September 2, 2024 • 49 mins
Social media is one of the biggest and most controversial disruptions in the last decade, arguably the last several decades. More than 5 billion people, or 62% percent of the world's population, have joined Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and other platforms. These platforms are providing marketers greater visibility into consumer needs and creating more opportunities to build brand loyalty. And, they give consumers greater access to shared interest forums, critical health information, and local communities. Yet, there are serious concerns. Last year, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on the negative effects of social media on teen mental health. Algorithms, meant to create a more personalized experience, are isolating users from diverse opinions and news sources.
Mike and Yael speak with UVA Darden alum Travis Nixon (MBA '16), Machine Learning Engineer with Meta, about how we might use AI and data to redefine the user experience on social media to achieve healthier outcomes.
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Episode Transcript
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Becky Duff (00:10):
Good disruption, a lively discussion between UVA
Darden School of Businessprofessors, Yael grushka cocaine
and Mike Lennox on cutting edgetechnologies and practices that
are challenging the status quo.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (00:32):
Hey, Mike, how you doing?
Mike Lenox (00:34):
I'm doing well. How are you doing today? Yael,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (00:36):
I am doing great. Have you posted
anything on social media today?
Mike Lenox (00:40):
Oh, today. No, I'm not. No, I have not.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (00:43):
Do you I always do. I mean, the question
is, not, have I posted today?But have I posted in the past
hour? Do you not post every daysomething on social media? I
Mike Lenox (00:54):
don't, you know, I go through episodes where I'm
more active, and then there aredays where I just, I just don't
think to do it
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (01:03):
is, what is your what is your social
media of choice? Let me ask youthat.
Mike Lenox (01:08):
So it's interesting. I think I'm a weird consumer of
social media. I would say I'mmore likely to post than I am to
actually read social media,crazy as that sounds, so I've
long used Twitter, now known asx, and because some of the
changes, I've been less using xand using LinkedIn, actually
(01:28):
more as a source of kind ofgetting news out about things
that I'm doing and the like. Nowhow about you? I know you're
you're very active here.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (01:36):
Yeah, I do love social media. I use it
all the time. I've been shiftinglike you. I was a heavy user of
Twitter a while ago or x, andI've kind of slowly moved away
from that, although I still useit, and I use LinkedIn a lot,
but I really use Instagram themost. I would say. I just find
(01:57):
it the most satisfying, the mostfun, and I enjoy interacting
with individuals. There are youon an Instagram follower?
Mike Lenox (02:05):
I'm really not, though I live vicariously
through my wife's Instagram soand hers is populated with dog
videos and like cute kid videos,so that I do get to consume some
of that content.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (02:18):
Well, the reason I ask you all these
questions and talk about it isobviously, maybe you've guessed
it, that I'm hoping that we cantalk about social media as a
disruption today, while not new,I know that it's been around,
and you can you I know that youhave some reflections on the
history, but I still think it'ssuch a pervasive and such a
powerful force in the worldaround us that it's going to
(02:40):
help us think about the futureand where we're going in many
ways. So can we talk aboutsocial media today? I
Mike Lenox (02:45):
love it. I love it. Let's call this like the Michael
J Fox, Back to the Futureepisode here, right? There you
go. We're looking at somethingthat's been around for a while,
but we're looking towards thefuture as well.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (02:55):
Well, look, it's let's just kind of be
aligned and on the same page, inthe sense of the impact of
social media, it is huge, right?So if there's about 5.4 billion
internet users in the world,about 5 billion or 62% say that
they are social media users, orat least to some, according to
some polls and statistics. Andit's growing every second, every
(03:19):
single second, 8.2 new usersjoin social media, which is just
shocking.
Mike Lenox (03:24):
Now, are those new users or those bots that are
creating, you know, their ownaccounts,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (03:29):
fair enough, could potentially bots,
potentially new users cut it asyou will. It is still impactful,
and it's just changed everythingfrom how we interact with each
other, how our kids interactwith their friends, to how
businesses and, you know, smallbusinesses, entrepreneurs, how
they start off. Social media isthe place to go, if you if you
(03:49):
haven't even noticed that yet.
Mike Lenox (03:51):
So can I ask you a question? So what, what is and
it is not social media, in youropinion? Yeah, it's
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (03:56):
a great question. Definitions vary. I
think social media, to somedegree is, you know, talking a
little bit in your lingo and thestrategy lingo, it's kind of a
network that connects end users,right? So, like an ability to
have one to one, end to end,kind of relationships, I think,
is what we're talking abouthere. And that becomes social.
Now, you know whether or not isfor social purposes or for
(04:20):
business purposes, is, by theby, but in my mind, that's how
we think about social socialmedia
Mike Lenox (04:26):
is texting a social media? Yeah, I
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (04:29):
think you can say that texting is social
media. I think WhatsApp, we youknow, WeChat. I think the
various iterations of that issocial media. I think, you know,
there's always a joke aboutdepending if you're texting in
blue or green, if you're a greenblue, you know, if you're a
green texter, maybe it's notsocial anymore, and you should
move in and change to a an appleor a fruit based device, as I
(04:52):
like to say,
Mike Lenox (04:54):
telephones. Telephones? Are they social
media, like the old, you know,group chats you could do on your
you. Telephone back in like a1980s Yeah,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (05:02):
what were they called those? Yeah, they
had a name, right? Those groupconversations, like party calls,
right? Thank you. Yeah,
Mike Lenox (05:13):
really dating ourselves again.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (05:15):
I know
Mike Lenox (05:16):
social media. Is it more than is it more than two
people? Does it need to be morethan two people to be a social
media I think,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (05:23):
I don't think it does necessarily. I
think a party calls definitelysocial media. And I think the
telephone, in its firstiteration, can be seen very much
as social media for that time,right? And it was disruption for
that time and again. While we'renot going to totally do it back
to the future. You can thinkabout the evolution of these
networks and evolution of socialmedia over time as disruptive
(05:46):
forces and disruptivetechnologies as they've evolved.
Yeah, and I
Mike Lenox (05:49):
would note that Facebook came out almost exactly
20 years ago now, sounbelievable. It's been around
for a while. Obviously, therewere things that predated
Facebook in that same digitalsocial media space. But
obviously, Facebook was the big,the big disruptor of the of the
time there, yeah,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (06:06):
yeah. And it continues to be, you know,
the prominent platform. I wouldsay it is definitely the largest
social media. I think Instagram,LinkedIn, are kind of slowly
catching up, but those arestill, Facebook is still
primarily the biggest platform,3 billion monthly active users.
(06:26):
I mean, that is a large chunk ofthe population around the globe,
if you think about it, and byfar the most popular social
network.
Mike Lenox (06:34):
That's incredible. It's incredible that that many
people around the world areusing it there. Look, I think
this is one in which, given 20years of history here, it'd be
hard to argue that social mediahasn't been a disruption, right?
So let's talk a little bit aboutthe good and the bad to date,
right? And we, what we alwayssee is we always do want to look
(06:56):
towards the future here. What doyou see as the good sides of
social media, our 20 yearexperience, at least since
social media, as we kind ofpopularly know it, now, has
arisen,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (07:07):
yeah, and I know that we're gonna open the
floodgates to some critique, andthere's plenty of negativity.
And as a generation, you know,you and I both have teenagers,
and so we always think aboutwhatever teenagers are big on.
We like to criticize. You know,rarely dove. You've seen the
generation of parents say thattheir their kids are into
something good and productive.But I would say that on some
(07:27):
level, social media hasdefinitely helped people feel
connected, feel accepted, feellike they can get support in
real time when they'restruggling, and not feel as
isolated as potentially theywould if they didn't have social
media. I mean, think just thinkabout the times of covid and
when we were all isolated in ourhomes. If there wasn't social
(07:47):
media and really wellestablished platforms, I think
we would have felt way morelonelier than we did, and we all
benefited from that in manydifferent ways. Costs of entry
and cost of exposure andmarketing capabilities have
dramatically changed andincreased and expanded and given
power to the everyday person, ifyou will. So many people can be
(08:10):
influencers, so many people canhave a say. Can share their
knowledge and their excitementand enthusiasm in ways that were
never possible before, unlessyou were some famous celebrity
or very kind of successfulmodel, and in that way, really
kind of has been breaking downslowly and surely barriers for
folks to influence each other,share their their their
(08:33):
knowledge and gain exposure inways that that they're they're
seeking.
Mike Lenox (08:39):
I really like that idea we might call, like, the
democratization of of Media andCommunications, and that, you
know, it's, it's hard to imaginenow 20 years in, but you know, a
time period where it'd be veryhard to get your video in front
of anybody, or your thoughts forthe day in front of anyone. And
now this is incredibly easy, atleast, to get it out there. Now,
(09:01):
whether you can get a lot offollowers is another, another,
another question there. What areyour things about some of the
earlier beliefs about socialmedia? I'm thinking in
particular, like the ArabSpring. I'm forgetting exactly
what year that was now, butthere was a lot of rhetoric then
about how social media wasempowering people. It was giving
(09:22):
them voice, and it was givingthem ways to coordinate with
others that were giving rise tothese democracy movements.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (09:30):
Of course, I mean, there's an, in a
way, it's kind of ironic. You'reyou're talking about an
additional level of transparencyin terms of the ease in which
you can connect with people likeminded people, or connect with
people that inspire you, connectwith people that other you may
not know that exist. And I thinkmovements like the Arab Spring,
(09:50):
movements that that you see fromtime to time, often, yes, they
have maybe a little bit more ofa political tone to them, but
even fanship of. Certainartistry or certain forms of
entertainment, like theconnecting with people who share
your passions has become mucheasier through social media.
Yeah, it
Mike Lenox (10:10):
is amazing to see the number of celebrities now,
just flat out, celebrities,musical successes, who got their
start on social media thatdidn't go through the quote,
unquote, traditional challengechannels that you would see for
success as, let's say, amusician, right?
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (10:26):
And in some ways, that has been well
overdue. I mean, the recordcompanies and the labels have
all been controlling some ofthat, to the dissatisfaction of
the artists. And here now thereis a platform that, as you say,
democratizes that and empowersthe artists to keep control and
to talk directly to theiraudience, to sell directly to
(10:46):
their consumers in a much morefast and immediate way.
Mike Lenox (10:52):
So we've talked about some of the upside here.
Tell me, what are the critiques?I mean, we've all heard them,
but tell us. Tell us what youthink, EIL, are some of the top
critiques we should be thinkingabout,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (11:01):
yeah, I mean, I think things that we
feel ourselves, things that insome ways, we would feel in many
different social settings. Thisnotion that you see the good but
not the bad. You see peoplehaving fun but not their
struggle moments, it puts addedpressure. It makes people, you
know, maybe a little bit moreself conscientious or low self
(11:21):
esteem, or they see other peoplehaving fun with each other, but
they're not included. So it canhave really mental issues and
mental pressure. It can increasethe mental pressure that folks
feel in ways that maybe we'veexperienced across generation.
