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Hannah Clark: Before we begin, I need to give you a disclaimer. This is not a normal episode of The CPO Club Podcast. If you’ve been listening for a while, you know we’re usually pretty focused on actionable takeaways and next steps for reaching your potential as a PM. But today is going to be very different.
At the time of recording, we’re one day post-American election. We’re three weeks shy of the second anniversary of the initial release of ChatGPT. We’re in the middle of a turbulent economic landscape impacted by a global pandemic and unstable climate and the creeping effects of late stage capitalism. So for this episode only, we’re throwing out the usual Q&A format and taking a shot at the tech industry as a whole.
And I have a perfect partner in crime. Victoria Ku is a product leader formerly of Airbnb and Highnote, currently on sabbatical to take a breath and care for her two young kids, meaning there’s no red tape keeping her from being 100% real about the problems that are impacting hundreds of thousands of really talented people in tech.
If you’re a first time listener and you’re searching for a career playbook, I urge you to look to the rest of our episode archive. But for those of you who are applying for your hundredth job or disillusioned with AI or feeling worried about what this economic climate means for your kid’s future, you might find this conversation cathartic, and hopefully also entertaining. Let’s jump in.
Hello, everybody! Welcome back to The CPO Club podcast. We are here today with Victoria Ku. We’re taking things in a different direction today. We are not going to be talking about actionable takeaways. We’re not talking about all of the great ways to be better at your job. Today, we’re going in on the product industry.
We are talking the dark side of product in 2024. There’s going to be some hot takes. There’s going to be some maybe controversial topics. And we’d love to hear about it in the comments if you have something to contribute to the conversation, but today Victoria and I are going to be talking about some of the things we’re not so proud of as product people.
Starting with the great resignation, Victoria, what do you have to say about it?
Victoria Ku: I mean, the great resignation was such a powerful period of our life, and it is sad to say that we are definitely no longer in the great resignation, and we’re in the period of product management and tech in which we have used up that leverage.
To go a little bit more deeply into it, the great resignation was a period of time where the worker had the most leverage, you know, like people were able to command like higher salaries, they were able to decline offers, like two or three offers even, which is a pretty good number, you know, that’s pretty good to compete with.
And that was predominantly during COVID, when companies and businesses were really freaking out, right? Because like it hadn’t been done before, being able to work remotely etc, really hadn’t been done before the way that everyone had been forced to do it in COVID. And so that created a lot of leverage for the average employee.
And so now that we’re in a post pandemic world and we’ve entered into a really confusing sort of economic state, as well as a tumultuous election year, you know, like a lot of this has created change. And the average worker has lost that sort of leverage, which has led us into what you’re seeing right now, which is a low leverage area, a weakened economy, you know, banks are pulling back, compliance is scared, et cetera, et cetera.
And that’s really impacted the job market. So beginning of 2024, you’ve seen like all of the big tech companies laying off either quietly or on mass, right? Huge amounts of layoffs, reduction in forces and people, a lot of product managers have actually been searching for jobs for a solid amount of time, and it’s really demoralizing.
So that sucks.
Hannah Clark: Speaking of not working, let’s talk a little bit about what’s going on with you because we haven’t really introduced this topic at all. Let’s first get oriented on where we’re coming from in this conversation. So you were recently at Highnote. Prior to that, you’re at Airbnb. Let’s talk a little bit about where you’re at, not just with your career, but also just with your mindset, with your outlook on product.
Tell us a little bit about where you stand.
Victoria Ku: What I will state in advance is that I’m so grateful to have the privilege of being able to be in this point in my life, where I’ve done the necessarily financial calculations and I feel okay stepping back from this tumultuous sort of job market and focusing, truly focusing on caring for my two very young kids.
So I’d like to say, you know, thank you past Victoria for that. Thank you future Victoria for allowing that. And thank you like lucky gods for allowing all that as well. But like most people probably could not be in that position and that really sucks. For me personally, you know, I’m taking a look at this environment of this like slowdown this, we’ll probably get to this, but like with AI and tech changing landscapes, and I’m saying, Nope, not today, right now.
I’m just going to take some rest. I’m going to take a little bit of a sabbatical and see where the cards really fall and then strategize moving forward. But it’s, it had been like a very tiring 10 years for me, and I’m really excited to have a break.
