Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Welcome to Prompting Curiosity, a podcast for the AI curious. No coding background required. I'm your host, Dr. Shantae Cofield, also known as the Maestro, and I created this show to explore what these AI tools actually are. Really, though, are the files in the computer, how to use them, and what they might mean for how we think, work, create, and move through life. Whether you're skeptical, intrigued, or already experimenting, you're in the right place. All that I ask is that you stay curious. All right, let's get into it.
[00:00:38] Hello, hello, hello, my curious people, and welcome to episode 56. 56 of Prompting Curiosity. I am your grateful host, the Maestro, and it has officially been one year of recording episodes for this podcast. So, technically, last week was one year, and. And I definitely celebrated hitting 50 episodes, and then I celebrated hitting 52 episodes because it's 52 weeks in a year.
[00:01:05] But date wise, we have officially hit one year. We launched on. We, me and Rupert, uh, launched on August 7th of 2025, and I am recording this on August 5th, 2026. And this will go out on, like, August. I'm looking at the calendar August 13, uh, of 2026. So it has officially been one year. This is episode 56.
[00:01:31] And in case you're doing the math here, the count mismatch is because I launched the podcast, which was originally called Chat GPT Curious. Remember that? Uh, I launched it with three episodes, as one does when you are launching a podcast during binge culture time. Right? The age of the binge. Uh, so I figured, given that it's been one year, I'd use today's episode to just riff and share my unfiltered thoughts about AI as it currently stands in August of 2026. Right? No teaching today, no tips or anything like that.
[00:02:05] Um, though, of course, at the end of the episode, I will be doing the How I Used AI this Week segment, because we love a routine here. So, y' all know, I stay talking about how I stay in those social media streets, namely threads, as it relates to. To A.I. uh, and the discourse there is just always so inflammatory and polarizing and, dare I say it, catastrophic, right? It is extremely hard to find a chill, nuanced take.
[00:02:36] And, you know, the very unfortunate nature of social media combined with an extreme loneliness epidemic and, you know, folks taking to the Internet in an attempt to be seen is what we get, right? We get these silos of shouting, and it's always, like, extreme positions, and AI is here and it's taking everybody's job, or like, hey, it's going to, you know, fail and this. All these extreme positions, no nuance with anything. So I want to give you my general thoughts. I got like a little list here and then I'm going to dive into a few of the points and would love to hear back from you. Right. I, I genuinely, genuinely appreciate and enjoy hearing back from you. I've said it many times. Podcasting is such a unidirectional medium, you know, such a unidirectional platform. I'm talking to the screen here, so just knowing that it's landing, it does mean the world. So would love to hear your thoughts, but in no particular order, my general thoughts on AI. So first off, it definitely has some cool use cases and some genuine utility, but the benefits are absolutely not distributed equally across all domains. And we see this, right? Knowledge workers, like, wow, we have so many things we can do with this. And other people are like, I'm a painter, right? Like, I, I don't know, I'm a, a, you know, some sort of service worker. I'm like, this, this thing doesn't help me. And I'm like, I get that it is not equally distributed. Equally distributed across all domains.
[00:04:02] Next thought. It is a great and easy target for people's frustrations towards the insidification of everything, right? Everything's getting worse and more expensive and here's AI, and people can just yell at that and say they hate it. And also, you know, it's tied into the environment, so they kind of feel like double good saying, saying things about it. And it's just being shoved down people's throats and it, it objectively makes some things worse. And so it's just an easy target to just be like, this is the fucking worst. And if you use AI, you're stupid. And if you use AI, like, you're the worst. And it's like, it is an easy target for, for people's justifiable frustration, you know, they have towards the engine ification of everything.
[00:04:48] Next point.
[00:04:49] It is not objectively inevitable. Like, you can't be like, oh, AI's here and there's nothing we can do and just get on board or, you know, die. And it's like, it's not true. It's objectively not true. Right? Uh, it is not objectively inevitable. But the flip side, given how enamored with and how entrenched in capitalism our society is, I do think it's inevitable when viewed through that lens, unfortunately.
[00:05:16] All right, next point, as it relates to gen pop use, and this ties into the previous point we could and probably should stop right now. We don't need to develop anything more. We don't have to do anymore. We don't need to be researching anymore. You know, it's on one hand, it's kind of cool to say that, you know, if I'm looking at AI today, it is the worst that it will ever be.
[00:05:39] Right? It's only going to continue to get better and more capable. But we could stop, and we probably should stop right now. You know, we're kind of seeing the, some of these CEOs be like, hey, maybe we should pump the brakes on these frontier models and just like, we should have some safeguards and things. It's like, no, we should be done with it. Absolutely, absolutely.
