53:46Jay Clouse · Interview
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April 27thThe argument in one line.
Every task handed to an LLM instead of thought through personally trades a slice of your own thinking, writing, and speaking ability for content that reads like everyone else's AI slop.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A YouTube creator or online business owner who has started leaning on ChatGPT or Claude for scripts, ideas, or emails and wants the case against it.
- Someone building a personal brand on camera who's worried their content increasingly sounds like generic AI output.
- A coach or course creator being pitched an AI-employee or AI-clone offer who wants a skeptical counter-argument before buying in.
SKIP IF…
- You're doing spreadsheet, data, or programming work, where the argument explicitly doesn't apply.
- You've already decided AI tools help your business and are looking for tactics, not a philosophical case against using them.
The full version, fast.
A YouTube coach argues that using LLMs for scripts, emails, and ideation quietly abdicates the thinking process, and wants viewers to stop treating that as harmless. The core claim: how you write is how you think, how you think is how you speak, and how you speak is how your content lands, so outsourcing early drafts to an LLM erodes the exact skill an on-camera creator depends on. A study titled 'Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus' is cited, finding that once adoption crosses a threshold, dependence spreads and cognitive competence drops. The practical conclusion: skip AI for scripts, thumbnails, and emails, since audiences already notice and disengage when content sounds AI-generated, and hire a human designer instead of an AI thumbnail generator.
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00:00 – 01:40
01 · Cold open: the anti-AI stance
Greets viewers, frames this as an unscripted, unapologetically anti-AI take, and sets the stakes as protecting your own thinking rather than fearing an 'AI apocalypse.'
01:40 – 05:50
02 · The core thesis: writing is thinking
States the central claim on screen: how you write is how you think, how you think is how you speak, and argues LLMs don't actually save meaningful time on creative work.
05:50 – 07:00
03 · The cognitive virus study
Reads from a study titled 'Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus' on screen, highlighting its finding that LLM dependence can spread rapidly and erode cognitive competence once adoption crosses a threshold.
07:00 – 09:30
04 · Reframing 'AI' as LLM, and the coaching Ponzi scheme
Insists on calling the tools 'learning language models' instead of AI, and argues some business coaches push AI offers for the money rather than because they use the tools themselves.
09:30 – 11:30
05 · Mocking the 'AI employee' pitch
Ridicules the idea of an AI marketing agent that scans trending YouTube videos to dictate content ideas, arguing it produces generic videos rather than standout ones.
11:30 – 14:14
06 · You already think better than the LLM
Argues the idea that LLMs generate better ideas than a person is false, illustrating AI output quality with the 'nail gun that spits macaroni' analogy.
14:14 – 19:00
07 · Standing out in 2026 by refusing AI
Pitches 'none of my stuff is touched by AI' as a differentiator, states she won't sell an AI clone of her coaching, and calls out coaches selling a 'don't think, just prompt' promise.
19:00 – 22:11
08 · Data centers, AI schools, and literacy decline
Widens the argument to data centers and AI-taught classrooms in Texas, links rising AI use to falling literacy rates, and states there's no such thing as ethical AI use.
22:11 – 25:27
09 · Reading the chat: 'we all hate AI videos'
Starts responding live to chat comments agreeing AI content feels off, then tells the story of a YouTuber whose audience called out an AI prompt accidentally left in his script.
25:27 – 28:43
10 · Integrity and the blank page as a muscle
Warns that audiences quietly stop opening emails and watching videos once they sense AI involvement, then reframes sitting with a blank page as a skill worth building, not avoiding.
28:43 – 32:27
11 · More chat responses and the assistant boundary
Responds to more viewer comments on nuanced AI use, then draws a line for her own business: her human assistant handles client relationships and community management, never delegated to AI.
32:27 – 34:47
12 · AI thumbnails: why viewers scroll past them
Takes a chat question on AI thumbnails, and the audience agrees in real time that AI thumbnails look cheap; recommends hiring a human graphic designer on Upwork instead.
34:47 – 37:22
13 · Wrap-up and podcast plug
Closes the PSA, mentions the Austin heat, thanks live chat participants by name, and points viewers to her 'The Deep Riches' podcast before signing off.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- How you write is how you think, and how you think is how you speak, so outsourcing writing to an LLM quietly narrows your own thinking.
- A study on LLMs as a 'cognitive virus' found that once adoption crosses a critical threshold, dependence spreads fast and cognitive competence drops sharply.
- Audiences already notice AI-written scripts and emails, and once they suspect AI involvement they trust the creator less and stop engaging.
- AI-generated thumbnails carry a recognizable cheap look that makes viewers scroll past instead of clicking.
- The 'AI employee' pitch of having an agent scan trending videos to reverse-engineer content ideas produces generic videos, not standout ones.