Hannah Clark: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.
We talked a little bit about the end of the great resignation. We’re now going into the period of big layoffs of this kind of I’m thinking of a sound and the sound is.
Victoria Ku: I would agree with you.
Hannah Clark: What’s next for the people who are sitting around applying to every product job on LinkedIn? What’s the outlook?
Victoria Ku: Yeah. I mean, it’s sad to say that in certain industries, the outlook is okay.
In a lot of the traditional big tech industries, the outlook is a little bit bleak. And here’s what I mean by that. You have like such a talented workforce that has been laid off to no fault of their own. And there’s a lot of really good experienced people who are now fighting for jobs that typically would go to those who had a little bit less experience.
That’s what I’m talking about lack of leverage. You have companies being able to command a really experienced workforce and hire them on a much lower salary and on a much less challenging job description. And so that’s causing a lot of pressure for everyone who’s doing the search.
It’s to no fault of the people who are applying. It sucks for the market. And the thing about tech is it’s always been a really tumultuous market. I don’t know if people remember, but I remember in you know, when I was a kid, I’m dating myself. But in 2001, like our parents, for those of us, our parents were like engineers or worked in like old school tech, like Nokia and, you know, for example. There was a huge layoff around the Y2K years and like they really did not, they didn’t come back for that for a while.
And it wasn’t until 2008, 2009, which the second recession hit, which allowed tech to get its bearings, like from 2000 to 2008, 2009, tech was able to then get its bearings and start hiring people who they typically wouldn’t be able to hire. Because during this time, finance really took the center of the stage, if you want my honest opinion, right?
Banking, finance like that took most of the really, really talented workers from the top colleges or whatever. But then by 2008, 2009, like tech was roaring. And since then we’ve had this like really long run, like we’ve had the longest running bull market of America. And people have forgotten that actually when tech sinks, it sinks, like it is a sinkhole.
And we’re experience that right now, like this isn’t surprising to me when I look back on the history of tech. During a boom, it’s a boom. And during a bust, it’s a huge bust. So the key to this is being able to have a narrative when you’re looking for your job, right? To have a really tight narrative about what your story as a tech worker is like and really leveraging your network.
I mean, at the end of the day, this is going to be a hot take, companies don’t really know what they’re looking for sometimes. That’s why having a network and kind of looking for those that have been successful in their friends has typically been a really strong strategy is because sometimes they don’t know what they’re looking for.
But they know that certain people have been successful, so they know how to look for those type of people. And if you worked with them before and you’ve been successful with them before, then you can leverage your network because that is stability and that’s consistency. And that’s what tech companies are really looking for during this time of lack of stability and consistency.
Hannah Clark: Yeah. Yeah. I think that people really cling to stability and consistency in any mode of crisis. We saw that definitely during the pandemic.
Speaking of the lack thereof, let’s talk about AI. That happened.
Victoria Ku: Yes. Yes. We’ve also got AI entering the conversation.
Hannah Clark: Yeah. AI has entered the chat. AI was, has been the chat for, basically the entirety of the last 24 months now?
Victoria Ku: Yeah. So what’s so fascinating to me about AI is that it’s an evolutionary sort of path that’s been taken. And what I mean by that is those that doubted the internet, they lost out on a lot of games.
There’s a statement about VCs not regretting the deals that they made it into. They regret the ones that they passed on that made it big. In a very similar sense, I think everybody has learned from the internet and so they’re not in a state where they’re like, oh AI whatever like I’ll just wait. You know, everyone’s like I got to get on this train like I got to get on it in case it gets big and so you’re having everyone, including worker bees, including employees, but also industries. Like no matter the industry, companies, no matter the company, really rushing towards this AI trend and like taking all these resources that have typically been allocated in other areas.
And now they’re like, find a solution for this trend. And so it’s taking away from, I guess, like infrastructure industries that typically are needed and everyone’s just rushing towards this area that maybe it could pan out, you know, I do think it could pan out, but does it need to be this rush right now?
I don’t know. I don’t think so.
Hannah Clark: My take on it is it’s we know that this is a tool, we know that it’s groundbreaking, and we don’t really know how to use it in its best form. I see it as a parallel to the internet. Internet came out, everybody needed a website. What is this website supposed to have on it?
