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AI is the biggest technology shift of our lifetime. This show is about how to profit from it together.
Each week I talk with the founders and CEOs closest to AI and Content, the ones figuring this out in real time.
I’m also building an AI content business myself and share the lessons I learn along the way.
WHAT WE COVER
The Titans -- How companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI are moving, and why their decisions matter.
The Incumbents -- How content giants like Disney, News Corp, Universal Music Group, and Reddit are responding to AI, and what it means for creators and publishers.
The Playbook -- Real lessons on AI business models, content strategy, creativity, IP licensing, distribution, and getting paid.
Family & Our Future -- Every episode ends with me asking my guest what AI means for our jobs, our families, and the next generation.
ABOUT YOUR HOST
Rob Kelly has interviewed Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, helped pioneer early web content licensing, and built multiple companies with more than $100 million in total sales. His work has appeared on CNBC, CNN, TIME, and Entrepreneur.
Thanks! -Rob
I'm Rob Kelly, this is Media and the Machine, a show about the biggest technology shift of our lifetime and how to profit from it. Each week, I talk with the founders and CEOs closest to AI and content, the ones figuring this out in real time. I'm also building an AI content business myself and share lessons of what I learned along the way. You know, life's funny. I began my career lucky enough to interview leaders like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Rob Kelly:I Then went on to be a three time founder and CEO, driving a $100,000,000 plus in revenue and some failures too. And now I'm back at the table, interviewing this new world's current and future leaders. This isn't only a business story, it's a human one. So every episode ends with me asking my guest what AI means for our jobs, our families, and the next generation. We'll figure this out together from the inside.
Rob Kelly:Welcome to Media and the Machine. My guest is CJ Chilvers, who went independent recently after parting ways with StudioNorth , a marketing agency. CJ is my first return guest. He was on episode number three, the AI content strategist Big Tech Calls First, where he warned that the AI hype would eventually collide with the need to show real results. Now he says some Fortune 50 companies are cutting 90% of their marketing teams, while expecting the people left behind to produce 10 times more with AI.
Rob Kelly:In some cases, the team trained
CJ Chilvers:the
Rob Kelly:AI before they left. CJ also explains why moving marketing under sales is the wrong move and why, quote, the future is gonna belong to the independents. His biggest prediction, OpenAI and Anthropic have become too big to fail. He argues ads and subscriptions cannot cover the trillions promised for data centers, and that a government bailout is inevitable, in part to protect insider investors. He says the public will pay the bill.
Rob Kelly:CJ warns that this could lead to hyperinflation hitting a population already facing much higher future unemployment. He saw similar warning signs before the two thousand eight financial crisis, where he personally bundled mortgages for HSBC, one of the world's largest banks. But he's not an AI doomer. We end with where AI is working, like radiology, where it detects tumors that human doctors may miss. Please enjoy my conversation with CJ Childers.
Rob Kelly:I just thought I would basically, like, hit record and ask you stuff. And, like, if there's something you say that I should delete, I'll delete it, basically. But, you know, like, there's just certain things I wanna ask you about that I think will come off better if I ask you live than if I tell you right now what I'm gonna ask you.
CJ Chilvers:Oh, yeah.
Rob Kelly:All that stuff.
CJ Chilvers:So No. I got a feeling.
Rob Kelly:You got a feeling. You got a feeling. Okay. See, it's already good. Yeah.
Rob Kelly:Don't say not word.
CJ Chilvers:Tell you if well, you know, there's NDAs. So Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you if I can't say something.
Rob Kelly:I'd much rather have you as a friend than have some weird little gotcha moment. Okay. So CJ, you were on my episode three, very important, third episode I ever did on my podcast. And one of my personal favorites because and it was called the AI content strategist, big tech calls first. The reason it was one of my favorites is that if anyone listens to your answers to everything you say, they would think that I sent you all the questions ahead of time.
Rob Kelly:So what I tell folks about CJ, you, when I'm describing you, is that you're one of the clearest thinkers I know on content and tech. Like, all those answers, you answered on the fly, which I think is like a superpower of yours.
