AI v. AGI, 2025 Goals & Leveraging SMEs in Your Content Marketing

Are you totally freaked out by artificial intelligence? Jazzed to try out every new development in real time? Existing in a beautiful oblivion about the whole thing? Today’s Word Wars tests the depth of your understanding of the spectrum of artificial intelligence—can you get it right?

Artificial Intelligence Vs. Artificial General Intelligence

Fact or Fiction? Imagine the (Near) AI-Infused Future through these Books & Shows…

While we wait to see what actually happens, here’s some recommended science fiction to get your gears turning. It’s all pretty wild and weird—and likely all totally possible. Although maybe not the monsters part??

The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson

This novel is set in a near-ish future where game-changing technology allows new geographies to be conjured as if by magic (by the ultra-wealthy, of course). In a world where a new land mass can be created, the lines of countries lose their meaning and humans belong to clans or tribes rather than nations. In an altruistic attempt to level the intellectual playing field, an innovative primer is developed that falls into the hands of an impoverished little girl (instead of the princess for whom it was intended) and alters the course of her life. Slightly lesser versions of this primer are also given to a legion of orphan girls with far-reaching ramifications.

Some super wild and weird stuff happens along the way, like a subterranean orgy cave that somehow creates a powerful collective consciousness that requires female sacrifice. Because of course it does.

This is a thorough if wacky thought experiment on one way things could all turn out.

A Murder at the End of the World, streaming on Hulu

What if you created a super helpful and capable artificial intelligence assistant who could serve as both your secretary and as your therapist? Nothing bad, I’m sure, right? This addictively watchable show imagines a scenario where an extremely rich, powerful tech mogul invites a collection of the world’s brightest and most eccentric thinkers, dreamers and titans to a sustainable hotel in an arctic climate in an Agatha-Christie-esque environment of plot twists and turns fueled by human drama and cutting-edge tech.

Mrs. Davis, streaming on Peacock

I watched this early in 2024, and my mind keeps coming back to it over and again. To me, this scenario portrays one of the more likely outcomes of artificial intelligence as it is coming of age in such prolific and un-monitored ways. Humans always go for the feel-good junk food, the dopamine-kick, the easy that avoids the messiness of IRL unpredictability. Mrs. Davis (the algorithm, not the show) plays on all these tendencies with the most altruistic of intentions.

The show is super weird in the most delightful sense of the word, featuring a nun who is literally married to Jesus and who was raised by a seriously messed up pair of magicians. It involves a tangled romantic triangle (aforementioned nun and Jesus, plus an eccentric billionaire with an underground resistance of sorts). Plus the Holy Grail, the Pope and Mary. Buckle up, Buttercup.

Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro

What if you could give your lonely only child the gift of a constant companion who would be a friend and guardian for life? This strange, ethereal novel imagines a future where a benevolent doll of sorts is programmed to act with only the best interests in mind for their one particular human. It’s self-charging and wholly self-sustainable, and capable of some sort of conscious thought, and it can never “die,” whatever that means.

Love and Monsters, streaming on Netflix

In this movie, humans’ reckless method of destroying a world-ending meteor before it reached Earth resulted in all the bug species rapidly evolving into massive, killer versions of their “normal” selves. Even in this post-apocalyptic world, the power of love prevails and sends one young man on a quest to find his high school girlfriend.

Note: I watched this on Netflix, but it looks like it’s no longer available there. Looks like it’s playing on other subscription streaming platforms, including Paramount+, Roku, YouTube and Amazon Prime.

2025 Goals

This feels a bit vulnerable to me, but I’m doing it anyways! I’ve collected a handful of the unpolished rocks tumbling around in my head over the past six months or more and turned them into actual goals I can work toward this year. Do you set goals? And do you stick to them? Here I’m sharing the things I want to do related to Pink Pineapple Post so I can keep it interesting for you (fingers crossed) and keep my creative juices flowing for the long haul.

Reach 5,000 subscribers to Pink Pineapple Post. Readers, I’ll need your help on this one! I have some thoughts on incentives you can get for forwarding Pink Pineapple Post to friends and co-workers. Pink Pineapple Post swag, people! Stickers, notebooks, pens, pencils and magnets are all in the mix! More to come on that soon. If you’ve enjoyed my ramblings, or know someone who might, please do share.