I don’t know. We need to have one. Social media, everybody knows that we need to have a social media account, maybe a social media manager. What are we posting? I don’t know. We need to have it. I’m seeing that pattern repeating, but the difference is that now AI is just so much more powerful and is just, well, in your words from before, like subsuming a large amount of jobs in the kind of capabilities that we’re trying to use it to leverage.
Victoria Ku: Yeah. And you know, I’ve written about this in conjunction with you guys. AI is in typical product terms, right? AI is a hammer and it’s trying to find all the nails, where a true product management is saying, this is a nail. Let’s go get our hammers or whatever tools that we have, but let’s like nail this down because here’s the problem and we can use whatever to solve it to prove that this is in fact a problem that we want to solve.
But the opposite is happening and not to say that it’s right or wrong, because I think, you know, history will tell us whether it was right or wrong, but in true strategic form product says you should find the problem first and then use the lowest cost solution to prove that this is a problem that we should be focusing on that has a higher enough ROI for us to build a business around.
And the opposite is happening. Now, there are several reasons why that is happening. OpenAI is probably the most famous of all the AI companies, even though there’s a plethora. I mean, there’s so many, right? Claude, Bard, all of them. But OpenAI, the reason why it’s commanding all of the media presence is because it’s paying super well, right?
It’s the ultimate tech company that is draining all of the resources in, you know, the valley or in the nation. And people are getting swept up in, I guess like the opportunity and not necessarily the problem. And so what I mean by that is the opportunity is the career opportunity or even the financial opportunity, all things that are worthy opportunities to take advantage of.
But it does need to be stated that is a departure from, like research-driven practices or even scientific curiosity driven practices that typically PhDs or scientists will often do first. And then the more industry savvy individuals and employees come in to figure out how to exploit this newly crafted, innovative tool.
Hannah Clark: I do want to talk a little bit more about some of the points that you made in your article. So don’t quit your day job for your AI idea, I believe was the title. And that kind of speaks to how this, there’s an intersection between this boom and this rush to get in on the piece of AI pie and this really suffering and struggling job market and people who are you know, their priorities might be a little bit mixed up around where they should be putting their efforts.
I would love if you could reiterate some of the points that you had around this kind of like decision making process.
Victoria Ku: Definitely. And there are several caveats to that, but I’ll start with the main points first, which is to say that like this job market, as we’ve stated is not easy at all.
If you are giving up a job in which you have good relationships, a good manager, you have a good salary, it’s stable. That is very lucky and very wealthy to have in this environment. And if you do plan to quit that job to pursue the dream of creating a startup that leverages, like OpenAI or Bard or Claude or any of them, and it might fail in the future, it won’t be as easy in past years to get that job back.
Like I said, we were in the longest running bull market and it was unprecedented, right? Like I would say, Gen Z had never seen a recession in their entire lives. And so that’s point number one, which is to say that you cannot get back into the job market as easy before. So that’s one reason why you shouldn’t quit your day job to pursue your kind of nascent AI idea yet.
The second one is also that there are really smart people that have been lured out of academia to compete for industry in this environment. And so what I mean by that is there are these scientists and these PhDs who have spent like all of their lives, 20, 30 years just focusing on AI, the love of AI and understanding how to maybe like actually use it, but more so like crafting it to be sharp enough to for like everyday use, no matter what that use is.
And these people are now employed by like Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, like these companies that have insane amounts of resources. And so, in one small swoop in the next updated model, that model could eat away at your idea, right? And we’ve seen this in the like 2008 era when like Twitter, Pinterest, all of these like kind of today giants were growing and they were able to eat up the market share of like smaller startups in just one simple update.
And I predict the same for AI. So if you were to start up a company that was in generating picks for your home improvement, right? Like Llama 3.5 easily could do that easily, right? And so what’s stopping someone from using Llama, who is faster and has better infrastructure than using yours, which is a paid app.
So that’s like the second reason is like in one fell swoop, you could be obliterated. Do you want that? Especially in this environment. And there are so many other reasons. I encourage you guys to, those that are curious to read the article and give me feedback. But I think like the other thing that I do want to caveat is, of course, if you have a strong vision, if you are an expert in your field and you are able to utilize these models in a way that gives you the performance that nobody else can command, then by all means use your expertise, use your subject matter expertise to create the product that can replicate you because you are the source, not the model.
