Guest: Marc Pickren, President at Next Net Media
Hosts: Seth Earley, CEO at Earley Information Science
Chris Featherstone, Sr. Director of AI/Data Product/Program Management at Salesforce
Published on: January 30, 2024
In this episode, Seth Earley speaks with Marc Pickren, President of Next Net Media with over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience across fintech, SaaS, and digital marketing. They explore how AI is fundamentally transforming search optimization and content creation, discussing the anticipated 25% decline in organic search traffic, the evolution of career paths as autonomous agents reshape workflows, and how organizations producing 32,000 content pieces monthly are adapting. Marc shares insights on balancing technological optimism with privacy concerns, maintaining human oversight of AI systems, and preparing teams for an AI-driven future.
Key Takeaways:
Insightful Quotes:
"Don't be a cynic, lean into the better angels of technology and be a part of the solution. Don't sit back and say, oh, this all is terrible. And it's too big of a monster. We'll go tame the monster." - Marc Pickren
"Every 100 years, all new people. You got to think every 100 years, but all new people." - Marc Pickren (quoting Chinese proverb)
Tune in to discover how organizations can navigate the seismic shifts in search optimization, content strategy, and career development as AI fundamentally reshapes the digital landscape.
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Podcast Transcript: AI's Impact on Search, Content Creation, and Career Evolution
Transcript introduction
This transcript captures a conversation between Seth Earley and Marc Pickren about the transformative impact of AI on search engine optimization, content creation workflows, career paths, and the balance between embracing technological innovation while maintaining privacy and human oversight in an increasingly AI-driven marketplace.
Transcript
Seth Earley:Welcome to the Early AI podcast. I'm Seth Early. Chris Featherstone couldn't make it today, but I'm really excited to have our guest today. And we're gonna be talking about some fantastic topics, including how AI is revolutionizing the search experience and how it's changing that search experience and what organizations need to do. Many of the things, the traditional industries around SEO are gonna change, right? And we need to understand what the implication is. We'll talk a little bit about how The big players such as Google have so much data that they can leverage to create personalized experiences. But what does that really mean for the organization? What does that really mean for how we're going to be going to market and getting the word out? Talk more about autonomous agents and the implications and the balance between technology and human judgment. And there's also the idea of career paths for people, right? We know there's going to be a lot of disruption in this marketplace., and in society, and how do we prepare people for that future. So our guest today is currently the president of NextNet Media. He has 25 years, over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and business leader. He has expertise in technology companies and demonstrating a track record of building and managing successful ventures. He has experience across multiple industries, including fintech, digital marketing, software as a solution. He's overseen $100 million billion P&Ls at large public corporations and Madison Avenue agencies, and he's remained at the forefront of this very dynamic digital landscape and delivering solutions for both customers and businesses. He has extensive knowledge and experience in AI and automation and more. Welcome, Mark Pickering, to the show.
Marc Pickren:Hey, it's great to be here. Good to see you, Seth.
Seth Earley:Nice to see you. Nice to see you. So, you know, you— we talked a little bit about this when we were preparing. You know, we like to start start with some misconceptions in the industry. So give me your sense of, you know, when you, when you start to look at AI, when you start to look at the changes in society, when you start to look at career paths. And again, we're going to cover a broad sweep of topics, but pick one of those areas and tell me what the biggest misconceptions are that you're seeing in the marketplace that where executives have either lack of understanding or misinterpreting things or just downright misconceptions.