CJ Chilvers:I was being safe. I was really only replying with what I thought the incentives were aligned with. And so just to give you an idea, like, listened to it yesterday just to be prepared for anything I got totally wrong. And, at the five minute mark, we're going right in. At at five minutes, here's a quote.
CJ Chilvers:I couldn't do, like, plan this out better. The quote is, we're talking about the AI companies and their incentives. And the quote is, this is the height of the hype. Right. What was this?
CJ Chilvers:Six months ago? Uh-huh. This is the height of the hype. So how do you get money after this? You have to demonstrate something.
CJ Chilvers:What happens if you can't demonstrate it? I have a sneaking suspicion it's gonna be a bunch of lies. Okay. So you can mistake that for being a very current episode where I'm just stating what's happening. But that was all prediction back then.
CJ Chilvers:So much has happened in that time.
Rob Kelly:And so since then, I mean, you're my first return guest. Congratulations. If I was really handy, I would have some sort of applause, you know, audio gone, but I'm not. The
CJ Chilvers:I'll get a robe at the five times.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. A robe. I like that. That's a good idea. So first return guest, and the main reason is since we last talked, you left your job at StudioNorth at this agency, you know, which shocked me because I just see you as a star, and I had to know I haven't asked you the details of this.
Rob Kelly:I had to know what can you share about what happened with this agency and you leaving.
CJ Chilvers:I can't share much beyond what you've seen in in just headlines for the industry. And I've said this in the last episode. It's weird that I predicted exactly what was gonna happen down to me, which is let's put yourself in the shoes of a tech company, one of the big ones, and you've promised all this money for data centers and you're finding out that you don't have this money because you were expecting to get so many subscribers and you're expecting ad income and you're expecting, you know, quadruple the productivity of the Fortune 50 or or whatever the promise was, and none of that happened on the on the income side. So what are you gonna do?
Rob Kelly:And who are you describing right now?
CJ Chilvers:I can't say. It's, you know, it's one of the things I can't say.
Rob Kelly:No. No. But I mean, I'm not looking for you to get in trouble. I meant, like, literally, who in the sort of chain here of the industry? I wasn't sure if you're talking about
CJ Chilvers:The biggest ones.
Rob Kelly:Fortune five hundred? Is that what you're talking about?
CJ Chilvers:Fortune 50.
Rob Kelly:Fortune 50 companies. Okay. So what happened with Fortune 50 companies since we last talked?
CJ Chilvers:They had to find money. They can't. It's strange. They're all reacting into it in different ways. Let's take Apple because I can say confidently they were not one of my clients.
CJ Chilvers:Right. So I can talk about Apple. Apple hoarded cash for this time. They're not worried. Everybody else is worried.
CJ Chilvers:Around the time this happened to me, I was talking to CMOs, just friends and nothing to do with my work at the agency.
Rob Kelly:These are heads of marketing, chief marketing officers.
CJ Chilvers:Yeah. I know a couple and they're not all titled that but that's their function. And they all said the same thing to me. They said, we're all preparing to be laid off. Like, we're getting our teams ready because I knew it was coming.
CJ Chilvers:I was like, well, you know, what's going on in the rest of the industry? Are there openings? Are there opportunities? What's happening? And every time I I got the same message back, you're lucky.
CJ Chilvers:You're going independent before all of us. You're gonna have months of experiments to measure. We don't. We're screwed. Like, we have to stick with our companies for as long as possible.
Rob Kelly:And why is that? Why can't they leave too?
CJ Chilvers:For the same reason, I can't. I I guess you would say, it's what you sign when you become that high up at a company. You know, who you get to work with, what you get to say, what you get to reveal. So they wanna get the most out of it while they can, and some are doing side projects, but they're all scared. They're scared to death because they know there's nowhere else to go.
CJ Chilvers:Their hope is a lateral move at best, and there's nothing out there. So they were actually envious that I was getting out earlier than they were. I don't know if they should be, but they were.
Rob Kelly:In other words, I mean, they prefer to be laid off now?
CJ Chilvers:Yes. They would. Mhmm.
Rob Kelly:Why would they prefer that as opposed to quitting? Just a better package?
