The Cost of AI Automation
Burning the Commons Never Produced so much value.
On Linkedin I came across this post where someone I follow in the GTM space realized someone was running not just automated Linkedin outreach but their entire account using an LLM chatbot. And since this dynamic and the impact it’ll have is a morbidly interesting topic for me - I wanted to poast (yes poast) about it. Here is it is:
Everyone wants more leverage.
Myself included.
And I can understand the POV that leveraging AI to outbound that impersonates you seems like an incredible competitive edge.
The problem is the cost, and not just the immediate cost but all the second and third order effects.
First order: What happens when you use AI to impersonate yourself for cold outreach? How would you feel if you were on the other end?
When the person on the other end figures it out (usually in .5 seconds)?
They immediately discount it (regardless of the msg in the outreach) and tune it out.
Competitive edge in the play itself is gone. Washed out.
And they also feel cheated. They were spending their time on someone who wasn't.
Second Order:
Growth of AI impersonation drives more and more people to discount any sort of cold outreach. These channels become less and less effective.
Third Order:
Signal to noise ratio broadly shifts to noise (too much AI slop to sort through the few attempts at "sending value at scale" - which btw I think is a great use case of AI)
The open internet dies, and we all shift from open platforms to smaller group chats, slack groups, discord servers, etc. to avoid the spam.
Like any tool, it always depends on how you use it, but I think that the key distinction here is how, what assumption you're making about the person you're reaching out to.
Are they:
An object - a means to an end?
Or are they another subject - an end in themselves that is worthy of respect, dignity, and care?
I know that sounds like hyperbolic for B2B sales, but I don't think this issue is just unique to GTM & B2B sales.
This is a whole issue that's impacting how the internet operates and will operate in the future. Wrote about it:
How to Think About When to Use Gen AI: Where is the value? The Process Itself, or the Outcome?
I talk and think about AI a lot - in fact probably too much for my own sanity. One of the recurring topics I encountered in my own inquiry, and in discussion with friends, clients and basically whoever is interested in talking about it, is a deep concern that can be summed up into “if xyz AI model/tool can do this, what are people going to have left to …
I don't think there's anything wrong with leveraging AI to build datasets, to build workflows, to provide relevant value programmatically at scale so long as you're upfront about it, and there's a clear delineation between where you, and your authentic human connection stops and starts, and where your AI-driven Rube Goldberg machine begins.
As long as you're upfront, I don't think anyone particularly cares about chatting with a chatbot (clearly) or getting cold outreach (to a reasonable degree), as long as it's providing them some sort of value.
I don't blame anyone for optimizing for more leverage, and I am not blameless myself, but I don't think this specific type of leverage is worth it the cost. It is just not how I want to show up.
But beyond my personal beliefs, I don't think this is something that can be meaningfully altered as a trend for now.
All you can do is adapt, as an individual, as the open internet dies and the balkanized version rises in its wake.