When Jeff Benjamin hits a creative wall, he doesn’t call a meeting—he calls ChatGPT. In this episode, the Global CCO of Tombras shares how AI helps him fight self-doubt, build creative momentum, and get ideas moving again.
In this episode, Jeff Benjamin, Global CCO of Tombras, shares how AI helps him get unstuck, build confidence, and push bold ideas forward—even when self-doubt creeps in. From romcom scripts to Arby’s pitches, he shows how AI acts as a sparring partner: sharpening thinking, stress-testing ideas, and keeping momentum alive.
We get into what separates distinct from generic, why affirmation can be a trap, and how the urge to share is still at the heart of creativity. If you're chasing big ideas—or just trying to beat the blank page—this one hits home.
Key Takeaways:
Jeff's LinkedIn: Jeff Benjamin | LinkedIn
Tombras: Tombras | Full-Service Independent Advertising Agency
00:00 Overcoming Self-Doubt in Business
00:37 Meet Jeff Benjamin: Creative Leader at Tombras
00:56 The Role of AI in Creative Processes
02:24 Using AI as a Sparring Partner
04:34 Practical Examples of AI in Action
09:31 The Impact of AI on Team Dynamics
11:37 Balancing AI and Human Creativity
14:13 The Future of AI in Creative Industries
21:06 Exploring Human Skills for AI Mastery
22:09 The Art of Asking Better Questions
22:40 AI as a Creative Partner
24:41 The Excitement of Sharing Ideas
30:09 Generational Differences in AI Interaction
32:35 The Risk of AI Dehumanization
38:19 Concluding Thoughts
📜 Read the transcript for this episode: Transcript of How the Chief Creative Officer of an Award-Winning Ad Agency Prompts the Perfect Pitch
[00:00:00] Jeff Benjamin: So I tried launching an agency, did it for about a year, and would say if CHATgpt was around, it would still be around and be successful because, you know, one of the big flaws that I sort of had at that time was I got stuck. I just got stuck in self-doubt. And and it was almost like I never really got the plane off the ground because I had so much doubt about the plane that was on the runway. We never really took off. I would have doubts about the name, I would have doubts about what it's about. I would have doubts about everything. I was stuck and, and think as a, sort of sparring tool. This has been just so great to get Not stuck.
[00:00:37] Jeff Benjamin: hey everyone. I'm Jeff Benjamin, global Chief Creative Officer at Tombras. We're a Knoxville based ad agency. , This year is number one Agency of the year. , Henrik, you and I have been friends for a while. We worked together for about a year. We've always been curious. About each other, about what we do and certainly about technology. So I think it's gonna be a great conversation. Looking forward to talking about some stuff like, , lately I've been noticing how much it validates us, you know, says great things, makes me feel like a genius. I think a lot of that is great and has a role in the creative process. But, maybe, it can also hinder the creative process. . So I'm, I'm really excited about that conversation.
[00:01:14] Henrik Werdelin: I know Jeff because some of the entrepreneurs I work with that's been very successful, um, like the founder of Ro and the founder of public.com, they used to work for Jeff, uh, when they worked in the creative industry. And then at one point they were like, you have to talk to Jeff. He's super cool and creative. And, . He has been our agency of record for bark, working on a lot of our big launches. And so if anybody's ever seen the Bark Air video, which is hilarious, , then it was Jeff and his team that made that. Jeff is one of the creators I know who. Have big teams and a lot of creative folks around him, but very often kind of like go like, Hey, I was chatting with Chad or Claude about this specific thing. I thought it might be an interesting kind of powow of like, how does people on the frontline actually use this on a day-to-day
[00:02:06] Jeremy Utley: let's go. So, maybe I'll just just take from Henrik and just say when do you decide to go to the team versus go to your chat GP buddies. Like what's the, what's your shortcut heuristic for? Do I bring this to a human or do I bring this to ai?
[00:02:21] Jeff Benjamin: Oh, that's an interesting question. And begs a conversation about my, my therapist would say, this is, at this point we have to talk about trust, because My instinct actually is every time go to AI first. , And, I'll tell you something, like I think maybe part of it comes from, you no one's perfect. I've got flaws. You know, one of the things I'm, I'm very aware of is sometimes I struggle. Not struggle, but like, What do you ask the team? How do you ask the team? What are you asking them to do? Uh, and instinctually, sometimes what I have in my head is maybe not the right questions that I'm asking, and so in some ways there's a value in just going to AI first, like a chat gt or whatever. To figure out what exactly am I gonna ask my team to do or pursue, or which direction to focus them in on And so in some ways, like it's been helpful for me to sort of like spar a little bit with the ai. To, to in my head, get the the conversation straight.
[00:03:29] Henrik Werdelin: How much is this? Because it's so agreeable that it always goes like, that's an incredible idea, Jeff. idea, jeff.