I don’t want to discount anyone who’s in that position to pursue their dreams, but it just needs to be stated that this is not the same environment. These are my words of warning.
Hannah Clark: We can’t be making flippant decisions with this particular job market or with this particular atmosphere competition, taking a little bit of a broader focus when it comes to AI, because I have been a little bit of a flip flopper on the idea of how much of a threat AI poses to people’s long term job prospects.
And especially, you know, when we’re talking about engineers, a lot of engineers are not so comfortable with where things are going with how AI is working out. Design, obviously that whole field has been affected. And I mean, really marketing as a whole, every industry has been strongly affected by the capabilities of AI and they’re just getting better.
What’s your take on this? Like some AI fanatics that I’ve talked to really believe that the key is going to be just getting better at leveraging AI and that everyone’s job is in theory safe. It’s just going to change. And then I, you know, I see a lot of strong evidence to the contrary. Where do you stand?
Victoria Ku: I definitely see the evidence to the contrary as well. I mean, I think if I were a hardcore capitalist, which I call myself a reformed capitalist being a former banker. But if I was a hardcore capitalist, I would be like, get money now, make all your money now, like work as hard as you can, get all the options and find yourself financial freedom before it’s too late.
But that’s not always possible. But that is the realistic or even, you know, I guess cynical, pessimistic side of me that’s saying save yourself, everyone, save yourself. But the other thing that I will say is that I am a hardcore proponent for universal basic income for this reason.
And this is where we’re getting into politics, Hannah, so let me know if we gotta put a lid on it. But there was a reason why Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and former, you know, CEO of YC, there’s a reason why he was going around championing universal basic income. And I’m also a proponent of Andrew Yang, who was the original champion of universal basic income, is because I do think that AI is going to take these jobs.
I do think AI will do a more efficient job than humans do. And it will therefore take less humans to oversee the job that more humans typically had done to create videos, to create art, to create code. There will be humans manning these areas, but it will take less humans. And for that reason, we do have to then alter the political landscape to assume that AI will take these jobs.
Because in an era of late stage capitalism, and, you know, we are heading, if not already in that stage, the businesses that employ us, that give us health care so that keep us alive and healthy, their metric will be to reduce the amount of cost that it takes to run the business and human capital is one of the highest costs.
So from a mathematical perspective I only see jobs being taken away. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I do think that humans should be able to create art to make bread to do the things that we were put on this earth to do being artistic. But I think that the environment does need to support that.
And I probably will die on that hill, which is to say the environment controls so much more than what we give it credit for.
Hannah Clark: First of all, this is such a complex matter that to attack it feels dangerous to even talk about. But really what we’re talking about is a fundamental change to our cultural norms.
If we trace back to the days where we didn’t have a standardized eight hour workweek and, you know, there was no labor laws to where we’re going, where, you know, we’re able to create machines that are able to generate the equivalent of many hours of human capital. Sorry, I’m getting like emotional.
So, you know, if you can hear that in my voice excuse me.
Victoria Ku: No, it is an emotional thing, right? Like it is human life.
Hannah Clark: Yeah. I mean, like we’re parents, both of us on the call. We have kids. A lot of people listening, you have kids, like you think about the way that the world is changing to accommodate, you know, like what is the norm going to look like?
And being in a period where there’s a transformative shift happening in terms of how wealth is generated, in terms of how labor is allocated, in terms of like how we even decide what is valuable and what is not, who is even the arbiter of these kinds of decisions?
That is like a question that keeps me up at night.
Victoria Ku: Absolutely. I mean, it keeps me up at night too, because I think right now, especially one day post election day I think it’s the government. And I think as of right now, there’s a lot of checks and balances that are very tenuous, right? AI is one check.
Politics is another check. The government is another check. Ourselves, you know, and our decisions are another check. Like for the first time in a pretty long time, you know, I think in tech, you know, you had those 10 plus years where like things were just on the up and up, right? Everyone was earning money.
There were no layoffs, right? Everyone had food and, you know, happy hours and it would never end. It was so positive. And I think for the first time for a lot of people, we don’t really know where things are going. We just know that there is this technology, AI, that’s new and it’s so sharp right now.
