#246: AI Answers - Live from MAICON 2026: AGI, AI Costs, and the End of GPTs

Paul Roetzer (0:00)

So, I think tangibly for AGI, the way I think about it is when the model is roughly the equivalent of the B players on your team. So, if we're talking to marketers, and you look across a team of people on your staff, and you say, okay, like these people do these 20 tasks, and I'm going to take Claude Opus 5.5 or 6.1 Astra from OpenAI, and I'm going to give that AI those same 20 tasks. Is it on par with like an average person on your team?

Welcome to AI Answers, a special Q&A series from The Artificial Intelligence Show. I'm Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute. Every time we host our live virtual events and online classes, we get dozens of great questions from business leaders and practitioners who are navigating this fast moving world of AI. But we never have enough time to get to all of them. So we created the AI Answers series to address more of these questions and share real-time insights into the topics and challenges professionals like you are facing. Whether you're just starting your AI journey, or already putting it to work in your organization, these are the practical insights, use cases and strategies you need to grow smarter. Let's explore AI together.

Welcome to Episode 246 of The Artificial Intelligence Show. I'm your host, Paul Roetzer, and I'm with my co-host, Mike Kaput. We are for the second time in history, I think, sitting at the same table doing this. It's weird. Is this the second time?

Mike Kaput (1:36)

I think so. I think the last Maicon.

Paul Roetzer (1:38)

So we are live at, well, not for you when you're listening to this, but we are recording this live at Maicon 2026 It is October 14th, about three-ish in the afternoon. We just heard an insane keynote from Kevin Roos, who just dropped the AGI Chronicles, a new book you absolutely have to go check out. He literally just left the main stage. He's going to be signing books here shortly. So my brain is kind of like on overload, Mike. We're on, I mean, it's technically day one, I guess, for attendees, but this is day three for us. We did an AI Council meeting on Monday, an AI for CMO Summit and workshops yesterday.

Yes.

Mike Kaput (2:17)

Opening night party.

Paul Roetzer (2:19)

We did an opening night party at the Rock Hall, which apparently people shut down the Rock Hall. I don't know if anybody that's here live with us was part of that group, but apparently some of our attendees stayed past their welcome, but it's the Rock Hall. You've got to be a little rebellious.

So we're here. It's been a pretty incredible week. But again, it's day one, but it feels like I've been here for at least a week right now. We still have a bunch of amazing talks coming. Andrew Yang is actually about to go on stage in an hour or so. I have to leave here and go welcome Andrew to the stage. So yeah, ton going on, but we figured, hey, what the hell, let's record a live podcast while we're sitting here. So we are in this amazing new podcast studio. We have Overlooking the Exhibit Hall.

We're going to go through an AI answers format, it sounds like, Mike. You're filling in for Cathy on the AI answers.

Mike Kaput (3:06)

I am. I feel like Cathy needs to sub in here, but yeah, I'll do my best to live up to her.

Paul Roetzer (3:12)

This is dropping Thursday the 15th, right?

Mike Kaput (3:15)

It sounds like it is happening tomorrow.

Paul Roetzer (3:17)

Okay. So you're going to be maybe listening to this while we were here at the final day of Maicon 2026

Mike Kaput (3:23)

All right.

Paul Roetzer (3:23)

With that, I'm going to stop talking and turn it over to Mike, and he'll get to guide us through.

Mike Kaput (3:27)

Awesome. So thanks, Paul. Glad to have everyone in the live audience here, that folks can't see at home, but super cool to be here doing this for Maicon.

Like Paul, you mentioned we're doing AI answers, and what we've had is our audience submit questions, people are attending Maicon, submit questions. Claire and our team did a great job pulling those together, so I took a look at them and selected a handful that I think would be awesome to chat through.

Paul Roetzer (3:55)

I definitely have not seen these because honestly, I wasn't even sure what we were doing when I came up here.

Mike Kaput (3:59)

Yeah. So this is raw.