CJ Chilvers:That, and they see the opportunity out there right now. They see there's less opportunity in giant corporations and much more out there for independence. And the future is gonna belong to the independents, especially those who understand AI and agents, and they do. So they want out.
Rob Kelly:I'm just making a note that the future belongs to independence. It's a nice line. It's making me think.
CJ Chilvers:It has to because if you think about all the moats that we've been told about AI, they're all things that independence thrive with and the giant companies don't. Like what? Taste, opinion, of unique point of view. These are all things that companies at that level can afford.
Rob Kelly:Cannot afford?
CJ Chilvers:Yeah. Mhmm.
Rob Kelly:K. And what's happening? Why are these marketing teams being decimated?
CJ Chilvers:And decimated? If that's the right word.
Rob Kelly:I I am it it sounds like something
CJ Chilvers:you Decimated is 10% left or 10% killed. It depends on on how you apply it. But the original meaning was, yeah, one out of every ten soldiers was chosen to be killed as a punishment. So that's decimation. In this case, I guess if you're replying it that way, this is more than decimation.
CJ Chilvers:Okay. Because they're gonna have about 10% of their team left.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. I'm hearing scenarios about that. Why would the CEOs be making that call now, and is that the right call?
CJ Chilvers:For a CEO, their allegiance is to the shareholder. In those terms, it's the right call. Just because they have to find the money somewhere. And if you can't get it from income, you gotta cut costs. They'll probably rehire, but they'll rehire strategically and at much lower cost.
CJ Chilvers:So it's the right move financially. Obviously, they're going to lose their best people in the process, and so it's not the right move strategically.
Rob Kelly:Are some of these fortune 50 companies actually losing nine out of 10 of their marketing team?
CJ Chilvers:Yeah. Wow. The ones I'm talking to.
Rob Kelly:Yeah.
CJ Chilvers:Yeah. Even more than that because I'm talking to the heads of the departments and they're expecting to be laid off. So who's left? I don't know. I hear in some companies they're moving it over to sales.
CJ Chilvers:Mhmm. That's the wrong move.
Rob Kelly:Why is that?
CJ Chilvers:That's absolutely the wrong move. As you look at the tech companies who are really winning in this era, it's the marketing down companies. It's Apple, Nvidia. It's the companies where marketing is from the top, the most important thing. It's a Seth Godin saying, right, of sales has failed marketing.
CJ Chilvers:Mhmm. If you need a big sales team, it's because your marketing team didn't do a good enough job. Right.
Rob Kelly:I'm curious on the marketing teams. So let's go into the scenario of nine out of ten losing their jobs. Any commonality about the one who kept their job? Is it a senior someone? Is it in the middle?
Rob Kelly:Is it lower? Is it an AI savvy person in the marketing team that keeps their job?
CJ Chilvers:So far it's been different at every company. I would guess it's a person who internally position themselves as the expert.
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
CJ Chilvers:And they might not want that job because now they're doing the job with 20 people, you know? Mhmm. But for whatever reason, they've positioned themselves to show that they can do that job.
Rob Kelly:Are they then saying, okay, you're losing 90% of the team, but now you have to use AI and you got this new budget to use AI. Is that what you're hearing?
CJ Chilvers:Is that how it works? I'm wondering what I can say. But some of it I've seen at other companies so I can talk about that. K. What really happened was the team trained the AI before they left.
Rob Kelly:Okay.
CJ Chilvers:So it's left to that one or two people to figure out how to automate all their functions. But they're not just asking for replacement. If your team was doing 20 long form pieces of content a week, they want 200 now and you're down to two people. Mhmm. So they don't say usually in most companies, go use AI to do all this.
CJ Chilvers:But it's implied. Mhmm. And you know, you're gonna 10 x your output with 10% of your workforce. How are gonna do that? You know?
CJ Chilvers:So it's not a matter of really budget as far as I've seen. It's getting to be that way, but that's more at, like, software companies. Mhmm. Where there's a lot of coding. When it comes to marketing, you're not spending that much in tokens.
CJ Chilvers:So really, it's about the amount you can put out.