[00:03:35] Jeff Benjamin: I saw it. I, I was on Instagram and there was like a meme or something and they were saying that like, people are complaining that chat, GPT is glazing too much. So I guess glazing is like a Gen Z term for like, great idea. Or like, wow, Or like, you know. And, I was like, wait, I don't want them to change that. I kind of like this aspect of it. Um, I, I do also 100% think that specifically for marketing advertising. There are a lot of great answers to any problem, and they're all correct. The thing that's really important is that you just sort of pick one, pick one of these angles and give yourself enough runway to throw yourself at it 110%. , I think you have to sort of be aware that like maybe it is a little self-congratulatory, , with some of your insights or first thoughts, but I like that it gives you confidence Uh, to pursue a direction and throw yourself at it 110% and see what comes out of that,
[00:04:32] Jeremy Utley: you know? I really resonate with that. Jeff,, I've noticed recently you talk about sparring partner, and I would love to hear if you have a kind of a tangible example. I'll give a couple just to, spark the conversation I have found in a couple of negotiations. Where it's very ambiguous about what the right course of action is. I've noticed a tendency in myself when it's ambiguous to perseverate, you know, and to mull it over rather than take action. And the, you could call it the agreeableness, for lack of a better word, , or the enthusiasm of a AI model. Actually gives me the boost I need to take action. And to your point, I think acting is actually more important you know, even the, which action it takes sometimes. And that I've noticed many times, it's like, I mean, imagine if I had Henrik always available to me and, we're sparring and we're kinda kicking our ideas and he is like, dude, you should totally do that.
I think I would take a lot more action if I had somebody like Hendrik just always encouraging me. And in a way I. it's kinda like that and TBD perhaps, whether it encourages us in the right direction. But it does feel great to kind of get the kick in the, you know, self-esteem to fire off that email or, or move ahead with that plan., What have been some of your kinda sparring, what are the contents of your sparring and what has it produced or encouraged that might have otherwise gone unattended?
[00:05:53] Jeff Benjamin: Um, uh, I mean, recently we were, pitching Arby's for their social work, , and, you know, there were a few different directions that we sort of had hunches on, and I think I was sort of maybe internally struggling with some of it a little bit. And then, and I started just sort of jamming out a little bit With chat and. You like, , you get past sort of the first, thoughts, the first ideas, and you're like, wait a second. Like, there's something here. and then you, I I've got, I'm trying to avoid details because none of the work's out there.
Um, but you start to quickly get confidence in the idea. Then when you have confidence in the idea, you start coming up with other ideas and other branches and ways it can go. and like I, it was just sort of awesome. The other thing I will say is that, like in my head specifically for me, I have the opposite going on in my head.
Being a creative, is especially like it's lonely and you know, you can have a lot of self doubts and things like that. And so that's in my head, And so to have something that's the opposite of that, , has been awesome. For me personally, as a creative, when Henrik and I met, I had just sort of shut down my own agency. , So I tried launching an agency, did it for about a year, and would say if CHATgpt was around, it would still be around and be successful because, you know, one of the big flaws that I sort of had at that time was I got stuck. I just got stuck in self-doubt. And and it was almost like I never really got the plane off the ground because I had so much doubt about the plane that was on the runway. We never really took off. I would have doubts about the name, I would have doubts about what it's about. I would have doubts about everything. I was stuck and, and think as a, sort of sparring tool. This has been just so great to get Not stuck.
[00:07:44] Henrik Werdelin: I I think there's another element of that non Stuckness, which I enjoy personally. I come up with half-assed ideas often.
[00:07:52] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah.
[00:07:52] Henrik Werdelin: and I've been lucky in my career to be around people who can kind of Henrik whisper. So like, I'll say something and then they'll say, oh, you know, you mean, and then they'll say something much better and I'll go like, yeah, that's exactly what I meant. Um, but I think what I can do now is I can take a lot of these half ass ideas and I could do two things with them. I can both say, Hey. Play back to me what you just heard. I said, And then when I read it, it's easier for me to actually compute if that's what I meant. And the second is I can then say, imagine you're Jeremy Ottley, you know, professor at Stanford.
I'm about to encourage him to do this specific thing. Kind of what are some of my blind spots? And Often it'll say obvious stuff, but you know, like often it'll kind of go like, you know, to point Jeff, it'll come up with another angle that I hadn't really thought about, and then I'll kind of like do a few iterations on that. And so I kind of like this idea of, you know, seeing it as a. Yeah. And I guess a, as an unst stuckness, uh, component.
[00:08:51] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah. I mean, you said something. something. else too that I think is interesting. Someone had given somebody else some advice on working with me. They Were like, you know what? It's actually, forget about what Jeff is saying, made me think about why he's saying it. Mm-hmm. And I, I do think that chat GPT has an ability, like when you're like throwing things out there to extract. Like the important thought in your thought that you're maybe not the best at communicating sometimes, and then it repeats it back to you and you're like, fuck, that's the idea.