But maybe this makes it morepronounced. I mean, for sure, if
you go back to your telephone.Example, if you were calling a
(11:44):
friend back in the 60s and the70s, and they didn't answer, but
you knew that they were on thefall, on the call with somebody
else, you would get jealous inthe same way that now, if you
see them on social mediainteracting with somebody that
you're not included, you mightfeel left out. We definitely see
that social media can have, canhelp spread and in a very rapid
(12:05):
way, you know misinformation, orjust sheer you know wrong facts
and lies and really cause some,not only stress and pressure,
but also cause a lot of damageby spreading wrong information,
and that, of course, is a big,big downside.
Mike Lenox (12:24):
Yeah. I mean, I think about here, growing up in
the United States, we had, inessence, three news outlets,
right? ABC, NBC, CBS, and youhad the three newscasters, and
there was a very narrow set ofsources for information and
news. Now we've created a worldwhere, literally, you know,
millions and millions of sourceshere. There's a good size to
(12:48):
that right now. Now we allow foradditional voices and the like.
But there's that downside thatyou just were mentioning, the
ability to proliferatefalsehoods, to build, little you
know, sub communities where nowour information facts aren't all
the same, that we're that we'redealing with there. How do you
(13:11):
react to that critique of socialmedia that in some ways, maybe
you could even argue it's openPandora's box, where now, great,
everybody has voice, but man, dowe want everybody to have voice?
And is it really improving theimproving the commons?
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (13:28):
Well, I think it's a valid critique, and
I think that, like any otherdisruption that you and I have
talked on this show about, withinnovation and with change,
comes a whole set of newconsiderations that we are all
responsible of tackling. So thisTake, for instance, this notion
of, yeah, do we want everybodyto have a voice? Because
sometimes those voices aren'treally what we would like to
(13:51):
hear, or sometimes they'rewrong, or sometimes they're
helping spread errorinformation. Well then it's our
responsibility to try and thinkabout what is it that we want to
encourage in terms of how peopleexpress themselves, how we are
influenced by each other, how welisten to each other, how do we
give feedback? How do we assesswhether information is correct
(14:13):
or not? How do we train ourteach our kids and the world
around us to be more thoughtfulwhen they consume information.
This has always been the case.We've you know, when you've gone
to the newsstand 2030, yearsago, you had to judge the
validity of a certain magazineand an outlet. You have to do
the same thing today. It's justmore of it, and maybe more rapid
(14:36):
than ever. And then about thecritique of mental health
impact, especially on teens. Iwant to remind us that the rise
in social media has come withthe rise of awareness in terms
of social in terms of mentalissues in general. So we are all
more aware of mental health.Kids talk about it more. Parents
(14:57):
care about it more seem to becaring about it. Reacting to it
more schools and educationsystems are more sensitive to
it, and so yes, there's anincrease in interest and
increase in maybe cases wherepeople are seeking mental health
support, but that's not justbecause of social media rise.
That's also because of ourawareness and heightened
(15:19):
sensitivity and heightened carethat we're taking to try and
support individuals whostruggle.
Mike Lenox (15:26):
Yeah, that's a good point, that there's any number
of societal ills where the firstreaction is always to blame
social media. But as we know,the world's complex, and there's
a lot of things going on, andsome of these things might be
causative, some of them might becorrelative, and maybe some of
them there really isn't anycorrelation at all, but we just
make that we just make thatassertion there as well. Is
(15:47):
social media, in your mind, justsimply a tool, or is it
something more as a phenomenonthat we're that we're facing? Is
you mentioned before, like it'samplifying things that have
always existed? Is thereanything that's different in
kind that social media isbringing about in your mind?
Well, I
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (16:06):
definitely think that from, if we think
about you and I, we're, youknow, we're Business School
professors, we think aboutmarketing, we think about
operations, we think about PR,we think about just channels. I
mean, I think that we've seen ahuge amount of disruption and
change in ways that businessesthrive and succeed, and in ways
in which consumers seek to findinformation, find out about new
(16:29):
products and consume thoseproducts. I think that it's
changed wellness and lifestylechoices based on on the web and
just opportunities that socialmedia provides in terms of
educating individuals andtraining individuals to think
differently about their ownhealth and their own lifestyle.
So yes, I think there arefundamental changes that are
(16:51):
occurring around us that areboth impacting business models,
impacting businesses, impactingpolicy and impacting individuals
around how they live theirlives.
Mike Lenox (17:00):
It reminds me of some work that I've done, some
research I've done over theyears on environmental activist
actions against firms. And itused to be that firms would be
wary of these kind of largeorganizations, let's say, like a
green piece, well, well knownactivists that would, you know,
target certain firms. They haveto worry now, in this day and
(17:21):
age of, you know, two peoplewith a clever idea on YouTube
creating a video that mightdestroy, you know, literally
millions of dollars of value fora company overnight, which is a
very, very different world,again, because we've
democratized voice, and thereare many more people who can
have a vehicle for for getting,getting a message out there,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (17:44):
and you know that could have a positive
effect, in the sense that itmakes everybody stop and think
and make it makes it aware thatwe don't have to wait for one
company, one organization, tofigure out some challenges or
some critique of our work, butwe need to be thinking about
every single individual outthere and what they might say
about our business. But youknow, Mike, you and I often know
(18:05):
that whatever we can discusstogether is not going to help us
really unravel the secrets oreven the hope, in this case with
social media, but maybe it'stime to bring in our expert.
What do you think? I
Mike Lenox (18:17):
think it's always time to bring in the expert. So
great suggestion. Well,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (18:21):
it's always a joy when we have one of
our own alums coming back, oneof our students that we had in
the classroom come back as ourexpert. And so I am really
excited to have Travis Nixonhere with us. Travis is a
machine learning engineer frommeta. Travis, welcome to our
show. Thank
Unknown (18:38):
you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (18:40):
We are really excited to have you here.
And let me tell our listeners alittle bit about you, Travis,
and you'll probably tell us alot more that we need to know,
but you have more than a decadeof experience in machine
learning and related fields. Iremember talking about it in
quite a lot of detail when youwere a student at Darden. You're
one of the leading experts inthe country, and machine
(19:01):
learning and its applicationimpact and potential, and you've
built many systems to harnessthe power of advanced natural
language processing, which isvery timely now in order to
deliver new insights and makebetter decisions. You of course,
have a background in finance.You have your Dart and MBA,
which I alluded to and beforemoving to meta, you spent quite
(19:25):
a while actually at Microsoftand other firms before that.
Thank you again for coming.Travis, how do you feel about
social media? I think you toldus you're not really a user of
social media. Ironically, yeah,
Unknown (19:40):
yeah. So I started my career with the US State
Department, and so I wasoverseas when Facebook really
hit. And when I got back to thestates, everyone who was on
Facebook dating had to be onFacebook. You know, instead of
like, exchanging numbers, youwould have each other on
Facebook. And I felt like I.Missed this whole movement of
(20:01):
moving your life to an onlineexperience, and so I just kind
of missed the boat on that, andnever quite caught up. But look,
I don't have anything personallyagainst it. It's just I never
really got too much into being auser of it.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (20:16):
And I think that that's really
interesting, that acrossgenerations, I've seen folks
either really take to it, andeach person might take to a
different social media in adifferent way, or a different
platform of choice, and somefolks that don't find the need
or don't gravitate towards it,and I assume, Mike, that you
have the same experience withpeople around
Mike Lenox (20:36):
you absolutely, absolutely and like I said, I
think it's interesting to be onewho uses social media as a
vehicle to promote things versusthose who are consuming it as a
source of either news orentertainment on the daily.
Unknown (20:49):
If I could jump in on that thought, actually, because
I think that's a really goodpoint, and I was listening to
the conversation prior to mecoming in, loved it, loved the
thoughts that we had there. ButI do want to interject one thing
that social media is oftentimestalked about in terms of users
and what what this is doing,bringing users together as a
society. But there's anotherwhole half of it, and in the
(21:13):
industry, this second half isreally the guiding star of where
social media is and where it'sgoing, and that is the corporate
side, the people that are buyingthe ad time on the social media.
And that shapes a lot of a lotof the questions that you would
have of, why is this this way inInstagram or in Facebook or any
of these platforms? Well,they've really got to build out
a business case for sellingattention in the form of
(21:35):
advertisement.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (21:37):
Yeah, that's fascinating. And I wonder
from your perspective. Like,have you seen that change a lot
over time? And do you think thatthat change is kind of good for
the consumer? Like, what is yourtake on it?
Unknown (21:49):
So, oh, that's a big question. Now, look, I think
that we're at an inflectionpoint. We have been for the past
year, in fact, ever sinceDecember 2022 when chat GPT was
released, and we had this suddenpause moment with what AI was
becoming, that the basis,mission and makeup of what
(22:10):
social media is and what it isintended for, is undergoing a
whole revolution and change. Sothere's a lot of different
answers to that question. So howdid we get here? Well, it
depends on the facet. So youmentioned like one of the one of
the negative sides of socialmedia was a mental health
concern. Can people get tooaddicted to social media, like,
(22:32):
Who here hasn't been at somepoint in their lives caught in a
loop of you see an interestinglink and you follow it, and then
that leads to another link, orthat leads to another video. And
in Tiktok these days, there's,there's just such a compelling
addiction towards scrolling tothe next video or reels. The
(22:53):
fact is, we built some AImodels, and we had an objective,
because for every AI model, youhave to name an objective. What?
What are you minimizing? Whatare you optimizing? What are you
maximizing? What we reallywanted to maximize was people
watching the next video. Wesaid, hey, we'll feed in all
this data we've got. We've gotthis data. We can anonymize it,
(23:13):
we can do whatever we want it,aggregate it, feed it into the
neural networks, and then, atthe end of the day, what we want
to maximize is people clickingon the next video. Okay? And it
turns out there's some greatways to do that in negative,
harmful ways, right? It turnsout negative emotions are very
compelling to click on negativecontent things that you disagree
(23:35):
with, and so we can feed vitriolinto someone's lives, and that's
not born out of any kind ofnegative impetus or desire, or I
want to manipulate someone'slife in a negative way. It's
just born out of this. Ai modeltakes a whole bunch of stuff in.
It's called a black box model,so we have no idea what's going
on in the middle of it, and thenon the outset, we maximize or
optimize clicks. Great. But itturns out then, just as you were
(23:58):
talking about at the beginning,there's some mental health
outcomes that aren't quitedesirable? So we start to chip
away at this question now, and Ihope that starts to answer what
you're talking about. How did weget to where we're at? But it's
a very multifaceted problem.