Rob Kelly:So interesting. So if with one tenth the team, know we're just ballparking here, and 10 x the output, I mean, that's a 100 x change.
CJ Chilvers:And it's bad. It's just really bad.
Rob Kelly:I mean, I'm smiling just because I'm smiling because I did the math right. But how much of this is AI?
CJ Chilvers:Oh, a 100%.
Rob Kelly:It's a 100%.
CJ Chilvers:Yeah. Yeah. I don't believe you know, I don't know when this episode will come out, but there's a current PR campaign going on right now to try to get the public to believe that none of this is caused by AI. You know, there's been over a 100,000 well over a 100,000 layoffs in the last year in tech, and it's being blamed on anything, anything but AI. I can't help but see that this is a concerted campaign.
CJ Chilvers:And the campaign, you know, it's the same thing that happened in the two thousand eight housing crisis. It's a PR campaign. It goes step by step. First of all, it wasn't the industry's fault. Make sure everyone knows that.
CJ Chilvers:Second of all, it isn't happening. You hear this a lot. The AI layoffs, they're not happening. You know, everybody over hired. Well, if you overhire during COVID, that was six years ago.
CJ Chilvers:If you're that bad at leadership and you think of the turnover in tech Mhmm. Right? You turn over once every couple of years or even a year and a half. So you've rehired for that position three times. So not only didn't you need that position, but you've rehired for that position three times.
CJ Chilvers:Times tens of thousands of jobs? No. You should be gone. You shouldn't if that's true, leadership should be gone. They should be the first ones out the door.
CJ Chilvers:That's not true. It's it's not just that they over hired. Not at all. So there's all these things being told. Eventually, it comes down is to a government bailout and the people pay for it.
CJ Chilvers:That's where all this ends up. And we've already seen the trial balloons for that.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. Tell me more about that.
CJ Chilvers:By the time this episode comes out, you'll see more. There'll be more trial balloons.
Rob Kelly:But tell me more about how a bailout might work and more just yeah. What's going on? What do you what do you mean?
CJ Chilvers:You can't promise trillions in data center build out and partnerships when you're only making well, who knows if you're actually making a profit. The best case scenario, you're making tens of billions, let's say Mhmm. In profit. You're not really because the expenses are just but let's just say for the sake of of saying it because all of the companies are saying that. So their stock price won't fall.
Rob Kelly:And who's they in this case? We're still talking Fortune 50 or are we talking about the AI models companies?
CJ Chilvers:The models, but also the picks and shovels people.
Rob Kelly:K.
CJ Chilvers:So they're all, know, boasting about the billions of profit. But they've they've promised trillions in build out.
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
CJ Chilvers:How do you get there from here? I mean, math, you know, it's back of the napkin type of stuff. It doesn't work. Mhmm. The only way you can get there is a government bailout.
CJ Chilvers:It's gonna happen.
Rob Kelly:Who does the government bailout? OpenAI, you mean?
CJ Chilvers:OpenAI is they're the first ones who have just come right out and said it. Anthropic doesn't say it, but they say that so many people are gonna be out of work that the government will need to step in and do something about it. To me, that's just a a smarter way to say bail us out.
Rob Kelly:Do you think a bailout would happen because OpenAI needs the money or because a bunch of people are laid off?
CJ Chilvers:Oh, no. It's just the money.
Rob Kelly:Okay. So literally, OpenAI might be kind of in that new too big to fail category. Gotcha.
CJ Chilvers:And that's the real reason for that circular spending that we've all seen, those charts. You know, each company promising the other company billions and billions Mhmm. Until it gets to this trillions of dollars that nobody has.
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
CJ Chilvers:And that nobody can pay for.
Rob Kelly:Except the government.
CJ Chilvers:Exactly. Mhmm. Which of course, they don't actually pay for inflation increases. Interesting.
Rob Kelly:How'd you come up with that thesis?
CJ Chilvers:It's just happening. And you can just see the incentives for it and plus it's happened before. You know, in 2006, was seeing this. 2007, what I was working for a big bank and I was bundling mortgages. Not in the way you think Mhmm.