Marc Pickren:Yeah, I mean, I think it's easy to kind of focus more on the top level and we could certainly go into a lot of conversation around still seeing comments like, not sure about this AI, when it's basically the genie is out of the bottle and has been out of the bottle and typically markets lag behind where business in the world is really at by 9 to 12 months. It's kind of what we saw with interest rates and the cost of capital and people being unprepared for that. But the end of free money had happened much earlier on in the process and just happened to arrive at our doorsteps. But I like to look at things more from the employee perspective. And team members, because I think that that's where most of the angst is, most of the anxiety, and we already have enough anxiety in the world. And then, you know, where is their role going to be in terms of organizations and where is their career pathing? And, you know, we have at our company, we own a bunch of subsidiary companies. One of the areas that has been probably changed the most by AI is in content creation, right? We produce about 32,000 original content or search engine optimized content pieces per month. And in the past, we had teams of 350 contract writers scattered throughout the globe and here in the United States. And the way that writers in particular are very— a lot of anxiety around AI because when ChatGPT opened up as a free service, basically anybody can go in there with a very comprehensive prompt and create a piece of content. And so what we've been working with, both with our writers as well as our team members, our young managers, is really in, in looking at AI in terms of how can you be the human in the loop, right? And I say this, that all day long of, all day long with AI or large language models, LLM is, they're going to confidently tell you the wrong answer. And so you have to be somebody that is human in the loop, which means that you need to know the subject matter and you know, and I know it's, it's funny, there's all these terms for things where it's called hallucination, it's where it's making things up or whatever.
And I point out that most of the time the AI is just wrong, you know, and it's very confident. Yeah. So how do you, you know. So how do you as a, as a young person, you know, coming into your career path, how do you carve out a position? I tell folks all the time, you know, I mean, if you're going to let yourself be. Defined by repetitive task oriented work, you're probably going to get replaced. You know, and so if you want to have job security into the future and you know you need to think of yourself as a, as a manager. And if you're a manager, then you have what I describe as, you know, direct reports, which are these autonomous agents, right? And you have to be able to manage those autonomous agents to deliver work product, just like you would an individual. And so the mental frame that you take in as an end user of technology, of a large language model or whatever, you can't just sit there and say, go make me a brisket or build me a house or create me a piece of content. You have to guide it. And that becomes a skill set. And so I would say that there's in terms of, you know, AI and career paths, there's a lot of opportunity for people to take the situation and actually take it up another level and approach their profession as a manager and a, as a thought leader. And by doing that, you know, they'll be able to carve a career path out.
Seth Earley:So, and this is really critical, especially in the content creation part because the result of this, just like search is going to be AI summarizes everything and you're going to have one answer, you're going to have one maybe answer with a couple of options or something like that. And, and it's going to, some search is going to be driven by the Google search prompt and giving you recommendations or options. And rather than say, go search the website, it'll say, you know, buy this product and oh, by the way, you can get this discount from this from this seller if that's what you're looking for. And it's going to answer in a variety of ways. So what are some of the implications of that? That's a whole separate topic we can go into. But in terms of content creation, if we're all pulling from the same things, why— how do you— I mean, you know, I've got this huge collection of content. You may have that. I may not. Right, but certainly the big internet, everybody has access to that. So if I'm trying to stand out in this content creation, content is going to become commoditized or it seems like it is certainly. So now what? What do you tell people? How do you stand out? How do you differentiate?
Marc Pickren:Well, I mean, first off, I think from an enterprise perspective and for people that have built a position around proprietary information or a perspective on the world, you know, it's never been a more important time to have a perspective on the world and to have, you know, actually, you know, first party data or information that, I mean, when I say first party data information, but really your point of view because your point of view is not like, okay, I use chat, GPT to write my term paper in college or whatever versus I actually thought through the problem and I use generative AI to help me with, you know, I say generative AI, but I could just say, I need help with my math homework. Well, I understand trigonometry and calculus, but there's this specific problem. Here's the work that I've already done on it. Can you, you know, there's very. It's a very different sort of use case and you think about, I described before about the, you know, sort of the human in the loop and that sort of approach of a manager of having, you know, autonomous agents as a direct reporter. Well, I would say to most people.
