Public Perception: AI Consciousness & Marketing Impact
Key Points
- A University of Waterloo survey found that roughly two‑thirds of the general public believe AI possesses some degree of consciousness, even though experts know current models only predict the next token.
- People tend to equate fluent language and vast knowledge with internal experience, using the “duck‑test” (if it walks and talks like a duck, it’s a duck) to assume AI is human‑like.
- A separate Washington State University study showed that simply labeling product copy as “artificial intelligence” does **not** improve consumer perception and can actually diminish trust, especially for higher‑priced or high‑consideration purchases.
- These findings suggest marketers must be cautious about invoking AI in branding, as misconceptions about AI’s “intelligence” and associated fears can backfire rather than enhance credibility.
Full Transcript
# Public Perception: AI Consciousness & Marketing Impact **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bALjI_OVrSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bALjI_OVrSE) **Duration:** 00:12:21 ## Summary - A University of Waterloo survey found that roughly two‑thirds of the general public believe AI possesses some degree of consciousness, even though experts know current models only predict the next token. - People tend to equate fluent language and vast knowledge with internal experience, using the “duck‑test” (if it walks and talks like a duck, it’s a duck) to assume AI is human‑like. - A separate Washington State University study showed that simply labeling product copy as “artificial intelligence” does **not** improve consumer perception and can actually diminish trust, especially for higher‑priced or high‑consideration purchases. - These findings suggest marketers must be cautious about invoking AI in branding, as misconceptions about AI’s “intelligence” and associated fears can backfire rather than enhance credibility. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bALjI_OVrSE&t=0s) **Survey Shows Majority See AI Conscious** - A University of Waterloo survey revealed that roughly two‑thirds of laypeople believe AI has some degree of consciousness, sparking discussion about the validity of such perceptions versus technical understanding. ## Full Transcript
AI is moving so fast I have trouble
keeping up with it sometimes here are
five pieces of news that I paid
attention to over the first week of
August number one the University of
waterl researchers did a survey to find
out what ordinary people think I'm not
counting myself as ordinary because I
work in Tech and I look at this all day
so people who don't stare at AI all day
what are they thinking about whether AI
is conscious or not whether it passes
what we call the Turing test which is
the traditional test for AI and the sort
of human uh interactions and whether AI
counts as human by the way it does pass
the touring test now and we found out
that's not very
useful so net net the researchers just
straight out ask like what do you think
of AI is ai ai conscious and the
overwhelming answer is that most people
think that AI has some degree of
Consciousness like two-thirds or so
now I'm not in that two-thirds bucket uh
I've looked at the at the way the
systems are put together I understand
enough about token generation to sort of
understand what's happening but I can
also really understand why if you don't
understand it it makes sense that it's
conscious because if we look around us
at the animal kingdom unless you speak
whale we're the only people who are
speaking language that we understand and
we have long Associated the ability to
speak speak language with the ability to
be smart and now here we have something
that has infinite memory or it seems
infinite right it's it's understood so
much about what we've written as a
species you can ask it about just about
any topic Humanity has explored it will
tell you
something and at the same
time it's just predicting the next token
of the next word people have a really
hard time wrapping their heads around
that one and I think the simplifier that
most people take kind of understandably
is that if it walks like a dock and it
talks like a duck it's probably a duck
it talks like a human so it probably has
some of the internal experiences of a
human is the way people sort of assume
things and what's interesting is that
bleeds into the way people perceive AI
in ways that we in product we in Tech we
in marketing need to think about because
another survey dropped this one from
Washington State University and it talks
about how AI in every case that they
checked does not improve perceptions of
a product marketing copy I'm going to
say it again AI or the use of the word
artificial intelligence does not improve
the perception of the product and
marketing copy and furthermore the more
expensive and the more High
consideration the purchase the more
likely it is to yield a negative effect
in other words people trust it less the
pricier it
is that makes sense to me especially if
you combine it with that first sort of
note around artificial intelligence
and how people think of it as actually
intelligent as actually sort of human in
some ways if you have some fear if you
have some uncertainty if you have some
doubt around what AI really is whether
AI is going to sort of take over maybe
you watch Terminator as a kid you are
not going to love the idea of AI in your
toaster or AI in your fridge or AI
wherever they're advertising it as a
benefit like AI by itself is not going
to be perceived as a
benefit so when we're building products
we actually have to talk about what the
AI unlocks I keep saying this and it's
true like if you can't articulate the
use case for what the AI is bringing to
the customer AI by itself isn't going to
work it's like back in the 1990s I
remember when people would want to talk
about how their company was green and
they would literally take out newspaper
ads or magazine ads and they would
greenwash the page and they would put a
nice little like jungle leaf with a
little like Drop of water on it that is
kind of where we're at when it comes to
putting Ai and slapping it on things
just to say it has Ai and this study is
basically saying that doesn't actually
help you you may think it does because
if you live inside this tiny bubble
intact you think about AI all the time
you talk about AI all the time but it
doesn't actually help you with like
people outside of this
little all right um number three
strategic partnership between optimiz Le
and Cavo and the reason I call this out
is because I've been looking for moments
where you see people putting money on
the line associated with specific
results in the commercial space and Ai
and so in this case optimizely has
decided it is important enough to get
into the AI game the large language
model game they need to partner with a
firm that essentially specializes in Aid
driven content generation for Enterprise
so what Cavo does is they work in the Cs
space they work in the website