Mike Lenox (24:11):
Makes me think here about, obviously, the business
model for a lot of thesecompanies is advertising, and as
you just said, that then leadsto an incentive to create the
algorithm having the objectivefunction of attention,
maximizing attention. But I wastrying to think of like, what
would be the alternative? Like,what would it be like? I don't
(24:32):
know. Would it be like theuser's affect for the videos
they're seeing? And how wouldyou even measure that, other
than through attention? And so Ihear you and I agree, and this
is one of the big critiques ofsocial media, but I'm trying to
think of like, what would thealternative be if we just even
took the business model aside?How would it decide what next
(24:53):
video to give me, other thanattention? So
Unknown (24:57):
fantastic question, Mike, and I think that's where
we. Inflection point is beforewe could measure dollars, and
dollars are the easiest thing tomeasure in the world, right?
That's why sales organizationstend to be very meritocratic in
promotions and things like that.Sell more better dollars easy to
measure, right? It, like I said,with these models coming down
(25:19):
to, how do we maximize dollars.Ad Spend has led to some
negative effects, but now thatwe have these large language
models, we're now able tomeasure things like, how healthy
was this conversation? How muchdid this affect their life and
and I can have a start point oftheir emotional or mental state
is permitted to be at this andat the end of that conversation,
(25:42):
it was higher, so I canbenchmark it higher. So now the
ability to arrange your socialmedia algorithms and outputs to
a healthy outcome are myriad,and I think that this is exactly
where we redefine what is socialmedia for? Is it meant to
connect us, or is it meant togive us a feeling of connection?
Because I can give you a feelingof connection with chatbots, and
(26:03):
with the onset of llama four andGBT five were there, right? So
fascinating,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (26:09):
fascinating. And
Unknown (26:10):
that's a rabbit hole, of course, to go down to. But
what is social media? What is itfor? I think is a very valid
question right now.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (26:17):
And I think you pick up on a good
point. And this is where ourimagination and our create, our
positive creativity, I wouldsay, comes into play in the
sense that, if we align ourgoals and our objectives, as you
both alluded to, maybe now,tools can detect my emotional
state. They can detect my healthstate. They can detect measures
(26:37):
of like blood pressure. They candetect smiles and frowns and
tired individuals or lethargicbehavior like now that we can
start to kind of pick up on someother cues in different ways,
maybe we can maybe the socialmedia companies or maybe their
organizations behind it and theindividuals will put more of an
(26:59):
expectation that we also helpindividuals overcome challenges
when, when they when they facethem, is that? Is that a good
way to think about it? Travis,absolutely,
Unknown (27:09):
and I see signs of this happening as a big consideration
for social media companies. Forexample, I have a great
opportunity to speak with a lotof our partners and so other
folks such as Reddit and varioussocial media platforms, and it's
what's interesting to me issocial media companies used to
define themselves and theirvalue in the form of how they
(27:31):
could get ads and how manyeyeballs and how much attention
and how much lifted revenue fortheir corporate customers. What
I'm hearing more and more is thebreadth and depth of their data.
In other words, we, our currentlarge language models, have fed
in all the language we possiblycan that's out there and
available for open AI to ingest,let's say take open AI Chris,
(27:55):
and that means that we'veproduced llms that are largely
formal, because they can go andscrape all of these great news
articles and blog posts that areout there for the world to see.
But what they aren't scraping isinformal conversations and how
we just interact with each otheron day to day basis. These
social media companies havethose conversations, and I know
Reddit, in the news, has beenmonetizing those conversations a
(28:17):
lot. The that actually ended uphurting Google a little bit with
the release of their models, butI think that it is a competitive
advantage that a lot of thesesocial media companies are going
to use to say, I can actuallymodel how a conversation goes,
what a healthy conversation is,what is the arc. How do we keep
it interesting, and everythinglike that. That's a value,
(28:39):
valuable data set to haveinteresting
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (28:42):
Reddit and other social media that
started at UVA, of course, to
Mike Lenox (28:46):
get that in disciplined bevels advocate,
though, if we design systems nowthat improve our welfare, I
mean, that sounds on its surfacelike this is great. This is the
where we need to go with socialmedia, but then I can think
about like, drug addiction,right? Like that might put me in
a state of euphoria. And like,is that? Is that what we need as
(29:09):
humans? Is that, like, thatpositive affect at all time when
we're engaging with a with aplatform?
Unknown (29:15):
Well, in direct answer to that, Mike, I don't think
we're ready for AI as a society,and it's coming way too fast. I
was seeing today that we'relooking at an acceleration of
intelligence, units per dollar,doubling every six months. And
this has been happening sinceattention is all you need. Came
out in 2018 or 2017 and thenacted on in 2018 and beyond.
(29:38):
Look, it's absolutelystaggering. And if you think the
models are smart now, just justa quick anecdote, when I was at
Microsoft, I was working with alot of financial customers on
how to implement GPT three, andnobody wanted it just to be
transparent GPT three like wecould not. There was all these
great use cases that we wouldbuild and we would ingest. Data,
(30:00):
and we would show how it's greatat classification and regression
tasks, if you just put someadditional layers on top. By the
time we got to that point, theconversation they were already
out six months later, chatgptcomes out because we added some
labeling onto that with someoffshoring teams and things like
that, and now everyone can't getenough of it. So I just want to
(30:20):
point out that we're all ravingabout GPT four, but GPT three
was in the industry considerednot too valuable. Now the step
from three to four is everyone'schanging their business models,
and I think the key to this isAI is not an innovative tool. AI
is a tool of innovation, and itfundamentally transforms
(30:42):
everything about a company. Now,OpenAI is telling us that the
leap from four to five isequivalent in size as the leap
from three to four, you thinkyou your job, your role, your
life, is not going to getdisrupted by this technology.
You've got to rethink and startthinking exponential, stop
thinking linear, right? And soto the point of what happens
(31:07):
when we can get all the dopaminefrom social interactions, from
our computer and not have toreach out? Mike, I think that's,
I think that's the question thatwe've got to answer in four
years, and we've got to come toa consensus about it, and I
don't know, think about themovie Her with Joaquin Phoenix,
yeah.
Mike Lenox (31:24):
Can we just back up for one second? It's one thing
I'm trying to follow here is,like, when I think about
generative AI, and I thinkabout, like, the her situation
there, that seems it's social,but it's artificial social,
versus, at least some notionthat social media exists today
is a communication between twohumans here, am I? Am I thinking
(31:46):
about that wrong? Or is it justeverything's getting blurred,
and it doesn't matter if theperson on the other side is a
bot or a human who's generatingcontent, it's
Unknown (31:55):
absolutely the latter, because I, and I won't go too
much to the details on this, butlet me ask you if we can host a
conversation between two peopleand have the other person not
know that they're talking to abot. Is that not a great label
data set to see how good yourbot is.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (32:10):
I'm going to take us back to social social
media for a moment. Guys, interms of like the social media,
how we think about it today, Iknow Mikey just opened a Pandora
box of about thinking about itin terms of interaction between
individuals and a bot. But if wethink about interaction between
one to one or one to many, ormany to many humans, Travis, is
(32:32):
there anything that you look atwith an excitement like, you
know, where, where, where do youthink the social media is going
to go in a way that haspotential to improve our life,
improve our social, improve ourfeeling, improve our our
happiness. Is there something onthe horizon that we can look
forward to?
Unknown (32:50):
I think there's tancier I I am very bullish on AI. I
think that this is the momentthat we have an opportunity to
as a species, graduate to thenext level. And I think that's
extremely exciting living in anage of abundance. But let me ask
you this the there's an analogyI like this tell and it might be
terrible, so give me thefeedback. That's great, but this
(33:12):
is what I like to say. If youhave ice cream vendor who found
a genie, Genie says, I'll greetyou a wish. And they say, I want
to make ice cream, the best icecream that it is possible to
make. And poof, boom, he's gotunlimited supply, the best ice
cream that it's possible tomake. And it turns out it's so
good that no one else can eatanything, anything else. The
(33:35):
food was good. The first bowl isfantastic. But when you can't do
anything else, it comes at theexpense of the rest of life. And
now desire is coming back, andit's now, it's now a curse,
right? So some kind of Faustianbargain there? I think, yeah,
we're there with with socialmedia and with AI. So the
(33:55):
question is, and I think let'stake this to advertising. So my
specialty and meta is actuallyon the ads org and making models
to decide which ads you shouldsee when you sign into Instagram
or Facebook. Okay, we need tochoose the five best ads that
people see. What happens when weget so good at choosing those
(34:16):
ads that you can't say no? Andnow what like? What happens if
you invented the ultimate adengine and now everyone just
runs a huge debts on theircredit cards? That's not good,
right? Right now, where we're atnow, so that's that's last yes
or year, right? Where we're atnow is what happens when I can
make the ad in real time to fitexactly what you want?
Mike Lenox (34:40):
This, is something I've long been concerned about,
and just to get academic speakhere for a second, is in a lot
of our models, we assume thatpreferences are exogenous,
right? Like you have somepreferences, they're born in
you. Maybe they change overtime, but it's exogenous to the
actions of others. We know. Tofrom consumer behavior, from the
(35:03):
efforts on, you know, behavioraleconomics and like that. But no,
no, we can actually shape thosepreferences, right? And so, to
your point, like, as we getbetter at that, as we are able
to leverage this data and usealgorithms to, like, completely
shape what we believe that, thatcan get very disconcerting. You
know that now, I feel like we'regoing down the dystopian path
(35:23):
here of, you know, an entity,either the state or a company,
deciding, like we're going totell us what you want and what
you should do, and, you know,total control type of thinking.
So please tell me how I'm wrong.Travis, that this is, this is
where we're going. Well, thecore
Unknown (35:41):
mitigation is societal and personal. And I want to get
and fully answer Yao's questionon what is the optimist take on
this as well, too, right? So,but let me address those two
points. So the personal isyou've got to be prepared
yourself. You've got to be awareof what's happening in AI. You
can't wait for someone else totell you three months after the
fact, you need to understand howthe algorithms might affect you
(36:04):
today. So the first thing is,listen to this podcast, read as
much about this talk as you can,because this is not a nerd
technology. This is nothappening in some data center.