You don't think that your team members, that you would just say to somebody, go create a PowerPoint deck for that. No, you wouldn't do that. Right. You have, you have your, your specific and for us it might be about the product that, you know, you know, when we think of sort of content creation, I think of actually a lot of the time we think of SEO or search engine optimization. We think, hey, search. We sit back as an end user and say I want to buy a car. You know, who sells cars? What should my. What are. What brand of cars do I want? And there is this whole universe. I remember. And I'm trying to remember, it was either Google or it was Facebook. Google I think it was. Was pointing out that most people are within three clicks of finding what they want. And now what we're seeing is that is changing on probably to a personalized experience. But on the flip side of that, that's all driven by cookies and third party behavioral data and capturing all of that with the death of cookies and there's going to be changes in that. You're looking at a move towards one to one experience and you really have to think of yourself as a brand or as an enterprise and looking at that. Instead of looking at, okay, what is my. As I start to get into SEO and I've got to content creation, you know, I personally am not very fond of content farms and more just putting cheap and inexpensive product out in high volume just to be ranked for keywords like you can. Maybe a couple years ago. And I think that there's been this, there's been this. In fact, Google is actively working to filter that out of their search results because ultimately you know Google is. We've said this a couple times, but it's all about keeping eyes on the glass. You know if I go to Google and I search for something and I have to click through 10 results before I find what I want, I'm going to get frustrated with Google. The consumer, the end user is the king in this, in this equation. They're going to get frustrated. So Google is going to try to give those relevant results and that's what is powered their whole business model. But on the flip side, the data that they collected to do that is so proprietary, going back 20 plus years that it is a massive competitive advantage. I look at Meta in a similar way for, I'll just say Facebook for lack of a better understanding. Everybody knows Facebook.
And on there, the amount of behavioral data that they have, you know, there's the opportunity to take this engine and basically take control of your content that is out there and have AI summarize it and they can basically create a paywall for the enterprise. And so I think that when you come back down to enterprise level in terms of organizations and content creation, there is a degree to which you have to look at your content strategy is a multi-dimensional target and you cannot just say, okay, I want to rank for this keyword. In fact, a lot of times we take the approach of okay, we want to rank number one for that keyword or first page for that keyword. You know, that may be the right client fit for me or it may not. And you actually want to filter out people that would not be appropriate for you. And so you really approach it from a customer persona perspective and then optimized so that those customers find you. But is it really mass market? I'm not sure that that's going to be effective. And in the mass market, as much as you know, because that's where, you know, ultimately personalized one to one experiences are going to take place through kind of the recommendation engine. And then on a consumer side, you're going to see what I describe as personalized search. And personalized search is where you've got an AI in your computer and then you've got, you've got an AI in Facebook or an AI in Google or whatever the search tools. And they're going to mediate with each other. This is like, I want, I want to buy a car, that's going to be the, the use case that I'll go through. You want to buy a car, what are your needs. Right? It's going to kind of work through your parameters and it's going to go out there and it's going to search and it's going to negotiate with other autonomous agent. So let's say Facebook has another autonomous agent on their platform. They may or may not have data around automobiles or car companies. And so there's going to be that working through, kind of going along search for information. And then ultimately once it's found it's going to bring it to you and say, okay, based on your objectives, here's some, here are some thoughts. You might love them, you might not like them, but you're going to send them back and say, actually my priorities have now changed, or actually I realized something. And so it's going to be this very interesting negotiation between autonomous agents to try to give you a personalized experience. And so I say, you know, when you think about, for any enterprise, think about just that mediation process in which instead of this being about optimizing for keywords and eyeballs, it's going to be about optimizing to find those clients, those customers. And it's, it's a shift to almost being a one to one relationship and making it personal.
Seth Earley:Yeah. And so in that context, you've published, you have published positions, you have published research, you have published papers and case studies that inform that AI agent. And those things, you're getting picked up in different contexts, but then they have a certain level of authority because, well, that's the thing that you really are looking for, that what I'm looking for because I'm confident this person knows what they're talking about because they've demonstrated expertise. And I referenced them and I cited them and they match my profile and versus, oh, I was just looking for a blue car. Well, here's 90 blue cars. Well, I don't want a pickup truck, you know? Right. And then, so. But, you know, in the course of that conversation with the agent, if you don't have a point of view and you don't have the detailed knowledge about that particular domain and the specificity and you don't have that out there indexed somewhere, whether it's chat, GPT or whether it's in Google or whatever, you're not going to show up. And so people think, well, what's the point of all this content? Well, you've got to feed that somehow. You've got to feed that beast somehow in order to give it sources, give it authority, give it citations in order that it can make a recommendation.