- Distinctive content in a market flooded with AI slop comes from ideas nobody else has, which only surfaces from sitting with a blank page yourself.
- LLM output reads as fluent and confident but is consistently generic, requiring repeated rewriting to sound worth publishing.
- Rising AI use has coincided with declining literacy rates, suggesting the tool doesn't just save time but degrades the skill it replaces.
- A human graphic designer hired for roughly $100-175 for a handful of thumbnails can outperform AI-generated thumbnails and build a reusable template.
- The ideation process is a trainable muscle: repeatedly sitting with uncertainty and generating your own ideas builds a skill that AI shortcuts bypass.
- Reading an AI-generated bullet-point summary often saves little real time, since the reader still has to process roughly the same amount of information.
- Refusing to sell an AI-cloned version of a coaching offer, even when it would be profitable, works as a trust signal that differentiates the real offer.
Outsourcing your thinking costs more than it saves
THE THINKING TAX
Every task handed to an LLM trades a slice of your own thinking, writing, and speaking ability for content that reads and looks like everyone else's.
02The core thesis: writing is thinking
- How you write is how you think and how you think is how you speak, so outsourcing early drafts to an LLM narrows the thinking that shapes everything downstream.
- The promised time savings from AI tools are mostly illusory for creative work, since the value was never really in the minutes saved.
03The cognitive virus study
- LLM dependence isn't neutral: a cited cognitive-dependence study found that once adoption crosses a threshold, reliance spreads fast and independent thinking measurably declines.
04Reframing 'AI' as LLM, and the coaching Ponzi scheme
- Calling these tools 'learning language models' instead of 'AI' strips the marketing gloss and makes it easier to see what you're actually trading away.
- Be skeptical of anyone selling AI adoption who doesn't actually rely on it in their own work.
05Mocking the 'AI employee' pitch
- Treat pitches for AI employees or AI agents that scan trends and dictate content ideas with skepticism, since they optimize for sameness, not standing out.
06You already think better than the LLM
- The idea that an LLM can out-think you is a myth worth rejecting outright, not a nuance to negotiate around.
- Polished-sounding AI output still tends to be generic underneath, and needs heavy rewriting before it's worth publishing.
07Standing out in 2026 by refusing AI
- Refusing to let AI touch scripts, thumbnails, or coaching offers, even when the AI version would be more profitable, can function as a genuine trust signal.
- Be wary of any offer promising results from prompts alone, with no thinking required on your part.
08Data centers, AI schools, and literacy decline
- Broader costs of AI adoption, like data-center buildout and declining literacy rates, are worth weighing against the convenience it promises.
09Reading the chat: 'we all hate AI videos'
- Viewers can tell when content is AI-touched, and that recognition quietly erodes trust, opens, and watch time before you notice it happening.
10Integrity and the blank page as a muscle
- The discomfort of a blank page is a muscle, not a problem to solve; repeatedly sitting with it is what builds real ideation skill.
11More chat responses and the assistant boundary
- Not every AI use case is treated as equal: spreadsheet work, programming, and using AI purely to think out loud verbally are called out as different from outsourcing creative work.
- Delegate operational, relationship-facing work like client concierge or community management to a real human assistant, not to AI, if a personal touch is part of the offer.
12AI thumbnails: why viewers scroll past them
- Cheap-looking AI thumbnails get scrolled past; a human graphic designer hired for a small budget can build a reusable, higher-performing template instead.
Terms worth knowing.
- LLM (large language model)
- The technical term for tools marketed as 'AI' — software trained to predict and generate text from patterns in huge datasets, not to actually reason.
- AI slop
- Common shorthand for the flood of generic, low-effort AI-generated content, thumbnails, and copy that has become widespread enough to signal low quality to viewers.
- Cognitive virus
- A framing from a cited study describing how LLM dependence can spread through a population once adoption crosses a critical threshold, causing measurable drops in independent thinking.
Things they pointed at.
05:50link"Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus" (arXiv study)
36:00channelThe Deep Riches (podcast)
Word for word.
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metaphor
Hey everybody, happy Sunday. Happy Sunday. Today we're doing an impromptu live where we're going to talk all about AI.
And I'm going to throw my hat into the AI kind of opinion ring. And I'm going to be one of the rare business coaches out in these streets who's speaking my mind against AI. I'm very anti -AI and I'm going to basically help you to make sure that your channel...
isn't really hindered by AI and your online business isn't hindered by AI. So first things first, let's talk about, there's a lot of conjecture and news about the AI apocalypse. So I'm actually not going to address that because I'm pretty sure we're all on the same page that the AI apocalypse is not coming.
