What's the Value of a Conversation?

Isn’t it funny that at a time of peak polarization and abysmal social isolation, a new technology that lets you talk more (but less to eachother) is booming?

There is an unparalleled satisfaction we get after having an effective conversation; maybe with a loved one, at work, or even yourself. Not to mention at a store or with your bank when we just need some personalized help, just talking to someone brings us peace of mind and often is a necessary step to reach our goals. It’s almost like we as humans need to talk, as many have said.

When I talk to someone it often leads to an action: buy something, go somewhere, commit, change my mind, spend time or take a risk… though yes even before COVID we were prone to just do research online and avoid human interactions, but sifting the information is still a form of communicating. Point is, we make decisions after getting information. And the more interactive that exchange, not just reading something but rather having a conversation, the bigger the outcome. Communication is a catalyst for action. We rarely just go do something without some external instigation.. a notification, a groan from your stomach, or your dog emptying herself on your bed so you give her more attention.

In this light, conversations are essentially pitches, ads, triggers, gateways, cross-roads, chemical reactions, and so everyone is a salesman then right? Unfortunately, but it’s subconscious most of the time, and salesmen may be a strong word… or maybe we are harsh on salesmen? At the end of the day everything influences everything else, even the cup on the table in front of me has a message… and maybe it’s in my best interest to listen. It is a worthwhile cliche to say; ask and you will receive. Communication leads to an exchange, whether it’s a meal, social acceptance, or a family.

And in the current economic climate of various resource constraints and workforce shifts, we are struggling to swim across a turbulent ocean of data and information that has accumulated over the last couple decades of the Information Age. “Overwhelmed” doesn’t do it justice, we’ve been here for so long we’ve adapted to drowning in data and become a data-submersed society. If we are now Goldfish who’ve become accustomed to wandering aimlessly at the mercy of the tide, wouldn’t it be nice if we had radar or some kind of advanced navigation technology? Sifting through all this data is the bottleneck to us evolving as a society, to maybe become dolphins or something.

On this backdrop, emerge LLMs and the transformer technology of ChatGPT. A truly remarkable breakthrough and scientific achievement, a fundamental theorem or mathematical understanding of nature akin to the Fourier and Laplace Transforms in their constructive potential for society. It sounds complicated, but it’s really not; it’s just the same mechanism we all use to learn language, we infer the meaning of something based on its surroundings. Put another way, we deconstruct communications based on the words and their layout in a sentence. Attention is all you need is the famous saying, but I like to think of it as “context is everything”. And doesn’t it seem like we need more contextual awareness, less ignorance (voluntary and involuntary), and better integration of different inputs on most issues in the world nowadays?

Almost anyone can make an Ai tool nowadays, which is actually a beautiful testament to how much of an intuitive, universal intelligence this contextual mathematics of language is. Though yes, soon I’ll need to negotiate with my phone.. But we don’t know what that’s worth to have (or avoid). In all seriousness, if people are already willing to pay to have to fumble through “one-way data” in all our apps, how much should we pay to avoid typing, deciphering and reading so much and instead get to just talk and listen to my surroundings? What is the value of Interpretation-as-a-Service?

OpenAI among others have bravely trail-blazed the value of this service at $20-30/user-month, but I’d bet that this price will grow significantly as society starts to understand and accept the much greater value of premium, “two-way data” communication in today’s Data Ocean. Or even put another way, once we appreciate what it's worth to return to a more human form interacting with our world! No more weird head down in your phone mode. No more squinting at the screen trying to find Waldo on some page. No more wandering through the maze of an app that some stranger dreamed up, when you are just trying to find a simple answer. Just give me a way to make sense of the world around me. Please.

