As we enter the final stretch of Podcast Advent 2024, I want to give you a short, but important message about podcasting in 2025. I was listening to a

Don’t Sacrifice Personal Connection

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2024-12-21 19:00:08

As we enter the final stretch of Podcast Advent 2024, I want to give you a short, but important message about podcasting in 2025.

I was listening to a podcast on iHeartRadio — a network that produces incredible shows with far too many ads — when a very obviously AI-generated audio ads shows up.

Maybe I’m part of a small group of people who can detect it, or care…but I doubt it. The ad has strong uncanny valley vibes. They didn’t disclose that it was AI-generated. They tried to pass it off as a human.

When I read The Coming Wave, the scenario that left the biggest impact for me wasn’t AI Agents that will be able to plan vacations or compile research completely autonomously. It wasn’t the computer viruses that will be able to find their vulnerabilities and rewrite them, making them harder to kill.

We’re increasingly talking to robots, outsourcing creative work, and convincing ourselves that if we just train ChatGPT enough, it can sound exactly like us. We need to remember what makes life worth living and content worth consuming: the personal connection.