As AI becomes increasingly realistic, our trust in those with whom we communicate may be compromised.
A pervasive design perspective is driving the development of AI with increasingly human-like features. While this may be appealing in some contexts, it can also be problematic, particularly when it is unclear who you are communicating with. Once an AI has a voice, we infer attributes such as gender, age, and socio-economic background, making it harder to identify that we are interacting with a computer.
Communication with others involves not only deception but also relationship-building and joint meaning-making. The uncertainty of whether one is talking to a human or a computer affects this aspect of communication.
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
AI can fight the climate crisis and fuel a renewable-energy revolution. It could also kill countless jobs or incite nuclear war.
he last few months, among many other advances, OpenAI’s ChatGPT smashed records to become the fastest-growing consumer application of all time, achieving one hundred million users. No one knows for certain what is going to happen next with AI. There is too much going on, on too many fronts, behind too many closed doors. However, we do know that AI is now in the hands of the world, and, therefore, the world seems likely to be transformed. Such transformational potential is since AI is a general-purpose technology, both adaptive and autonomous.
AI is one of the few practical technologies that may allow us to re-engineer our economies to achieve Net Zero. However, even if AI leads to great economic gains, however, some may lose out. A paper from Open AI estimated that almost one in five workers may see half of their tasks become automatable by large language models. AI also offers worrying new tools for propaganda. Can our democracies resist torrents of targeted disinformation? Currently, AI is inscrutable, untrustworthy, and difficult to steer.
Perhaps most concerning, AI might threaten our survival as a species. For a start, the rapidly advancing, uncertain, progress of AI might threaten the balance of global peace. If you think that AI could never be smart enough to take over the world, please note that the world was just taken over by a simple coronavirus. AI might immiserate or even eliminate humanity by initially working within existing institutions. An AI takeover might begin with a multinational using its data and its AI to find loopholes in rules, to exploit workers, to cheat consumers, gaining political influence, until the entire world seems to be under the sway of its bureaucratic, machine-like power.
What can we do about all these risks?
What we need is new, bold, governance strategies to both address the risks and to maximize AI’s potential benefits. We want to ensure that it is not only the largest firms who can bear a complex regulatory burden. Current efforts towards AI governance are either too lightweight or too slow. We need mechanisms for international cooperation, to develop shared principles and standards and prevent a “race to the bottom”. We need to recognize that AI encompasses many different technologies and hence demands many different rules. Above all, while we may not know exactly what is going to happen next in AI, we must begin to take appropriate precautionary action now.
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
In today’s world, an organization’s ability to grow and innovate is shaped by an increasingly complex public affairs landscape that’s become more decentralized, more democratized, and more influential. Organizations must be strategic and proactive about shaping their operating environment to ensure they’re successful and resilient for the long term.
JMD Live ONLINE BUSINESS CONSULTING specializes in helping clientsshift from reactive issues management to building proactive public affairs strategies that create the conditions to reduce regulatory risk, drive growth and innovation, and build authentic stakeholder relationships. We do it by taking a multi-dimensional approach that brings together advocacy, public policy, stakeholder engagement, internal and external communications, sustainability, and social impact.
Today, to ensure they’re successful and resilient for the long term, professionals and organizations must be strategic and proactive about shaping their operating environment to ensure they’re successful and resilient for the long term. At JMD Live ONLINE BUSINESS CONSULTING, we specialize in helping clients shift from reactive issues management to building proactive public affairs strategies that create the conditions to reduce regulatory risk, drive growth and innovation, and build authentic stakeholder relationships.
Our approach is tailored to the specific needs and challenges of our clients. We do this by We do it by taking a multi-dimensional approach that brings together advocacy, public policy, stakeholder engagement, internal and external communications, sustainability, social impact focusing on three key areas:
Strategy: Building clear and actionable strategies that shape the client’s public affairs ecosystem and build long-term resilience.
Execution: With the right strategy in place, we become an extension of your team and manage the day-to-day effort. Where specialized experts are needed or local insight required, we identify, engage, and support the right partners.
Expert Counsel: We are a sounding board and strategic advisor across a range of issues to help senior leaders solve problems sol and manage both short and long-term challenges.
JMD Live ONLINE BUSINESS CONSULTING IS an accomplish public affairs and communications strategist firm creating successful and creative multi-dimensional strategies for the world’s largest organizations, individuals, multi-lateral organizations, and governments. Our approach is tailored to the specific needs and challenges of our clients.
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
In today’s world, an organization’s ability to grow and innovate is shaped by an increasingly complex public affairs landscape that’s become more decentralized, more democratized, and more influential.
Organizations must be strategic and proactive about shaping their operating environment to ensure they’re successful and resilient for the long term.
We specialize in helping clientsshift from reactive issues management to building proactive public affairs strategies that create the conditions to reduce regulatory risk, drive growth and innovation, and build authentic stakeholder relationships.