[00:09:20] Jeremy Utley: Extract the essence. Yeah. Extract the essence. that's, I've had that experience too. It's like I, that's what I wanted to say, but I couldn't say it until you said it.
[00:09:31] Jeff Benjamin: that's why it's been a really helpful tool to like go to first before I talk to human beings.
[00:09:37] Henrik Werdelin: And Jeremy, just so you know, like this is Jeff, like the creative force between like the either we're won the best agency of the US for multiple years in a row, right?
[00:09:47] Jeff Benjamin: This year we are agency of the year number one Agency of the Year by adage. And Last year we were independent Agency of the year. And it's been like a little bit of a five year renaissance. It's five year renaissance. It's like an 80-year-old agency based in Knoxville, Tennessee, which is the last place you'd ever think of. Um, and so we've had a little bit of a,
[00:10:05] Henrik Werdelin: And and how much do you think, I mean like, obviously I've met a lot of people from your company and they're all incredible people, but how much do you think that that kind of like openness to embrace technology is part of that story or always it kind of like the other way around? Like you are so successful because that you kind of have the openness to explore a lot of different things.
[00:10:28] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah. I think we're pretty curious people. I think being based in Knoxville, Tennessee, you don't get to see what everybody else is doing, so you get to do things your own way. Like you're sort of tucked in the mountains of Knoxville and you can be weird. Um, it is a sort of like if you come to the agency, there's a lot of technology which is a little bit bonkers. Like there's one room that looks like Cape Canaveral and you're seeing , all the searches that are happening in real time in that moment. And there are creatives in there who are getting inspired by that. So in many ways. We embrace data pretty quickly. At the same time, I think with ai, especially with creatives, I would say like maybe in the last couple months it's changed, but before that, I would get the side eye a little bit. I would go to chat GPT to do something or AI and stuff like that.
[00:11:16] Henrik Werdelin: , You don't feel like the animosity. In the creative team around this
[00:11:22] Jeff Benjamin: I felt it a little bit up till maybe about a month ago.
[00:11:26] Jeremy Utley: Did anything change? What do you attribute the difference to?
[00:11:30] Jeff Benjamin: I think people started using it for themselves. or seeing me throw out things and they're like, wait a second. That is a good idea.
[00:11:37] Jeremy Utley: Could we talk for a second about, uh, , I, want to go kind of nerdy for a second and talk about cognitive bias because of something you said earlier about giving you confidence. So, you know, at, at the D School, we use a classic improv technique called Yes, And Everybody's familiar. With Yes. And right. It's like a classic brainstorming technique. And the thing that's interesting about Yes. And is it serves two purposes, right? So if we're brainstorming, we all say yes and right. One purpose it serves is it puts me the speaker in the posture of. now I gotta build by saying yes and I can't be a doofus and say something irrelevant. So it kinda keeps me focused, you know, and on track and in a building contributing posture. But the other thing it does is it helps you feel safe When you know anything you say, I'm gonna respond with yes. And. You have a sense of carefreeness and a willingness to express, and that's what you're getting at with, Chad g, PT is it's building my confidence. I would say just like humans who are Yes, Ending, build your confidence. 'cause people, we start feeling invincible if we start Yes. Ending. we're just like high fiving and chest bumping and having a great time. Right. So that's the benefit. The, the flip side or what I wonder about is. What happens in terms of anchoring? So if what we've usually have done in the context of a team and the yes and, and the confidence building and exploring, if it now happens with ai and then I come to my team, my confidence in my ideas already built at perhaps, and the team may not have been a part of the exploratory process. I mean, this is a concept called anchoring, right? Where you become kind of, you start to defend your ideas because you think they're good. What's the impact on your interaction with your team now that Chad GBT is building your confidence individually?
[00:13:17] Jeff Benjamin: Well, I mean, hopefully I picked a team that's gonna agree with me all the time. I think that you've, I mean, , part of like where I am right now is that I've got to have like some sort of instinct, , for, which way we should go. Um, but I think that when I'm going in there and I'm saying, Hey, this is the manifesto, or this is the idea, I'm open to the thought that it's not, and, they may have a different point of view and I can have a constructive conversation because. We are not actually sort of willy-nilly floating around. We actually have something like a piece of clay that we can mold here. Now there is sort of a, minimal viable product or whatever,
Uh.
[00:13:56] Jeremy Utley: thing to. React
[00:13:57] Jeff Benjamin: There's a thing to react to, which I think is different when you're just sort of like throwing a random idea out in a brainstorm and it has no gravity. You know, it has no weight to it
[00:14:08] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm.
It's
[00:14:09] Henrik Werdelin: I really think it's, that's such an. Interesting point. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what are the different outcomes of ai, and I got obsessed with this kind of meta thought that most people gravitate to concepts that has been articulated clearly and labeled so. There's two concepts that we talk a lot about in the future. Ai. It's basically universal basic income, and it's some permutation of what I think it was called like the paperclip kind of thesis, which is basically AI will turn us all into paperclips. But these are very known concepts and because they are known concepts that are labeled and pretty clear defined, I feel everybody just graduate.