personalization space and what they
claim is that they can drive significant
improvements in conversion rates on your
website in customer satisfaction scores
in resolving customer success issues
just by heavily personalizing the
content to you and that that wouldn't be
possible unless you're doing it at scale
with a large language model driven
solution optimiz is looking at that they
want to take that I'm sure and put that
into testing they want to take that and
put that into their CMS their content
management
system and what what's this is not an
acquisition as far as I can tell this is
a partnership agreement between the two
but it's still like there's commercial
terms and I call that out because it
means that there's enough interest in
the market for this kind of solution
there's enough track record of
delivering commercial value based on
large language models from Cavo that the
partnership is worth
it and that's a good sign like if you're
looking at like what are you building
and where are you showing value like
I've been calling out that we need to
see cases like this where Enterprises
are showing value in the marketplace
that are driven by AI that they are
saying they couldn't get any other way
and Cavo is saying this and Optimizer is
basically saying Cavo is right we're
going to Buddy
up number four is somewhat similar so
Shopify
on earnings estimates uh I think it was
yesterday August 6th and the reason
that's compelling is because Shopify
attributed the Beats to their use of AI
enabled tooling to get more merchants in
the door and it unlocked sort of a
thought pattern for me around sort of
places where people can start to use Ai
and build against it at the end of the
day if you are in shopify's shoes you
already have a million plus merchants on
the
platform you certainly can roll out AI
tooling to the merchants you have that's
fine that's not necessarily going to
drive your Topline Revenue the way
getting the next Merchant in the door
well because you make money off of the
platform fees but you also make money
off of expanding the footprint and your
sort of surface area for transactions
overall and what's interesting is
they're they're essentially saying that
AI enabled tooling made it easier for
Merchants to come in and start using
Shopify they did not clarify if that
meant it was easier to switch and you
were an established Merchant if it's
easier to start a new shop as a merchant
I don't
know but intuitively the idea that a lot
of the work that you do setting up a
shop is susceptible to a token
generation model where it's like very
text based you need to produce a lot of
the text the text has specific rules
associated with it that you just need to
do over and over again you need to
complete it to a high quality bar to set
up your shop all of that makes sense
that's a good use case for where you
would stick a large language model to
make it substantially easier which would
in turn make it more likely that people
would be able to complete that series of
activities get to a launch of their shop
and start be able being able to take
transactions which in turn would allow
Shopify to
monetize so that's a long way of saying
I think this is another use case sort of
like the caveo use case where you can
actually see AI being used to commercial
advantage in the marketplace and the
market AE it up I think Shopify got a
massive valuation about 10 15% or
something I'm sure like it's different
now because that's how stocks move but
the initial reaction was very large
because the market is so hungry for news
about AI that involves
Revenue last thing I want to call out uh
this one you may not have heard of these
guys zest AI um I'm calling them out
because one of the things that has been
a problem across a range of Industries
uh so publish comes to mind uh anywhere
where you have applications comes to
mind college applications loan
applications uh anywhere you have a need
to write a lot of text Grant
applications these things are all
getting inundated with extra volume now
that llms are here because llms have
made producing high quality text cheap
it's so cheap now and so if you work in
the publishing world as an agent you
just get like overwhelmed drowned in
manuscripts of questionable quality in
many cases if you work in job
applications I've talked about this you
get overwhelmed in resumés many of which
are questionable quality because of AI
what's interesting about this story is
that zest has decided that they are
going to invest in Aid driven fraud
detection software that is designed to
catch fraudulent applications and help
Underwriters not accept
and I think that's interesting because
it's sort of the I I think it's the
Leading Edge of this idea that you know
AI enables a lot of Supply in the
marketplace from a tech perspective but
AI is also going to enable more
filtering and we haven't really had that
I think the market is super hungry for
it and I'm really curious to see where
this goes it just launched we don't
really have a lot of traction yet on it
um they're claiming it really helps with
reducing bad debt so if you work in
fintech you understand bad debt is what
you want to avoid it's where you take
people take out a loan and don't pay you
back and they're saying something like a
40% reduction in bed debt in their in
their pilot
testing
and we will see but my sense is that we
are going to have a whole lot more tools
like this and that's why I wanted to
flag it we're going to have more tools
that help you deal with the supply of
very cheap wording that llms have
enabled because that is becoming a
problem it is exceeding human abilities
to filter it which is why some people
and this is anecdotal but some people
are giving up on the coldly pipeline
entirely and I don't just mean job
Seekers I mean in some cases companies
are saying we are just going to go with
referrals and the application pipeline
is something we won't pay a lot of
attention to because at the end of the
day the quality through there is so low
thanks to llms it's really tough to get
any kind of hit rate on the interviews
that you do just just off all day
applications now not every company's
like that don't walk away and say oh
Nate said that you know cold
applications are gone it's just that the
supply has distorted the market and I
think that the filtering AI is coming in
and it's going to shut so those are your
five pieces of news we had the
University of water loose study the
Washington State University study on AI
help not helping in marketing uh we had
optimized Le CBO in Partnership we had
Shopify beating on earnings with AI
tooling and we had zest AI talking about
tooling around filtering uh out
essentially fraudulent applications
powered by AI was sort of the
implication so that's what we've got for
just the first week of August uh I hope
you had fun with this uh I'm trying to
call out the things that are actually
driving Trends here and not just sort of
random pieces of news I'll link a couple
of things underneath so you can find
them and uh have a great week