Marc Pickren:Sure.
Seth Earley:And so that's going to come from a variety of sources. And that expertise, that domain expertise is something that is going to be really important. I mean, I think at some level, you look at folks like, and you know, some, some larger agencies like Gartner research, you know, you know, McKinsey as an example, like their knowledge management and their insights and their domain experts are going to have enormous advantages, leveraging that for purposes. Because they have that proprietary. Some of that's proprietary information. But really, even if it's not proprietary, it's the way they think about it and the way they organize and the way they frame things and they have a point of view, that's a differentiator.
Marc Pickren:It is. I would actually say so the. Yeah, when you think. So I would actually look at this from a more of a philosophical perspective of if we're all drawing from the same well, what is standing out? That's, that's really the job. Now, if you want to do middle of the road work, that's probably what these tools are going to wind up replacing. But it's not going to replace a good person with a bright mind and the will to change the world. Right. And the will to, to have something. And so if you're going to do outstanding work and if you're going to do highly creative work that breaks moulds or is memorable and makes an impact, or if you're going to have a unique perspective on a problem that is clearly defined and novel, it is something that a lot of, you know, I don't think the large language model is going to, is not going to be able to do that. Will it be able to get you a faster? Sure. Will it be able to organize your thoughts for you? Sure. But in terms of the application, there's a reason that they call it, the writers call it slop. It's mush. It's. It's so consistent. It's McDonald's. It's like, yeah, I know what I'm gonna get and sometimes I just need to get something done. Sure, that's. I think that there is massive, I think that that is a massive driver of most of the people that want to use AI like today. Right. Like ChatGPT. And so I have a certain creative problem. I need an answer. And it's going to be kind of middle of the road and I know I'm not going to get the perfect answer, but I'm going to get something that that I can work with and that's fine. The ability to do that is kind of interesting. I find though that you know, when we talk about enterprise level sort of a knowledge base. You've described AI or large language models, but also I would describe it as maybe. And there are other tools that are at play. You know, retrieval augmented generation where you go and you can retrieve information and you have your proprietary data that you can bring to and you also have some real time feeds that you can bring. And so you're. There's a lot of different technologies that are coming into play. And, but if you have a, a knowledge base that is, that is, you know, expert knowledge, you know, that's going to serve you well. But I think that having said that, I would also say that there's a lot of, in the creative side of things, there's, there's going to be, it's always going to be that person with the will, the insight, the expertise, the knowledge, the experience that is actually going to have to be able to be applied to bring that, to bring that to bear for great work versus, you know, just merely mediocre or average.
Seth Earley:Sure. Average. So, yeah, so I want to move to maybe somewhat related topics, but talk about, I mean, there's obviously implications for this, privacy implications, data implications. And we were recently in a podcast. My book came out a number of years ago, but the idea about a personal information cloud, you know, managing all of this information and having that personal information that you can, that is working on your behalf. And so this agent could act as your agent, so to speak. But then there's so much data going, being collected by organizations like Meta and Google and all of these others that either you're getting targeted by the advertisers in ways that you might not like or they have a reason, they have information about you, you don't even know that they have or you didn't know that they were collecting. And this is, this is becoming kind of an issue. It's an issue in the European Union. It's not so much an issue in the US yet, although I think it's becoming more, it's top of mind. So when you think about some of these concerns or issues, what are some of the areas where organizations have some gaps or where there, where you should be able to have a right to control your data and you don't, or if there's all kinds of. And obviously this is a wide open topic, but a couple of nuggets around some of your thoughts about kind of data privacy and who's data is data and who should be able to use it.
