Generation AI Matt Britton on Preparing Gen  Alpha for an AI‑Driven Future | AI Marketers Guild

Everyone, welcome to another edition of AI Insiders with AI Marketers Guild. We've got a rare treat, at least for us, because we don't have too many repeat guests. But when I saw Matt Britton, who my old boss at MRI Fuglas and had the pleasure of knowing a long time, and he's now these days known as the CEO of Suzy, but also a serial authority, when I saw he's got a new book coming out on, on AI and generation AI in particular, I was just like, yeah, one of the very few business books these days that I just can't wait to read. So Matt and, and Matt, by the way, like, I still, a year later, get remarks on the last session you did and like, I think about it all the time and some of the early stuff you're talking about with synthetic audiences and like, how you're using AI data yourself to inform your corporate strategy. Like, seriously, like, so memorable and so just useful. So thanks for coming back.

Thanks for having me, David. Awesome. Well, I mean, I think given the size of the audience, I'd rather be more of a discussion event, school presentation. And I guess I can start by giving a little bit of background on myself for those who are unfamiliar and maybe we can get into a discussion about the different parts of the book. So I have spent my entire career helping big brands navigate change and disruption, and that's meant different things over the course of my career. When I first started in the early 2000s, disruption and change meant the Internet itself. And that was really driven by the millennial generation, who were the first generation to grow up with the Internet in the household. And for the millennials, they obviously looked at a world an entirely different way. And early in my career, I spent a lot of time convincing brands to get on the Internet and market to young people who then were disproportionately using the Internet to drive their business. And I remember being at the Hershey Company in Pennsylvania and they told me we would never stoop down to a level of marketing our brand on computers. That's what they said. Then in 2005, 2006, I was helping brands navigate social media. I had been fortunate enough to be marketing to college students and teens as my primary business model when Facebook was born. And as that started to take off, and first with younger people and then with the whole population, I really helped brands navigate what that meant and was very early on there, to the extent that I personally registered at Visa on Twitter for Visa. That's how early it was in the social media era. For these large brands and of course in 2009, 2010, disruption meant the iPhone. So the iPhone is really the technology that's most synonymous with Gen Z, the next generation. And obviously for most Gen Z consumers, and for many of you might have Gen Z consumers as children, you know that the iPhone is now sort of like an appendage to their body. And obviously mobile changed the way that consumers communicate with one another, the way they transact, they, the way they build relationships for better or worse. It's a lot of times replaced physical in person interactions and has been the root of a lot of depression, which we've seen from Gen Z, who, you know, the combination of mobile devices and social media have made them more connected, but at the same time far more distant, if you will. And those were all major disruptions. And again, each, each of those disruptions kind of brought in a new generation of consumers who are hardwired differently. Because you have to remember, for Gen Z, for example, they never knew a world without the iPhone. So that's just the way it exists. It's almost like we never knew a world without electricity. So to not have electricity when there's a power outage, we're like, oh my God, there's no electricity. What are we going to do? That's sort of like what it would be like for Gen Z to not have their iPhone with them. It would be akin to us not having electricity and now the new generation.

And it's funny you say that because like the first thing that comes to mind is the blackout 20 years ago in the city. And like for the first few hours of it, it was such a block party because we were all like, we don't have electricity, let's party, right? It's like drink all our beer, right? You know, and just have a great. Obviously it was tough for people with some mobility issues and stuff, but. And scary later on like Spain, Portugal. But like, like I think this, like you take away your appendage and it's almost just a relief for a little.