These tech bros are just sweating bullets because they're running out of money and their IPO is coming up. But I wanted to talk about something so much more important because I believe that the tech grows at the top. If we open our eyes very clearly and we take a look at what's happening here, my sincere intention with today's live is to help you to avoid getting involved in the Ponzi scheme in a really dark and sinister way.
And that is abdicating your thinking and your creativity and your business. OK, so if we think about this on a grand scale. I'm going to get a little philosophical with you, but I'm also going to show you some very important things that are going to help you to grow your YouTube channel and your business by avoiding using AI in your work.
If we think about this on a grand scale, the men at the top have some and the entire premise of AI is that they have their lobster bibs on and they're waiting for everybody to insert this god -awful software into every aspect of your life. And to abdicate the thinking process. So every time that we use these things called LLMs, which they've marketed as artificial intelligence, it's not artificial intelligence.
These are language learning models. And so every time we insert an LLM into our thinking process, let's take, for instance, you sit down to create something. And now instead of you thinking of ideas, you're going into an LLM and asking it to think for you.
Or before you go grocery shopping, instead of thinking, you're asking an LLM to create a list for you. Or instead of reading an email from your kid's school, you're asking an LLM to read it and think about the stuff for you and create a bullet list that you're going to have to read anyway. So it's very dangerous territory.
And I'm going to start really quick with just my... What I want you to take from what I'm trying to convey here is I'm going to pop this on the screen. I'm going to make it really big.
So I was thinking a lot about why this is so precious to me, why it really bothers me. And here's why it really bothers me that all of these predatory tech bros and also the business coaches who are really trying to push AI so that they can get some of that sweet, sweet AI money because it's hot right now. Here's why it really bothers me.
Because how you write is how you think, okay? How you write is how you think. And how you think is how you speak.
And how you speak is how you move through the world. So we're not just talking about saving a couple minutes. We don't really actually even save all that much time with these tools.
What I'm talking about here is the promise of saving us time. There's not really a delivery on that promise. First of all, we can all see that.
It's a big, giant time suck. Anybody who's spent even a little bit of time in these LLMs can see. I mean, of course, there are exceptions.
I'm talking specifically about running an online business here. I'm not talking about spreadsheet stuff and computer science stuff and maybe programming stuff. And I know there's nuances here.
I'm talking specifically about just the kind of customers that I'm serving who are business owners looking to grow their business. These LLMs don't save you time, especially not in the creativity process. It doesn't save us any time to sit down and abdicate our thinking because I'm going to put it on the screen one more time.
How you write is how you think. And how you think is how you speak and how you speak is how you move through the world. So I talk a lot about YouTube and I'm here to help you to create a beautiful YouTube channel.
And if you want to create a beautiful YouTube channel, you want to have energy behind the words that you're saying. An important part of having energy behind the words that you're saying is that you've engaged in the entire process of thinking, writing, creating. Part of the reason that your videos will take off when you're excited about a thing is because you sat down and you thought about the stuff.
And you put it into a piece of paper and you mind your brain for little nuances, quotes, ideas, stories, and all that stuff gets overlooked when we just pop into one of these and say, think up an idea. So I just can't stand it. But I also wanted to point to a really important.
point, which is our cognition is actually an, an elemental part of our health. And it's an elemental part of our experience in this world. And it's an especially important part of our mental health.
So there's actually studies like tons of studies, and I don't want to bog this live down with studies, but I wanted to just pop a study on the screen. That is so important for us to keep in mind as beautiful business owners that we all are. So this is a study that was recently published called large language models as a cognitive virus.
And I want to read a specific line from this study that is very, very important. So the entire study, I highly recommend you read it. Please just go Google large language models as a cognitive virus.
It's an excellent study and it's 12 beautiful pages going in depth on how terrible these softwares are for our brain. But I'm just going to read the key sentence here that I want you to take away. Once a critical threshold is crossed, small increases in adoption can trigger rapid population level shifts towards persistent dependence with abrupt losses in cognitive competence.
So just to summarize, we're all losing cognitive competence. And as business owners, we do not want to lose cognitive competence. That's like our only asset.
That's all we really have is cognitive competence. So learning language models, which is now what I really want us to all normalize. Let's stop calling it artificial intelligence because it's not.
There is no such thing as artificial intelligence. They've completely hijacked. They've completely hijacked that phrase and used it as a form of marketing.
These are learning language models. So when you sit down to create your beautiful work and you are tempted to buy the hype of all the online business coaches, no shade, no hate. I respect the hustle.
Everybody's trying to get the bag. But a lot of these business coaches out here, they're not really using the stuff in their actual life, but they're really trying to push it and push it and push it. It's a big, giant Ponzi scheme.
