am I ever
(08:53):
going to publish that book?
Am I ever going to get that tofruition?
It could have happened by now.
Dr. Bo Bennett (08:58):
Yeah, Yours is the typical story.
It really is.
People have been publishingbooks for years, like or writing
a book for years and notpublishing it.
I'm still working on it.
I got a couple of chapters down.
It's just a long process andit's usually one of those things
that ends up on the back burner.
Carl Richards (09:12):
It's not on top of people's list, and it's one
of those things that, let's faceit, writing, writing a book is
work.
I think there's the there's apopulation of people who believe
that I'll just wait for theright moment to be inspired and
then that'll just.
You know, the book writing,heavens will open and everything
will be great, but in thetraditional book writing sense,
no.
You schedule time to write andyou do that for as long as
(09:37):
you're supposed to.
Anyways, you're that from whatI.
I had a book writing coachyears ago who explained that to
me, and she said yeah, even thefolks like Stephen King, it's
work, it's a job, that's whatyou do.
So it sounds like this makesthe process easier, especially
for those of us who are businessowners.
We're not necessarily writers tobegin with.
(09:58):
A lot of us are not writers.
We're business owners.
We have ideas, we have thingsthat we want to express.
We don't necessarily know theright way to express them.
This, at least, allows us tohave a chance of getting our
messaging out there veryefficiently.
What are some of the challenges, though, that you run up
against in the AI space?
What are some of the pushbacks?
Dr. Bo Bennett (10:18):
Well, people don't like the idea as we talked
about.
As you mentioned, people don'tlike the idea of being replaced,
and writing is one of thosethings where people feel it's
extremely personal and it'ssomething that they really want
to do.
It's not something that theywant AI to do for them and they
take it extremely personally.
And it's funny too, becausewhen I place ads, sometimes I'll
(10:39):
put an ad on Facebook regardingthis and the like, nasty
comments and hates and the youknow the, the hate emoji,
because people just don't likeit.
I mean, let's, let me rephrasethat Some people just don't like
it.
Other people will will see thevalue in it and see how much it
could help them and they willlove it.
(11:00):
But, yeah, there are definitelysome people who just absolutely
hate it.
And that's the challenge.
And it's sort of like when I wastrying to sell people on the
internet this concept of theinternet back in 1994, when I
started my first web hostingcompany, I'd have to tell people
what the internet was and tellthem why they needed it.
And it's new, it's newtechnology.
(11:22):
They were afraid of it, theydidn't understand it.
Therefore, they didn't like itand that was my challenge.
I had to try to try to getpeople to one, just to be
positive of the internet ingeneral, and that's kind of how
I feel.
Where I am right now, I'mselling AI a lot more than I'm
selling bookbudai, and that'sthe nature of things right now.
Carl Richards (11:46):
That's a very good parallel.
Thinking back to, I mean, 1994,we barely had computers.
In college I studied radiobroadcasting and I think we had
one or two computers for studios, but then we had a computer lab
computers for studios, but thenwe had a computer lab, a
computer lab with eight or 10computers in it.
Nine pin dot matrix printerthat everyone printed their
assignments out on took 86 hoursto print the anyways.
(12:09):
Uh, you're right, it was.
That's just what.
What it was like back then.
You know, on the informationsuper highway, nobody would have
thought, or those who had someforward thinking didn't realize
how far, how far that was goingto go with information.
I mean, I would never havethought back in the early 90s
that there would be a day whereI wouldn't need a wall full or a
(12:31):
shelf full of encyclopedias,because I grew up with them
right, as did you, I'm assuming.
And now your encyclopedia is.
Well, your encyclopedia now ispretty much on your phone that
you carry in your pocket, butit's in your computer.
So I can see the trepidationaround AI and not seeing it
replacing people.
(12:51):
I mean, we run up against ittoo in the podcasting space
because people automaticallythink that, well, ai, are you
concerned?