This is happening in your life.The second is, societally, we
need to be aware of thesedangers, and we need a political
system that's able to act onthings, to act in society's best
interest as rapid as possible.And I know that saying Politics
(36:26):
does not give is not really arallying cry of hope. These
days, I think that the world hasacted fairly well in times of
crisis and adapting to newdevelopments. So I'm hopeful on
that. Let me paint the utopianpicture. So we're going down in
this dopey event real quick, butlet me paint the utopia picture,
if we get this right. So let'ssay that my neighbor, we just
(36:49):
had a big storm and a tree fellin their house and huge damage
to their home and made Luckily,they have insurance, but suppose
they didn't have insurance now.Suppose we're five years down
the road, and AI has progressedas it has been, and they're able
to go to the computer and say,I've got holes in my roof. I
need a quick solution. Here'swhat's available to me. And they
actually hold a conversationwith the AI agent, so they don't
(37:11):
just need to ask everything intheir first prong. And the AI
agent helps them inventsomething that's actually going
to repair their roof. And notonly that, it's going to be a
SpaceX relay so that they canactually now get SpaceX internet
right? Great. They go to awebsite and they say, publish
this idea and patent it. Aitakes care of that. Ai,
comparisons, researches all thepatents and says, now we have
(37:33):
new product. And they say,Great, there's an adversarial AI
that shows whether or not thiscould be successful in an open
market. Now he's got a huge gapin his finances to fill, and so
he says, market this, and I wantyou to put it on Facebook and
Instagram, and I want you tobuild ads and help me sell this.
And I want to send this to amanufacturing facility which can
(37:55):
pick up the design and autofabricate what it needs to in
order to develop this product.And now you have him with a
patented product outselling inthe marketplace, in a situation
where intelligence has, by andlarge been commoditized. It
raises the question, what arehumans at that point if
intelligence gets commoditized?But I think that there is a
(38:15):
utopian path in this of helpingeveryone grab a slice of
innovation.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (38:21):
I love that. I love that. And the
social part of that is what, interms of it's part of the
process of democratizing itlike, is that, that now social
becomes like, just how weinteract more broadly, is that?
Is that how you see it,
Unknown (38:35):
social media? This is where I come down to the
redefining of what is socialmedia. So in that experience
that I just mentioned, socialmedia can play many parts. First
off, on the advertising part,how do you get your product? How
do you get your brand out there?How do you start from scratch?
And I would say that one of themost positive forces from social
(38:55):
media to date has been theability of small businesses to
play in what were large marketstraditionally. I mean the risk
you'd have to go through to buyTV ads before
was impossible, right?
And now, with a budget of aslittle as 50 bucks, you can
affect consumers within 10 milesof your coffee shop and get them
to come in and boost your sales,as well as meta already has
(39:16):
abilities to help you increasethe quality of your ads. You
don't need as big of a marketingteam and marketing budget
anymore, I think that's awonderful thing, democratizing
market, and I think that's goingto continue. So I think, yeah,
that's where it's headed, therein the social media part of the
story.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (39:35):
And I want to go back to something
that resonated with me, that youmentioned earlier, that anything
in abundance, suddenly, kind of,it could be good in and of
itself, but then it could havenegative effects, and, you know,
synergies, or a negative impacton other adjacent activities.
(39:55):
And we see it right, like evenif social media had a good
effect on, let's say, a goodeffect on. Individuals, the fact
that it's distracting from,let's say, going out there and
being doing physical activity orexcluding some or reading a book
or what have you. Yes, that isan immediate challenge, but in
the longer term, it also meansthat we have to rethink some of
the other aspects of our lives.Meaning, you see that with the
(40:19):
increase in social media, Ithink there's also a boom in
terms of quality of, let's say,TV and movies. Why has suddenly
the game and the ACT stepped upon the TV front? Is because in
order to attract viewers, theyhad to change and improve the
quality, and suddenly youbrought in star quality and star
productions in order to bring inviewers, because they were being
(40:41):
lost to social media. You know,innovation around writing and
around thinking aboutliterature, innovation around
entertainment just, I just thinkthat it opens the door to
creativity in different ways tokeep everything in balance. Does
that make sense? Does that can Isell that story? Mike, to you a
little bit, I
Mike Lenox (41:01):
like it. I like it. I like the the positive, utopian
kind of view, or discuss,discussing here, obviously, you
know, I think you know, what arethe bifurcations lead us down
one path versus another isreally something that kind of
top of mind for me, of, how dowe, how do we make sure it
doesn't go off the rails, andmake sure that it leads us to
(41:21):
this more utopian path thatwe're discussing.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (41:25):
Well, Travis, you said, responsibility
is on all of us, all of us toget exposed to learn to be
judgmental in our consumption,and that I buy a lot. I mean,
criticizing AI is one thing, butlearning enough about it in
order to be a smart consumer andcriticize it in a productive
manner as a whole differentballgame. So I like that
question well, so
Unknown (41:46):
and a couple thoughts on that. Look, with social
media, you can unplug to acertain extent. And actually, I
realize now, as I'm thinkingabout it, I'm actually not
social media free. I'm onLinkedIn.
There you go.
Right exactly. Avoiding socialmedia is gonna be YouTube.
YouTube's a social medianetwork. Avoiding social media
(42:07):
in total, is very, verydifficult. Avoiding AI is gonna
be impossible, just absolutelyimpossible, if you want to
continue to participate insociety at the normal level. So
I think that defensivestrategies and understanding it
is really a requirement foreverybody.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (42:22):
Well, Travis, this has been really
super helpful. Thank you fortaking the time spending it with
us for this amount of time, andit's great to chat with you and
to hear about all of yourinsight and success. It's been a
long time, and I'm so, so proudto hear from you and your
position. And thank you forsharing your knowledge of not
only AI generative, AI socialmedia and the like, yeah,
(42:46):
thanks, Niall,
Unknown (42:47):
it's been a pleasure reconnecting. Thank you so much
for the time.
Thank you, Travis,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (42:52):
so Mike, are you still down on social
media? I was
Mike Lenox (42:55):
going to ask you, are you going to delete any of
your social media accounts?
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (43:01):
So have we changed our perspective at
all? No, I think, I think it'salways about with, like
everything else. It's with themoderation. And so I feel like
social media plays a reallycritical part in in my life, and
we haven't even talked about thepotential of connecting people
networks. I'm traveling. I'vebeen living away from my family
(43:23):
for years and years and years,and I'm I feel that social media
has enabled me to stayconnected, and so for me, it
plays a critical role, andthat's why I do it. But with the
power comes greatresponsibility. So I hear your
warnings and your concerns,
Mike Lenox (43:37):
yeah, and I think, you know, I can't deny one. You
know, this has obviously beendisruptive in the way we
traditionally talk about this.It's restructured any number of
different industries, fromcommunications to media to news.
And that's that's obvious, Ithink, in terms of the good or
the bad, clearly, there are goodaspects of this, clearly, and it
(44:00):
has created value for society. Iworry about the kind of
dystopian future, as you know,and you know, hearing Travis
talk about some of the you know,you know, coming with AI, it
makes me even more worried,right? So, so
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (44:16):
is so is your worry? Is your worry about
the AI part, or the social mediaper se. So are you more
concerned with the fact that AIis so pervasive and will
continue to control our lives?Are you worried about the social
media specific aspect, if we candifferentiate it, maybe we can,
yeah, yeah. And I think,
Mike Lenox (44:34):
I think it gets back to what Travis had said about,
you know, what are thesemachines designed to do, right
and and I think that that notionof they're they're there to
attract your attention and keepyou engaged with them. So I
would make a distinction betweenthe Instagrams, the tiktoks, the
YouTubes from, like we weresaying, texting. I think that
(44:55):
that's a different environmentthere. It's a different level of
engagement. And. And I thinkwhen you think about, you know,
the ability, not only tooptimize the next piece of
content you receive, but toactually optimize the content
itself using generative AI, thenthat addictive ability is going
to be even that much stronger.And what does that mean for us?
(45:18):
If you know, it's not justbecause user x created a cool
cat video that gets, you know,brought up in the recommendation
engine. It's the AI is nowcreating something bespoke for
me that's going to keep me onthese platforms even longer.
That that's worrisome.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (45:37):
Yeah, that's fair. And I can see that
concern. And I guess to somedegree it's you know, us,
meaning the employees, theleaders, the managers, the C
suite us, who train futurebusiness leaders, you know,
those who are regulators like itis all of our collective
responsibility to think about,how do these tools get used, and
(45:59):
How does this disruption get setup to be more positive in our
lives and negative? And how dowe think about that content,
that self generated content, byAI, and the role that it's going
to play in our lives in thefuture?
Mike Lenox (46:14):
I mean, I do agree that we have discretion, right?
We have agency, so we don't haveto use these tools, right? So
that's a good thing, of course,yeah, but we'll see if people
you know heed that or not. Soyeah, where do you come down
good, bad or no disruption?
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (46:32):
Oh yeah, this is going to be
controversial, because I thinkI'm going to come down on the
good disruption. And I kind ofpredict you're going to say bad.
Mike Lenox (46:41):
I am actually. And it's funny, because, you know
me, I'm usually the optimist.I'm usually the utopian. I love
technology, and I usually comedown on the side of good. I'm
gonna go bad on this one. We'vehad some other ones recently
that are kind of related topicsthat I think I came out on bad
on a few of those as well. Yeah,I do worry like we're kind of
(47:01):
opening Pandora's box here, andI don't know how we put it back,
but it certainly can haveimplications that can be
worrisome.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (47:11):
So I'm going to kind of take our moment
of saying goodbye and thankingthose who need to be thanked to
also challenge you. Mike, if ifwe come down, or if we believe
that it is a bad disruption,meaning social media is a bad
disruption, then what are yougoing to do about it? Or what
are we going to do about it inorder to help cater and shift
(47:33):
the direction? Because justsaying that it's bad, and I see
this with kids like we can banit, we can do a lot of different
things, but we've seenhistorical impacts and
successful, you know, banning ofdifferent things that
individuals thought were badthat doesn't really solve the
problem. I think that we can bemuch more constructive in the
(47:53):
actions that we take. Yeah, andI totally
Mike Lenox (47:55):
agree with that. I think maybe it's education
again, right, just making surepeople are informed about what's
happening behind the scenes onthese systems, and so they do
have that agency we were talkingabout. And look, who doesn't
like to sit for an hour watchinga bunch of cat videos, right?
Like it's a certain piece in themind space that that can create,
(48:19):
but, but, you know,understanding what's going on
and what they're trying to do, Ithink it's gonna be important.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (48:26):
I hear you. I hear you. Well, thank you
for that, Mike, and I appreciateyou letting me get excited about
things that you aren't verysupportive of.
Mike Lenox (48:36):
You're gonna be in trouble. I don't know. I hear
you. Provocative here.