Bit, I know, but that, but then after three hours people start riding and get upset. That's probably what would happen with Gen Z and a lot of us without our iPhones, right? And then so, so those were like major disruptions and with each time that's happened, I've tried to work with brands and get them to understand what it meant. And the same sort of, I guess stories, chapters of events has always taken place where first brands trying to push it off. Oh, this is just the fad. It's not that big. The market doesn't understand it. We start to see the early adopters, normally the tech companies really embrace it. For example, when mobile really took off in 2010, 2011, Facebook famously exchanged, you know, this desktop dollars for mobile dimes. Meaning like they start to shift their entire ad strategy to selling on mobile and their stock plummeted because the market was like, oh no, they're not focused on, on desktop anymore, they're focused on mobile. And they obviously, they obviously were smart and ahead of their time. Right. So. But the market didn't get it. Now we're in another era, right? And I would argue now, I've been in business now for 25 years, that this disruption of AI is by far the biggest and most transformational. And I think it's going to unfold the fastest. So even making the comparisons to the iPhone, the, the first and second edition of the iPhone was 18 months apart from each other. Where if you look at recent data that showed that AI is doubling in its capacity and output every seven months, that would mean we were basically jumping from iPhone One to, to iPhone 15 in seven months. Right. Not taking 15 years to get there. And that's really what is so dizzying, I think for all of us, especially for businesses, is to really get our arms around the rate of change that we're experiencing here. So I was seeing this firsthand and I had a front row seat obviously to the changes of the past and relative to AI. When AI first kind of became mainstream via ChatGPT, I knew it was time to really have it transform my business. I run a venture funded software company called Suzy and we do consumer research for most of the leading brands in the world. And when AI first became, you know, a thing, I pushed it to my engineering team to figure out and they really weren't making much progress. I think this technology is different because at the, at the altitude that AI is at, it's not just another feature functionality you can plug in. It really is something that makes you rethink your entire business and product. And our engineering team is having a hard time wrapping their arms around it. And I had been doing some research that showed that you can build an AI without even being an engineer. And I thought I would put it to test. And I've, I've alluded to David on your, on your webinars in the past. I dove in and start to build an AI. And fast forward now 12 to 18 months later and there's really not many things that you can tell me you need to build digitally that I couldn't build. And I'm not an engineer and I'd never coded before. But I've taken the time, I've taken probably the 10,000 hours, need it to understand everything that AI is capable of. And obviously it's an ongoing journey because it changes each day. But that's really opened up my eyes to the world. And I was going through that process. I made the decision that it's time now to write my second book. My first book was actually 10 years ago today, and it's when David and I were working closely together at my former agency, mry. And my first book was called Youth Nation. And Youth Nation was around the premise that for the first time ever, youth culture was not counterculture. So if you think about youth culture in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, it was largely counterculture. You saw it with Woodstock, you saw it with punk rock grunge in Seattle in the 90s, right? You saw youth having to be counterculture and in some ways disruptive to have a voice because the popular discourse was driven by corporations, right? So whatever Clear Channel played on, on heavy rotation on the radio became the music of the time. Whatever Ed Sullivan picked in the 60s to be on TV became what people focused on in television. And over time, what NBC played on musty TV on Thursday night, right? Young people didn't really have that voice. Their voice was dictated by corporations. And for the first time ever in 2015, as social media had proliferated, the youth could actually dictate culture because they had a megaphone and they were starting to do so. And fast forward to today that's proven to be true where almost every new trend starts off with young people and then it kind of filters to broader populations. And so that was the book I wrote 10 years ago. And now, given all the changes in the power which I just explained, I thought it was time to write my second book. So I wrote a book which actually coming out on this upcoming Tuesday, called Generation AI. And Generation AI is how Gen Alpha, which is the first and only AI native generation we have, meaning they will know no other world without artificial intelligence. And the power of AI is going to change the world. And the premise is that you have this new generation coming in again, currently age 0 to 15, that isn't going to know world without AI. So they're not going to know technology without technology that can be humanized, that you can talk to like a human. And things that are going to seem so very foreign to us is going to be the only world that this people, that these people know. And what does that mean for the future of education, of the workforce, of parenting, of relationships, of health care, you know, and of society at large. So that's what the book is about. And each chapter dives in deeply into these pillars of society and talks about the current trends that we're seeing right now and how it plays forward into the years ahead. Because I think we are seeing a real shift in humanity right now. It's so much broader than, you know, having chat GBT find your latest recipe for lasagna, although that's really a nice way to use it.

It's my sous chef.

I know it is for you, David. And, and I think it's. That's great. And I think a lot of people mistakenly think that that's what it's going to do. And it. To say it's the tip of the iceberg would be the understatement of the year. And in my research in all these topics, whether it's the potential for AI to reinvent healthcare while at the same time eliminating jobs like radiologists within 12 months, or whether how it's going to change parenting because kids in the house are going to start to create deeper, more intimate relationships with AI chatbots. And we've already seen one teenager tragically commit suicide and there's a wrongful death lawsuit from this kid's parents, basically claiming that the company that, you know, marketed this chatbot didn't take the proper measures to prevent this chatbot from allegedly causing this teenager to cause self harm. Right. So that's already started to happen. And as I mentioned, if the power is going to be twice as much seven months from now, it's going to be even more lifelike. So what does that mean for parents? How do they need to get involved? Because everything is so much more intense now in terms of the technology's impact on our everyday lives. I talk about the future of work and what it means to future proof yourself. Right. You know, the reality is that if you're not deep into an art or deep into a science, meaning you're doing things that the machines can't do, you know, in terms of creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, or you're learning to own, operate, develop, deploy the machines, if you're doing one, not one or the other, you're really going to find yourself on the wrong side of this.

And can I just ask you about this for a sec? Because we got a lot of senior student folks here, a lot of people who are great, like marketing, strategists, content creators, like, folks like, like, just frank, like, how are the people in this room?