It's going to replace you, andI'm like, well, no, it's going
to enhance what we do and we'llbe able to do more of it and do
it better than we do, and ourproduction team is already doing
that.
We don't have any services yetthat click a button and it does
it for you, but I'm sure thatday will come.
(13:13):
We're still in a world, though,where people will invest in.
If they want to.
They'll invest in a handmade orpartly made product, a
person-made product.
The auto industry still hasvehicles, not mainstream ones,
but vehicles that are.
A lot of them are assembled byhumans, not machines, and there
(13:33):
are other examples of that, too.
So cabinet makers still exist,because your you know, large
furniture warehouses thateverything's basically assembled
by a machine or a robot isn'tof the same quality that what
some people want.
So, but the AI discussion Iknow it opens a can of worms.
How is AI changing our world,though?
(13:54):
What's your?
What's your perspective?
Dr. Bo Bennett (13:55):
Well, in the broader sense, it is doing a lot
of the work.
Well, in the broader sense, itis doing a lot of the work that
we typically have to do, that wedon't want to do, which is a
really good thing.
And I don't think people seethat.
They tend to gloss over thebenefits and just look at the
potential downside, like, ooh,it's going to take my job, but
really, I mean, that's what'sgoing on right now.
(14:17):
It's doing some of the stuffthat we just don't want to do.
We don't need to do.
It's so much better for us, forhuman beings.
We are creative creatures,we're smart, we have this level
of intelligence.
Let's use it right and let'slet AI take care of all these
mundane tasks that we typicallyspend a lot of our day doing
(14:42):
mundane tasks that we typicallyspend a lot of our day doing.
So I think if, first of all, ifand by you I mean the general
you if we as people embrace AI,that's the first step.
You have to embrace it and thenyou'll be able to use it, use
it to your advantage, and onceyou could do that, then you're
going to be ahead of everybodyelse who is basically fearful of
it or doesn't want to use it.
So it really is changing us, inthat those of us who are using
(15:06):
it can focus on more importantthings.
I can't even tell you how muchmore productive I have been
since AI, since I've beenadopting AI, because all of
those things on my to-do listthat I just never got to Now I
could finally get to.
It's so many mundane things,like.
I'll give you just one example.
We had a book descriptionwriting service where I would
(15:28):
basically write the descriptionof the book.
So I'd have to get somebody'sbook and I wouldn't read the
whole thing and this was notthat I'm scamming anybody.
I told him, like you don't haveto read the whole book, but you
, basically I read the forward,the front section, the first
chapter, and I kind of perusethe rest of the book enough to
really get a sense of how towrite a good, marketable book
(15:49):
description for it.
So this whole thing took aboutmaybe like two or three hours,
sometimes a little bit more,sometimes a little bit less, and
now AI does that for us in likeliterally six seconds.
I mean it's crazy.
And then you say, okay, well,probably doesn't do as good.
No, no, it does a much betterjob than I ever did.
Why?
(16:10):
Because it reads the entirebook.
I mean, you just upload the PDF, it'll read the whole thing,
it'll get a full understandingof the book and you just have to
give it the right prompts.
You have to tell it what youwant precisely and what it's for
, and it'll write a description,will do the formatting and
again it.
It takes like seconds as opposedto hours, and now that's
(16:31):
something that I don't have todo and, yes, I don't charge as
much money for it anymore.
In fact, it's a free service weoffer, but, uh, it's.
It's just things that I kind ofhad to do, that I really didn't
want to do, but it was kind ofpart of the business.
So I think that if everybodykind of looks for those type of
things that they could pass offto AI and then put their time
(16:56):
and their energy into somethingmore productive, something
hopefully that's morefinancially productive for them,
then that would be great andthat's what you need to start
thinking about.
Carl Richards (17:05):
I think that's a really good example, too is it's
a time saver.
It's not a job eliminator.
It allows you to do differentthings.
It allows you to redefine yourservices.