Automatically to put the future into those buckets. And what I think is interesting, in what you're saying is that what I think AI actually can help sometimes is that it can take a lot of different thought and then it can help create like almost this kind of conceptual bucket. So when you come into a meeting and you say, Hey, you know, what do you think about name of kind of cool, you know, like concept with name of three lines of kind of wine. Uh, premise for this concept. I think it's much easier for people to take all their random thoughts and almost kind of put it in that bucket.
[00:15:20] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:23] Henrik Werdelin: And I think, honestly for us creatives, It's also kind of part of our job to create buckets that have gravity so that other people kind of can get excited about contributing to them. Because all these very abstract thought are just difficult to have in, your mind. And it's difficult to have a good conversation about because kind of abstract conversations. That just end up having abstract outcomes. Right.
[00:15:47] Jeremy Utley: Well, and ironically, um, or not, I don't know if it's ironic or not, but I don't know what that word means really. It's just an interesting word to use. Um, but the, capacity of an AI to Insta Bucket, something IE. You know, here's a bunch of my loose thoughts. Create a four letter framework. that's a that's a helpful
[00:16:07] Jeff Benjamin: Huge.
[00:16:08] Jeremy Utley: right? And all of a sudden it like, feels more legit because ai, oh, it's the poll acronym. P, you know, pretend you were listening, you understand. Nobody cares anyway. L listen, like you're listening to your fate, right? You can just make it up, but then people go, oh yeah, the, pull framework. We Use that all the time, right? It's. not push, right?
[00:16:30] Jeff Benjamin: I mean, even before AI and stuff, like, what we would do is, okay, you're working on a project, teams are coming in with stuff. You've got like literally a hundreds of ideas, some smaller, some bigger. You put 'em all on a wall. Right? And now you're, you start to arrange them to try and group things together because what you're in search of is the big idea. You know, And you're, it it's a little bit like Homeland. Kerry Mathis.
[00:16:56] Jeremy Utley: Yes,
[00:16:57] Jeff Benjamin: you're, when you're trying to sort of make sense of all of this. And it's like, okay, this is the idea or this is the idea. There was a guy, famous Ari Merkin, he was famous for, like, this guy wouldn't show up for a couple weeks and then he would show two weeks into this thing. He'd go to the wall and he'd be like, that's the idea.
[00:17:15] Jeremy Utley: Huh, huh?
[00:17:15] Jeff Benjamin: MCC cam's a little bit off. Uh, aI can do that. And you can say, you know what, gimme another one. Rearrange these again.
Maybe there's
[00:17:24] Henrik Werdelin: Do you think it can do that picking, and I say this because. I talked to somebody who works for a big luxury brand and he was kind of along set. One of the issues that we find is that we all about taste, and taste is what we sell, and aI can't do taste. Uh,
[00:17:42] Jeremy Utley: I think it's a superficial argument. I agree. I agree. Taste is important, but taste is a function of experience, which means it is a trainable thing and in so far as language models are trainable, you can train them. I think that's a little bit of a cop out respectfully. I don't know who this person is, but I would respectfully suggest. Or I, I would ask the question, what if you could imbue a model with your taste? What could you do then? And anytime we're like holding onto the thing that we say, this is the unique thing we do. I think that we're in a dangerous position.
[00:18:12] Jeff Benjamin: I think when you're more specific about the audience, you know it, its taste gets better. I think its taste is better than many other human beings I. now. But here's what I do think Henrik, Is that I'm actually just asking it to create some arrangements. And I'll use my taste you know, to decide if that's right. I'll ask it to rearrange it if I need to, but ultimately I'm sort of making the end. Judgment. And in that sense. You know, like, I love this work. 'cause I've been trying to like figure out like, so our, our like platform for the agency is data plus creativity for business results. I was like, how do I make this thing exciting it was there before I got there. How do I make it exciting for creatives? So before ai, I was playing around with this word and I feel this way even more now. I love this word bionic. You know where human beings are augmented by technology, and that's what I think of that relationship when it's coming up with these different variations. Ultimately, I still have to put my humanity and my instinct and judgment and taste. Uh, I have to apply that to this.
[00:19:17] Jeremy Utley: There's a weird tendency, I think, a desire , for it to be so magical that we don't need to do any work. I've observed that even, I mean, Hendrick knows. We conducted some research last year, myself and a research colleague Harvard. , We conducted this research. What we found was the teams that exerted the least effort, felt the best and had the worst outcomes, and the teams that exerted the most effort. Felt the worst and had the best outcomes, And so, and there's all, it's like ai, if it's just gotta make it easy, right? And what we don't want is we don't wanna expend the calories. And granted, you know, going to the board and finding the great idea is an expensive task, right? And if you say, now rearrange 'em and find it again, it's like for a human, they're like, dude, I gotta go get another Red Bull. I need to take another walk. Right? But for an ai, it goes, sure, happy to rearrange. Right? But then you still, the question is. As the human will, you still say, now I'm going to exert the effort to evaluate the rearrangement. And that's where a lot of folks underperform because eventually you're just like, you know what, it is?