Unknown (48:42):
I hear you.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (48:43):
I hear you next time, next time, we
have our two avatars record thisconversation and we'll see what
they say about it. That's
Mike Lenox (48:49):
exactly right. We're gonna go complete AI on our
podcast. There you go.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (48:52):
There you go. Well, with that, I think
it's time to wrap this one up.Thank you, Mike. Thanks to
Travis, who joined us, thanks toBecky and Gary as always, for
providing us the support that weneed. And that's it from us,
from social media.
Becky Duff (49:13):
Good disruption is a podcast from the University of
Virginia, Darden School ofBusiness. You.
Good disruption, a lively discussion between UVA
Darden School of Businessprofessors, Yael grushka cocaine
and Mike Lennox on cutting edgetechnologies and practices that
are challenging the status quo.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (00:32):
Hey, Mike, how you doing?
Mike Lenox (00:34):
I'm doing well. How are you doing today? Yael,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (00:36):
I am doing great. Have you posted
anything on social media today?
Mike Lenox (00:40):
Oh, today. No, I'm not. No, I have not.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (00:43):
Do you I always do. I mean, the question
is, not, have I posted today?But have I posted in the past
hour? Do you not post every daysomething on social media? I
Mike Lenox (00:54):
don't, you know, I go through episodes where I'm
more active, and then there aredays where I just, I just don't
think to do it
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (01:03):
is, what is your what is your social
media of choice? Let me ask youthat.
Mike Lenox (01:08):
So it's interesting. I think I'm a weird consumer of
social media. I would say I'mmore likely to post than I am to
actually read social media,crazy as that sounds, so I've
long used Twitter, now known asx, and because some of the
changes, I've been less using xand using LinkedIn, actually
(01:28):
more as a source of kind ofgetting news out about things
that I'm doing and the like. Nowhow about you? I know you're
you're very active here.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (01:36):
Yeah, I do love social media. I use it
all the time. I've been shiftinglike you. I was a heavy user of
Twitter a while ago or x, andI've kind of slowly moved away
from that, although I still useit, and I use LinkedIn a lot,
but I really use Instagram themost. I would say. I just find
(01:57):
it the most satisfying, the mostfun, and I enjoy interacting
with individuals. There are youon an Instagram follower?
Mike Lenox (02:05):
I'm really not, though I live vicariously
through my wife's Instagram soand hers is populated with dog
videos and like cute kid videos,so that I do get to consume some
of that content.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (02:18):
Well, the reason I ask you all these
questions and talk about it isobviously, maybe you've guessed
it, that I'm hoping that we cantalk about social media as a
disruption today, while not new,I know that it's been around,
and you can you I know that youhave some reflections on the
history, but I still think it'ssuch a pervasive and such a
powerful force in the worldaround us that it's going to
(02:40):
help us think about the futureand where we're going in many
ways. So can we talk aboutsocial media today? I
Mike Lenox (02:45):
love it. I love it. Let's call this like the Michael
J Fox, Back to the Futureepisode here, right? There you
go. We're looking at somethingthat's been around for a while,
but we're looking towards thefuture as well.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (02:55):
Well, look, it's let's just kind of be
aligned and on the same page, inthe sense of the impact of
social media, it is huge, right?So if there's about 5.4 billion
internet users in the world,about 5 billion or 62% say that
they are social media users, orat least to some, according to
some polls and statistics. Andit's growing every second, every
(03:19):
single second, 8.2 new usersjoin social media, which is just
shocking.
Mike Lenox (03:24):
Now, are those new users or those bots that are
creating, you know, their ownaccounts,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (03:29):
fair enough, could potentially bots,
potentially new users cut it asyou will. It is still impactful,
and it's just changed everythingfrom how we interact with each
other, how our kids interactwith their friends, to how
businesses and, you know, smallbusinesses, entrepreneurs, how
they start off. Social media isthe place to go, if you if you
(03:49):
haven't even noticed that yet.
Mike Lenox (03:51):
So can I ask you a question? So what, what is and
it is not social media, in youropinion? Yeah, it's
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (03:56):
a great question. Definitions vary. I
think social media, to somedegree is, you know, talking a
little bit in your lingo and thestrategy lingo, it's kind of a
network that connects end users,right? So, like an ability to
have one to one, end to end,kind of relationships, I think,
is what we're talking abouthere. And that becomes social.
Now, you know whether or not isfor social purposes or for
(04:20):
business purposes, is, by theby, but in my mind, that's how
we think about social socialmedia
Mike Lenox (04:26):
is texting a social media? Yeah, I
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (04:29):
think you can say that texting is social
media. I think WhatsApp, we youknow, WeChat. I think the
various iterations of that issocial media. I think, you know,
there's always a joke aboutdepending if you're texting in
blue or green, if you're a greenblue, you know, if you're a
green texter, maybe it's notsocial anymore, and you should
move in and change to a an appleor a fruit based device, as I
(04:52):
like to say,
Mike Lenox (04:54):
telephones. Telephones? Are they social
media, like the old, you know,group chats you could do on your
you. Telephone back in like a1980s Yeah,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (05:02):
what were they called those? Yeah, they
had a name, right? Those groupconversations, like party calls,
right? Thank you. Yeah,
Mike Lenox (05:13):
really dating ourselves again.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (05:15):
I know
Mike Lenox (05:16):
social media. Is it more than is it more than two
people? Does it need to be morethan two people to be a social
media I think,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (05:23):
I don't think it does necessarily. I
think a party calls definitelysocial media. And I think the
telephone, in its firstiteration, can be seen very much
as social media for that time,right? And it was disruption for
that time and again. While we'renot going to totally do it back
to the future. You can thinkabout the evolution of these
networks and evolution of socialmedia over time as disruptive
(05:46):
forces and disruptivetechnologies as they've evolved.
Yeah, and I
Mike Lenox (05:49):
would note that Facebook came out almost exactly
20 years ago now, sounbelievable. It's been around
for a while. Obviously, therewere things that predated
Facebook in that same digitalsocial media space. But
obviously, Facebook was the big,the big disruptor of the of the
time there, yeah,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (06:06):
yeah. And it continues to be, you know,
the prominent platform. I wouldsay it is definitely the largest
social media. I think Instagram,LinkedIn, are kind of slowly
catching up, but those arestill, Facebook is still
primarily the biggest platform,3 billion monthly active users.
(06:26):
I mean, that is a large chunk ofthe population around the globe,
if you think about it, and byfar the most popular social
network.
Mike Lenox (06:34):
That's incredible. It's incredible that that many
people around the world areusing it there. Look, I think
this is one in which, given 20years of history here, it'd be
hard to argue that social mediahasn't been a disruption, right?
So let's talk a little bit aboutthe good and the bad to date,
right? And we, what we alwayssee is we always do want to look
(06:56):
towards the future here. What doyou see as the good sides of
social media, our 20 yearexperience, at least since
social media, as we kind ofpopularly know it, now, has
arisen,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (07:07):
yeah, and I know that we're gonna open the
floodgates to some critique, andthere's plenty of negativity.
And as a generation, you know,you and I both have teenagers,
and so we always think aboutwhatever teenagers are big on.
We like to criticize. You know,rarely dove. You've seen the
generation of parents say thattheir their kids are into
something good and productive.But I would say that on some
(07:27):
level, social media hasdefinitely helped people feel
connected, feel accepted, feellike they can get support in
real time when they'restruggling, and not feel as
isolated as potentially theywould if they didn't have social
media. I mean, think just thinkabout the times of covid and
when we were all isolated in ourhomes. If there wasn't social
(07:47):
media and really wellestablished platforms, I think
we would have felt way morelonelier than we did, and we all
benefited from that in manydifferent ways. Costs of entry
and cost of exposure andmarketing capabilities have
dramatically changed andincreased and expanded and given
power to the everyday person, ifyou will. So many people can be
(08:10):
influencers, so many people canhave a say. Can share their
knowledge and their excitementand enthusiasm in ways that were
never possible before, unlessyou were some famous celebrity
or very kind of successfulmodel, and in that way, really
kind of has been breaking downslowly and surely barriers for
folks to influence each other,share their their their
(08:33):
knowledge and gain exposure inways that that they're they're
seeking.
Mike Lenox (08:39):
I really like that idea we might call, like, the
democratization of of Media andCommunications, and that, you
know, it's, it's hard to imaginenow 20 years in, but you know, a
time period where it'd be veryhard to get your video in front
of anybody, or your thoughts forthe day in front of anyone. And
now this is incredibly easy, atleast, to get it out there. Now,
(09:01):
whether you can get a lot offollowers is another, another,
another question there. What areyour things about some of the
earlier beliefs about socialmedia? I'm thinking in
particular, like the ArabSpring. I'm forgetting exactly
what year that was now, butthere was a lot of rhetoric then
about how social media wasempowering people. It was giving
(09:22):
them voice, and it was givingthem ways to coordinate with
others that were giving rise tothese democracy movements.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (09:30):
Of course, I mean, there's an, in a
way, it's kind of ironic. You'reyou're talking about an
additional level of transparencyin terms of the ease in which
you can connect with people likeminded people, or connect with
people that inspire you, connectwith people that other you may
not know that exist. And I thinkmovements like the Arab Spring,
(09:50):
movements that that you see fromtime to time, often, yes, they
have maybe a little bit more ofa political tone to them, but
even fanship of. Certainartistry or certain forms of
entertainment, like theconnecting with people who share
your passions has become mucheasier through social media.
Yeah, it
Mike Lenox (10:10):
is amazing to see the number of celebrities now,
just flat out, celebrities,musical successes, who got their
start on social media thatdidn't go through the quote,
unquote, traditional challengechannels that you would see for
success as, let's say, amusician, right?
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (10:26):
And in some ways, that has been well
overdue. I mean, the recordcompanies and the labels have
all been controlling some ofthat, to the dissatisfaction of
the artists. And here now thereis a platform that, as you say,
democratizes that and empowersthe artists to keep control and
to talk directly to theiraudience, to sell directly to
(10:46):
their consumers in a much morefast and immediate way.
Mike Lenox (10:52):
So we've talked about some of the upside here.
Tell me, what are the critiques?I mean, we've all heard them,
but tell us. Tell us what youthink, EIL, are some of the top
critiques we should be thinkingabout,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (11:01):
yeah, I mean, I think things that we
feel ourselves, things that insome ways, we would feel in many
different social settings. Thisnotion that you see the good but
not the bad. You see peoplehaving fun but not their
struggle moments, it puts addedpressure. It makes people, you
know, maybe a little bit moreself conscientious or low self
(11:21):
esteem, or they see other peoplehaving fun with each other, but
they're not included. So it canhave really mental issues and
mental pressure. It can increasethe mental pressure that folks
feel in ways that maybe we'veexperienced across generation.