[00:06:01] Uh, and to that end, my next point, we absolutely do not need these huge fucking data centers. Like, that's one of the biggest arguments around it.
[00:06:09] And I need to do an episode about data centers. I am holding off on it, I'm putting it off, I'm punting it because there's going to be research involved. And I'm like, I'm tired. I have a lot of stuff that I'm doing, uh, and sitting and sifting through. But like, data centers in and of themselves are not bad. Having these gigantic economies of scale, it is more efficient, but we don't need all these new data centers. We've had data centers for, for years and years and years. So they're not objectively in themselves, in and of themselves bad, but we don't need these massive data centers. This is all just like a power play, pun intended, I guess. Uh, this is a money grab.
[00:06:44] It's unnecessary. It's fully and wholly unnecessary. And you know, some of them, I don't even think they're going to come to fruition, thankfully. Uh, but it's, it's not, it's not needed. We do not need these huge data centers. Right, next point. The fact that companies are stuffing AI in everything and literally shoving it down our throats to me, speaks to the fact that these companies aren't making any money and they are scrambling.
[00:07:14] Which brings me to the next point.
[00:07:17] It is all absolutely funny money, circular money at this point. And I have no idea if the bubble is going to pop or if it's ever going to be officially categorized as a bubble.
[00:07:29] But that, uh, money is funny and circular as hell. And I encourage you to not dig into it because you will just give yourself an ulcer. You know, honestly, I've said this before and I think you can hear in my Voice. When I start, you know, really talking about this stuff, all the, the fintech stuff that I was, you know, consuming quite a bit of, really turned me off from having any desire to predict what might happen in any way, shape or form. Right. That's literally all those podcasts do. I used to watch that Prof. G. Podcast with Ed Elson and um, Professor Galloway. Scott Galloway. Scott Galloway. I actually, you know, have an episode, Old Navy episode, largely inspired by conversation on there and it's just annoying at this point. Feels like the news but like somehow worse.
[00:08:19] They just say all the bad stuff that's happening. They say that it should be illegal. They point out how the worst people are winning and will face no repercussions if anything does happen. And then they predict what's going to happen. But you know, maybe conveniently leave out the, the part that no matter what happens, especially if it's something bad, it won't actually affect them because they're rich. Especially Scott Galloway. And you're just like, you're over here telling us resist and unsubscribe. Meanwhile you have stock and you can sell and buy and, and you know, he's a multi millionaire many times over. Like this is, this is a game, isn't it? Doesn't actually affect him. Right. But I would advise stay away from the, the fintech, the fintech stuff, um, but not trying to predict anything that that is going to happen. But I honestly don't see some, you know, as it currently stands, I don't see some permanent great workforce replacement coming anytime soon.
[00:09:20] You know, yes, people are absolutely losing their jobs to AI, but not because AI is so capable. Right. They're losing their jobs to capitalism and corporate greed. That's it. They're literally not losing their jobs to AI.
[00:09:34] Like and these people, some of them are being hired back. But at the uh, you know, the same vein, it's like they are not losing it because AI is so capable in replacing them. And it's like, wow, look, all the stuff we can get done. It's literally These corporations and CEOs are like, I can continue to turn an endless profit. Because that sounds logical. And the way we can do that is cut this line item, cut this expense, cut salaries, get rid of these people and hire robots. I actually saw a great clip from John Stewart's, John Stewart's podcast and he was interviewing. I'm not sure how to pronounce the guys last name. Corey Doctorow.
[00:10:08] He's the author of the book and why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and what to do about it. And Corey made a great case for AI because actually Corey has a very treatable type of cancer. And he was just, uh, diagnosed as, like, it's. He doesn't have it anymore. Um, it's gone for now. I'm not showing on the scan, something like that. Uh, but he made a case for AI being used to assist radiologists and ultimately costing the hospital more money. But saving lives, right? Where you keep the same team, but then you bring in AI on top of it. It like, scans what the radiologists are scanning and maybe picks up a few other things. And like, you know, you save a few lives, but it costs the hospital an extra million dol, uh, over the course of that year. And he was like, I can completely get behind that use case. He's like, but what we're seeing now and how it's currently being promoted is actually, oh, you have 10 radiologists, fire nine of them, implement this AI, pocket the profits. And if people die because something gets missed, because this robot is, you know, working at a speed far faster than any human could check it, well, then the robots could be used as a scapegoat, right?
[00:11:17] Corporate capitalism, y', all, is going to kill us all.