Whatever it says, right. Because it's,
cheaper from a calorie burning perspective.
[00:20:24] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah.
[00:20:25] Henrik Werdelin: I Out on the board of BGA Engels group for many years, and BGA has this kind of cool, he's a big architect for. People don't know. , And he has this kind of expression, he talks about people doing homework, which is basically when he comes into his studios and people have kind of answered whatever the questions that they were given, but it's kind of like just something they did fast. 'Cause they wanted to go and do something else. And so based on that, I now often kinda like my question when people give me something. Maybe even before I see it, it's like, would you put this on your portfolio? Like, is this going on your portfolio or not? And they were, ah, maybe not. It's like, okay. Yeah, come back , when it goes on your portfolio. So I think it's interesting. Um, and I have a question around that
[00:21:04] Jeremy Utley: that's a A great question.
[00:21:06] Henrik Werdelin: We, we have actually, I'll, just tell a short story from podcast we did like a few weeks ago where we talked, I think it was the CEO of the Atlantic. And we got into this very interesting kind of conversation, which is basically what are the human skills that you need to practice for you to become better using ai? And the short thesis is that, let's say that you are bionic and you have an Ironman suit on and if you can lift 200 pounds, , as a human. With A bionic suit on, you can lift a thousand, it's an exponential technology. So if you can only lift 50 pounds, then you can only lift, let's say like 250 pounds. And
[00:21:40] Jeremy Utley: A multiple. it's a multiple, but there's still a base rate that's being multiplied.
[00:21:43] Henrik Werdelin: so the question Jeff, is. I'm sure you've seen many ideas that come to you that is kind of clear chat DBT, right? Like if you can just SC screen your eyes and you go like, okay, this is pretty average. What do you think is some of the unique human traits that we as creatives have to practice in order to get the best out of the bionic suit that AI has given us?
[00:22:09] Jeff Benjamin: I think asking better questions, more specific, , like what is the voice? of the question you want, like, one of the one, one of my little tricks lately is like, how would Don Draper answer this? And part of it is like throwing a little bit of like a, crazy variable, into the prompt that's going to get like a very specific and different, more inspiring type of answer.
To a problem. So I think there's that. I think it's also just asking lots of stuff,, you know, one of my things with you is making us thinking, right? And so how do you turn this relationship you have with ai? Not, in it solving the problem, but it being part of the making process. It's just like word or Photoshop. It's not actually doing it it's just a tool to help you do it.
[00:22:56] Henrik Werdelin: My visual language is always stone carving, that kind of, I start with the empty prompt, which is basically just like a big block of rock. And then all my questions is just me carving stuff away. And sometimes I go like, oh, this will be a pretty woman. And then I accidentally cut off the nose and go, okay, not a woman anymore. Now it's something else. Right. And so it's all about just kinda like following the flow, uh, as you kinda like build it out. Yeah.
[00:23:21] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah.
[00:23:23] Jeremy Utley: There's something interesting when, when you say, how would Don Dra answer this? Jeff? Which I think is worth calling out, which is there are certain, and I'd be curious if you have other examples of this, but there are certain, you could call them what a nerd would call them as metacognitive strategy, which is thinking about my thinking. And what you realize in that moment is, oh, I need an expert perspective. Right. And we talked at lengths with this. Amazing. , Dean of Harvard's Education School, , Steven Koslin, you know, a few months back about going upstream of our thinking. And a lot of times the really interesting insights are when we kind of push our thinking upstream from the outcome to a more specific prompt like that. And that I think. Is a function of experience, right? Knowing to ask the question, how would Don Draper think about this is valuable? And again, it's expensive because probably like you've got some output that either you can think about, , which requires a certain amount of caloric energy, right? Or you can ask an additional question which is going to force you to kinda reactivate and reengage. Um, but it's more expensive probably. How do you think about. When to inject more questions versus when to just stop or when to go to a human?
[00:24:41] Jeff Benjamin: Oh, Oh, I'm just a curious person, so I'm just in, in some ways I was made for this moment. Uh,
[00:24:48] Jeremy Utley: Because it's tireless and its willingness to continue to
[00:24:51] Jeff Benjamin: Henrik knows that asking questions, and it'll always give you an enthusiastic response.
[00:24:57] Jeremy Utley: But when do you go? Now I can go to the the team.
