Amplifying Cognition - Jeremy Somers on building an AI-assisted creative agency, 80:20 in Humans + AI, AI-amplified storytelling, and the future of agencies (AC Ep48)

Jeremy Somers on building an AI-assisted creative agency, 80:20 in Humans + AI, AI-amplified storytelling, and the future of agencies (AC Ep48)

06/12/24 • 39 min

“True creativity comes from humans because it stems from our unique individual experiences of life. “

– Jeremy Somers

About Jeremy Somers

Jeremy Somers is Founder and Director of AI-assisted creative agency NotContent.ai, and of We Are Handsome. He has extensive experience as a Creative Director, working for brands such as Asos, Canon, Mercedes-Benz, Qantas, Spotify, and W Hotels.

Websites:

www.notcontent.ai

www.jeremysomers.com

Instagram: @notcontent.ai

Beehiv: notcontent.beehiiv

What you will learn

Exploring Jeremy’s journey from analog to digital in the creative industry
The pivotal role of generative AI in transforming creative processes
How notcontent.AI merges AI tools with human creativity for enhanced productivity
Addressing common misconceptions about AI replacing creative jobs
Strategies for integrating AI into traditional creative agency workflows
The future of creative agencies in an AI-driven world
Insights on maintaining human creativity at the core of AI-assisted outputs

Episode Resources

Transcript

Ross Dawson: Jeremy, it’s awesome to have you on the show.

Jeremy Somers: Hey, Ross, thank you for having me.

Ross: So you’re a leader in AI-assisted creative agency work. Tell me more. Tell us more.

Jeremy: The story begins long before the world of generative AI and AI creativity. My career and life history have always been about creativity. And I started in traditional analog photography, when I was in my teens, and trends went through the whole transition into digital photography. And then I taught myself graphic design. And then I learned it through a very, very early Photoshop version on a bubble, iMac, and the colored ones. And then started working in some of the very first digital agencies in Sydney. And learning through the transition of like, there was no social media and other social media, there is no e-commerce now there is e-commerce, so it’s in digital agencies working on big brands, Nike, and Pepsi, and Microsoft, Samsung, etcetera, etcetera, through this whole transition. And so a lot of my career journey has been in transitional periods of, like, massive shifts in the thing that I’m doing, not just the tools that are available to us, but just societal level shifts of how we communicate as designers and creators and branding people to the outside world.

And I happened upon open APIs, Darley white paper very early on, probably coming up on, two and a half years since it was released, I think I’ll check that. But I haven’t found this like paper and nerdily, read through the entire thing, and then read through it again. And then I fully understood what was going on, I had this moment of, sort of cinematic-like, flashback, flash forward moment of, I see the end result of where everything I’ve ever done, creatively, how I’ve done, it has changed, but this is going to change everything in a way, which we’ve never seen before. So I have this, Pivotal epiphany. And I was like, whoa, okay, how can I learn more? One, and two, o...

“True creativity comes from humans because it stems from our unique individual experiences of life. “

– Jeremy Somers

About Jeremy Somers

Websites:

www.notcontent.ai

www.jeremysomers.com

Instagram: @notcontent.ai

Beehiv: notcontent.beehiiv

What you will learn

Exploring Jeremy’s journey from analog to digital in the creative industry
The pivotal role of generative AI in transforming creative processes
How notcontent.AI merges AI tools with human creativity for enhanced productivity
Addressing common misconceptions about AI replacing creative jobs
Strategies for integrating AI into traditional creative agency workflows
The future of creative agencies in an AI-driven world
Insights on maintaining human creativity at the core of AI-assisted outputs

Episode Resources

Transcript

Ross Dawson: Jeremy, it’s awesome to have you on the show.

Jeremy Somers: Hey, Ross, thank you for having me.

Ross: So you’re a leader in AI-assisted creative agency work. Tell me more. Tell us more.

Previous Episode

Ross Dawson on Future Job Prosperity: 13 reasons to believe in a positive future of work (AC Ep47)

“If we start to think about humans plus AI, this mindset begins to shape what we are trying to create.”