[00:11:21] But I am honestly, again, I don't want to, like, make predictions of anything. I'm just honestly interested to see what we do with it as a society. Right? It is, like I said earlier, it's being forced down our throats. And that's the greatest, in my opinion, that's the greatest obstacle to people actually adopting it. Uh, you try to force something, you know, try to force people to do something. They're like, I don't want to do it. They, they absolutely dig their heels in. All right? And then that's. That's followed closely by the fact that most people just genuinely don't have a great use case for it. And so it's like they don't have use case for it, but they're being, it's being shoved into any everything. And then the prices go up on things, the quality of things. When I'm, I'm looking at my computer right now and I use the software called descript for editing videos, and like, they put all this AI in it. The price goes up. The editor was broken for, for, uh, some time. And I'm like, worry about that. I don't need Underlord in here. I need the editor that I paid for. And that, that's what you do. I need that to work.
[00:12:25] But as it relates to what, uh, we as a society do Like I said in that list, it is, AI is a great, and it's an easy target for people's frustrations, for the incentive and ification of everything. Absolutely. Right now we're seeing Hank gre.
[00:12:41] That dude is getting dragged. He's getting dragged for using AI and there seems to be so little nuance in the public discourse around it and like, no grace for him. I'm seeing some things, but there's like so little nuance and it's just, it's very interesting. And I, I, I piggyback that off of the statement of, you know, AI being this target because there, there is so little grace being extended there. There's, I will say that there are people, you know, speaking against it, against, you know, in favor of him and just, uh, trying to impart some nuance. But the fact that there's such, you know, uh, discourse that's so strong, he's like literally getting dragged. And this guy's been so helpful and, and so prolific with content creation for so long and people are just like, they see no use case for it to allow it to support it. Like, I, I honestly haven't fully researched the case to see what he did.
[00:13:41] Um, and I also don't care, Like, I wish that he was transparent. That is the main thing is that you just always wish people are transparent with how they're using it. I don't care that you use it. Tell me that you're using it and then let me make my decision on my own. Right. So ultimately I hope that we get more nuance and we get more public discourse around, around AI. But uh, in terms of what we as a society do with it, I do think that it will continue to have an impact on search, uh, in that it is really nice to just get an answer instead of a bunch of links. There are certain things that I will do on Google for sure and like, I am the type of person when I'm searching for something. I will go to page two, page three. I don't need to just be in the very first one. But like, it is really nice to get just the answer. I know for a fact, like businesses. Anyone that was a blogger that did like, um, food blogging or recipe blogging, I know their business is getting. Because I don't have to go read your stupid blog now. I can just get the, what I wanted the whole time was just the recipe. Not like the story about how you like hung out with Aunt Susan one time and then got the recipe and then it was stomach. I don't care. I don't care. I love that you're doing this. I love that. You know, grateful, but I don't care. Go ahead and put ads on it. I get it. Make your money. But, like, I don't need to have this story time in here. So in that case, into that end, it's very nice to have the ability just, you know, get an answer about things.
[00:15:09] Um, but no, it's not going to replace everything because people still want the human experience with it. They want the. The human behind it. They trust the human more. But, you know, again, I'm interested to see what we do with it as a, as a society. Um, but, you know, the fact that it's, uh, being forced on people and the AI results are being shown first on Google, that's not good for adoption. Nobody wants things forced on them. So do I think that that will continue to prolong its general adoption? Yes, absolutely. You know, I try to, you know, I try not to. I should say try not to apply my own usage and my own preferences to the population at large.
[00:15:50] But I do be noticing what people who are older than me, you know, in their 50s or 60s, what they're doing, and some of them are using AI. They'd be calling it chat GBT. Like B as in boy, chat GBT.
[00:16:06] Uh, my goodness. Jesus Christ. With the, uh, the generated. The AI generated images, man. My mom be all that. I'm like, mom, stop that. Knock it off. But we know that demographic, that, that age range, that, that what is in that name of that. That demographic that it's gonna bother me that I can't think of the word. And I know that you listening to this, are screaming it right now, and you're in your car, in your head, and you're like, that's it. What is the name for that? Where we have like, Gen Z, Gen Alpha millennials.
[00:16:38] That.
[00:16:39] Wow, that's gonna. That's gonna bother me. The genre is not right.
[00:16:43] Uh, but I know these folks are listening to this and being like, use Maestro. You're on drugs. And I feel like it. I'm like, why can't I. A generation, wow, there it is. Generation.