I could be making an extra six figures a year right now lying to you, telling you how to use AI in your life's work. But I'm just not going to be doing that. I'm not saying that everyone who's saying that you should use AI are lying to you.
I'm saying a lot of these business coaches have gotten lost in the sauce. And I'm seeing some of the use cases that they're saying. for instance you could have 10 employees ai employees and then i'm listening to the actual use cases of these ai employees and i'm sorry if i sound like a raving lunatic but if you listen to the use cases of these ai employees for instance a marketing a marketing ai agent who you basically have the marketing ai agent skim everything that's trending on youtube and that'll tell you exactly what kind of videos you should make so that you can start trending on youtube And to me, that's batshit crazy.
And this is coming from a YouTube expert who's been doing it for 16 years. If you want to have excellent content that really stands out in the market, do you know how you do that? You do that by creating inspired content that you really care about, that helps people and the skillset that you're proficient in, not by going out there and looking at what's trending.
Okay. So. Hopefully, another thing I'm intending to do here is to give you the agency to really believe in yourself.
Another reason that there's the dark and sinister layer under here with all the AI junk is that it's almost a hidden message under there is that I can think better than you. This LLM can think better than you. This LLM can come up with better ideas than you.
This LLM can come up with some fancy stuff that you can't. And the truth is, as we're seeing right now, it's not true. It's simply not true.
A lot of it is just, I have an analogy for you. It does get a lot of output. You type a prompt into an LLM and you get five pages of all this flowery language.
And it says, good morning. It's great that you're asking about blah, blah, blah. And let's dive into the blah, blah, blah.
And then it gives you five. meaningless bullet points. But if you take a look at what it's giving you, the output, the quality of it, it's always lukewarm curdled milk nonsense.
And even if it is half decent, the half decent stuff, you have to repolish it and repolish it and repolish it. So the analogy I'd like to give you is does it get a lot done, done? Sure, it gets a lot done, but it's a lot like saying I have a little .
And I'm able to create 10 ,000 pieces of construction paper that have macaroni all over them. And it's like, yeah, do we have a lot of stuff coming out of AI? Yeah.
But is any of it all that great? No. No.
And this is one of the reasons I'm telling you, please don't let AI touch your YouTube stuff. Please don't let AI give you ideas because your ideas are your ideas. This, the thinking process and the creative process belongs to you.
And the dark and another layer of the dark and sinister is there's a capitalism is getting in there and trying to insert itself into your work. It's asking for the ultimate piece of the pie, which is give me your entire life.
The shellac of the whole thing is I'm going to make your life easier and better, but the dark and sinister is all of them have their lobster bibs on and they're saying, ooh, any minute now, everyone's going to give up the thinking process and we can be in every inch of their lives. It's very twisted, very dark, very sinister.
But more important, I know that you tune in because you want practical, tangible stuff. What's relevant to you is that this will not help your channel to grow because what will help your channel to grow? is creating good videos.
And you don't want to watch AI videos. I don't want to watch AI videos. Nobody wants to watch AI videos.
So doesn't it make sense that if you don't use AI, your videos are already going to be better by default based off of the fact that many people are now using AI and it's all sounding like AI slop? Right? So if I can give you one quick tip, if you want to stand out in 2026, the ultimate move right now is to say, none of my stuff is ever touched by AI.
I don't have an AI coach. I personally, I'm telling you, I don't have an AI coach, an AI bot version of me. If you buy one of my courses or programs, or you work with me in an accelerator, or you hire me as a coach, I'm not going to give you my AI coach to give you answers that are just as good as the answers I'm giving you, because what the hell are we doing here, ladies and gentlemen?
So if you want to stand out in today's market and you want your voice to really sound special and you want your videos to really be banging, and that's what I'm here to help you to do, create great stuff. I want you to know that you have it within you today to just sit down and create something great. If you happen to be leaning a little bit or a lot into the AI stuff, but even worse, even worse.
Here's what's even worse. Here's what's even worse. And I hate to bring this.
I don't really enjoy saying these kinds of things, but it needs to be said. Here's what's even worse. There are a lot of business coaches, like I alluded to earlier, who it's trendy to talk about AI.
And the ultimate offer is you don't have to think. You can put a couple prompts into an LLM, and it will help you to make millions of dollars or to create a dream YouTube channel or to get millions of subscribers. Buy my thing.
type in the prompts and you will be a millionaire. And that's a lot of business coaches are getting on this gravy train and they're making lots of money. And I'm not saying that they're doing it nefariously.
What I'm saying is a lot of people have just drank the Kool -Aid and gaslit themselves. Okay. So you cannot type a couple of prompts into an LLM and magically watches.
It gives you Matt. We can already see like, let's all open our eyes. I'm going to say it one more time.