It is a rare moment when tech shows a trend towards more human behavior being promoted by technology. Maybe as exciting as the birth of the mobile phone, the internet or even the telegraph? Well either way, it seems like a society reforming force. Though let’s not ignore the fact that you are no longer talking to a human. But hey, listen instead it’s more polite, faster, more reliable and frankly it will inevitably be smarter.. and you know what? Generative AI gets us talking more, communicating more; to be more creative, unique, genuine, open... operating intuitively, through stories and situational awareness.

Although yes some loss of fidelity will happen, as does with all analog to digital conversion… but everything is a trade-off. Can it be misused or dependency-building in practice? Sure, but it’s also mechanical in nature. It has the potential to become more than us, and doesn’t it seem like our world is maybe a bit too complex for us to handle nowadays? Why is it so controversial to say that maybe a super intelligence could even help an arrogant species that seems to have lost its way (or at least could use some help in light of the mounting global challenges we face). And maybe that’s enough for us to adopt this technology, cautiously of course, but also hopefully.

Within this landscape, I was reflecting on valuable conversations I’ve had in my life. How as a first generation immigrant 30 years ago, learning to communicate well was a constant struggle and as I got better at it, it became a skill I only ever grew to value more and more. It struck me as odd that we don’t think of conversations as currency, as communication as the medium for value exchange.

Some conversations came to mind that I may have paid for, such as office hours with a university professor or a consultant, and others through luck or indirect actions like enlightening talks with mentors, close friends and family. And even conversations with strangers; a store clerk who advised me on which product to buy, or that random person who told me about a musician who has turned out to be one of my favorites, or that golden nugget of a social insight buried deep in some niche online forum.

And let’s not forget the conversations I have at work, where it is easier to notice the price of things; people’s wages multiplied by the duration of a conversation, or the potential savings/profit/etc of an outcome of a conversation. Or the opportunity cost of me spending time arguing, or just rambling, instead of having a more constructive interaction. And maybe one of the more accurately appreciated situations; the value placed in product management on having a direct conversation with your customer to gain their feedback, easily costing hundreds of dollars each (so the perceived value is presumably even higher). The reality is we have long been paying too much for sub-par conversations.

But isn’t measuring the value of a conversation quite an intangible and pointless thing to do? Setting aside the practicalities around how to quantify their value, and let’s not overlook how hard it would be to link specific actions or outcomes to specific conversations, there is an even bigger issue… the Schrödinger of it all. The mere act of trying to measure or prove the value of a conversation taints it with bias. I will say or do things differently if I know it is all being monitored. Public Relations, Social cooling, Toast-masters… countless examples exist on how human behavior is a slippery thing, the biases of perception, and how intricate the mechanisms for measuring the value of a social interaction can be.

All models are wrong but some models are useful, as they say. But in business and the economy, there lies a glimmer of hope to approximate the value of this information exchange. An organization or individual operates under resource constraints to achieve certain goals.. financial, social, environmental, etc. And in that ecosystem interactions are already monitored, social biases are known and the complexities can be managed. Every rational agent in an economy wants to maximize their outcome - better quality of life, more profit, better customer experiences, more output, less waste, less inequality, less suffering, etc. We can just ask: did that conversation lead to revenue, savings, or some form of intangible benefit like happier customers or workers? Do we communicate in a way that enhances decision-making abilities? And if we were to zoom out, what is the frequency of high vs low value conversations for those different types of conversations or interactions look like? How are these numbers trending based on ongoing initiatives like adopting new tools? How well are you communicating across and beyond your organization?

It is not a new idea to say there is great potential in Generative AI to tie together various streams of data and knowledge to unlock decision-making for leaders, workers, customers, and society at large. “Data is the new oil” is another tired saying you’ve probably heard, but the end products made from it are where the value will live. To get there, it may be useful to think more about conversations as currency, and communication as an asset or a liability. Indeed, if communication reigns supreme, the internet provided the forum and smartphones made it accessible - maybe LLMs will make it more efficient, eventually.

When it comes to sifting through the noise and finding tangible opportunities in Generative Ai, an important question to ask is simply - what’s the value of a conversation here?