Introduction
**In the Age of AI: Are We Losing Our Touch?**
Hey there, marketers! 🎉
In this lightning-fast business world, we’re seeing a generational shift!
Boomers and Gen X? They powered through challenges head-on. Millennials? They’re all about learning from each other. Now, enter Gen Z, diving into AI and automation like it’s second nature.
So, what does this mean for us? 🤔
Join Miguel Suat, founder of Montanus, in the latest episode of Content Universe!
He shares his recent battle with video editing—a real eye-opener. 🎥
What’s the sweet spot between AI solutions and good ol’ human creativity?
Are we ready to rethink how we tackle problems?
Tune in to discover when to embrace AI and when to roll up those sleeves! 💪
Don’t miss out—your next big strategy could be just an episode away!
What You’ll Learn
1. Recognize when AI can’t replace manual efforts.
2. Evaluate task complexity before automating.
3. Quick AI tests save you time.
4. Mix AI with manual work strategically.
5. Consider if tasks align with your skills and enjoyment.
6. Understand generational approaches to problem-solving.
Episode Transcript (AI Generated)
Hey guys, welcome to the Content Universe. Today I want to talk a little bit about using an AI versus just getting things done. Gtd, GSD, getting shit done. What’s the abbreviation? I don’t know. AI versus just powering through and actually doing the things yourself the old school kinda way manually. Now, I think there’s a generational shift that’s happening right now and the first one is that what would be my parents and older? So that would be I guess from the boomers and also generation X. Those kind of people they are brought up, and now of course I’m talking in really general terms so don’t judge me too hard, I’m thinking that they grew up learning that if there’s some problem, you should just work harder and then you will work harder to solve it. Now my own generation, we have a little bit of a approach to solving a problem so in our opinion and I’m a millennial myself so in our opinion I think in general there is a perception that there must be someone else who also has this problem. There must be someone else who has already solved this problem, so therefore I will go to YouTube, to Reddit, to Google even to see if I can find a solution that is easier than just me working harder and spending a lot of time trying to solve this problem so that’s a difference between the Millennials and I’m guessing Generation Z no not said but Generation X and an older. Of course this is in general terms so again don’t judge me but this is my perception and now what’s happening what’s what has been the newest generation on though on in the workforce they have a completely different approach from even from ours so not just there must be someone else who’s already done this but they probably have more of a perception that is there must be an app that has already solved this or that solves this for me and now the newest version of this is of course there must be an AI that can solve this problem for me and I think that is in many cases true or in some cases true but in some other cases it’s also just completely wrong and in some other cases you will have to still power through you’ll have to still just work harder than old-school kind of way in order for you to be efficient and effective in what you do now the reason I’m telling you this, is that yesterday I spent time trying to blur out the background of a video and we’ve been working on this video for hours on end because the video quality is a little bit low. The recording quality is low. It’s a streamed video and it’s just really hard getting the right blurriness of the background. We need kind of hard blurriness to to really kind of, well yeah, blur out the background. And so this is the problem that we are trying to deal with. What has happened over the last couple of weeks, is that we’ve tried numerous times getting an automated way, or finding an automated way, of blurring out this background. How hard can it be really? You know, Teams does this all the time. You know, you just flick a switch and then it says, okay now your face is clear and the background is completely blurred out. Now I don’t know why, but it’s been really hard finding a solution that can actually solve this problem for us. Maybe because the quality of the video was a little bit too low. Doing it in post-production has been very very hard. We’ve spent hours and hours on end trying to get an automated solution to do this for us. Because inside our heads blurring out the background would mean blurring you know, adjusting every single frame of that video. Which is obviously not a plod like, it’s not within the scope of the project that that that is possible at all. My point is, we tried to do this and we failed with AI. We tried to do this and we failed with AI. We tried many different, many different apps. So we tried Katwing, we tried Adobe Premiere, we tried some online website who would just do it without the app, blah blah blah. We tried many different things, but nothing seemed to work. Yesterday, I took the consequence and I was like okay, whatever, I’m gonna try and do this manually. I’m gonna try and do this the old-school way where you just go into Premiere Pro and you map out the person on the screen, it’s a talking head interview, so you map out the person and you you just put on some of the Gaussian blur that you usually use for that. Now, it’s not a perfect solution, because I did not go through it frame by frame but I did go through it like, every time the person moved, I would adjust the blurriness. So it’s not like, it’s not automatically blurring out perfectly the background but it is removing the disturbing or the irritating things in the background. So basically, that, doing that, took me… and I’ve never done it before and it took me about an hour. About an hour to do that. I’m just thinking if it was a professional like my regular video guy, for instance, but he didn’t have time but anyway, but, if it was a professional video guy who already knew how to do this, I’m guessing that she, he could probably