Marc Pickren:Sure. You know, I think that I remember and going, been doing digital since the early 90s and in 96, at the time, there were companies then that were talking about a consumer centric approach to digital data and to data and being able to, you know, the consumer managing their data and. And I was, I thought this was the coolest thing. And this is, again, this is like in 96. And like to date, the approach from basically the entire marketplace has been we're going to take it. And so what I would say is consumers in the future, just like my kids, there's, there's going to be a, an active choice to share or not share information and I think it'll become more of a friction of do I. I'd rather just pay the $2 fee to be on social media versus or subscribe versus do I want to share all of my data with the platform. I think that that's. And that's going to change because again, there's going to be this increased awareness. But I also. You think of, think of just growing up in the past. You know, I think that if you talked about a scenario where somebody was given the opportunity to move into a home and they were told that every room in this home has a camera on you and a microphone that is transcribing everything that you say and everywhere you go, there's GPS tracking, you know, would they. That person have moved into that home? But that's basically what, that's basically what we've all done with the mobile phone. And so it is just kind of ironic in ways. And so I think that. And so is there the opportunity to not do that, to not be on social, to not be using, you know, Facebook, Instagram. I see my kids turning away from social. And I think there's a broader, broader kind of awareness, generational awareness. But again, I'm not sure that technology is being marketed and positioned in a way that says, okay, here's, here's the advantages and here's the downside and we're going to make this transaction clear. You know, it's kind of everything is opaque. And so I think, I think that you're probably going to see the European Union lean more into greater transparency and make it more clear to end users. That's what they've chosen to do. I still would say, though, and you're, you're absolutely correct. You know, we talk about kind of this idea of a personal information cloud and there's all these potential use cases, but the, there is a privacy element, and the other element of it is, is. Is a trust element. Do I trust you as a organization to safeguard that? You know, we just saw TD Ameritrade got. I'm not sure, I shouldn't say TD Ameritrade. I'm sure all of their trading information was stolen and it was all over on the dark web. And so I'm getting, you know, I have that account and I'm getting messages, hey, sorry about that. You know, do we really have, like, confidence in organizations? And so I think there's, there's a little bit of an uphill battle there. I do think that the application, though, you know, that. I mean, I think that this personal information cloud, because when you're making that decision, I go back to that, you know, like buying a car scenario, right? Well, if I tell, if I'm able to say to my autonomous agent, hey, here's what. I just had my third kid. Here's my budget. You know, I'm trying to be a practical parent. And, you know, like, I really want to know what's out there. Like, it then is able to go out and negotiate on your behalf. So I think it's, it's such a significant opportunity. And, you know, I do think we will see laws. We've seen laws come into effect in California. We're seeing laws come in the European Union. And I think the trust that people have with the platforms is at an all time low. I mean, I think it's just. People have become cynical and I don't. And you can see it in terms of everybody's kind of upset at everybody else. And so I think there's an opportunity for something that addresses the issue. But I think it's. I don't know that any enterprise, be it Microsoft or Google or Apple has yet done that. And I don't know if they're working on that, but I don't think consumers feel great about any of those major platforms.
Seth Earley:Yeah. And I don't think anybody, there's not really any financial incentive for those organizations to do that.
Marc Pickren:Sure.
Seth Earley:So I. Yeah, I think. Well, we'll see. I mean, ultimately that Apple's is kind of positioned themselves with privacy, but.
Marc Pickren:Yeah.
Seth Earley:You know, how much. How much does that. Yeah, right, exactly. And how much do you pay and what are you getting for that, right?
Marc Pickren:Yeah.
Seth Earley:So interesting. So just a couple more things. One thing we'd like to do is, you know, people who are trying to understand the implications of the technology and where they should be going and where the trends are, a lot of times they listen to other podcasts. And so, you know, what are you, what are you reading? What are you listening to? What are you looking at to kind of stay up on all of this? It's changing so rapidly.