CJ Chilvers:Not in the way that people actually made money doing it. I was physically bundling them. So the people were making the big deals at the top. It was my job to take the individual mortgages, audit them, and then put them on big carts bundling them up to be sold to other banks. This was the start of the crisis.
CJ Chilvers:What I saw there, I saw $100,000 loans on shacks in somebody's backyard. Mhmm. I saw big name NFL players getting these massive loans on literally nothing, literally a yard. It just didn't make any sense. We all saw it while we were physically bundling these mortgages.
CJ Chilvers:We weren't making any money off it. We were barely making above minimum wage at that time. But we all saw that coming, and now I feel the same thing. Like, we all see this coming. So much money has been promised that isn't there.
CJ Chilvers:The only way out of it is a government bailout because they've long since passed the point where they could be just acquired, and that's enough. There's not enough money in an acquisition to cover all this. Who's gonna take on all those promises? I can't imagine who. Not even Apple has that cash stored.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. I'm starting to see folks hit OpenAI hard about their profitability coming up to the IPO like Mark Cuban. What's your take on why folks are starting to hit them hard? Any idea? I know it's different depending on which person, but
CJ Chilvers:Yeah. The money just isn't there. So people can see that. Mhmm. And I don't think the criticism is coming from their investors as much as people who are already out.
CJ Chilvers:Mhmm. And invested in other things and saying none of this made sense. Like could you please explain yourself because you seem to be still successful, so is anthropic. Mhmm. So what's going on?
CJ Chilvers:Again, it's echoes of 2008 because what happened like the bond rating agencies, what do they do? They gave them the same ratings even though they knew the bottom had fallen out and there was no there there. But they were still holding on to this promise that no, everything's gonna be fine. Everything's just gonna be the way it was. And we all knew there was nothing there.
CJ Chilvers:So I feel the same way about the AI companies. They've yet to show how they're gonna make this money. It's not gonna be through subscribers. We know that. Mhmm.
CJ Chilvers:In our last episode, we said it's gotta be through ads. Mhmm. Now they've surpassed what ads can do. So I don't know where they're going besides a bailout.
Rob Kelly:Yeah. It made me think back to when AOL bought Time Warner. Different, but there's just some a little bit. I'm wondering if the big AI companies will use let's just say they're able to go public well, SpaceX is public, and I'm calling them in part an AI company, but Anthropic and OpenAI, pure AI companies planning to go public, roughly a trillion dollar valuation. And do they go ahead and just buy, call it, quote, more legit businesses that actually have the goods?
Rob Kelly:Couldn't they just buy up a bunch of, you know, the big SaaS companies, the sales forces of the world and
CJ Chilvers:They're putting them out of business. So I Right, bro.
Rob Kelly:I mean, they don't want to buy them. Right?
CJ Chilvers:Right. Well, they had to choose a path, either acquisition Uh-huh. Or or they they had to go nuclear, hit the button, and just say, okay. We're taking over everything. And that seems to be what they've done.
Rob Kelly:Is what? Take over everything?
CJ Chilvers:Or no. Hit the button.
Rob Kelly:Hit the button. Put the button to
CJ Chilvers:where everything.
Rob Kelly:Hit the button to
CJ Chilvers:To just say, okay. We're gonna do every SaaS thing.
Rob Kelly:Oh, yeah.
CJ Chilvers:You know, our agents are gonna do everything. Right. They didn't have to do that. They could have held back on that, positioned themselves for acquisition, and said, so whatever company was gonna acquire them, now you have the power. Build whatever you want.
Rob Kelly:I'm just curious. Do you think that OpenAI and Anthropix IPOs will go ahead? Like, you know, they're pretty imminent.
CJ Chilvers:I think we're getting a glimpse into whether there will be a bailout from all of that. Like how entrenched are they? You know, what can they get done to help themselves and exit Mhmm. Before the bottom drops out. So I think that's it's just a signal.
CJ Chilvers:I have no idea. Right. But it'll be a nice signal to get.
Rob Kelly:And what's the difference in this case between, let's say, OpenAI and Anthropic getting bailed out versus just a bubble? Is it the same?