But maybe this makes it morepronounced. I mean, for sure, if
you go back to your telephone.Example, if you were calling a
(11:44):
friend back in the 60s and the70s, and they didn't answer, but
you knew that they were on thefall, on the call with somebody
else, you would get jealous inthe same way that now, if you
see them on social mediainteracting with somebody that
you're not included, you mightfeel left out. We definitely see
that social media can have, canhelp spread and in a very rapid
(12:05):
way, you know misinformation, orjust sheer you know wrong facts
and lies and really cause some,not only stress and pressure,
but also cause a lot of damageby spreading wrong information,
and that, of course, is a big,big downside.
Mike Lenox (12:24):
Yeah. I mean, I think about here, growing up in
the United States, we had, inessence, three news outlets,
right? ABC, NBC, CBS, and youhad the three newscasters, and
there was a very narrow set ofsources for information and
news. Now we've created a worldwhere, literally, you know,
millions and millions of sourceshere. There's a good size to
(12:48):
that right now. Now we allow foradditional voices and the like.
But there's that downside thatyou just were mentioning, the
ability to proliferatefalsehoods, to build, little you
know, sub communities where nowour information facts aren't all
the same, that we're that we'redealing with there. How do you
(13:11):
react to that critique of socialmedia that in some ways, maybe
you could even argue it's openPandora's box, where now, great,
everybody has voice, but man, dowe want everybody to have voice?
And is it really improving theimproving the commons?
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (13:28):
Well, I think it's a valid critique, and
I think that, like any otherdisruption that you and I have
talked on this show about, withinnovation and with change,
comes a whole set of newconsiderations that we are all
responsible of tackling. So thisTake, for instance, this notion
of, yeah, do we want everybodyto have a voice? Because
sometimes those voices aren'treally what we would like to
(13:51):
hear, or sometimes they'rewrong, or sometimes they're
helping spread errorinformation. Well then it's our
responsibility to try and thinkabout what is it that we want to
encourage in terms of how peopleexpress themselves, how we are
influenced by each other, how welisten to each other, how do we
give feedback? How do we assesswhether information is correct
(14:13):
or not? How do we train ourteach our kids and the world
around us to be more thoughtfulwhen they consume information.
This has always been the case.We've you know, when you've gone
to the newsstand 2030, yearsago, you had to judge the
validity of a certain magazineand an outlet. You have to do
the same thing today. It's justmore of it, and maybe more rapid
(14:36):
than ever. And then about thecritique of mental health
impact, especially on teens. Iwant to remind us that the rise
in social media has come withthe rise of awareness in terms
of social in terms of mentalissues in general. So we are all
more aware of mental health.Kids talk about it more. Parents
(14:57):
care about it more seem to becaring about it. Reacting to it
more schools and educationsystems are more sensitive to
it, and so yes, there's anincrease in interest and
increase in maybe cases wherepeople are seeking mental health
support, but that's not justbecause of social media rise.
That's also because of ourawareness and heightened
(15:19):
sensitivity and heightened carethat we're taking to try and
support individuals whostruggle.
Mike Lenox (15:26):
Yeah, that's a good point, that there's any number
of societal ills where the firstreaction is always to blame
social media. But as we know,the world's complex, and there's
a lot of things going on, andsome of these things might be
causative, some of them might becorrelative, and maybe some of
them there really isn't anycorrelation at all, but we just
make that we just make thatassertion there as well. Is
(15:47):
social media, in your mind, justsimply a tool, or is it
something more as a phenomenonthat we're that we're facing? Is
you mentioned before, like it'samplifying things that have
always existed? Is thereanything that's different in
kind that social media isbringing about in your mind?
Well, I
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (16:06):
definitely think that from, if we think
about you and I, we're, youknow, we're Business School
professors, we think aboutmarketing, we think about
operations, we think about PR,we think about just channels. I
mean, I think that we've seen ahuge amount of disruption and
change in ways that businessesthrive and succeed, and in ways
in which consumers seek to findinformation, find out about new
(16:29):
products and consume thoseproducts. I think that it's
changed wellness and lifestylechoices based on on the web and
just opportunities that socialmedia provides in terms of
educating individuals andtraining individuals to think
differently about their ownhealth and their own lifestyle.
So yes, I think there arefundamental changes that are
(16:51):
occurring around us that areboth impacting business models,
impacting businesses, impactingpolicy and impacting individuals
around how they live theirlives.
Mike Lenox (17:00):
It reminds me of some work that I've done, some
research I've done over theyears on environmental activist
actions against firms. And itused to be that firms would be
wary of these kind of largeorganizations, let's say, like a
green piece, well, well knownactivists that would, you know,
target certain firms. They haveto worry now, in this day and
(17:21):
age of, you know, two peoplewith a clever idea on YouTube
creating a video that mightdestroy, you know, literally
millions of dollars of value fora company overnight, which is a
very, very different world,again, because we've
democratized voice, and thereare many more people who can
have a vehicle for for getting,getting a message out there,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (17:44):
and you know that could have a positive
effect, in the sense that itmakes everybody stop and think
and make it makes it aware thatwe don't have to wait for one
company, one organization, tofigure out some challenges or
some critique of our work, butwe need to be thinking about
every single individual outthere and what they might say
about our business. But youknow, Mike, you and I often know
(18:05):
that whatever we can discusstogether is not going to help us
really unravel the secrets oreven the hope, in this case with
social media, but maybe it'stime to bring in our expert.
What do you think? I
Mike Lenox (18:17):
think it's always time to bring in the expert. So
great suggestion. Well,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (18:21):
it's always a joy when we have one of
our own alums coming back, oneof our students that we had in
the classroom come back as ourexpert. And so I am really
excited to have Travis Nixonhere with us. Travis is a
machine learning engineer frommeta. Travis, welcome to our
show. Thank
Unknown (18:38):
you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (18:40):
We are really excited to have you here.
And let me tell our listeners alittle bit about you, Travis,
and you'll probably tell us alot more that we need to know,
but you have more than a decadeof experience in machine
learning and related fields. Iremember talking about it in
quite a lot of detail when youwere a student at Darden. You're
one of the leading experts inthe country, and machine
(19:01):
learning and its applicationimpact and potential, and you've
built many systems to harnessthe power of advanced natural
language processing, which isvery timely now in order to
deliver new insights and makebetter decisions. You of course,
have a background in finance.You have your Dart and MBA,
which I alluded to and beforemoving to meta, you spent quite
(19:25):
a while actually at Microsoftand other firms before that.
Thank you again for coming.Travis, how do you feel about
social media? I think you toldus you're not really a user of
social media. Ironically, yeah,
Unknown (19:40):
yeah. So I started my career with the US State
Department, and so I wasoverseas when Facebook really
hit. And when I got back to thestates, everyone who was on
Facebook dating had to be onFacebook. You know, instead of
like, exchanging numbers, youwould have each other on
Facebook. And I felt like I.Missed this whole movement of
(20:01):
moving your life to an onlineexperience, and so I just kind
of missed the boat on that, andnever quite caught up. But look,
I don't have anything personallyagainst it. It's just I never
really got too much into being auser of it.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (20:16):
And I think that that's really
interesting, that acrossgenerations, I've seen folks
either really take to it, andeach person might take to a
different social media in adifferent way, or a different
platform of choice, and somefolks that don't find the need
or don't gravitate towards it,and I assume, Mike, that you
have the same experience withpeople around
Mike Lenox (20:36):
you absolutely, absolutely and like I said, I
think it's interesting to be onewho uses social media as a
vehicle to promote things versusthose who are consuming it as a
source of either news orentertainment on the daily.
Unknown (20:49):
If I could jump in on that thought, actually, because
I think that's a really goodpoint, and I was listening to
the conversation prior to mecoming in, loved it, loved the
thoughts that we had there. ButI do want to interject one thing
that social media is oftentimestalked about in terms of users
and what what this is doing,bringing users together as a
society. But there's anotherwhole half of it, and in the
(21:13):
industry, this second half isreally the guiding star of where
social media is and where it'sgoing, and that is the corporate
side, the people that are buyingthe ad time on the social media.
And that shapes a lot of a lotof the questions that you would
have of, why is this this way inInstagram or in Facebook or any
of these platforms? Well,they've really got to build out
a business case for sellingattention in the form of
(21:35):
advertisement.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (21:37):
Yeah, that's fascinating. And I wonder
from your perspective. Like,have you seen that change a lot
over time? And do you think thatthat change is kind of good for
the consumer? Like, what is yourtake on it?
Unknown (21:49):
So, oh, that's a big question. Now, look, I think
that we're at an inflectionpoint. We have been for the past
year, in fact, ever sinceDecember 2022 when chat GPT was
released, and we had this suddenpause moment with what AI was
becoming, that the basis,mission and makeup of what
(22:10):
social media is and what it isintended for, is undergoing a
whole revolution and change. Sothere's a lot of different
answers to that question. So howdid we get here? Well, it
depends on the facet. So youmentioned like one of the one of
the negative sides of socialmedia was a mental health
concern. Can people get tooaddicted to social media, like,
(22:32):
Who here hasn't been at somepoint in their lives caught in a
loop of you see an interestinglink and you follow it, and then
that leads to another link, orthat leads to another video. And
in Tiktok these days, there's,there's just such a compelling
addiction towards scrolling tothe next video or reels. The
(22:53):
fact is, we built some AImodels, and we had an objective,
because for every AI model, youhave to name an objective. What?
What are you minimizing? Whatare you optimizing? What are you
maximizing? What we reallywanted to maximize was people
watching the next video. Wesaid, hey, we'll feed in all
this data we've got. We've gotthis data. We can anonymize it,
(23:13):
we can do whatever we want it,aggregate it, feed it into the
neural networks, and then, atthe end of the day, what we want
to maximize is people clickingon the next video. Okay? And it
turns out there's some greatways to do that in negative,
harmful ways, right? It turnsout negative emotions are very
compelling to click on negativecontent things that you disagree
(23:35):
with, and so we can feed vitriolinto someone's lives, and that's
not born out of any kind ofnegative impetus or desire, or I
want to manipulate someone'slife in a negative way. It's
just born out of this. Ai modeltakes a whole bunch of stuff in.
It's called a black box model,so we have no idea what's going
on in the middle of it, and thenon the outset, we maximize or
optimize clicks. Great. But itturns out then, just as you were
(23:58):
talking about at the beginning,there's some mental health
outcomes that aren't quitedesirable? So we start to chip
away at this question now, and Ihope that starts to answer what
you're talking about. How did weget to where we're at? But it's
a very multifaceted problem.