[00:16:57] Uh, but that generation be using it. And to me, that is telling, right, that it does speak to adoption. I'm like, all right. Because people always, you know, we look at the younger generations and say, what are they doing? That's. That tells us, like, what's coming, what's going to be held on to. I was going to typically going to be adopted, but with tech, I'M looking at the older generation as well. And if they are hopping on new tech, that says something that we cannot ignore that. Right? We know the folks that are younger than me, folks that are way younger than me, uh, the numbers show that they are using it. That's why AI usage typically spikes during the school year and it drops off in the summers because like kids stop using it. Um, but in common sense would tell us that they're using it. I don't need a chart, but I can just say common sense. But the charts do. They do back it up. But honestly, I have no idea. Again, I'm saying it from predictions, but I have no idea how it's going to play out. But I do maintain, like I've said in like those very early episodes, like episode like 4i.
[00:17:56] What we do and do not value as a society will be and is the biggest predictor of how AI will be used. If we continue to champion fast, flashy, you know, money, superficial things, material things, we shouldn't be surprised that students are using AI left and right.
[00:18:17] We're not championing, championing the journey. We are championing the final destination.
[00:18:23] I get as fast as you can, make the most money, have the most power. Money is power. Like, of course, people, students, kids, they're like writing this paper to myself, I can just do it faster. I get it. We have no championing or modeling of the val about the value of the journey. Like, so we'll see, we'll see what happens. I feel, I feel bad for teachers. I think that that is a. They're in a tough position. Um, in general, being a teacher's tough position. Understaffed, underpaid, over studented. Right. There's too many kids in the class. I do think that there are solutions of just, you know, it's, it's a numbers thing of like have the kids, right? Have the kids, you know, writing that blue book. I remember those things. Have them do, you know, auditory things, oral presentations. That's the solution. But that's time. And I don't know if we, we have that. I, you know, I think the flip side is that AI could be used in classes to help students.
[00:19:21] It allows you to personalize and customize lessons for individual learners. People be learning differently. I think there's so much value, so much potential there. You know, I Google notebook. I'm going to come back and talk about that at the end of the episode. But you know, what's going to happen with it and stu, it's with students and younger generation. I I don't know. Um, but looking at the time. So lastly, I'm gonna wrap it up here. Wrap it up soon. Um, but lastly, if there was an option to have everything start from scratch and there's no way, I. There's no Internet. Yeah. I'm on board. Cool. Get rid of everything.
[00:19:56] But as it stands right now, I'm absolutely not willing to give it up. No. It is so helpful for my business. It's helpful for my brain. It is helpful for me, and I refuse to be bullied. You know what I feel like is, and, um, when I'm reading things as Is to be bullied by folks who have no use for it. And I'm like, cool. I will never say that anyone needs to use it or should use it ever. I will never say that. If you want to use it, use it. If you don't, absolutely do not.
[00:20:26] Right. I think that we are headed down an all too familiar path of blaming the individual and punishing the individual when it's the corporation that needs to be held accountable. Right. It's giving paper straws, my friend. Not to say that I'm not concerned about the environment and did that whole episode early on, uh, and I need to do, like, a revamp of that or just like, circle back to that. I read these things peripherally and I. I largely maintain the numbers.
[00:20:49] And I was more than the numbers. I largely maintained the, um, the decisions and the conclusions that I came to from doing that research that, like, you really can't trust a lot of what's out there. So much of it is just objectively wrong and presented to be inflammatory. And it's crazy because it's like, in the newspaper. I'm like, this is wrong, though. I'm like, going through all the studies that they're using, and I'm like, you took the wrong numbers. So I, you know, I do read Andy Maisie is probably, like, my number one resource with this. And I just don't trust what's put out there. And from the negative side of things, like, yes, I am absolutely concerned about the environment. And like I said, we absolutely do not need these massive data centers. And yes, black and brown communities will be disproportionately impacted. They were trying to put one near where I live, uh, in El Segundo. And that thing got voted down before it even, like, had a chance. And it's like, of course we're doing this super affluent. And there's also what's, you know, interesting fact, there's already data centers there. Um, but like, we live in a super affluent area and people got money, they got power, they're not gonna let that fly.
[00:21:59] But you know, from my understanding of where we're at with the technology, we don't even need these massive data centers. We don't need all this for compute. Like, this is all just money grabs and, and hopes and dreams and more of that funny circular money.
[00:22:13] Right? And uh, I do not agree with that. We do not need that. But I also do not want to give up AI And I don't think that it has to be an either or. It's not like, okay, we'll keep AI and that means we have to keep the big data centers.