Well, the fact that they're on this call right now means that they're probably not. Because if you're on this call, you're, you're taking time to learn. And if they're taking time to learn here, they're probably taking time to learn elsewhere. And that differentiates them from most of the rest of society. So I would say that people on this zoom probably aren't, you know, screwed, but a lot of people will be. And I think it all starts with, you know, if you think about education, right, how kids are being educated, because you think about the future. Because that's the number one question I get after speaking engagements. Always, what do I tell my kid what to do? Like I'm worried about my kid. They're going to college, they're going to have student loans. You're telling me there's not going to be jobs? Like, what do we do? And I think you start with how kids are educated. The traditional notion of education in America is based upon memorization and regurgitation, right? And I played that game. Read as much as you can, cram as much information, and then show that you've memorized it on a test. And as long as you can memorize whatever the coursework is and regurgitate it on a test, that would mean you're a good student, right? And I think that methodology really worked well in a knowledge based economy. Meaning your ability to, you know, regurgitate facts and maintain those facts in your brain meant that you can be a lawyer or an accountant or be these jobs that were in high regard in society, but now largely facts are becoming commoditized. We all have access to information in any modality we want. And we no longer have to rely on experts to write contracts, to do our taxes, to read X rays, right? AI is doing those things better. So most of the ways that we're being educated right now are becoming increasingly useless. And the things that we need to learn how to do is not how to solve these problems, but being critical thinkers in figuring out what problems need to be solved. Meaning you don't need to be a designer anymore to design a beautiful poster, right? But you need to be smart enough to know what type of poster needs to be designed. So that's the biggest shift overall is these technical skill sets. You no longer have to be a great photographer to take great pictures anymore. In terms of understanding the F stop and all the knobs in the dslr Camera, you just need to know where to point your phone to, and that will make you a better photographer.

And you need to have, and like, you need to internalize the rule of third. Like you need to in, like have that sense.

You do.

But over time, David, the algorithms could actually do that for you. They could take your picture, whatever you're pointing at, and look at trillions of pictures in the past and make the tweaks for you.

Right.

So, so the it, those things are even less important. You just need to know where to point the picture to and what the context of it is, and that will make you a great photographer. In the past, you really need to understand lighting and all these things. But the machine's going to end up doing that for you over time. It already kind of can. It's just reality. And, and, and now, you know, 99.9% of all photos are taken on the iPhone. And sure, you still hire professional photographers for a wedding, right, or something really important, but it's really the edge use case. And I think you're going to see that play out in a lot of different industries where specialists are going to be used for edge use cases. Like, I don't, I don't use a lawyer to write contracts anymore for my speaking engagements, but I'll probably use a lawyer when I sell my company. Right. So that's an edge use case. But for the ins and outs of using a lawyer, I'm probably not going to go to a lawyer anymore. I'm going to rely on AI to write my contracts and that. So what does that mean for the legal industry? So I can go on and on in terms of disruption, in terms of where it's happening, but you're kind of seeing it slowly play out everywhere.

And well, well, so then it's like, so, I mean, what do you think of the, of what agencies are even going to look like, you know, a year from now or once everyone catches up at agencies?

Yeah, I mean, I think in a world where your business model is selling human hours, where the greatest technology we've ever seen is essentially meant to replicate the output of humans more efficiently, I don't really think that's a good business model. Because if we're all saying AI can make us more efficient, then eventually the brands are going to catch on and say, why am I paying you five hours to do something that it takes you 30 seconds to do? And now does that mean I should only pay you for 30 seconds of your time? And I think increasingly over time, as customers of ad Agencies or Deloitte, like a consulting firm. Right. Think about it. You can use something like Deep Research to create an incredible market analysis of, of, of the market of bubble gum in Ecuador. Right. And you can have a 30 page report output instantly without paying analysts, without paying, you know, the management of those analysts or everything that and oh, you know, I would say maybe a year ago somebody would have paid McKinsey tens of thousands of dollars to create that report on the market analysis of bubblegum in Ecuador. And now I can have it in four minutes with a prompt using Deep Research from Gemini. Right. So over time now. Sure. Are companies still going to use McKinsey for if they're thinking about buying a multi billion dollar company and they want to market? Yes, for now. Right. But again it's the edge use cases. But the day in and day out of how companies conduct that type of market analysis is not going to be these large expensive consulting companies.

Well and that's where I'm also curious like what you think those prospects are because like, like it's there enough of these companies that want to pay for some more senior experience. Maybe they don't need a whole agency full of these people. But like, and don't need as many people doing the grunt work where you're learning this stuff on the job and working your way up the ladder. Like, like what, what is generation AI going to do for a living?