It’s doing such a good job. And what if it does too great of a job that the companies that employ us say, Hey, I want that and not you. And it wouldn’t be such a big deal if we had healthcare you know, universal healthcare. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if we had universal basic income, we would find something else to do.
But our lives hang in the balance of these companies that employ us, unless we’re independently wealthy. And so that’s super scary, right? And that is why there’s this mad rush of individuals trying to embrace AI, as one should if they’re curious. But I also can’t help but wonder if it’s a little bit fear based too, and that’s not really how we want to pursue like human intelligence, or like machine intelligence.
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Absolutely. And like, when we have conversations about things like AGI, like one of the things that I keep coming back to is this whole trope of just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. There is a certain amount of that where it’s I feel like we’ve opened this Pandora’s box.
And there are a lot of folks who are able to make decisions now that impact all of us that can’t be reversed. That’s like a very stressful reality to live under.
Victoria Ku: Yeah, and you know, to echo what you said, we have kids too. I stay up at night wondering what the world will look like in 14 years, right, when my kid goes off to college.
And the reality is I have to accept I have no clue. I have no clue what the world is like. I only assume that they will never need to drive, which is a relief, to be honest. In a similar sense, right? Like I do think that AI can be used as a force for good. I do think that should the environment rally around the use of AI in a way the Biden administration and previous like presidential administrations have also rallied around current events.
So like the example I’m giving is like doing away with student debt, right? So educational student debt, forgiving that. I think the next step would be like medical debt, if possible, but in a similar sense, there is the hope and also belief that the government in the future will stay up to date with the trends, right?
And maintain adaptability to be able to ease the transition of humans, maybe not working in so many sectors and maintaining a relatively healthy equilibrium in society, right? There is that hope, but for product managers like us, you know, hope is one thing and like putting into action and executed plan is another thing.
And that part, I can’t really say, right? We can only have opinions and also adapt to what comes out. And I think that is why so many individuals are rushing towards AI so that they don’t get left behind.
Hannah Clark: You know, it’s interesting too to me about when we’re talking about all these topics all together is AI on one hand, we’re really talking about something that’s supposed to be able to extend our productivity and extend our ability to do things.
But when we really look at where we as a society put pressure on ourselves to establish a sense of personal value and worth, it comes down to productivity, individual productivity. What do you bring to the table like that? We hear that all the time in so many contexts. We put so much value on what can your output be as an individual contributor, as a manager, as an employee, how much your income is.
All of these are kinds of markers that kind of establish us in this sort of like a social hierarchy. So what happens then to our, you know, it’s almost like we’re eating away at our own held beliefs about how we’re supposed to evaluate ourselves by creating something that’s basically outsourcing all of those things that we hold so dear.
I kind of wonder, you know, like years down the road, when we’re all literally incapable of being as productive as we want to say we are, at what point do we say, you know what, let’s just call it a wash. We know now that we’re no longer in we don’t need to be the elevator people anymore. We don’t need to be the people who are like the human washing machines.
We have technology that’s able to do that. Let’s just focus all of this additional wealth on taking care of our people and giving everyone, you know, a certain standard of life that you don’t have to, you know, prove to everyone that you earned.
Victoria Ku: Absolutely. I call that the post scarcity world and I am here for it. I can’t wait for that world.
Hannah Clark: And that’s one theory, right? That’s one world that so many of us, I think, want, but I think that there’s also, there’s a dark side to that where there’s a lot of people who like, that is a part of your held identity that like, it’s almost like a political ideology to equate people’s self worth with what they’re capable of bringing to the economy.
Victoria Ku: Absolutely. And you know what? Everything that you said points me towards a late stage capitalism society. And the reality is, it is why everybody has this belief that we need to be super productive, we need to compare ourselves to machines, but we’re not. We’re also so tired, right? Like I do not get the sense that we’re in the kind of bohemian era of tech where everyone was like bright eyed and ready to come in and like work until 3 a.m, and like love doing so, right?
I get the sense after you know, being on blogs, being in Facebook groups, listening to people talk, like keeping up to date in the news. I get the sense that we’re all super tired, similar to the product management sort of framework. Maybe that means that our metric has been wrong, and it’s not the worst thing in the world to realize that we’ve been going for a different North Star, right?