do it in what 30 minutes or something like that. a lot faster. So my point here is that yesterday I really had this experience that we’ve used a lot of hours trying to get an AI to solve a problem that took me actually only one hour to solve myself. And I think what are the learnings from this? Well I think the learnings or the primary learning here for me is that you really need to consider whether it’s worth it to set up an automation to to try and use AI for for specific task. Now I’ve given this a little bit of thought now and I think there are there are probably five different things that you need to take into consideration before you decide whether you should use an AI, whether you should just plow through old-school way. So the first one is look at the task look at look at what is the task itself is it AIable? Of course it needs to be, AI needs to be able to do it to solve it that’s that’s pretty clear. Also look at is it a recurring task? Is it something that you do very often? Is it something that you do just this once or is it …and also of course is it something that you enjoy? Is it something that you find tedious trivial or is it something that actually gives you value to your life? So that is something that you really considered before choosing to quote unquote outsource it to an AI. Now the other thing is time estimate How long time does it actually take you to do this manually? If it’s a really short time my thought is that probably it’s not worth trying to automate it. If it’s like less than an hour maybe it’s easier to just do it manually especially if it’s not something that you do like every day or something. The third thing you need to look at is of course complexity how complex is this task? Is it something that requires many different steps? Is it a single task within a job? Is it like a single thing that you need to solve? And of course would you be able, if it’s more than one step would you be able to then automate moving between the steps or would you still have to be in the loop as a human? I know that in the military you talk about being in the loop of being on the loop and I think it’s really mostly effective if humans can be on the loop so so you would be supervising the loop you’d be supervising, or monitoring the progress rather than having to come in with input, having to do things, move files from one place to another. So that’s something you’d also need to look at the complexity of the task. Now the fourth thing that I would probably suggest is because the real power of AI is speed I would suggest you start out by, once you’ve looked at the task and all this, you just try and jot it into an AI. Just try and plot it in because making a really quick test where you don’t really put a lot of effort into testing, that quick test will take you say five minutes. So it’s a really quick test and it’s it’s really, it’s really easy to see whether you’ve misjudged the complexity or whether you’ve you’ve underestimated the powers of that specific AI solution that you’re trying to use. So just try and do a quick test, to see if it’s something that, to see if the result is something that you would be satisfied with, or if it’s pretty close to something that you’d be satisfied with, is the result something that you feel is worth working further on and then of course the last step is try and evaluate so evaluate those four steps, whether you, is it a task that you love is it something that you don’t want to outsource? What is the time, the time you spend? Is it worth outsourcing? And when I say outsource I mean outsourcing to AI. Is it is it really complex or is it quite simple? Simple tasks are obviously easier to automate or to have AI do and then, of course, what is the result of a, like a really quick prototype kind of thinking pilot test? What is, what is the result of that? Is it satisfactory, is it not? Is it far from the goal? Is it pretty close? All of this. Do a really good evaluation and it doesn’t need to be something really thorough you know on a piece of paper, on a four-page report or anything. Just like in your head or on a piece of paper just do a quick pros and cons because that will probably take you what 10 seconds and then after that try and decide whether you should go for the AI solution, whether you should just power through old school way work harder maybe go to YouTube you know, that kind of that kind sort of way of solving a problem. Or if you should maybe even use some kind of combination of the two so you would have the AI do the primary work and then you would take over and then do the rest of the work if you if you’re able because what I find is that often with these AI systems that you’re actually not able for instance with the blurry background here you wouldn’t be able to adjust the blurriness because it’s just the the system just doesn’t allow for that when you use certain AI services. So would you be able to adjust it afterwards that’s obviously also also pretty important. Alright so that is my take on AI versus getting things done approach. AI versus working harder or the I would say the Millennial kind of way, you know go to YouTube to find out, that kind of way. That is that is my take on that and I hope you enjoyed my name is Miguel Suat and I am the owner and founder of the content agency content production agency Montanus where we do podcasts video blog posts social media stuff all that kind of stuff for companies with complex knowledge that they need to that they need to communicate out to their customers and all the stakeholders. Now I hope you enjoyed this episode if you did not let me know send me an email podcast at montanus.co I think that’s the pot… maybe I’m wrong in that one but you can either way you can send it that email and it will land in my own inbox so that you don’t go work fine podcast at montanus.co send me an email and of course if you like the episode give it a like give it a star review please it really helps and of course share with your friends and colleagues or whoever you think might be interested all right that’s it for today see you around in the content universe