– Ross Dawson

About Ross Dawson

Ross Dawson is a futurist, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, author, and host of Amplifying Cognition podcast. He is Chairman of the Advanced Human Technologies group of companies and Founder of Humans + AI startup Informivity. He has delivered keynote speeches and strategy workshops in 33 countries and is the bestselling author of 5 books, most recently Thriving on Overload.

Website: Ross Dawson

LinkedIn: Ross Dawson

Twitter: @rossdawson

Facebook: Ross Dawson

YouTube: Ross Dawson

Books

Thriving on Overload

Other books

What you will learn

Exploring the dual attitudes toward AI: replacement vs. enhancement
Introduction to the amplifying cognition podcast by Ross Dawson
Overview of the Maven cohort course on AI-enhanced thinking
Debating the future of work with insights from Sangeeta Paul Chattery
How AI can amplify human cognition and decision-making
Understanding the potential for a positive future of work
Inviting listener feedback and discussion on the future of jobs

Link to report:

Please let Ross know your thoughts and comments on future job prosperity:

LinkedIn: Future Job Prosperity

X/Twitter: Ross Dawson on Future Job Prosperity

Episode Resources

Transcript

So this episode is a bit different than usual. It’s just me today. And like to share this mini report I’ve just written about making the case about why we should believe that the future of jobs will be prosperous. And one of the most popular episodes in the podcast has been episode 39 recently with Sangeet Paul Choudary, where we had a kind of a debate around the future of work where he was somewhat less positive, particularly around the evolution of the skill premium in jobs. And I was making the case for a more positive perspective on the future of work. And if we think about the future of humanity, perhaps the most important issue is the future of work. This is how we create value for ourselves for society, the way that we feel we have value we express our personality, our capabilities, we achieve our potential, it’s there’s nothing more important in a way than the future of work though how it is that we contribute and create value in our work, I recall this survey by Pew Research jus...

Next Episode

undefined - Anita Williams Woolley on factors in collective intelligence, AI to nudge collaboration, AI caring for elderly, and AI to strengthen human capability (AC Ep49)

Anita Williams Woolley on factors in collective intelligence, AI to nudge collaboration, AI caring for elderly, and AI to strengthen human capability (AC Ep49)

“In collective reasoning, one of the fundamental hurdles is coming up with a shared understanding of what we’re trying to do, and where we’re trying to go. “

– Anita Williams Woolley

About Anita Williams Woolley

Anita Williams Woolley is the Associate Dean of Research and Professor of Organizational Behavior at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. She received her doctorate from Harvard University, with subsequent research including seminal work on collective intelligence in teams, first published in Science. Her current work focuses on collective intelligence in human-computer collaboration, with projects funded by DARPA and the NSF, focusing on how AI enhances synchronous and asynchronous collaboration in distributed teams.

University Profile: Anita Williams Woolley

LinkedIn: Anita Williams Woolley

Google Scholar: Anita Williams Woolley

ResearchGate: Anita Williams Woolley

X: @awoolley95

What you will learn

Exploring the concept of collective intelligence
The difference between individual and collective intelligence
How collective memory, attention, and reasoning work
The impact of gender on collective intelligence
The role of AI in facilitating human collaboration
Integrating AI as a teammate in group settings
Future possibilities for human-AI collaboration in problem-solving

Episode Resources

Transcript

Ross Dawson: Anita, it’s wonderful to have you on the show.

Anita Williams Woolley: Thanks for having me.

Ross: So your work is absolutely fascinating. So I’d like to dive in as much as we can, in the time that we have. Much of your work is centered around collective intelligence and I’d love to just pull back to get that framing of collective intelligence relative to human intelligence. So we have some idea of artificial intelligence, which is emerging. So where does collective intelligence fit in that?

Anita: Yeah, well, it is. There are a lot of uses of the word intelligence. So it’s good to get some clarity. I guess starting with the notion of individual general intelligence, which is the thing that’s most familiar to most people, it’s this notion that individuals have this underlying capability to perform across multiple domains. And that’s what’s been shown empirically, anyway.

So individual intelligence is a concept most people are familiar with. It refers to this. Well, when we’re talking about general human intelligence, it’s a general underlying ability for people to perform across many domains. And empirically, it’s been shown that measures of individual intell...