The Media Leader Podcast | Believe It or Not
In a new mini-series, former Media Leader editor-in-chief Omar Oakes is joined by former Dentsu International CEO, now AI strategist Hamish Nicklin to argue over the nuances of AI development and its use in the creative industries.
In episode five, the duo debate for and against the prompt: “AI sycophancy will run wild, and it will be bad for business.”
Taking the “for” side of the argument is Oakes, while Nicklin represents the “against” side, posing sceptical questions.
While both Oakes and Nicklin agree that AI sycophancy is an active problem for business leaders, Nicklin suggests that thoughtful prompting can help address concerns that chatbots are misleading you to keep you happy. These include giving the AI explicit permission to reject ideas and asking chatbots to provide feedback as though it were for a third party, rather than the user.
As Nicklin argues, subordinates can be sycophantic, too, and “sniffing out the bullshit” is already a core skill for business leaders. But Oakes asks: what happens when you “don’t know what you don’t know”?
Listen now by hitting the play button or use the appropriate entry point into Spotify, Apple or Google Podcasts:
Highlights
2:12: Recent developments in AI: AI-generated music on Deezer, Los Angeles’s AI art museum
6:01: What is AI sycophancy and does it mean bad ideas aren’t getting killed?
16:52: Four tips for combatting AI sycophancy and making a chatbot a “critical friend”
34:44: How to “sniff out the bullshit” when you don’t know what you don’t know
45:38: Second-order effects: commercial damage of wrong decisions; impact on psychology, communication standards; AI education
1:00:58: Verdicts
Believe It or Not Ep. 4: Is AI turning the internet into a sea of slop or has ‘churnalism’ already made it sloppy?
Believe It or Not Ep. 3: Is there still room for human creativity in the AI era?
Believe It or Not Ep. 2: Will humans still touch media plans within five years?
Believe It or Not Ep. 1: Will AI replace most white collar jobs?