Mike Lenox (24:11):
Makes me think here about, obviously, the business
model for a lot of thesecompanies is advertising, and as
you just said, that then leadsto an incentive to create the
algorithm having the objectivefunction of attention,
maximizing attention. But I wastrying to think of like, what
would be the alternative? Like,what would it be like? I don't
(24:32):
know. Would it be like theuser's affect for the videos
they're seeing? And how wouldyou even measure that, other
than through attention? And so Ihear you and I agree, and this
is one of the big critiques ofsocial media, but I'm trying to
think of like, what would thealternative be if we just even
took the business model aside?How would it decide what next
(24:53):
video to give me, other thanattention? So
Unknown (24:57):
fantastic question, Mike, and I think that's where
we. Inflection point is beforewe could measure dollars, and
dollars are the easiest thing tomeasure in the world, right?
That's why sales organizationstend to be very meritocratic in
promotions and things like that.Sell more better dollars easy to
measure, right? It, like I said,with these models coming down
(25:19):
to, how do we maximize dollars.Ad Spend has led to some
negative effects, but now thatwe have these large language
models, we're now able tomeasure things like, how healthy
was this conversation? How muchdid this affect their life and
and I can have a start point oftheir emotional or mental state
is permitted to be at this andat the end of that conversation,
(25:42):
it was higher, so I canbenchmark it higher. So now the
ability to arrange your socialmedia algorithms and outputs to
a healthy outcome are myriad,and I think that this is exactly
where we redefine what is socialmedia for? Is it meant to
connect us, or is it meant togive us a feeling of connection?
Because I can give you a feelingof connection with chatbots, and
(26:03):
with the onset of llama four andGBT five were there, right? So
fascinating,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (26:09):
fascinating. And
Unknown (26:10):
that's a rabbit hole, of course, to go down to. But
what is social media? What is itfor? I think is a very valid
question right now.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (26:17):
And I think you pick up on a good
point. And this is where ourimagination and our create, our
positive creativity, I wouldsay, comes into play in the
sense that, if we align ourgoals and our objectives, as you
both alluded to, maybe now,tools can detect my emotional
state. They can detect my healthstate. They can detect measures
(26:37):
of like blood pressure. They candetect smiles and frowns and
tired individuals or lethargicbehavior like now that we can
start to kind of pick up on someother cues in different ways,
maybe we can maybe the socialmedia companies or maybe their
organizations behind it and theindividuals will put more of an
(26:59):
expectation that we also helpindividuals overcome challenges
when, when they when they facethem, is that? Is that a good
way to think about it? Travis,absolutely,
Unknown (27:09):
and I see signs of this happening as a big consideration
for social media companies. Forexample, I have a great
opportunity to speak with a lotof our partners and so other
folks such as Reddit and varioussocial media platforms, and it's
what's interesting to me issocial media companies used to
define themselves and theirvalue in the form of how they
(27:31):
could get ads and how manyeyeballs and how much attention
and how much lifted revenue fortheir corporate customers. What
I'm hearing more and more is thebreadth and depth of their data.
In other words, we, our currentlarge language models, have fed
in all the language we possiblycan that's out there and
available for open AI to ingest,let's say take open AI Chris,
(27:55):
and that means that we'veproduced llms that are largely
formal, because they can go andscrape all of these great news
articles and blog posts that areout there for the world to see.
But what they aren't scraping isinformal conversations and how
we just interact with each otheron day to day basis. These
social media companies havethose conversations, and I know
Reddit, in the news, has beenmonetizing those conversations a
(28:17):
lot. The that actually ended uphurting Google a little bit with
the release of their models, butI think that it is a competitive
advantage that a lot of thesesocial media companies are going
to use to say, I can actuallymodel how a conversation goes,
what a healthy conversation is,what is the arc. How do we keep
it interesting, and everythinglike that. That's a value,
(28:39):
valuable data set to haveinteresting
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (28:42):
Reddit and other social media that
started at UVA, of course, to
Mike Lenox (28:46):
get that in disciplined bevels advocate,
though, if we design systems nowthat improve our welfare, I
mean, that sounds on its surfacelike this is great. This is the
where we need to go with socialmedia, but then I can think
about like, drug addiction,right? Like that might put me in
a state of euphoria. And like,is that? Is that what we need as
(29:09):
humans? Is that, like, thatpositive affect at all time when
we're engaging with a with aplatform?
Unknown (29:15):
Well, in direct answer to that, Mike, I don't think
we're ready for AI as a society,and it's coming way too fast. I
was seeing today that we'relooking at an acceleration of
intelligence, units per dollar,doubling every six months. And
this has been happening sinceattention is all you need. Came
out in 2018 or 2017 and thenacted on in 2018 and beyond.
(29:38):
Look, it's absolutelystaggering. And if you think the
models are smart now, just justa quick anecdote, when I was at
Microsoft, I was working with alot of financial customers on
how to implement GPT three, andnobody wanted it just to be
transparent GPT three like wecould not. There was all these
great use cases that we wouldbuild and we would ingest. Data,
(30:00):
and we would show how it's greatat classification and regression
tasks, if you just put someadditional layers on top. By the
time we got to that point, theconversation they were already
out six months later, chatgptcomes out because we added some
labeling onto that with someoffshoring teams and things like
that, and now everyone can't getenough of it. So I just want to
(30:20):
point out that we're all ravingabout GPT four, but GPT three
was in the industry considerednot too valuable. Now the step
from three to four is everyone'schanging their business models,
and I think the key to this isAI is not an innovative tool. AI
is a tool of innovation, and itfundamentally transforms
(30:42):
everything about a company. Now,OpenAI is telling us that the
leap from four to five isequivalent in size as the leap
from three to four, you thinkyou your job, your role, your
life, is not going to getdisrupted by this technology.
You've got to rethink and startthinking exponential, stop
thinking linear, right? And soto the point of what happens
(31:07):
when we can get all the dopaminefrom social interactions, from
our computer and not have toreach out? Mike, I think that's,
I think that's the question thatwe've got to answer in four
years, and we've got to come toa consensus about it, and I
don't know, think about themovie Her with Joaquin Phoenix,
yeah.
Mike Lenox (31:24):
Can we just back up for one second? It's one thing
I'm trying to follow here is,like, when I think about
generative AI, and I thinkabout, like, the her situation
there, that seems it's social,but it's artificial social,
versus, at least some notionthat social media exists today
is a communication between twohumans here, am I? Am I thinking
(31:46):
about that wrong? Or is it justeverything's getting blurred,
and it doesn't matter if theperson on the other side is a
bot or a human who's generatingcontent, it's
Unknown (31:55):
absolutely the latter, because I, and I won't go too
much to the details on this, butlet me ask you if we can host a
conversation between two peopleand have the other person not
know that they're talking to abot. Is that not a great label
data set to see how good yourbot is.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (32:10):
I'm going to take us back to social social
media for a moment. Guys, interms of like the social media,
how we think about it today, Iknow Mikey just opened a Pandora
box of about thinking about itin terms of interaction between
individuals and a bot. But if wethink about interaction between
one to one or one to many, ormany to many humans, Travis, is
(32:32):
there anything that you look atwith an excitement like, you
know, where, where, where do youthink the social media is going
to go in a way that haspotential to improve our life,
improve our social, improve ourfeeling, improve our our
happiness. Is there something onthe horizon that we can look
forward to?
Unknown (32:50):
I think there's tancier I I am very bullish on AI. I
think that this is the momentthat we have an opportunity to
as a species, graduate to thenext level. And I think that's
extremely exciting living in anage of abundance. But let me ask
you this the there's an analogyI like this tell and it might be
terrible, so give me thefeedback. That's great, but this
(33:12):
is what I like to say. If youhave ice cream vendor who found
a genie, Genie says, I'll greetyou a wish. And they say, I want
to make ice cream, the best icecream that it is possible to
make. And poof, boom, he's gotunlimited supply, the best ice
cream that it's possible tomake. And it turns out it's so
good that no one else can eatanything, anything else. The
(33:35):
food was good. The first bowl isfantastic. But when you can't do
anything else, it comes at theexpense of the rest of life. And
now desire is coming back, andit's now, it's now a curse,
right? So some kind of Faustianbargain there? I think, yeah,
we're there with with socialmedia and with AI. So the
(33:55):
question is, and I think let'stake this to advertising. So my
specialty and meta is actuallyon the ads org and making models
to decide which ads you shouldsee when you sign into Instagram
or Facebook. Okay, we need tochoose the five best ads that
people see. What happens when weget so good at choosing those
(34:16):
ads that you can't say no? Andnow what like? What happens if
you invented the ultimate adengine and now everyone just
runs a huge debts on theircredit cards? That's not good,
right? Right now, where we're atnow, so that's that's last yes
or year, right? Where we're atnow is what happens when I can
make the ad in real time to fitexactly what you want?
Mike Lenox (34:40):
This, is something I've long been concerned about,
and just to get academic speakhere for a second, is in a lot
of our models, we assume thatpreferences are exogenous,
right? Like you have somepreferences, they're born in
you. Maybe they change overtime, but it's exogenous to the
actions of others. We know. Tofrom consumer behavior, from the
(35:03):
efforts on, you know, behavioraleconomics and like that. But no,
no, we can actually shape thosepreferences, right? And so, to
your point, like, as we getbetter at that, as we are able
to leverage this data and usealgorithms to, like, completely
shape what we believe that, thatcan get very disconcerting. You
know that now, I feel like we'regoing down the dystopian path
(35:23):
here of, you know, an entity,either the state or a company,
deciding, like we're going totell us what you want and what
you should do, and, you know,total control type of thinking.
So please tell me how I'm wrong.Travis, that this is, this is
where we're going. Well, thecore
Unknown (35:41):
mitigation is societal and personal. And I want to get
and fully answer Yao's questionon what is the optimist take on
this as well, too, right? So,but let me address those two
points. So the personal isyou've got to be prepared
yourself. You've got to be awareof what's happening in AI. You
can't wait for someone else totell you three months after the
fact, you need to understand howthe algorithms might affect you
(36:04):
today. So the first thing is,listen to this podcast, read as
much about this talk as you can,because this is not a nerd
technology. This is nothappening in some data center.