You don't want to watch AI videos. Nobody does. You don't want to read AI emails.
Nobody does. You don't want to buy an AI coach bot. Nobody does.
So nobody wants it. But everyone's trying to sell you on the fact that you should use this stuff. I sound a little bit curmudgeonly.
Part of the reason I sound curmudgeonly is because it's hot as hell in Austin. And it's been like over 100 degrees for like months now. And I'm so sick of it.
But another reason is that.
all of this AI stuff, the doom and gloom stuff, the AI apocalypse, the bubble is sure enough, it's popping, but yet I'm still seeing business coaches out here promoting AI offers. And I'm like, are you tone deaf? Hello?
So, okay. So I wanted to also go into really quickly some other aspects of why I don't use AI. Okay.
I do not use Yeah, hate AI videos. Exactly, Colin.
Thank you. I think all of us do. Like all of us do.
Another thing that I wanted to address, though, is here's why I'm absolutely refusing to use AI. Because it does not grow my business. It just doesn't.
Anybody who tells you that it will grow your business, they're straight up, they're lying to you. They don't know what they're talking about. Period.
We've had millionaires and multimillion dollar business owners before AI. And we're going to have them after AI. And mark my words, AI is this bubble is actually it's popping right before our eyes.
But what I wanted to talk about is we're at a pivotal moment here in human history. I alluded to that LLM is a cognitive virus study. And I wanted to also talk about the data centers.
So basically here, I'm going to lay it out very simply. I don't want to live in a world covered in data centers. I don't want to live in a world where children are being taught by AI bots.
So here in Austin and in Houston and in various parts of Texas, they're rolling out and all over the country. They're rolling out schools where there are no teachers. Kids are just sat in front of computers.
And it's a very dystopian future. And it's happening right before our eyes. And the literacy rates are plummeting, by the way.
the increased use of AI is directly correlated and it's been shown to be causal for a reduction in literacy rates and cognitive functioning. So I don't want to live in a world covered in these god -awful data centers. I don't want to live in a world where children are sat in front of computers.
And I also don't want to live in a world where my intellectual property and your intellectual property and all of our intellectual property is stolen and spit back out at us in a mediocre LLM. And that is just a normal part of our life without getting any compensation. So as far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as ethical use of AI.
I know that sometimes we have to use it nowadays. For instance, you can't go to Google and Google something without AI being inserted into the thing. And that stupid AI star is following us everywhere.
And I'm not judging you if you have to use AI for some stuff. I understand spreadsheet stuff and sometimes programming stuff. But I'm saying like big picture, the less that you use these things, the better your brain's going to be.
The less you use these things, the better your business offerings will help you to stand out. The less you use these things, the better your YouTube channel will grow. I'm going to pop it on the screen one last time.
Please hear me one last time. How you write is how you think and how you think is how you speak and how you speak. is how you communicate in your YouTube videos.
And all of this stuff ties together. So it's not just that you're abdicating the writing and thinking process when you're using LLMs. When you reduce that little process of writing and thinking, how you think.
How you write is how you think. How you think is how you speak. How you speak is how you live in this world.
And all of this stuff ties together. So if we think about it like this, it's somewhat like asking somebody to take 20 ,000 steps for you and then expecting yourself to be great at a marathon. And it's just never going to work like that.
So same with online business. If you want to put together great offers, you want to be really good on camera, you want to have excellent YouTube videos, you want to come up with great offer ideas. You want to really be an excellent salesperson in your webinars.
I believe that the more you insert AI or LLMs into this process, the more those skills are reduced because one is not divorced from the other, is not divorced from the other. It's a whole organic ecosystem. Heard a business coach the other day saying, and no judgment, this is a judgment -free zone, but I'm just reflecting on what I'm hearing out on these streets.
In an effort to sell an affiliate link for an AI program that's very popular right now, I heard a business coach who was promoting that AI offer, but she was saying it's like magic because I took all of my content and I gave it to AI and then it gave me five more ideas. And I'm like, lady, all due respect and with so much love, too bad you missed out on thinking for yourself, you know?
Too bad you missed out on that thinking process. I also heard somebody else saying that they had an email from their kid that they fed the email through AI and that the AI automatically gives them bullet points every day that they can read to save them time. But if we really think about it, the use case for saving time by reading a bullet list, does it really save that much time to read a bullet list versus reading an email?
You still have to read the same amount of words more or less. So even if it saves a minute or whatever. Wouldn't it be nice to actually have the experience of having read and thought about some stuff and be like, what are the key actions in this email?