Marc Pickren:You know, I try to look at it in terms of I've, I've got a bit of an eclectic mix. You know, I, I listen to the All In podcast. I feel like that's a group of entrepreneurs that, you know, have. They clearly have a, a bias. They absolutely, certainly in terms of politics or kind of the, the way of approaching things, they're very business. Business centric. But you know, I'll also seek out and, you know, somebody that I thought was incredibly interesting is a fella named Yuval Noah Harari. And he is one of the, he's actually a, he's kind of an anthropologist and he does, he's a super deep thinker and he wrote a book a couple of years ago called Sapiens, which is all about understanding humanity and, you know, like really kind of looking at the broader. And I just think about. And I'm reading the most recent book, and I can't remember what the title of it is, and I apologize. But, but I, I really enjoy just his. His perspective is so thoughtful. It's not, it's not all doom and gloom, but it, it's also not all, you know, hype train and, and, and whatever. Like, let's, let's actually think about what it is. Now, that same level of thoughtfulness is on the podcast, the Lex Freedman, the Lex. Lex Freedman podcast. And, you know, what, what I enjoy about Lex is it's very, again, it's very thoughtful and it doesn't. And, you know, and I find that a lot of podcasts, they feel very much almost, they have such a narrative that they're trying to push. And I appreciate thoughtful, thoughtful conversations about the pros and the cons of different things and exploring, you know, exploring really some areas where, you know, really not knowing what the right answer is, you know, and really kind of sometimes asking questions of an expert or somebody that's been there and just kind of exploring this. And so I love that from the Lex Friedman podcast. And there's. The All In podcast is also kind of fun in that regard, too. There's a lot of camaraderie, there's a lot of conversation. You know, so I really enjoy both of those.
Seth Earley:Yeah. And, you know, I've been thinking of reading that Sapiens book. I've been hearing about it for a while.
Marc Pickren:Excellent. It's really a great book.
Seth Earley:Something on my list. And I just started reading, a couple weeks ago, I started reading or listening to the. Not listening to, but reading. And there's no audio book. There's no audio yet, but there will be. It's called. It's on the future of humanity and it's Brian Christian. And, you know, he's got a really interesting. So much energy, and he's really passionate about it. And. And I heard a podcast of his, and then I got the book and saw how long it was. I'm like, I got to really think through. Right, but. But I, I think it's. It's. It's well worth it, and he's talking about the future of humans and AI and. And super intelligence, and it's really. It's got some. It's got a lot of useful insights, I think, from what I've seen. And it's not, as you say, it's not, you know, you're not. We're not all going to die, and we're not everything's going to be perfect. So.
Marc Pickren:Right. Which is nice because for a balanced person, you're looking for that balanced view of things.
Seth Earley:That's right. That's right. That's what I try to be as well. So. So, Mark, before we finish up, I want to ask you. Tell me if you have any hobbies, what. What kinds of things are you doing when you're not working on, you know, with your companies? What do you do to kind of take a break? What are some of your hobbies?
Marc Pickren:Sure. Well, my hobby is. Is trying to. My son and I golf. We. There's a course that's 5 minutes from my house. I moved here about three years ago. And I realized that the. It just works really well for me. And. And there's a guy named Kyle that, on the staff there, that just is the most wonderful person. And he's really helped me. And I. You know, I'm tall, but I got really bad knees and. And I used to play racquetball, and I'm at that point in my life where I can't do that anymore. And I really love that kind of exercise and getting out, but getting out playing golf. It's a long walk, so it's super healthy. And even if I'm not doing it competitively, I still, in terms of playing with people, It's nice and it's social and it's an opportunity for my son and I to get together and spend some time together. And you know, it's, it's wonderful. I really enjoy it a lot.
Seth Earley:Yeah. And are you, and are you seeing improvements?
