In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss how to spot an AI snake oil salesman, a vital skill in today’s hype-filled environment. Learn the questions to ask that reveal true expertise and understand the hallmarks of genuine AI knowledge. Discover the red flags to watch out for so you don’t fall prey to fleeting trends and empty promises. Tune in to gain valuable insights that will empower you to navigate the world of AI with confidence.

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What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.

Christopher Penn 0:00

In this week’s In-Ear Insights, let’s talk about, well, I have a bit of a rant. Ever since November 2022, when ChatGPT came out and the ability for the average non-technical person, the non-technical business person, to be able to use AI tools came out, suddenly everyone and their cousin was an AI expert. All people were hawking crypto and NFTs. So, the AI experts—meanwhile, the folks who have been in the profession for a decade, two decades, their entire careers, etc.—are like, “You don’t know anything about anything. You’re literally just copying and pasting each other’s ChatGPT prompts.”

Even today, I was in my inbox this morning trying to clean it out, and there are people offering all sorts of ChatGPT prompt workshops. You can get this strategic AI consulting workshop, and I look at the outlines and go, “I don’t know that you know what you’re doing.”

So Katie, let me ask you, as someone who has some hands-on experience with general AI, but is not an engineer: How do you detect snake oil when it comes to AI? How do you, when you look at your LinkedIn feed and you see somebody talking about AI as though they were an expert and you know that person is not an AI expert, how do you tell the difference? How would you advise someone else to enhance and improve their BS detector?

Katie Robbert 1:34

Oh, it’s such a—it’s a tricky question, because now you’re talking about people management and sort of like the intangibles. This is something that I get asked a lot, and I struggled to communicate it because it’s a lot of just knowing behaviors and, well, I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t say “struggle”. I’ve spent a lot of time studying human behavior, and I’ve spent a lot of time studying communication and body language and nonverbal cues. But also, the way that people communicate online is a whole practice in and of itself.

I feel like the first thing I look for is how much fluff there is versus how much substance there is. So, if you’re telling me that you have 98 prompts that are going to change my life, like, first, it’s the wording—first of all, that sounds very salesy and catchy. Then I’m like, “Okay, well, let me