We do it by taking a multi-dimensional approach that brings together advocacy, public policy, stakeholder engagement, internal and external communications, sustainability, and social impact.
Our approach is tailored to the specific needs and challenges of our clients. We do this by focusing on three key areas:
Strategy
Building clear and actionable strategies that shape the client’s public affairs ecosystem and build long-term resilience.
Execution
With the right strategy in place, we become an extension of your team and manage the day-to-day effort. Where specialized experts are needed or local insight required, we identify, engage, and support the right partners.
Expert Counsel
We are a sounding board and strategic advisor across a range of issues to help senior leaders problem solve and manage both short and long-term challenges.
We are public affairs strategists who’ve created successful, multi-dimensional strategies for some of the world’s largest organizations, multi-lateral organizations, and government.
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
“… it allowed me to be more of the person I aspire to be, The Best in The World at What I Do.”
“I have always been better with the written word than the spoken one and for me working from home, allowing me to be more of the person I aspire to be, revealed itself to be very much a privilege. While for some the lack of interaction can make it easy for minor anxieties and frustrations to spiral into existential crises, for me, it gives me time to think, allows me to write considered arguments, and makes me more articulate.”
As a professional, I am a business and management consultant, a free thinking creative systemic strategic planner and most of my days involve reading reports, finding obscure problems, addressing, and solving them for the benefit of my clients. When in the office, attempting to share my ideas often meant stumbling over my words and sometimes blurting out a dumbed-down version of what I was trying to say or demonstrate. But these days, most of my work-related interaction with either my clients, contributors and associates are through office and social media chat apps. This means I have time to craft my comments before I utter them.
Now, I can spend a minute writing them down as clearly as possible, making a better case for the changes I would like to make, recommend, or see implemented. The slowed interaction gives me time to think, allows me to write considered arguments, and makes me more articulate. Essentially, it allows me to be more of the person I aspire to be, the best in the world at what I do. What is more, the terrain has evened out. Everyone is on the same platform, equally accessible, and they can answer me when it is convenient.
Overall, in these days of pandemic, the toll of isolation far outweighs the benefits of reduced social anxiety.
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
Today and tomorrow, like it or not, the future belongs to crowds.
We are now living in a society where there are too many chiefs and not enough indians.
Remember the images of the Chinese pro-democracy protesters dispersed by troops in Tienanmen Square; the images of the several million mourners streaming through the streets of Tehran to the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini; the images of a “tent city” emerging in Tompkins Square Park; the images of hundreds of English soccer fans penned against a chain-link fence during a match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield; the images of the January 6 United States Capitol attack?
Our world is now defined by images of crowds to rival those of the past: people waiting in mile-long lines at food banks; police using tear gas to disperse protesters; thousands of people gathered in support of Black Life Matters, Pro-life, LGBTQ rights and so on. More than ever, the protests of the past few years have shown that the most immediate and dramatic way for people to register discontent and call for change is by massing in the streets in frank and perilous defiance of the establishment and public order.
More than ever, people are standing in the streets rather that in the voting polls.
A dire consequence: governments, legislators and politicians are no longer adopting legislations and policies to build a better society, they are doing it to please the crowds and make sure to be re-elected and maintain their own personal power. To make things worse, news media in search of better ratings, are throwing oil on the fire: news commentators are no longer reporting, they are commenting; the more incipient and incendiary they are, the more profit. The real problem of the world today is not the Covid-19, the real problem is the degeneracies and degeneration of the people.
Imbecility is now the trademark of most of our populations.
Among the younger generation, progressive values are hegemonic. On issues ranging from LGBTQ and women’s rights to anti-racism and immigration, younger people are attempting to communicate their moral values on social media to the older generation.
Our world is getting really crazy, perhaps the most astounding year in generations, a time of norm-shattering abnormalities with an unlimited potential of destruction that might culminate in world-wide conflicts.
Based on the crisis-infused year we are in now; it is easy to predict that the balance of 2023 will unfold with even more craziness and long forgot aberrations. What we need is, as for the deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, a major modern upheaval that would purge the earth from all the Trumps of this world, from all the malefactors of an evil society.
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
“It doesn’t get much better than a moment of delight on social media.”
For most businesses, social media engagement seems like a slam dunk strategy. Everyone should be doing it, right? But it certainly comes with its blind spots and questions.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to set yourself apart on social media is simply to reply to all your customers, all the time. A helpful and happy response will invariably propel you ahead of the curve. All it takes is engaging with the people who want to engage with you.
Eighty-eight percent of brands do not respond to messages that need a reply. Simply by engaging with your customers and clients, by engaging with the people who want to engage with you, be among the elite twelve percent.
JMD Live ONLINE BUSINESS CONSULTING can help you do just that. Here are some tips that you can implement today.
1. Social media engagement is public
Social media engagement allows you to naturally amplify your brand’s voice and tone. Social media engagement allows you to propel your interactions front-and-center before a larger audience.