This is happening in your life.The second is, societally, we
need to be aware of thesedangers, and we need a political
system that's able to act onthings, to act in society's best
interest as rapid as possible.And I know that saying Politics
(36:26):
does not give is not really arallying cry of hope. These
days, I think that the world hasacted fairly well in times of
crisis and adapting to newdevelopments. So I'm hopeful on
that. Let me paint the utopianpicture. So we're going down in
this dopey event real quick, butlet me paint the utopia picture,
if we get this right. So let'ssay that my neighbor, we just
(36:49):
had a big storm and a tree fellin their house and huge damage
to their home and made Luckily,they have insurance, but suppose
they didn't have insurance now.Suppose we're five years down
the road, and AI has progressedas it has been, and they're able
to go to the computer and say,I've got holes in my roof. I
need a quick solution. Here'swhat's available to me. And they
actually hold a conversationwith the AI agent, so they don't
(37:11):
just need to ask everything intheir first prong. And the AI
agent helps them inventsomething that's actually going
to repair their roof. And notonly that, it's going to be a
SpaceX relay so that they canactually now get SpaceX internet
right? Great. They go to awebsite and they say, publish
this idea and patent it. Aitakes care of that. Ai,
comparisons, researches all thepatents and says, now we have
(37:33):
new product. And they say,Great, there's an adversarial AI
that shows whether or not thiscould be successful in an open
market. Now he's got a huge gapin his finances to fill, and so
he says, market this, and I wantyou to put it on Facebook and
Instagram, and I want you tobuild ads and help me sell this.
And I want to send this to amanufacturing facility which can
(37:55):
pick up the design and autofabricate what it needs to in
order to develop this product.And now you have him with a
patented product outselling inthe marketplace, in a situation
where intelligence has, by andlarge been commoditized. It
raises the question, what arehumans at that point if
intelligence gets commoditized?But I think that there is a
(38:15):
utopian path in this of helpingeveryone grab a slice of
innovation.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (38:21):
I love that. I love that. And the
social part of that is what, interms of it's part of the
process of democratizing itlike, is that, that now social
becomes like, just how weinteract more broadly, is that?
Is that how you see it,
Unknown (38:35):
social media? This is where I come down to the
redefining of what is socialmedia. So in that experience
that I just mentioned, socialmedia can play many parts. First
off, on the advertising part,how do you get your product? How
do you get your brand out there?How do you start from scratch?
And I would say that one of themost positive forces from social
(38:55):
media to date has been theability of small businesses to
play in what were large marketstraditionally. I mean the risk
you'd have to go through to buyTV ads before
was impossible, right?
And now, with a budget of aslittle as 50 bucks, you can
affect consumers within 10 milesof your coffee shop and get them
to come in and boost your sales,as well as meta already has
(39:16):
abilities to help you increasethe quality of your ads. You
don't need as big of a marketingteam and marketing budget
anymore, I think that's awonderful thing, democratizing
market, and I think that's goingto continue. So I think, yeah,
that's where it's headed, therein the social media part of the
story.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (39:35):
And I want to go back to something
that resonated with me, that youmentioned earlier, that anything
in abundance, suddenly, kind of,it could be good in and of
itself, but then it could havenegative effects, and, you know,
synergies, or a negative impacton other adjacent activities.
(39:55):
And we see it right, like evenif social media had a good
effect on, let's say, a goodeffect on. Individuals, the fact
that it's distracting from,let's say, going out there and
being doing physical activity orexcluding some or reading a book
or what have you. Yes, that isan immediate challenge, but in
the longer term, it also meansthat we have to rethink some of
the other aspects of our lives.Meaning, you see that with the
(40:19):
increase in social media, Ithink there's also a boom in
terms of quality of, let's say,TV and movies. Why has suddenly
the game and the ACT stepped upon the TV front? Is because in
order to attract viewers, theyhad to change and improve the
quality, and suddenly youbrought in star quality and star
productions in order to bring inviewers, because they were being
(40:41):
lost to social media. You know,innovation around writing and
around thinking aboutliterature, innovation around
entertainment just, I just thinkthat it opens the door to
creativity in different ways tokeep everything in balance. Does
that make sense? Does that can Isell that story? Mike, to you a
little bit, I
Mike Lenox (41:01):
like it. I like it. I like the the positive, utopian
kind of view, or discuss,discussing here, obviously, you
know, I think you know, what arethe bifurcations lead us down
one path versus another isreally something that kind of
top of mind for me, of, how dowe, how do we make sure it
doesn't go off the rails, andmake sure that it leads us to
(41:21):
this more utopian path thatwe're discussing.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (41:25):
Well, Travis, you said, responsibility
is on all of us, all of us toget exposed to learn to be
judgmental in our consumption,and that I buy a lot. I mean,
criticizing AI is one thing, butlearning enough about it in
order to be a smart consumer andcriticize it in a productive
manner as a whole differentballgame. So I like that
question well, so
Unknown (41:46):
and a couple thoughts on that. Look, with social
media, you can unplug to acertain extent. And actually, I
realize now, as I'm thinkingabout it, I'm actually not
social media free. I'm onLinkedIn.
There you go.
Right exactly. Avoiding socialmedia is gonna be YouTube.
YouTube's a social medianetwork. Avoiding social media
(42:07):
in total, is very, verydifficult. Avoiding AI is gonna
be impossible, just absolutelyimpossible, if you want to
continue to participate insociety at the normal level. So
I think that defensivestrategies and understanding it
is really a requirement foreverybody.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (42:22):
Well, Travis, this has been really
super helpful. Thank you fortaking the time spending it with
us for this amount of time, andit's great to chat with you and
to hear about all of yourinsight and success. It's been a
long time, and I'm so, so proudto hear from you and your
position. And thank you forsharing your knowledge of not
only AI generative, AI socialmedia and the like, yeah,
(42:46):
thanks, Niall,
Unknown (42:47):
it's been a pleasure reconnecting. Thank you so much
for the time.
Thank you, Travis,
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (42:52):
so Mike, are you still down on social
media? I was
Mike Lenox (42:55):
going to ask you, are you going to delete any of
your social media accounts?
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (43:01):
So have we changed our perspective at
all? No, I think, I think it'salways about with, like
everything else. It's with themoderation. And so I feel like
social media plays a reallycritical part in in my life, and
we haven't even talked about thepotential of connecting people
networks. I'm traveling. I'vebeen living away from my family
(43:23):
for years and years and years,and I'm I feel that social media
has enabled me to stayconnected, and so for me, it
plays a critical role, andthat's why I do it. But with the
power comes greatresponsibility. So I hear your
warnings and your concerns,
Mike Lenox (43:37):
yeah, and I think, you know, I can't deny one. You
know, this has obviously beendisruptive in the way we
traditionally talk about this.It's restructured any number of
different industries, fromcommunications to media to news.
And that's that's obvious, Ithink, in terms of the good or
the bad, clearly, there are goodaspects of this, clearly, and it
(44:00):
has created value for society. Iworry about the kind of
dystopian future, as you know,and you know, hearing Travis
talk about some of the you know,you know, coming with AI, it
makes me even more worried,right? So, so
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (44:16):
is so is your worry? Is your worry about
the AI part, or the social mediaper se. So are you more
concerned with the fact that AIis so pervasive and will
continue to control our lives?Are you worried about the social
media specific aspect, if we candifferentiate it, maybe we can,
yeah, yeah. And I think,
Mike Lenox (44:34):
I think it gets back to what Travis had said about,
you know, what are thesemachines designed to do, right
and and I think that that notionof they're they're there to
attract your attention and keepyou engaged with them. So I
would make a distinction betweenthe Instagrams, the tiktoks, the
YouTubes from, like we weresaying, texting. I think that
(44:55):
that's a different environmentthere. It's a different level of
engagement. And. And I thinkwhen you think about, you know,
the ability, not only tooptimize the next piece of
content you receive, but toactually optimize the content
itself using generative AI, thenthat addictive ability is going
to be even that much stronger.And what does that mean for us?
(45:18):
If you know, it's not justbecause user x created a cool
cat video that gets, you know,brought up in the recommendation
engine. It's the AI is nowcreating something bespoke for
me that's going to keep me onthese platforms even longer.
That that's worrisome.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (45:37):
Yeah, that's fair. And I can see that
concern. And I guess to somedegree it's you know, us,
meaning the employees, theleaders, the managers, the C
suite us, who train futurebusiness leaders, you know,
those who are regulators like itis all of our collective
responsibility to think about,how do these tools get used, and
(45:59):
How does this disruption get setup to be more positive in our
lives and negative? And how dowe think about that content,
that self generated content, byAI, and the role that it's going
to play in our lives in thefuture?
Mike Lenox (46:14):
I mean, I do agree that we have discretion, right?
We have agency, so we don't haveto use these tools, right? So
that's a good thing, of course,yeah, but we'll see if people
you know heed that or not. Soyeah, where do you come down
good, bad or no disruption?
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (46:32):
Oh yeah, this is going to be
controversial, because I thinkI'm going to come down on the
good disruption. And I kind ofpredict you're going to say bad.
Mike Lenox (46:41):
I am actually. And it's funny, because, you know
me, I'm usually the optimist.I'm usually the utopian. I love
technology, and I usually comedown on the side of good. I'm
gonna go bad on this one. We'vehad some other ones recently
that are kind of related topicsthat I think I came out on bad
on a few of those as well. Yeah,I do worry like we're kind of
(47:01):
opening Pandora's box here, andI don't know how we put it back,
but it certainly can haveimplications that can be
worrisome.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (47:11):
So I'm going to kind of take our moment
of saying goodbye and thankingthose who need to be thanked to
also challenge you. Mike, if ifwe come down, or if we believe
that it is a bad disruption,meaning social media is a bad
disruption, then what are yougoing to do about it? Or what
are we going to do about it inorder to help cater and shift
(47:33):
the direction? Because justsaying that it's bad, and I see
this with kids like we can banit, we can do a lot of different
things, but we've seenhistorical impacts and
successful, you know, banning ofdifferent things that
individuals thought were badthat doesn't really solve the
problem. I think that we can bemuch more constructive in the
(47:53):
actions that we take. Yeah, andI totally
Mike Lenox (47:55):
agree with that. I think maybe it's education
again, right, just making surepeople are informed about what's
happening behind the scenes onthese systems, and so they do
have that agency we were talkingabout. And look, who doesn't
like to sit for an hour watchinga bunch of cat videos, right?
Like it's a certain piece in themind space that that can create,
(48:19):
but, but, you know,understanding what's going on
and what they're trying to do, Ithink it's gonna be important.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (48:26):
I hear you. I hear you. Well, thank you
for that, Mike, and I appreciateyou letting me get excited about
things that you aren't verysupportive of.
Mike Lenox (48:36):
You're gonna be in trouble. I don't know. I hear
you. Provocative here.
Unknown (48:42):
I hear you.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (48:43):
I hear you next time, next time, we
have our two avatars record thisconversation and we'll see what
they say about it. That's
Mike Lenox (48:49):
exactly right. We're gonna go complete AI on our
podcast. There you go.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (48:52):
There you go. Well, with that, I think
it's time to wrap this one up.Thank you, Mike. Thanks to
Travis, who joined us, thanks toBecky and Gary as always, for
providing us the support that weneed. And that's it from us,
from social media.
Becky Duff (49:13):
Good disruption is a podcast from the University of
Virginia, Darden School ofBusiness. You.
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