So I think about it like junk food. Sometimes, every so often, have some junk food. But especially when it comes to your creative work, your copywriting, your ideation, your scripting or unscripting, you can get my free unscripting template at brendaturner .com slash gifts.
your offer design, just all of it. The less that you use AI, the more you're going to stand out today because it's all, all, all a big C, it's becoming a big C of AI slop. So when you don't use the AI slop, your stuff starts to sound like magic.
You start to sound like the beautiful genius that you are. That's how we stand out in today's market. So a lot of people are like, how to survive in the AI market?
I'm saying, If you want to survive in the AI market, stop using AI. If you want to really thrive and stand out in the AI market, stop using AI.
If you want your business to grow in 2026, stop using AI. Don't use it for your emails. Don't use it for your content.
Don't use it for anything, really. I mean, you are a grown up and you know where you could use AI to grow your business and all that. But I personally, as somebody who's been doing online business for 16 years and having generated multiple thousands of dollars every year in organic sales without any ads, Um, I'm just saying, I'm not a huge fan of AI and the less that you use AI, the better your brain's going to work.
The better your business is probably going to end up. Um, if, if, if you love AI and it's really helped you, I'm always happy. So I'm happy to hear from business owners who are saying like, I love AI and AI has helped me a bunch.
My whole thing here is why I'm creating all of this stuff that I do is because I really am your biggest cheerleader. I want you to thrive and not just survive. I want you to thrive in your business.
But I'm just really behind the scenes when I'm taking a look at my colleagues and I'm like, how are you using AI? Most of the stuff that they're using it for, it just seems like a giant circle jerk. People are convincing each other that we need to use this stuff and then the results aren't all that great.
And the output isn't all that great. And the results aren't all that great. So this is just a frank and honest conversation.
Rather than me selling you some AI bot version of me, which I could be doing right now, or selling you on how to use AI for your content, or how to use AI to create anything at all, or pointing you to some offering that's an AI bot, I'm not going to do any of that because I absolutely hate that shit. And the less that we use this stuff, the better your business is going to grow.
Okay. So go ahead and go to my gifts page to download any one of my free offerings that will help you to actually grow your business without AI. And let me check in on the chat really quick.
Exactly. Summarizes almost all the same amount of time to, yeah. Summarizes, summarize, summaries take the same amount of time to read and process.
Exactly. Cognitive client is a serious threat. AI could increase dimension in the future.
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I agree.
I'm not a fan of AI ideas at all. Yeah. Hank Green, beautiful YouTuber, Hank Green.
I think it was Hank. It was either Hank or his brother. One of the bigger YouTubers was reading a script and in reading the script, he had used AI for his script.
And his audience was saying lately that his content was sounding weird and kind of like AI. And people were kind of raising an eyebrow. And they were like, are you using AI?
Like they were all kind of talking in the comment section, like it sounds like he's using AI. And it's funny how the minute that that comes up, it makes you not trust a creator as much. And I want you to keep that in mind.
So anyway, he was reading his script and he accidentally left a little AI prompt in there and he forgot to edit it out. And everybody really didn't like it. His audience was really insulted by it because people don't want you speaking business owner to business owner.
People don't want to hear from LLMs. They want to hear your ideas. Even if your ideas aren't as sharp as you think they should be, even if your ideas aren't as robust as you wish they would be, people would rather hear your most mediocre idea.
Like I want you to. Trust me on this. Take my hand.
People would rather hear your most mediocre idea, even if you're doubting it. You're like, I'm not sure if it's good. It might be kind of mediocre.
People would rather hear that a million times over than something from an LLM that sounds real clever.
That's the honest to goodness truth. I don't want to hear your LLM chatbot speaking through you. I want to hear your ideas.
I want to hear your stories. I want to hear your concepts. And I want to hear it from your unique voice.
So the less you use AI, I promise you, the more you're going to stand out in these streets. People can hear it. We think that people aren't going to notice.
They're really noticing. So don't let AI touch it at all. Whatever it is, whatever just came to your mind.
Don't let AI touch your offers. Don't let AI touch your YouTube videos. Don't let AI touch your emails.
Quick side note before I let you go. when you're using ai to write your emails if people get a whiff of that they're going to stop opening your emails so we're really playing with fire here people get a whiff that you're putting ai into your videos they're going to stop watching your videos people get a whiff of you're using ai to deliver your courses and programs they're going to stop buying your stuff it's it's called integrity and you have to trust here's I'm so sorry, but I get so enthused.
This is the part that makes me so excited. And what I'm really passionate about teaching you is that you've always had it in you always. Like all of us have imposter syndrome, what is called imposter syndrome.
All of us have self -doubt. And the illusion of the crutch that LLMs kind of are promising us that you can somehow make it better or more perfect or whatever, it's just an illusion. You can trust whatever you have in your heart and soul.
today right now is totally good enough. It's good enough. It's going to be 1000 % way better than anything you put through an LLM.