[00:25:00] Jeff Benjamin: When I have enough to be like, holy, like, you know, like this, this feels like an idea, or this feels like a bunch of ideas, or, I think we're I think we're onto something. There seems to be enough here. You know, Henrik said something before, I don't know if this is gonna answer your question. He said something before and it made me think like, this is not advertising related. I've got an idea for a romcom. All I have is a title. I Wish I had Someone For You. That's the title. I think it's a good romcom. I don't, I'm not sure. You know, so like, one of the first things I did with chat GBT was I said like, write this as like write a screenplay. Like, I don't know the first thing about writing a screenplay or anything like that. I just got a hunch that this title's a good title I. And you're like, oh my God. Like, it's like, this seems like it could be a movie. And then I'm like, well write another one. And then it writes another one. It's completely different, but I'm like, this is a pretty good movie too. Like you do that enough times, you're like, wait a second, I got something here. I had a theory, a hunch that I wish I had someone for you was good, but like I'm seeing enough here now that like, there's fertile territory. What I think of as a big idea as an idea that can give you lots of ideas.
I should be able to go to the media team. I should be able to go to the programmer. And they should have ideas when I tell them this idea. Uh, like for me, a big idea is something that's got a lot of width to it. And so because of that version of what I think a big idea is when I'm seeing a lot of stuff coming out of this computer that seems pretty good. You know, maybe it's not like the the can winning idea or the idea that's gonna break the internet, but what I'm seeing enough that seems like wait, this is a place to go fishing.
[00:26:35] Henrik Werdelin: I also think, you know, I don't know when you were asking that question, Jeremy. I was kinda thinking, I wonder when I kind of stop prompting and start like talking to humans I think it's when kind of like the excitement for what I got is bubbling over. And I, and I need to share it with somebody. And I don't necessarily. I don't need to share anything with chat GPT. Right. You know, I'll just always be there waiting. Like, it's not like I'm so excited to tell you this new idea, you know, chat hold your GPU. Um, it's not actually a GPU. So anyway. you know, my dad once told me, I asked him once, like, when do you ask somebody to marry you? And he had like a Danish phrase. which Was something to the extent of like when there's nothing else that you would rather do, like when that is the only thing that kind like. Obsesses your mind, right. When you can't help yourself basically. And so I think and I think what's interesting with, you know, like this thing about when do you tell a human is that it actually talks back to the point about what is the human trait that we. Should practice. And there's something very innate, I think, in most humans, that when they have something exciting, they want to share it.
[00:27:40] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah.
[00:27:41] Henrik Werdelin: That point, that boiling point, the a hundred degree Celsius of ideation when it suddenly goes from being water to being vapor, then I think it's kind of like a fascinating point.
[00:27:54] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah, I mean, Before any of this, like I'd be at work, I was like a 22-year-old graphic designer, and I'd be working all night or like a few hours on something and I'd be like, it turned a person next to me. Oh, do you wanna see something cool?
Yeah. I show you something cool. But I, I think the greatest conference room in any creative company is the hallway. You know, When you're bumping into someone, like whatcha working on? You wanna see something cool? Like, do you think this is neat? , Like to your point, Henrik, I think there's a natural moment where you're like, oh my God. Like, look what it did. You know, I, I think we're onto something. I have to share this with someone. someone.
[00:28:29] Jeremy Utley: So here's an interesting question. I'm just, 'cause I'm thinking about. What does that mean? Is the urge to share really, because I need to take action, right? For example, maybe I need to share this with the decision maker or with the account exec, or with the team that can action it in a world where agents can increasingly take action, does that feeling of need to share? Does it, continue with ai? Because there's actually now systems where you can take the next several actions with ai. couldn't the bubble over. Just be towards a
[00:29:00] Henrik Werdelin: I honestly don't think so. And I, you know, I can see obviously mostly talk about entrepreneurship, but I think one of the interesting thing when it comes to picking an idea, for example, for what you should work on for the next 15 years of your life, what you need I. is often the external validation that makes you even more excited about it. And I think that can come from different kind of. Channels. It can definitely come from like going down to the dark park and showing kind of your idea for a box with treats of toys. And then people go, oh, that's awesome. Just let me know when you're ready. I, I'll, you know, I'll, I'll sign up. And that you go like, okay, maybe this wasn't a dumb idea at all. Right? Or I'll call Jeff and go like, okay, here's a stupid idea. And he goes like, oh, wow. And so I'm actually not sure , that AI could do that. I think that there's something very interesting in that I don't think we necess Sarah have a term for is the human to human reaction. The connection that comes when you share something that you're excited about to somebody else, and they get excited about that too. And I think you need that for entrepreneurship and maybe even for creativity.
[00:30:06] Jeff Benjamin: I agree. , Here's what I'm curious about though. Do you think that's generational? I like, I think about like your kids, for example, growing up with this technology. To some degree, we have that urgency to do that because we grew up doing show and tell. You know, like we've had these moments, human moments where we're like, oh my God, look what I did. You know, uh, the kids I think they're growing up a different way. And , are they gonna take that urge and go deeper into the AI or are they gonna take it externally?