It's funny as you're talkingabout the time it would take to
previously to do that.
I can remember working in radioand editing on reel-to-reel tape
(17:26):
.
Now it's digital Well, evenbeyond digital, because there
are AI tools that can do a lotof the work for you as well, or
at least make the editingprocess easier.
We still use some high-endediting programs and tools to to
make sure everything is exactlythe way we want it, but I can't
imagine going back to editingon reel-to-reel tape to try and
(17:51):
do the job that now is done in afraction of the time, because I
don't have to stop the recorder, cut, pull out a piece of
editing tape, make sure it'sstuck together, back the tape up
, play it, make sure it soundsright.
It's just.
The process is way, way simpler, and I can see that too with
with with writing and certainlywith content creation in general
(18:14):
.
What are some quick tips forpeople who are maybe trying out
AI and they're not successfulwith it?
What are, what are some of thetips that you can suggest to
them as far as finding those andI can't recall the, the exact
terminology you use but but the,the things that you tell AI to
do.
I think that's one of thehangups that some people have is
(18:34):
I'm trying that, but I'm notgetting the results I want.
What are some tips to helppeople on their journey, so the
term is called promptengineering.
Dr. Bo Bennett (18:42):
Thank you, that is going to be a big term in the
future.
You mean like internet is now abig term, sort of yeah, it's
(19:12):
sort of like, I guess, some jobassociated with the internet.
You mean like internet is now abig term, still this middleman,
if you will.
And the middleman is the textand the communication, or even
the verbal, the speech thatinstructs AI, artificial
intelligence, to give somedesired outcome.
So you need to know what thatis and you need to know how to
talk to it.
So it is sort of like alanguage and people will think,
well, yeah, it understandsEnglish, it understands any
language basically.
(19:32):
So you just talk to it like youtalk to a human.
That's ideally how AI issupposed to become right.
You're supposed to be able totalk to it like a human and it
should understand you as a human.
However, it's not.
I don't know if it's ever goingto be there, or maybe I should
say that it's only going to getas good as human language.
(19:54):
And what I mean by that is eventoday.
We've all been speaking forhowever long we've been alive,
minus a few years, andwe'reinterpret people.
There are cognitive biasesinvolved, logical fallacies.
(20:14):
There's a lot of communicationmissteps that basically takes
what's in my head and themessage that ends up in your
head is not the same.
There's a lot of distortionthere.
So when you're talking to acomputer, like via computer
programming, there's like thisfiltration process which is the
(20:35):
computer language where you cantell it exactly.
It's like a common language andthere's no misunderstanding.
So, like when I'm programmingand something goes wrong, I
don't say, oh, it misunderstoodme, I say, oh, I screwed up.
Right, I screwed up the code.
And this is really importantbecause there's that common code
(20:55):
.
And when we have like promptengineering, if you can
effectively figure out the code,like how to communicate with AI
correctly, then that's themiddleman.
In a sense you can tell it todo exactly what you mean,
exactly what you're looking for.
And this is a little bit trickybecause there's no book that
(21:17):
you could buy on how exactlyChatGPT understands what is the
code.
It doesn't work that way.
It's still human language andit's prompts.
But getting around to yourquestion, how could people get
better at this?
And that is, start researchingprompt engineering.
There are books on promptengineering.
There are books on promptengineering, there are websites
on it.
There's like the top 10 promptsand this is basically a lot of
trial and error right now.
(21:38):
It's people understanding howto talk to different LLMs.
The language models, so likeChatGPT, may have different set
of prompts than the other onesout there.
The point is that they all havedifferent ones.
So which large language modelare you going to be using Like
Claude is the other one that Iuse a lot and then look up and
(21:59):
do some research on promptengineering for that and start
to learn it, and then you couldstart playing around with it and
then you could start to teachit and you can, through trial
and error, get it to do exactlywhat you want it to do.
And that's essentially what Idid with bookbudai.