I promise you. Um, I think sometimes the truth is in between. Sometimes I am thankful for it and sometimes it makes me sad.
Yeah, that's okay. Sophie, I understand. I mean, everybody's got their own, their own unique take on this stuff.
I personally, um, Don't like it at all, but I understand that there are some use cases, like I said, spreadsheet stuff, you know, or programming stuff, you know. Sometimes I use AI for brainstorming and research, but never for creation or editing.
You're going to have to check, Una, the beginning of this live, because I kind of talked about that, where I'm going to pop it on the screen one more time. How you write is how you think. How you think is how you speak.
And when we're using AI, to circumvent that brainstorming process, it's really not a great idea. Now, this isn't me wagging my finger at you, Una.
I'm sorry, Una. This is just me letting you all know. I just wanted to let you guys know and honest.
My honest, I'm just always want to be as honest as I can. And one of the most precious parts of this whole thing for me is sitting down with that blank slate in my brain and opening up. and saying, what would you have me say today?
What are the ideas given to me? And I really don't like inserting some lukewarm, mediocre LLM into that process because it's never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to have better ideas than whatever you come up with when you open your mind to that process. That process is a very important part of the human experience.
So a lot of people want to wriggle out of that blank page. A lot of people understand you don't like the blank page. You don't like sitting down with a blank slate and saying, oh, no, what ideas can I think up today?
I understand that feeling. Believe me. I've been at this for 16 years.
But what I've come to realize is that is such a precious part of the whole thing.
This is not unlike giving birth to a thing. And the empty space that, you know, that being open to that uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty and not knowing what's going to happen. And then all of a sudden, you get an idea.
You get another idea. You get another idea. See, that's actually a muscle you're building.
When you build that muscle to connect with that ideation process, which is so precious, that ideation process keeps you on your toes. So that ideation process, being a business owner, being able to think up ideas on the fly, It's not like that's just for your content.
That's for everything. When I'm at live events and something goes terribly wrong, which happens quite often if I'm hosting a five -day challenge and something goes terribly wrong, as it will always happen, I'm thinking on my feet. I've got a great idea coming up all the time because that's a muscle that we really want to sharpen.
Please don't delegate the ideation process as much as you can to these curdled milk lukewarm LLMs, okay? Terry says, I would add that as a verbal processor, when I speak to it, not type to it with ideas that illuminating my head over and over, it can provide me some clarity of what I'm actually thinking about. So like I was saying before, I think everybody has their own interfacing with this kind of software.
And I'm just being completely honest with everybody. I'm never, ever wagging my finger at anybody here because we're all business owners who have our own unique take on how we want to use these softwares. I'm just not a fan of any of it, really.
I guess you could call me an anti -AI revolutionary. I really don't like any of it. And I feel that the less that we use these things, the better.
But whatever helps you, whatever you find helpful, like I was saying before, please feel free to keep doing it. But if you're ever looking at the output and you're like, it's not really working, yeah, you can trust that and stop using it.
Best regards from Brazil. Awesome. Welcome in Brazil.
Good to see you. And the last comment, or one of the last, if any of you guys have any questions, by the way, please feel free to let me know. AIs are trained on what we do, search, like, want, need, do.
Well, here's the illusion. He or she would have to keep up with all that. If we had a personal assistant, he or she would have to keep up with all that.
Here's an important thing that, here's what I found. I don't need an LLM to be like the presupposition for this whole thing is that it's of any value for, let's say I have a bunch of groceries that I want to buy and I want to repurchase those groceries every time. I don't, the presupposition being that it's of any value to me to not sit down for five seconds and write out a grocery list.
That's an important part of the thinking process. This is just where my brain is at with it. Going back to the whole LLM thing.
the LLMs as a cognitive virus thing, those things that LLMs are marketing that they can save us a bunch of time on, such as what we want to read and all those things, I don't need LLMs to know what I like reading. I already have that right up here. But my assistant doesn't help me with any of that stuff.
What my assistant does for me is my assistant helps me to handle my customers. My assistant is like a client concierge, my assistant, which I definitely don't want to delegate to AI.
My assistants are bringing a human touch to my business and a lot of the important aspects of running my business, like a community management situation. A lot of people are delegating AI for community management and then people get into the community and there's a bunch of robots answering questions and people like, where is a human being?
And that's not very good. So my assistants don't help me with things like what I want to read and write and all that stuff. And those things that LLMs are purported to help us to do, I just find it to be a big circle jerk waste of time.
A lot of it's a lot of busy work. That's just a me thing. That might just be a me thing.
But also going back to the ethical stance, there is no ethical AI in my personal opinion.