[00:22:24] No, we can not have the data centers and we can keep AI. It's not an either or there. Uh, but what I can say for sure about AI, ah, is that I continue to use it to build things like my dashboard. And I recently made the content creation tracker which came out so good. And I've been updating it as I and running the program and getting feedback and people are using it like, oh, they don't change this, change this. It's cool having something that's, that's client facing.
[00:22:51] Um, but as I continue to build things, I continue to be amazed. Like, this is wild that we can do this with just simple, simple language. That's crazy, right? Uh, and again, the benefits of AI are not equally distributed across all disciplines. But as it relates to what I do, the benefits are there and I am not willing to give up what, what it can do. Absolutely not. You know, yes. I'm also nervous that these companies will just jack up the price one day. It feels very inevitable. Uber has showed us this. Right. I've talked about, you know, the Uber playbook time and time again on this podcast, but that's partially why I did last week's episode about open weight models to, you know, so that I can understand better about it. And that definitely made me feel better.
[00:23:40] Right. I was like, okay, there seems to be a safety net, a backstop on this that like if Claude and, and Chat GPT decide to just go crazy with their prices, we can go to an open weight model and just pay less. Like they are competing in a true open market. But, and they're capable. That's the biggest thing there. They are so close to being the same capability as these frontier models, especially for what we use them for. Right. But I will say that there's definitely continues to be a feeling of fragility as I've built these tools.
[00:24:14] That I quite, quite frankly have no idea how they work. Like, I have a loose understanding of the frameworks, things like that. And I wasn't just pure vibe coding. I was like, hey, just build this thing. I have the scaffolding, the framework that I like using. I know the database that I like using. I know the, um, server, uh, side of things that I like using. But I don't know what to type into stuff. I don't know how it works at all. I don't know the code that's needed for this. I don't know SQL, like ADD language. I don't, I don't know these things. I literally have no idea what to do. And something like, doesn't work. I just put it into AI and I'm like, this is what it shows. What's. Can you fix this? And yes, you can ask questions and you can learn things along the way, but like, I cannot fix this thing. I can't go into the code and know what it's supposed to be. This isn't just like the aesthetic side and it's like, okay, well, it's just some CSS or some HTML. It's very simple. And like, I don't know, this is a lot of stuff that's going on here. So, you know, there's definitely that feeling of fragility there.
[00:25:11] Um, but that is a discussion for another day. So as I do my best to look outside of the social media silos and their strong opinions about AI, I personally am going to abstain from making any definitive predictions about AI. And all I'm going to say is that one, uh, year into this podcast and 56 episodes later, I continue to be very curious about AI, and I am extremely grateful for everyone of you.
[00:25:44] All right, how we used AI this week and then we'll wrap it up for good. So each episode I share a quick example of how I, or someone I know used AI that week. So this week I'm sharing a fun case, a fun use case that Lex told me about today, uh, from one of her, or, uh, rather that one of her SEO inner circle clients shared with her. And that person is using Google Notebook LM to create graphics that outline any processes that she has laid out in a blog post and thus, uh, better help the reader understand the information that she's presenting. And I fucking love this. I fucking love this. So if you don't know what Google Notebook LM is, I did an entire episode about it. Episode 25, you can go check that out. Um, but that is definitely a Super, uh, incredible and super strategic use of AI, namely, or more specifically Google Notebook lm.
[00:26:38] And I'm so here for it. All right, that right there is all for today. Hopefully you found this episode helpful and if you did consider sharing it with somebody, you know who is curious about the AI, I think this is a nice one to share. People can get a feel for where I am at. You know, I'm not an AI apologist. I am an AI realistic. Um, and I'm curious about it so people can get a, a take on, on my, my stance. I definitely find myself when I tell people that I am into AI, it's not a huge part of me. It's not even a big part of me by any means. It's like, oh, how are they gonna feel about this? But I was on a podcast today and I just felt the need to be like, hey, I am curious about AI, but like those big ass data centers, like, I'm one of the good ones. Um, but I think it's a good episode to share. So if the spirit moves you, I would love that.
[00:27:30] Don't forget I have a companion newsletter and blog, the Curious Companion, that drops every Thursday and is basically the podcast episode in text format. So if you prefer to read or you just want a written record of the things, join the newsletter. Fam. You can head to prompting Curiosity.com um, forward slash newsletter or forward slash blog. Or keep it simple and just check out the link in the show notes. As always, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you.
[00:28:00] And the biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest, thank you for being here for a year of prompting Curiosity. I truly, folks, I truly am so, so very grateful.
[00:28:11] Here is to another year. All right, until we chat again next Thursday, stay curious.
[00:28:19] It.