Maybe productivity isn’t the best metric for us to be championing. Maybe it was the best one during our hypergrowth years, but maybe now that we’ve reached a certain level of maturity, maybe we can choose a different North Star. And it’s not to say that transition wouldn’t be tough. Like I agree with everything that you said.
I think that for some people letting go of that identity would be really tough. Some people might go through a period in which like they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves and maybe they would fall into a period of like depression. And then society would have to maybe support that you know, collectively would have to support that with a lot of people maybe needing to take some time for themselves and you know, just in a very like poetic way you know, lying down rather than leaning in.
But I do believe that after that period occurs, and we all do need that period of transition, right? That is what rest is for. But after that period, I think that we would pick ourselves up, and I think we would understand what our next skill set, our next job, our next artistic endeavor would be. And I think we would throw ourselves into that with equal fervor until AI picks that up, and we would be aware of that, right?
And then we would move on to the next thing, and we would learn to adapt. But I say all of this with love because I know that there’s a lot of animosity towards AI in the sense where AI can spit out really great PRDs, they can spit out really great code. I think the most animosity is AI can spit out really beautiful art, right?
They can create really beautiful videos really talented artists work. They can do all of that. And the artists are like, hey, that’s mine. I’m the one that sweat, blood, and tears to create that, and you just took it. And the most, I think this all culminates in this like really popular meme, which someone was on record saying I did not want AI to create art so that I had to do laundry and like I had to work until the death, right?
It was supposed to be the opposite. And I echo that. I echo that completely. But from a very tactical perspective, I’m like, well, that was all AI had to work off of, right? That was what was existing. So how do we give AI the data to do the things that we don’t want? The really hard stuff. What if we gave it politics?
What if we give it performance reviews? What if we gave it bullying, right? Or you know, negative influencing, right? What if we gave AI the hard things? Well, we would have to figure out how to get these things like tangible, right? Feedable to these models. And then once we get to that point, I think there will be enough of an equilibrium that we can divvy out the work and say, okay, I want you to do this, but I want to do the art, right?
I want to do the creativity. Or like AI, maybe you take it, you know, 70% there and I get to do the last 30%, which is what I wanted to do anyway.
Hannah Clark: Yeah. Well, and I think that this is a really great segue into predictions because we’ve got some commentary here on what’s happening, what’s led up to this.
And I think that you’re really onto something. I tend to think that as we see more and more AI generated content, whether it’s like PRD or a piece of really advanced digital art, I think increasingly what we’re going to see is an emphasis and a value placed on things that are organically human. That’s my romantic optimistic perspective, but I think that we have already seen some forecasts of these and predictions in some of the portrayals of AI before this whole boom.
You would see in video games and that kind of thing, or movies, portrayals of AI almost as like this antagonist to human beings. And I do think that there’s something to that in which we already are starting to feel this animosity towards AI and what it’s capable of and what the threats that it poses.
And you know, just straight up, if I see a piece of AI art, I just know that it’s AI. And it just doesn’t have the same value to me. It does not touch my heart the way that something that I can tell somebody created from their own personal experience and emotions. And I would love to say that there’s more ways that we can apply that value system.
But you know, like it’s not everybody is cut out to be an artist at the same time. Not everybody has the creative drive. How can we all equally benefit and find our place to express, you know, our self realize and express value and create something and some kind of impression on the world that feels like our life has been well lived?
Victoria Ku: That was such a great blurb. I mean, it was just so powerful, and I agree with you on the romance of the human effort, and I actually don’t think it’s wrong at all. If you look at something as like human as luxury goods are where my mind is going. Nowadays, ooh, Hermes bags are handmade.
It’s handmade by like this couturier and like in Italy or, you know, or in France, right? In one of their salons and it’s used like this ancient double sewing method. And so the purse that you’re getting has been like sweat on by these like people who have honed their craft for 20 years, right? And I think the amount of money that these purses command is just insane.
So I agree with you, right? Versus like, when you see like Zara or Forever 21 and it’s machine made and look how cheap it is like anybody can afford to look good. So, I definitely agree with you I think that there’s still going to be this romance in human made products for reasons other than just the romance I think if I pull on my kind of caveman instincts philosophy, we do tend to find more value out of effort, right?