For whatever little tiny pros that it does offer, which I personally haven't really had all that much of. There's been every so often, like once in a blue moon, I've had a little bit of luck with some LLMs, but most of the time it's not worth it. But also the ethical, I find AI to be implicitly unethical.
What's your opinion about AI for thumbnails?
When I put this thumbnail up here, hopefully you saw the thumbnail for this live stream, but the thumbnail is don't let AI touch it. And I mean that for your thumbnails too. When people see the AI thumbnails here on YouTube, it signifies one thing.
I wonder if everybody could just put in the chat simultaneously. If you happen to be on here, what do you do when you see an AI thumbnail most of the time? And, or what do you think when you see an AI thumbnail most of the time?
Just like pop it in the chat. Most of the time when people see an AI thumbnail, they're scrolling past it because most of the time those AI thumbnails don't really have anything all that great behind them because there's so much AI slop on YouTube. So if you're actually creating great videos, you don't want to hide them behind an AI thumbnail to the best of your ability.
I really discourage the use of AI for thumbnails. I think cheap. I think skip it.
I think don't click it. AI thumbnails suck and I don't want to watch the video. Right.
Thank you, everybody. I'm with you. And I'm right there with you.
So another thing that I want to just give you a quick tip on, here's a quick tip. When making a YouTube thumbnail, that is a very important part of this whole process, but we want a human touch for this. So I use services, I personally design all my own thumbnails because I'm just picky about it.
But for my clients, I recommend upwork .com. So Upwork .com has a vast sea of graphic designers and you want to hire a graphic designer to maybe help you to create like your first four thumbnails. And that'll give you a nice starting ground for like templates.
They can even make you templates in Canva and those professionally designed graphic. A professional graphic designer, I wonder if we have any in the house. A professional graphic designer is not unlike a professional.
They're basically professional artists. So a lot like AI art, you know, when you see AI art, it looks like slop. When you see an actual piece of art, it's like something special to it.
So graphic designers, I love graphic designers. Graphic designers are artists, but they're artists in the mixed media of digital stuff. And a graphic designer isn't usually all that much.
Put a budget up of like $100 or $175 or four thumbnails. See what you get. Hire a couple different graphic designers.
Experiment. And that will set you leaps and bounds above anything an AI thumbnail would probably do. Because there's a certain type of feeling tone to an AI thumbnail.
Am I right? Everybody kind of agreed here in the comments. The AI thumbnails have this cheap kind of team you quality to them.
There's just no getting around it. I know it's tempting. I know it's tempting to pop some stuff into AI and get a thumbnail, but as we can see, they just don't perform all that well.
So the more human touches you can add to your business, the better your business is going to stand out in 2026. Hands down, point blank. Shooting it straight with you.
Yeah, it looks uncanny. Yeah.
Diane says, light bulb moments are wonderful. Thanks, Diane. Okay, everybody.
So that was my little PSA about AI. The less you use AI, the better. I've been a little bit on summer vacation.
And by vacation, I mean, I've just been kind of taking it slow the past couple months. It's very hot here in Austin. And if anybody else has been in Austin, this summer has been extremely brutal.
I've just been kind of laying low, but I'll be back with some more officially recorded videos. I really wanted to make this recorded video, but I kept putting it off and putting it off. Anyway, I'm off.
I'm always with my hair frizzy because I'm always in and out of the heat and I'm off to go have my second hike of the day. And it's been great hanging with you guys. Tranquil teacher says join late, but yes, 100 % agree.
Awesome, Tranquil. I'm very hot here. Yeah.
Terry, it's so hot. Una says, thank you for everything. Thank you, Una.
Thank you everybody for, for showing up and adding to the conversation and always being so lovely. And it's been great hanging with you guys. If you would like to.
keep in touch if you're ever like where's brenda what's she up to i post on a very regular basis on my podcast that's called the deep riches and that's on spotify it's got 56 ratings there's a double there's a little snafu here there's two versions of the podcast i have to clean that up somehow my rss feed got mixed up but it's called the deep riches and you can find that anywhere you get your podcast and i'm posting um at least five times a month to that podcast okay uh Tranquil teacher says, love the podcast.
All right. You're a glitter covered alien. Okay, cool.
Okay, everybody. Thanks so much for hanging. I'll see you guys in the next episode.
Big, huge hug. Make that money.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
An impromptu Sunday livestream turns into a full case against using AI in your creative work, opening with a promise to keep your channel from getting hindered by the same tools business coaches are cashing in on.
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
21:30link
“go ahead and go to my gifts page to download any one of my free offerings”
soft CTA dropped mid-stream after the main PSA, pointing to a free template rather than a paid offer
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
Visual structure at a glance.
