Hey ChatGPT- how does my hair look?

New research that came out this week from OpenAI and Anthropic shows some mind-bending facts about how the world is utilizing this new hotness they're calling "AI." I published a deep dive on this new research in a new blog post, Are You Using AI for $10 Tasks or $10,000 Decisions?​

The fact from this research that's still living rent-free in my head: 73% of ChatGPT queries are for personal, non-work tasks. Questions like, "What should I wear to a cocktail party?" or "How do I tell my boyfriend that I want to break up?" are 3/4s of all ChatGPT messages.

Meditate on that for a second. Users like you and me are 3x more comfortable using AI for advice on shoes than helping out with their day job.

When you dig a layer deeper, 40% of ChatGPT queries are "Doing" tasks like writing an email or creating a table. More interestingly, 49% of queries are "Asking" tasks, like getting feedback on your email, seeking advice, or sourcing a second opinion. When you tweak for demographics, highly educated users are significantly more likely to use ChatGPT for "Asking" tasks.

Meditate on this again: ChatGPT users are mostly using AI for advice, and (for now!) mostly personal advice.

I think this is a really vital insight for any agency. In the past year, 1.9+ billion conversations have been held with AI primarily for personal advice. This is a major competitive threat to any agency that built a brand on expertise.

It's inevitable that a population trained to use AI for personal use will increasingly use it for business use. And based on how we're using it now, we're going to use it for business advice.

It's only a matter of time before your advisory services are going to be devalued by clients who say, "Hey, so I asked AI how to optimize my SEO strategy and it's going to lead me through it step by step for $20/month, so....thanks for all your help! We're cancelling our $2K retainer with you."

But as I always say: never let a good crisis go to waste.

It's a losing game to just look at AI as just a way to do more work, faster. That's a commodity game, and for small marketing agencies, that's a slow death.

This insight from OpenAI reveals a huge opportunity for agency owners and operators to leverage AI to enhance their own strategic decisionmaking and deliver better work products to clients. Instead of asking ChatGPT to help you dress well, you can use ChatGPT to merge your agency's best practices with first-party audience insights and a client's brand guidelines and performance data.

Same "Asking" behavior, just a different context. Business advice, instead of brownie recipe advice.

Your subject matter expertise, when augmented by AI, is what will help you differentiate your services from a non-expert just using AI. A tool is only as good as the person wielding it.

The change that agencies need to be willing to make is to prioritize their own context data. Is your CRM up to date? Are your UTM codes clear and descriptive? Do you have well-documented client briefs? Does your organization's Mission/Values statements still hold true? All the things you should have been doing to run a smooth and organized business are going to help you transition to this AI-powered paradigm.

You think that's interesting? I didn't even talk about Anthropic's enterprise business data research and what it says about "The Great AI Divide" between prepared and unprepared companies, and between wealthy, tech-savvy nations and emerging economies. The hot takes keep getting hotter.

A TL;DR from the CRO

I keep turning to AI for advice on hair care, so that stat checks out.

-Roman Noodles, Chief Ruff Officer

ROCK TUMBLING UPDATE

This TL;DR was written at Boston's Chase Lounge before I jet off to Chicago for a music festival. I brought along my most recent batch of finished stones, some Dragon Blood Jasper to gift to my old college friend who I'll be staying with for the weekend.

I'm SUCH a cool guest: I bring rocks.

The woo-woo meaning behind these bad boys is around courage and strength. Also called the "Stone of Courage," it fosters a warrior spirit, giving you the stamina and determination to face obstacles and encouraging you to pursue your desires with passion and confidence.

I didn't realize these rocks had such a mood! I laughed extra hard at the lounge because I'm going to a rock music festival.

Life can be poetic when you're a rock nerd.

Rocking out with my rocks,

Dan from Learn to Scale​

​Opt-out from the newsletter | Unsubscribe from all emails | Update your Preferences | www.learntoscale.us, Boston, MA 02119

​PS. Howdy, my name's Woody, and this is Andy's Room.​