So we love things in which we know that there has been more effort put into it than things that we know that there has been less. Call it sentimentality or whatnot, but the thing is that we do value it more and we do that as a society, as a human race. I think that there still is a world in which AI could take us there.
I think ideally, it would be a world in which the government is, you know, has the right environment set up for us. Like I said, UBI is one solution and like universal health care is another solution. So that if companies don’t need to employ people, then we are not all lost, right? We’re not all sunk on a very like aspirational level.
I do think that if AI was being wielded by uber capitalists who gave zero care to human suffering or even human life needs, then it would be up to us as consumers to insist that the products that we purchase had some human level of investment the way that you see microcosms of like neighborhoods investing in their neighborhoods doing now, right?
Insisting that they buy local and not from Amazon, voting with their wallets by buying something local versus for convenience with the big tech companies. And I think that would be our right and also our power, but we as a society would definitely need to crowdsource that. And that’s the part that’s hard.
Again, election day, prove that it’s super hard to do that. We all want the easy solution.
Hannah Clark: Another, I guess you could say optimistic thought that I have that I come back to from time to time is that there is a certain liquid quality to the market and to the economy in which as innovation creates solutions that solve certain problems, it also creates new problems and those problems thus need solutions.
We’re entering this period where we are, you know, creating new problems for ourselves by solving others. And therefore a new market will likely be born from that. I want to think that it’s not that the jobs are over. It’s just that this period, this stage of jobs is over as as we stopped having people having to wash clothes by hand every time, you know, then now there’s maybe a larger need for tailors or whatever.
There’s always some kind of a check to every balance that kind of creates like a kind of equilibrium where people can find their place. So I’d like to think that, you know, as much as it’s difficult to say goodbye to the familiarity and that stability that we were talking about earlier, I think that maybe like the quality that we really have to lean into is adaptability more than anything else.
Victoria Ku: I agree with you. I think adaptability is also the trait that I’m okay, I have to instill in my daughters, right? Like, I don’t know anything about the future. And this is the only thing that I know that they’re going to need right now.
Hannah Clark: And curiosity, too.
Victoria Ku: That childlike wonder that we all lose sometimes out of cynicism, you know?
Hannah Clark: Yeah whatever you want to call it, scrappiness or whatever you see, it’s important to be curious enough and to be attentive and adaptable enough to see where the winds are blowing and like to anticipate, you know, where do I have to be? What do I have to be curious about now?
What do I have to learn in order to meet the market for where it’s going?
Victoria Ku: Absolutely. And, you know, I don’t think all is lost. Like everything you said, I hundred percent agree with. In fact, I would even say that enterprising individuals right now are looking several steps into the future and saying wow, I think AI is going to be taking over the world soon.
But once it does, it’s going to face this problem, right? And I’m seeing that, you know, it’s going to face this secondary problem. I guess in colloquial terms, it would be like first world problems, right? At some point, all AI models are, you know, going to face first world problems, and I’m going to solve that first world problem, and I’m going to take this time while AI is going through its rough patch phase to figure out how to solve it en masse, right?
And so, to your point, there will be new problems to solve. Enterprising, adaptable, intelligent, talented, you know, very optimistic individuals will likely come forward as solutions to those problems. And I think we can all be inspired by that, but I do think that the government has a very large spot to play in this kind of future world that’s like approaching very rapidly.
And so maybe to some individuals who are feeling very cut out by the tech world right now, maybe politics is the place where they need to be right now. Wouldn’t be the worst place in the world to put your efforts.
Hannah Clark: I mean, I’m in Canada, so no comment there.
But what I will say is what I’m getting from this conversation and kind of the takeaway that I’m left with is that really when we think about the speed of change and where we’re at in the AI environment and the job market, et cetera, maybe AI I dare say is yesterday’s problem.
Maybe we’re too late to get into that game. Maybe we should be looking, if we’re looking into and develop a business model with longevity, look at the power vacuum. Look at like where those vacuums are going to be in a few months or years from now as we let the chips fall. That’s where I’m feeling right now.
Victoria Ku: I think that’s a definite hot take, right? I think totally that’s a true hot take. In my mind, I’m like, do I agree with that? Do I agree with that? I don’t know, Hannah. I don’t know.