A great question. So to say I have the answer right now I think wouldn't really be believable because again the world changing so fast. But it goes back to what I was saying earlier in terms of I can't tell you exactly what they're going to be doing, but I can tell you the skill sets that are going to be in demand and it's going to be those skill sets that are larger around problem solving and creativity. And it's not going to be on the skill sets that require you to maintain the knowledge. There's still going to be people that are going to be needed to figure out what problem needs to be solved. Whether it's a problem needs to be solved for a consumer or problem that needs to be solved for a business. And those people who can figure out what problem needs to be solved and also understand how to command this technology and actually put it to work are going to people that are in demand. Right. But you know, if you go back, go to the medical industry, you think, which is obviously the healthcare industry is one of the biggest industries and sectors that exist in business and you think about the Complex of, of, you know, booking an appointment. You're going to be booking your appointment not through a traditional like secretary, it's going to be through an AI chatbot. You're already kind of doing that. Right. Sure. You, you may need to see a nurse or to get your blood taken or something like that. So there's an example of a job that's still going to exist. But if you look at evaluating test results, if you look at having a general practitioner, it's going to tell you the appointments that you need to make based upon those test results. All those things aren't going to be in need of an actual doctor. Right. And over time, robotics might take the place of a surgeon. Right. And so when you start to play it out, it's really kind of mind blowing in terms of, okay, well what does that mean for the future of health care? And you can kind of play out that same story for almost every industry. Well, my, the saving grace is just going to create a lot more efficiency, I think. And these companies that are efficient hopefully are going to be redeploying this capital and it's going to create new jobs. But what those new jobs are, David, to your question, I think really remains to be seen.

Well, my brother in law is an ER nurse and I feel like 20 years from now he'll still be working and he'll be probably so thankful he went down that path instead of what might have been the more traditional path of being a doctor because he'll be in demand for the rest of his life. Right.

Yeah.

So I'll take a few questions for you down, Earl, please.

Oh, sorry. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you, David. So I 100 agree with everything that you're saying and I'm very much looking forward to checking out your book. Yeah, I've been making the rounds talking to people, you know, people, industry leaders, just to get their thoughts on AI and how, if they're even using AI and how they've been using it for their businesses or for their individual lives. And I agree with you 100% that I think we're seeing such a revolutionary change that I don't think people really can grasp how big it is. And my standard pitch is that in the same way we went from Portals with AOL and Yahoo, then we went to Search with Google, we're going to chat with ChatGPT. And I think part of the challenge that I've been seeing just talking to people, just based on the disparity in terms of the knowledge of it and how to use it. I think what we're going to see is there's going to be a gap in terms of how people are going to be adjust to the new way of doing things. So before we used to have a list site on aol, for example. Then we learned about Excite, Yahoo, or Google. Oh, we can sign in, we can search for stuff, but now we can actually create custom gems or chatbots or bots that can bring the information to us that's more timely, more updated, and hopefully with other hallucinations, more accurate.

That's right.

Like, the potential is so huge, and I. It baffles me, but people don't see it.

I know. Well, people don't see it because they don't want to see it. You know, we've seen throughout time people push off change. You know that people thought that the advent of the Model T by Henry Ford was terrible for society and it eliminated the jobs at 70,000 horse and carriage companies. But then the automotive industry created the majority of the new jobs in the next decade in America. So you're going to have fear. You're going to have people that are going to write it off. And that's what always happens when change is brought to society.

Yeah, I agree 100%. I can't think, can't help but think about the, the technology adoption curve, where you have the innovators, early adopters, late adopters, and laggards. And for something as potential monumental as this, I think it would be in everybody's best interest to figure out how to get on top of this. Because, like you, I've been getting into it only because I see the potential. Like, I've created my own agency of experts using custom bots from AI.

That's awesome.

That's literally very much in demand.

And Earl's going to join us in a few weeks to show us how we did it.

Yeah, thanks for the talk. It's very enlightening. I just want to make a comment. So I'm a product developer. I created an AI chatbot. And what's interesting for me is that I created a chatbot for a purpose of indexing your own content. And one of the things that AI does is that you can change the nature of your product by just changing the prompts that you're using. So the product that I created for one purpose, now I realize that you can actually use the same product to do a lot of other things with it, more than the one that I just intended to. And my background is also I started as a programmer. And that's a mindset that also needs adjusting because we were trained to say, okay, if I give these instructions, I'm going to be able to rely on these results, or I can engineer the results that I want. And AI works a little bit differently. And that's the type of a mindset that comes only with practice. I think that's a type of a skill set that is going to be required in the future. Just understanding how AI works and what you can expect out of it.

Well said. I agree. 100.

Well, Matt, this is great. As always, I'm so psyched to read the book. Psyched to join the book launch too, and so look forward to seeing way more you out there. Thanks for coming.

Yeah, thanks for your support. Definitely. Check out the book. It's already. It's on Amazon right now and everywhere books are sold. So we'd love to hear what you guys think of it.

Yeah, we'll do. Excited for this one? Yeah. See you soon, Matt.

Thanks, everyone. Best of luck, everyone.

Thank you.