Like with the book publishingindustry, after so much trial
and error, I know exactly whatto tell it to get exactly what I
(22:22):
want back and for the commonperson.
This is a lot of work thatthey're probably not going to
deal with and they don't have to.
Carl Richards (22:29):
They can just come to us if they want, like a
book ready this sounds similarto just as you were talking
there, how individuals will do asearch on the internet on a, on
a, on a search.
If you're not putting in theright information, you'll get
some very interesting searchresults so it's so.
It's about putting in the rightinformation, and I know there's
(22:50):
a.
Obviously it's a little bitmore in depth, but but I like
your suggestion of of actuallydoing your due diligence, doing
some homework and andresearching the best way to go
about asking the questions or orinputting the information that
the artificial or augmentedintelligence needs to be able to
give you the result that you'relooking for.
(23:12):
Yep Philosophical question.
Then AI your friend or your foe?
Your friend.
Dr. Bo Bennett (23:17):
It should be your friend, but I think a lot
of people kind of see it as thefriend who's doing extremely
well and very successful andthey don't like it for that
reason, or the friend that theydon't know very well and they're
afraid of.
So I think, again, you need toget to know it a little bit,
play around with it and see howit can be your friend in many
ways.
Let's address the big, scarymonster in the closet like will
(23:41):
AI turn on us and launch nuclearwar or somehow empty our bank
accounts or do somethingnefarious like that?
It's extremely doubtful,because think of artificial
intelligence.
Like intelligence, we havesmart people who are good and
smart people who are bad.
Right, we do good things and dobad things.
(24:03):
And there's always this balancewithin humanity of, like hackers
.
You have hackers trying to likerip people off, rip off old
ladies, and then you haveethical hackers who fight that
and who leave traps for them andwho expose them.
And that's the way it is andthat's the way it's always been
predating computer stuff.
So when we're talking aboutartificial intelligence, you're
(24:25):
going to have people who use itethically and people who use it
unethically, and so far inhistory the ethical people have
been winning.
Call me the positive thinker,but I really am the optimist.
But I tend to believe thathumanity is a lot more good than
we are bad, and the good willprevail.
So we're not going to get an AIthat's going to destroy
(24:48):
humanity.
Carl Richards (24:49):
I think we should save that for Hollywood or a
throwback to iRobot you know, Ithink it makes great movies
wonderful movies?
Yeah, exactly 100%.
But to your point, it can dowhat it's told to do.
So if somebody tells it to dothat, then maybe.
But what are?
Dr. Bo Bennett (25:06):
the odds.
The question is will itprogress to have wants and
desires?
Because right now we don'tthink artificial intelligence
has wants or desires.
Like you said, it just doeswhat we tell it to do.
But what if it does get to thepoint where it does start having
desires, have some kind ofartificial intelligence that
(25:31):
develops these evil desires?
I think somewhere in the worldwe're going to have this
artificial intelligence that hasethical desires and maybe, and
again, it's going to be this,this fight or whatever.
I don't know this.
I'm not a fight, but more oflike a like a struggle, like a
constant struggle betweenhackers and ethical hackers and
scammers and scambaiters and soforth.
Carl Richards (25:52):
Like you said, that's been around for years.
Right, it's not like it'sanything new and as far as
technology or evolution inindustry, that's been around too
.
I'm assuming those people whomake buggy whips probably aren't
that busy anymore than theywere, say, maybe 150 or 200
years ago, because we don'ttypically drive horse and buggy
(26:16):
in mass quantities like we didback then.
Dr. Bo Bennett (26:20):
Yeah, it's a whole idea of not worrying about
things that you can't control,and that's another huge aspect
of it.
I mean, maybe this is just aphilosophy, it's just again a
way of thinking.
I mean, maybe this is just aphilosophy, it's just again a
way of thinking.
But yeah, why worry about it?
There's nothing that I could doabout it.