CJ Chilvers:Well, every bubble has the same effect, but every bubble is completely different. And we're always blindsided by how a bubble bursts.
Rob Kelly:Mhmm.
CJ Chilvers:So it's best just to stay out of it. And there's different tactics for that. If you're in the the Warren Buffett School, right now, you're out. If you if you know a lot, you're out. If you don't know a lot, you're still in, but you're so well diversified.
CJ Chilvers:In ten years, it'll probably be okay.
Rob Kelly:Well, right. And I mean, Buffett always did what Apple, it sounds like, is doing right now, which is hoarded cash for a rainy day Mhmm. And just be ready. And everyone said, why are you sitting on all this cash? What are you doing with it?
Rob Kelly:And Buffett would always say, I'm just waiting. I'm waiting for that big
CJ Chilvers:I'm waiting for the sale. I'm waiting for yeah. The clearance sale.
Rob Kelly:Oh, yeah. That's when he salivates and, you know, buy low. He can buy OpenAI for a 100,000,000. So the sequence can be a bubble first and then a bailout, but it also could be a bailout before things hit a bubble.
CJ Chilvers:Which then gets into a dark place because then you're talking hyperinflation.
Rob Kelly:In which scenario?
CJ Chilvers:Well, maybe in both. Okay. But definitely in the bailout scenario Mhmm. Where everybody just wants things to remain the same. Don't rock the boat.
CJ Chilvers:Right. Then you could get hyperinflation into a population that has much bigger unemployment. So what does that look like? You know, I don't wanna know.
Rob Kelly:So these reports that the US government might be investing in OpenAI, is that really the beginning of the signal for the bailout? I mean, I was looking at it was, like, maybe 10%.
CJ Chilvers:I don't know.
Rob Kelly:I haven't looked at the latest, but I just saw, you know
CJ Chilvers:Right.
Rob Kelly:Is that the beginning?
CJ Chilvers:I don't know if it's a good signal for a bailout. It's a good signal that you've tied yourself to a government that doesn't wanna look bad Mhmm. And its investments. So that's a good thing right now. I don't know beyond that what it means.
CJ Chilvers:And we could see what happened with Anthropic. Right? Mhmm. Who didn't offer tribute,
Rob Kelly:let's say. Mhmm.
CJ Chilvers:And you can see how the two have been treated. And you know, you can draw your own conclusion from that, but I don't think it's a signal of the bailout or not.
Rob Kelly:And you like incentives, I know, and think about it. I'm now thinking, so The US is one of The US's incentives to keep OpenAI and Anthropic around is they actually need to have parity with China and AI geopolitically. They actually need the AI for weapons in many cases. Would that be the main reason that they bail them out?
CJ Chilvers:No. I think the main reason is money, but that is another reason.
Rob Kelly:But money for who? Money for
CJ Chilvers:Yeah. That's, you know, that's the question. Right? It's not it's not money for us. It's money for for insiders.
CJ Chilvers:I'll just put it that way.
Rob Kelly:You mean insiders within the government, say government leaders or
CJ Chilvers:Right now. Yeah. Okay. And I think with a change of government, you know, coming up not too distant future, it may be more business interest. The thing is about insiders is we can't see, so we don't know.
CJ Chilvers:Okay. But it sure seems like a insider play that's been happening.
Rob Kelly:Okay. So my first take was, like, geopolitically, you know, Trump is our president right now running the government. Like, he, you know, he does not need a black eye in AI. He wants to be number one in AI, and also our military relies a lot on AI these days. But you're also saying perhaps there's actual insiders who have influence who say, like, you gotta keep these things alive, man.
Rob Kelly:We got too much money riding on an OpenAI.
CJ Chilvers:I think that's the number one thing.
Rob Kelly:And you think that's number one. Okay.
CJ Chilvers:Yeah. That's always the number one incentive. Money. You know, will show that. Mhmm.
CJ Chilvers:And it may take ten, twenty years, whoever, you know, I don't know. But we'll find out about all kinds of deals that happened behind the scenes. I'm absolutely sure of that because that's what history has shown us.