Marc Pickren:I am, I am, I am. I'm still not great. I'm a recreational golfer, let's put it that way. I'm not somebody that I'm going to be on tour anytime soon. And I, I came to golf late. You know, I didn't start till I was, you know, in my early 50s or whatever, but. But I enjoy it a lot. You know, I think. And I'm just, I'm just more focused on the exercise and being outside than I am on, I played a little competitive golf. And I'm like, oh my God, this just heightens my stress level. So I don't, I don't do that. I'm just now like, okay, it's all, it's all recreational. All of, of course, and, uh, that's great.
Seth Earley:Because, you know, your, your physical health is so important in terms of running a business because you need lots of energy for that and you need to keep a positive output. So here's a, here's a quick question, kind of an introspective question. If you were to kind of go back and think of yourself as a graduate of school, what, what kinds of advice might you give yourself at this point? You know, with this retrospective understanding, what advice would you give yourself getting out of school?
Marc Pickren:I mean, I would probably frame it more— unfortunately, it's probably hard for me to do that given how much the world has changed. You know, like the rise of the internet came after school. Like, I mean, so I would— and I do a lot of thinking on this in terms of, you know, 40% of middle management in the United States are millennials. And my son and daughter are two different or the Gen Z and etc. And, you know, there's, there's, I would just say, like, so if I were today in today's world, you know, there's a lot of cynicism about just about everything. And, you know, unfortunately, you know, when people tell me that, oh, this AI thing is a fad, I don't, I don't, you know, it's whatever. I tell them, I say, do you understand that most of your friends and your political views have been shaped by AI, like on social media. It has been running and determining your point of view, hijacked us, hijacked us, been hijacking. And so, you know, and so, you know, my kids and even the members of our team, certain members of the team, and, you know, there's a lot of cynicism towards technology. You know, a lot of these kids have like you, back to what you said, have just been targeted with the most ridiculous ads on YouTube, and they, you know, or they've, or they've had a synchronicity to where all of a sudden the ad is like right on point for something that then— and, and I just find that there's a lot of cynicism about technology, and, and I've always held the view that it, it can, it can be such a force for good. And in, in kind of the basis consumerism, technology, AI, you know, if you get above that, there's really, there's some wondrous things that can take place for humankind, and they can be a part of that. That's so I would say, don't be a cynic, lean in our better angels of technology and be a part of the solution. Don't sit back and say, oh, this all is terrible. And, and it's too big of a monster. We'll go tame the monster.
Seth Earley:Yeah, who else is going to solve it, you know? Right. Today's graduates and tomorrow's graduates and the people who are going to, you know. Inherit the, inherit
Marc Pickren:the earth, inherit, you. Know, whatever is, you know, whatever
Seth Earley:we end up leaving based on the decisions we make in the next couple of decades, right?
Marc Pickren:My favorite, my favorite quote is, it's a Chinese proverb that says every 100 years, all new people. So you got to think every 100 years, but all new people, all new people.
Seth Earley:Yeah, everybody. Yep, you're right. We turn over everything. Well, Mark, it's been a real pleasure. So where can people find you? We'll put this in the show notes as well. But what's the best way to reach you?
Marc Pickren:Yeah, so, you know, LinkedIn is a great way to reach me. I'm— I was early to LinkedIn, so it's, you know, Mark Pickering. Is the— I'm listed M-A-R-C-P-I-C-K-R-E-N. And then, you know, we're, you know, www— I'm an old guy, I actually do that these days— but nextnetmedia.com is where you can. And there's actually a connection point on, I think, on our executive team to where you can actually connect with me, because I'm just really about like just I'll talk to anybody. I'm all about trying to be helpful to folks. And that's, you know, that's kind of where I sit right now. So super appreciative of you and an honor to be on the show.
Seth Earley:Thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate it. All right. It's been great. And so, again, thank you. It's, it's been tremendous. Really enjoyed the conversation. So this has been another episode. I have to say exciting episode because I really enjoyed it of the Early AI Podcast. And we will see you all next time. Thank you very much. All right.
Marc Pickren:Bye for now.