Like if let's say that I didbelieve that artificial
intelligence was going to evolveand kill everybody, if I really
(26:41):
believe that, I'd be worried,I'd be losing sleep, I'd be
panicking and maybe I couldstart a website or a social
media account and attract a fewthousand people.
But I mean, that's the extentof what I could do.
It's not going anywhere, you'renot.
It's just not, so don't worryabout it.
And if it does happen and killsus all one day, then I was
(27:03):
wrong and too bad.
But again, there's nothing wecould do.
We might as well live a goodlife until that point.
Carl Richards (27:09):
I think that's a great place to shift the
conversation a little bit.
So, friend, I like that, yeah,and I agree, because I think at
a bird's eye view, it's like oh,there's a lot of trepidation,
but when you actually start todig in a little bit deeper and
not just look at it and listento the rhetoric, because a lot
of the rhetoric that you'reseeing in social media or even
(27:30):
in conventional media, it isbased on fear or based on a
single or not too many opinions.
When you break it down, itreally has the ability.
As you've said, you're a primeexample.
You're a business owner andyou're very effective more
effective than you were as abusiness owner who helps people
in the publishing space be moreeffective, serve more clients,
(27:54):
make more money as a result ofhaving some fantastic tools and
AI at your disposal that you'vecreated.
What would you like to sharewith people?
Do you have any resources thatyou'd like to pass on to
individuals to assist themeither with learning more about
what you do in publishing orsomething that will help them in
the AI space?
What would you like to passalong?
Dr. Bo Bennett (28:16):
I could definitely help people who are
interested in using artificialintelligence for book publishing
, whether it's finishing a bookthat they started to write or
just starting from scratch, orjust publishing literally a book
a day like a new book, andstarting a publishing empire.
We have people who have donethat, so if you are interested
in that, just check out mywebsite.
(28:36):
It's called bookbudai and wehave a full course, an online
course with videos where youcould really educate yourself
and see how it works and you cantry out.
Get your hands wet, feet wet,whatever you want to get wet.
Give it a shot, see how itworks for you.
Try out.
Get your hands wet, feet wet,whatever you want to get wet.
Give it a shot, see how itworks for you and, if you like
it, keep doing it and if youdon't, don't, just don't get the
(28:58):
ai wet, because then it mightturn on you.
Carl Richards (29:00):
No, it might.
You know, bo bennett, it's beena fantastic conversation.
Thank you so much for being myguest today.
Before I turn you loose to gopublish 86 more books in the
next 86 minutes, or to helpsomebody get into the publishing
space, like myself, who's beentrying to do it for the last
almost 20 years, I'll leave youwith the final thought.
Dr. Bo Bennett (29:17):
Final thought is something we've already
mentioned, and that is toembrace AI.
I think that's so important toembrace it.
Don't be afraid of it.
It's not going anywhere and themore you embrace it, the more
you learn about it the least,the less you'll fear it and the
more you will profit from it.
Carl Richards (29:32):
All right, great place to leave it.
Bo Bennett, thank you for beingmy guest today.
All right, thank you.
And thank you for joining ustoday.
Special thanks to our producerand production lead, Dom
Carrillo, our music guru, NathanSimon, and the person who works
the arms all of our arms,actually, my trust.
All of our arms, actually mytrusty assistant, Stephanie
Gafour.
If you like what you heard today, leave us a comment and a
(29:53):
review and be sure to share itwith your friends.
If you don't like what youheard, please share it with your
enemies.
Oh, and if you have asuggestion of someone who you
think would make an amazingguest on the show, let us know
about it.
Drop us an email, ask Carl atcarlspeaksca.
Don't forget to follow us onLinkedIn and Twitter as well.
You'll find all those links inthe show notes, and if you're
(30:14):
ready to take the plunge andjoin the over 3 million people
who have said yes to podcasting,let's have a conversation.
We'll show you the simplest wayto get into the podcasting
space because, after all, we'repodcast solutions made simple.
We'll catch you next time.
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