[00:30:36] Jeremy Utley: I think gaming is an interesting analog. You know, I was talking to actually to, to a very, you know, very successful founder. And we kind of entered the world of gaming, and I've never been a gamer for whatever. reason, it's just not been a part of my life. But this founder who, you know, I would say is well adjusted and, , all this stuff very successful externally in business, started telling me things about their kind of life in the gaming, multiverse, for lack of a better word.
And I found myself somewhat surprised. To realize how much validation is to, you would say it's not human. I mean maybe because there are humans behind the other avatars. Maybe it's human. However, I left that conversation feeling there are sources of validation that are totally different to Another human kind of vibe being, you know, resonating at my resident frequency. That , to your point Jeff, about gener, I dunno if it's a generational thing or what. I just, again, I, always wanna question the premise.
[00:31:37] Henrik Werdelin: I'm not sure. I think it's a generational thing. I think it's an innate human thing still, I mean, like, I think when Jeremy is more exposed to young people through, , universities, but when I just see my kids five and 11, I mean like the 11 would play Roblox. That's a game. It's a lot about competing against other people and getting seen to be good at it. And so there is this. Notion that, you know, like, and I think they might even be skeptical that they're being played with because obviously a lot of games are very good at making sure you get just the exact amount of challenge. So you feel the flow, but not enough. So you kind of give up. I. kids are so incredible smart. They pick up on that and they go, yeah, it's just playing me. I, I understand that. And I think specifically, I mean the 11-year-old already is like, you know, that's just the algorithm or you know, like, I know there's a supercomputer that's trying to get me to spend more time on. I think that generation probably is just gonna. Maybe even be a little bit anti it. Uh, No, I actually think, I think the, the human to human thing is something that we, for a while will not, and I think actually, if you're really philosophical about it, and it's a completely different conversation, is if you think about what are the biggest risks of ai, I actually think it's, one of the biggest risks is that it dehumanize us because that for a while we will. Basically enjoy getting complimented by the ai. Like social media got us excited about like liking each other's food pictures. And then slowly went like, Hey, wait a minute. I'm being completely isolated now from quote unquote real humans. And as we know, and Jeremy will stop me because he knows more research than anybody I know, but like. It is really about feeling connectivity to communities. And if you look at all the longevity, happiness studies, it's all about feeling as part of like a collective. And I think that's probably hundreds of thousands of evolutions that is difficult to throw out a people.
[00:33:33] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah.
[00:33:34] Henrik Werdelin: Jeremy, this is where you should just cite three kind of research papers and make me, sound like I know what I'm talking about.
[00:33:40] Jeremy Utley: Well, you do, definitely, and, increasingly online communities are real communities, right? I mean, that's part of the beauty of the internet, right? That you can have this like really weird niche kind of interest. I, And I say weird only in the sense, I mean, unconventional. That's not a judgmental word, but maybe like a, a niche interest. You can find your people. I don't think finding those people is any less of a real community And if you met with them in your living room. Right, forums in which you meet with them and then there are, there starts to be layers of abstraction there in terms of , do you know their identities? Is it an anonymous community? There starts to be all sorts of interesting things and then you really get to. Where is this validation coming from? You know, and by the way now, I mean, just imagine what Meta's doing with all sorts of kind of AI powered kind of personalities in different places. Are we increasingly in, I mean, we know the, kinda danger of bots on platforms. Are we increasingly going to be validated by AI personalities that share our niche interests? I just, I don't think that, at least theoretically, that it's impossible.
[00:34:42] Henrik Werdelin: I think you're probably right. I guess I'm just hopeful that, we will.
[00:34:46] Jeremy Utley: or I mean maybe it's, maybe it's a question of the kinda future that we want to design. Really,
[00:34:50] Henrik Werdelin: jeff, when it comes to being nervous about. AI being a creative, where are you on the scale? Because obviously a lot of people in the creative industry is kind of concerned.
[00:35:04] Jeff Benjamin: I think there is sort of like you, you've got a great term that AI is collective intelligence and the risk with collective intelligence is that you end up with, things that aren't distinct. And so, I do think there's a real risk in. To your point of like, you know, falling in love with your, your averageness that you did together with the ai and you're so proud of it, and like you sort of get blind to the idea that, wait, wait a second. Maybe this isn't distinct, that this is our, And I'll tell you something, this happened to me. I was so excited. about. I'll tell you, it is so good at writing a a brand manifesto. Um, so, you know, it does this manifesto. It does it so quick. I'm like, oh my God, it's, it's doing it even better. And I'm like, some of the people I work with and I did it so fast and, and I feel like maybe I authored it even though yeah, I did it and I'm tweaking it and stuff. And so we ended up making a video. We take it to the client, play it for the client. Like, I'm like, oh my God, this is incredible. And the client said that this. It Doesn't feel distinct or, had that sort of, averageness isn't the right word, but you know what I mean? It's just, it's not feeling distinct. It doesn't feel ownable, iconic to us. So I think there is that, sort of risk, um, that, that I think about a lot that you can. It's what we were talking about here that like, even though I do love the self-esteem, uh, that that can be a danger, it's a it's a double-sided sword.