Hannah Clark: I don’t know that I agree with it. I’m thinking of this now, but my, you know, my, we’re just chatting. We’re just talking.
Victoria Ku: And the thing is, we don’t have to agree, right? Like we don’t know. I think it’s such an interesting point, right? Like it’s probably one of the most interesting kind of like drink debates that people will have in the next like few weeks, maybe even the next year. But I would say that any smart enterprising individual knows not to fight it. And probably to look at the power vacuum and see how they can take advantage of it, hopefully, with the metric of, you know, for good, right?
For good of the human kind, right? And not for themselves necessarily. But at the same time, it also wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if people who need stability in their lives take a backseat and say, Hey, listen, I just want to see where it lands, right? I don’t want to spend the next 10 years being swung back and forth by, you know, the government, by like AI, by the industry, because I have so little energy right now and I need to focus on the things that matter. That would also be okay too.
Hannah Clark: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think that because we’re in such a transformative period of time as a culture and as a society at large, maybe now is a good time to reevaluate, you know, there’s this like white picket fence, you know, life goal template that we’re all handed.
Maybe now’s a good time to start to take that into our own hands and reevaluate, like what is the life that I’m trying to achieve for myself and for my family and for, you know, what kind of model or new template can I draw up that other people will be inspired by who are close to me than not necessarily having to, because, you know, this is how we break away from these deeply entrenched values that we were just discussing.
Victoria Ku: Okay, so like to come full circle, have you done this with ChatGPT yet?
Hannah Clark: I’m such a love hate relationship with ChatGPT. I don’t know. I haven’t. Well, how would you do it? How would you do it?
Victoria Ku: I’ll tell you my prompt. I asked ChatGPT tell me about my life as if I’ve already had it so I’m living it right now.
Tell me about the dream life that I’m living as of right now. What I do hour by hour, like describe to me what my day is like. And ChatGPT will give you a prompt back and be like, so what do you care about? What are things that give you energy? What do you love in this world? Because it’s smart, right?
And it can’t just spit out something generic. And so you get to chat with it a little bit. And in my case, I’m like, you know, I really love to work on creative projects, right? Maybe delve into some writing, create some art, sculpt, do some philanthropy. And surprisingly, ChatGPT spun out a really powerful account of like my day in the future and it was so powerful that I actually teared up.
And I was like so surprised that ChatGPT could go to that level of depth. Or maybe I’m, maybe it just, you know, wasn’t that hard to make me tear up about this future life that I would love to have.
Hannah Clark: Those hormones though.
Victoria Ku: Absolutely, you know, there you go. Optimism and cynicism right there.
But I did it with ChatGPT and it helped me realize that, you know, like productivity like is so important. That’s true. But like my North Star was not that I wanted to work. You know, my North Star was that I wanted to do the things that I wanted to do if I didn’t have to earn money.
Hannah Clark: Yeah. Like work is not necessarily just about how, like what capital you’re creating for someone else. It’s about what capital you’re creating for your, your life.
Victoria Ku: Your freedom, right? You know, sometimes if I want to just drink a coffee and, you know, look outside and be one with the trees for a second, I would love to do that. But if I didn’t have that financial freedom and, you know, freedom from corporate, for example, maybe I would be sitting in a meeting that I really couldn’t control.
And it’s at 8 a.m. and I’d be doing this instead of creating some like creative brainstorms that I would much prefer to do that would actually take me further. And so that’s the example that I encourage people to slay, you know, engage with ChatGPT to figure out like, what would they do if they were living their perfect post scarcity life already.
Hannah Clark: Okay, I’m gonna do it.
Well, okay, we’re so over time, but this has been like, talk about a good way to spend your life. This has been such a great conversation. I’m so happy that we were able to do this. Well, Victoria, before I let you go, where can people follow your work online?
I’m hoping that we can have a lot more on The CPO Club soon enough. But yeah, where can people follow you right now?
Victoria Ku: You can find me on LinkedIn. Friend me, you know, message me. Always happy to respond to anyone, you know, needing any assistance to product management or just questions in general.
It’s great to have you here in this afternoon, Hannah. So good to see you.
Hannah Clark: So good to see you too. Please keep your hot take comments to a minimum on my LinkedIn, everybody, but thank you for visiting. Thank you for joining us for this chat. And we will talk to you soon.
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