Rob Kelly:Is there anything this reminds you of at all in history?
CJ Chilvers:Well, definitely 2008. Mhmm. And then the stocks '99 into 2000 because there's so many people who have been laid off. If you think back to that time, that's when day trading became a thing. Right before that because people could make more money just trading stocks than they could being a barista or whatever.
Rob Kelly:In the February, you're saying?
CJ Chilvers:No. Right before 2000. Everybody says the pets.com era.
Rob Kelly:Okay. Pets.com era. Yep. Okay.
CJ Chilvers:So there was this delusional frenzy to invest because people were like, well, I'm making, you know, $200 a day off a few stocks. Why would I go to work? I'm happy here. I see that a lot right now.
Rob Kelly:Okay.
CJ Chilvers:So that's not a good sign. You should not be doing that. You should not be making that. That is a sign of overvalued market for sure.
Rob Kelly:So that's basically the .com bubble. I'm looking at the exact timing. Pets.com went out of business in November 2000 after major ad campaigns in '98 and '99, and they're sort of the symbol of that era. Okay.
CJ Chilvers:But now we have that. We have exactly what they were, and it's a thriving business. So, you know, I don't know what to do with that. It was just a delusional time. Mhmm.
CJ Chilvers:And I see that right now. Things are very delusional right now.
Rob Kelly:That same scale or are you thinking it's gonna be much greater?
CJ Chilvers:Well, back then, not everybody was on the web. Right?
Rob Kelly:Right.
CJ Chilvers:So it's much bigger scale in those terms. Everybody's online. So it involves everybody. Mhmm. Back then, was mostly nerds.
CJ Chilvers:Mhmm. Mostly nerds like me. Me too. I had my first e commerce store in '94. Mhmm.
CJ Chilvers:So yeah. I go way back with the nerd kind of attitude in this. But it wasn't the nerds making the money at that time. It was the people who were just out selling an idea Mhmm. With not a whole lot to back it up.
CJ Chilvers:And I see that now too. It's just all these AI companies. Lots of promises, implementation is nowhere to be found.
Rob Kelly:But it did work out for the internet. Now we have the equivalent of pets.com. So, I mean, is this all I don't wanna say just, but is this all just a big bubble that bursts and a big bailout that happens, and then you and I are talking twenty years from now, and everyone's using AI and it's all hunky dory?
CJ Chilvers:Everybody will be using it. I don't think we'll refer to it as AI anymore. Right. It'll just be normal background stuff we can do.
Rob Kelly:But I meant more like, will it end up just being this giant speed bump in history and things work out? We're just looking at a really painful, you know, next few years. Is that what you're feeling?
CJ Chilvers:I don't think there's an appetite for that anymore. You know, this is something that I that I hear economists talk about all the time is we forgot about moral hazard. We just put it to the side in 2008 and just decided, hey, we can just print money forever. Mhmm. Or kick it down the road to the next generation.
CJ Chilvers:Well, it's the next generation is here now. And they've never known a world where a big business could just fail. So I don't think there's an appetite for it. I think it should happen, but I don't think it can happen. Whatever party was overseeing that would be out of office for a very long time.
Rob Kelly:What's an area AI has almost completely taken over in a positive way?
CJ Chilvers:What is well adopted is in radiology, where AI can detect the smallest tumors that doctors can't detect. So the doctors, they say they're still around, but the AI is doing a better job than they can do. They're here to detect false positives and to give their opinions on what a course of treatment could be. So eighty five percent of radiologists are are using it daily. So that's that's a big deal.
Rob Kelly:Well, CJ, thanks so much for sharing an update just on how things are going, and really appreciate all your time.
CJ Chilvers:Well, thanks for spending this time with me. I actually have the time now, so this is awesome.
Rob Kelly:No. I can't wait to hear on the next creations that come out, all your newfound time, and can't wait to learn more from you. So looking forward to Yeah. Me too. To a part three.
CJ Chilvers:Sounds great.
Rob Kelly:Alright. Take care, CJ. Thanks so much. Well, this is Media and the Machine. A few things about you and me.
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