[00:36:32] Jeremy Utley: and you start to lose a sense for what, like your real benchmark standard. So your, go your own gold standard when you're getting kind of gassed up or what is it glazed is that what the kids were saying? When you're getting glazed, you kinda lose your sense for whether there's any real cake there, whether it's all frosting. I.
[00:36:49] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah. Candor is helpful. But do you know what, that doesn't mean like, you know, maybe like, you know, I just had a therapy appointment before this and, uh, he was telling me that one of his other clients was like, um. , Tell me something bad about me, I think is what it was, and it just wasn't doing it. And she asked it over and over again in different ways. And then finally, CHATgpt is like, you're exhausting.
[00:37:19] Jeremy Utley: That's amazing. Well, I think we are getting to another metacognitive strategy there, which is prompting for candor. You know, and I think the reality is we actually don't like hearing it's confirmation bias. Right? We don't like hearing bad news. We actually avoid bad. So, And I think if we become aware of our own human cognitive bias there, then we can prompt for the opposite. So my favorite, of course, is like if I've produced a piece of work and I ask Chatgpt for feedback, it says, Hey, it's an 88 out of a hundred. Right? That's great. But if I say, I want you to assume the role of a Cold War era Russian Olympic judge. Be honest. It's like, truth be told, it's an 18, not an 88, you know? But again, metacognitive strategy, I have to know that my human desire is for affirmation, and this model's pre-training is to affirm. Therefore, I have to ask for something that's counter to what I want and counter to what it's been programmed to do.
[00:38:15] Jeff Benjamin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:38:17] Jeremy Utley: Thank you, Jeff.
[00:38:19] Henrik Werdelin: Jeremy, what stood up you today?
[00:38:22] Jeremy Utley: Uh, you know, know, there's four things that struck me and I'll rattle 'em off just riff as you will. Um, one thing is The risk that we can, uh, we can get more more than we probably should because of a AI's tendency to gas us up. And so, and therefore the second related, we should be prompting for candor and prompting for critical feedback specifically because it's so opposite to our own instincts and AI's programming. Uh, third thing was what you mentioned actually about bubble over moments. I think that's a really cool kind of, of, uh. uh, litmus test for when do do I go to the It's when I'm bubbling over with excitement, with possibility, with the sense of I can't, I, i, I can't not share this with with my team. And then the last thing that really struck me was, it the early early part of the but this idea that I. that. AI is actually a really great yes and partner. I think I've thought about creativity in AI in a bunch of different ways, but I've never really thought about importance and, I and and I would say furthermore, I thought about the danger of it being affirming as we just talked about. I never thought about the affirmation as a feature too. Which is just like in a human brainstorm. And the role of affirmation actually helps unleash creativity. Um. I, That being said, I do think that there's a challenge to, we know when we're brainstorming that the role is for more, and the reason we we affirm is to push for volume. I I do think the danger with aI is that it affirms, and rather than going for volume, we settle. And so I I wonder how we kinda rewire our own instincts when it comes to creativity and AI to kind of leverage the affirmation to to fuel fuel greater ideation rather than fueling mediocrity.
[00:40:10] Henrik Werdelin: I mean, I think all those are super well set. The, um, and, and echoes, uh, what I had down the, I think specifically the, the emotional points of As we become very good at using AI and as increasing the amount of people are understanding use cases that just are very productive, what are some of the things that we don't think about? Some of the human traits that we need to be able to label identify to become better at them? And I think the bubbling over is one, which is like when the used so exciting. I think the other one is. Uh, that I don't have an answer for, but I, I'll definitely kind of put some thought into, and if anybody's listening or has some good ideas, love to hear theirs, uh, on what is the point when you know that you have pushed AI into a place originality. So if you were to show it to another human, you didn't really just feel that they were saying, this is clearly just AI generic, kind of like outcome. Like when do you know that something is unique enough to pass the the human test?
[00:41:17] Jeremy Utley: I love your your question would you put this in your portfolio? I think that is a very, and, and I would say just as somebody who spends a lot a lot of time collaborating with ai, I can't ask ai what I, should I, put this in my portfolio That is a deeply, I think the reason I like it so much is it's a clear standard and it is a deeply personal question that you almost know instantaneously whether you would want to put something in your or not, and that's the the ultimate litmus test.
[00:41:44] Henrik Werdelin: and I think with that. Thanks to everybody who keep listening. Thanks for everybody who can like email us and suggest people to get on the pot. And if you liked it just a little, then please hammer away on that like button. Share it on LinkedIn, subscribe on the YouTube channel. 'Cause that's kind of, uh, what helps us keep this podcast going.
[00:42:03] Jeremy Utley: of course, secret word for the day. Bubbles.
[00:42:07] Henrik Werdelin: bubbles, bubbles,
[00:42:09] Jeremy Utley: It's okay
[00:42:10] Henrik Werdelin: on that front. See you all soon.