Make 12 video posts on LinkedIn (one per month). I’ll be honest, posting video of myself scares the begeesus out of me! I’m hoping writing it down will help me get over the hump and actually do it.

Start a regular journaling practice. I just signed up for a journaling workshop with my friend Elisabeth Andrews. Ah, I remember those youthful days of sitting in European cafes or in idyllic parks scribbling in artisan-crafted notebooks. This, though, I can feel will be something different. More practical and foundational, I’m thinking. Even though I do write every single day, there’s something completely different about writing purely for introspection, for unadulterated creative impulse. A realization that has come to me lately is that writing what I want to write, with no assignment, no outside pressure, creates a zingy energy that taps into a deeper zone than I generally access. Maybe like an aquifer running swift and pure far below the surface. I am wondering if journaling will be an entry point to that source.

Score a new client. To me, getting to look under the hood of a business or brand and figuring out how marketing and clever content can help drive it forward is like dumping out a fresh, jumbled 1,000 piece puzzle and working side by side putting it all together into a stunning, holistic picture. Could you use a partner to help with marketing plans, content frameworks, newsletter launching? I’m your gal.

Read more. For someone who writes and talks about books so much, you wouldn’t think this would be such a big deal. But the truth is, I read first and foremost for the pleasure of it. So putting a number on it feels like taking away the joy from it. Like counting calories at dessert. Just… don’t! So I’m not going to set a specific goal of a number of books to read this year, but rather focus on carving out more time in my days to devote to reading. It’s mostly relegated to pre-bedtime routine since kids have entered the picture, but this year I’m going to do more of it during (so-called) leisure hours. Like instead of—gasp—watching shows.

Write about trust. This topic has been fascinating me for a while now. Of course, I know what trust is on a personal level—but it’s much harder to pin down in a professional setting. When it’s there and robust, you can feel it. Ideas flow freely, work feels more like play and the energy is just good. When it’s shaky or even one person is mistrustful, the ground feels uncertain, you’re on edge and suspicious of others and you go into watch-your-back mode. I’ve experienced both, which makes me want to unpack the whole thing and drag it all out into the light to understand the ingredients of a trusting workplace. My first phase of writing about this is going to be talking to people who excel at creating a foundation of trust. Know anybody like this? Or are you yourself a trust guru? Let’s connect.

Be a connector. Speaking of connecting, over the last pair of years, I’ve realized how much making one-on-one connections enriches my life. And I want more. I truly savor intimate conversations with an individual or a small group, and the next step for me in 2025 is to pay it forward by helping others make these matches. To me, this is both practical and personal. On a practical level, I’d love to be part of a smart network that helps people get jobs and find new professional opportunities. On a personal level, this is where the spark lives. You get the new, the next, the support by inhabiting these spaces.

Smart Tips for Leveraging Your SMEs

Throughout my life as a student and in my professional career, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing experts on everything from how rubber is made (tapped from a tree, like syrup) and a professional wedding dress seamstress to artists and artisans, a former exec in the paper biz, cheesemongers, sommeliers, EV fleet-building pros, racecar drivers, math PhDs and financial planners. No matter the subject, these interviews are reliably and endlessly fascinating, opening up previously hidden worlds populated with colorful characters, dangerous conflicts and an intriguing look into the future. The experts are passionate, compelling and often brilliant and funny.

You probably pass these unlikely geniuses in the hallways at work on the daily, with no idea of what you’re passing up. These are your SMEs, or subject matter experts. And they’re the secret treasure that can light up your content marketing. Ready to mine these gems and create truly fantastic and original content guaranteed to attract new customers and encourage the ones you’ve got to stick with you for the long haul?

For the next several issues of Pink Pineapple Post, I’ll be doling out my top tips on how to make the most of this rich resource hiding in plain sight. The very first step?

Tip #1: Go on a SME hunt.

🕵️ Not all SMEs are created equal. So ask around, see which names pop up repeatedly when you ask your peers who would be a good expert to interview on any given subject. You’re looking for experts who speak with a little pizzazz and flair. Those who can put things in layman’s terms.

🥸 The person who is most technically fluent is not necessarily the one you want to feature. It’s the expert who is also relatable. Someone who will go beyond a cardboard quote and offer some color commentary.

👏 Also make sure to match the SME to your audience. A more technical audience is well suited to a more technical SME, whereas a wider, more general audience prefers to hear from an expert who’s able to speak more colloquially.