Traditional private one on one private interactions like email are fine, but with social channels like Twitter, these interactions can be public, at least to start. The same goes for engaging with your audience in Instagram comments or Facebook reviews.
You are already wowing your private audience in other channels like email and live chat! With social media, the awesomeness you are delivering becomes visible to everyone. Those amazing audience interactions that create strong word of mouth marketing for you are now amplified to a much larger audience.
Existing and potential customers get to see first-hand that you are responsive and actively supporting your products and services.
2. Social media engagement is fast and focused
You can deliver delight very fast and in a focused way, chatting with your audience about specific topics and campaigns or helping solve problems that they are facing.
Focusing on the short and sweet, something magical happens: the barrier to entry for your audience drops dramatically. They now have an easy way to converse with you, anytime. Focusing and specific topics mean you can reply faster and engage deeper with your audience.
Faster responses equal happier customers, which equals more ROI. Happier customers and clients are the one big factor that affects any bottom line: faster responses generate revenue for all brands.
Because of its fast and friendly nature, social media is often preferred over other channels of getting in touch. The more and faster you respond to your audience, the better and faster prospective customers and clients learn that social media are great places to connect directly with both, you and your brand.
3. Social media is where your customers are.
Today, social media is where your customers are. You can achieve a huge scale of engagement by being responsive on social media.
A vast majority of your audience of your prospective customers and clients are on social media throughout the day. It is where they are at and where it often makes the most sense for them to reach out and get in touch. Today, people spend most of their waking hours staring at screens.
Let it be known that people spend an average of nearly four hours a day consuming media on a screen. A growing percentage of that viewing happens on smartphones and apps.
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
We live in a Global Village: People interest over personal interest
These times of uncertainty, anxiety, and overwhelming information, mean that many of us are seeking to find a sense of calmness.
On top of that, the global upheavals of a very real climate crisis, the instability of economic and political powers and the emergence of anti-racist and anti-violent movements are all issues that call to people to engage responsively with our world.
A mindfulness practice, the simple act of pausing, taking a breath and becoming aware of our mind, body, and heart, may offer some respite as well as a very good way to support one’s desire for action.
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
When you are weaker than your opponent, there is nothing to be gained by fighting a useless fight.
When you are weaker than your opponent, there is nothing to be gained by fighting a useless fight. Know how to pick your battles. Fighting a loss fight gives you nothing to gain but pain and martyrdom, and, in the process, a lot of people who do not believe in your fight, who do not believe in your cause will be injured, and possibly even die. Weakness is not a sin and can even become a strength if you master the art of playing it right. Fortunes changes and the mightiest of the mightiest are often brought down. In appropriate times and circumstances, playing the card of “surrender” may conceal great power. Playing the surrender card often lull your opponent into complacency. It provides you the time to recoup, time to undermine and time to plan your revenge. Never sacrifice that time in exchange for honor in a battle that you cannot win.
Keep this in mind: People trying to make a show of their authority are easily deceived by the surrender strategy. Your outward sign of submission makes them feel important. Satisfied that you respect them, they become easier targets for a later counterattack. Measuring your power overtime, never sacrifice long-term maneuverability for the short-lived glories of martyrdom.
What gets us into trouble in the realm of success, power and quest for influence is often our own overreaction to the moves of our rivals. That overreaction creates problems we would have avoided have we been more reasonable. It also has an endless rebound effect, for our rivals to respond by overreacting as well. It is often our first instinct to react, to meet aggression with some kind of aggression. The next time it happens to you, try something different: Try not to resist, not to fight back, but to turn the other cheek and bend. You may be surprised to find this often neutralizes the aggressive behavior of your opponents; they expected you, even wanted you to react with force and they are now caught off-guard and confounded by your lack of resistance. You are now in control of the situation because your surrender is part of a larger plan to lull your opponent into believing he has defeated you.
This is the essence of the surrender strategy: Inwardly you stay firm, but outwardly you bend. Deprived of a reason to get angry, your opponent will often be bewildered, unlikely to react with more violence, which would, again, demand a reaction from you. Instead, you are allowed the time and space to plan your countermoves that will bring your opponent down. In the battle of the intelligent against the brutal and the aggressive, the surrender strategy is the supreme weapon. The surrender strategy requires self-control and duplicity. Those who genuinely surrender are giving up their freedom and may be irremediably crushed by the humiliation of their defeat. What you want to do is: To only appear to surrender, to make believe, to play dead for a while only to come back stronger later on.
Yes, indeed, in certain circumstances, it can be better to surrender than to fight. Faced with a more powerful opponent and a sure defeat, it is often also better to surrender than facing a defeat or having to run away. Running away is never an option. Running away may save you for the time being, but your opponent will eventually catch up with you. If you surrender, instead, you are creating an opportunity to coil around your opponent and, in due time, to strike all fangs out from close up.
The point of surrendering is to save your hide for a later date when you can reassert yourself.
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
J. Michael Dennis ll.l., ll.m. Live 
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