Creating More, Not Less, With AI: GeekWire’s Todd Bishop

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
AI tools are evolving at a rapid pace, so quickly even that they change when users go back to them. On today's episode, we speak with a journalist and fellow podcaster about tech advancements and their implications on organizations.

**Todd Bishop** (0:16)
I'm Todd Bishop from GeekWire, and you're listening to Me, Myself, and AI.

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:21)
Welcome to Me, Myself, and AI, a podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review, Exploring the Future of Artificial Intelligence. I'm Sam Ransbotham, Professor of Analytics at Boston College. I've been researching data, analytics, and AI at MIT SMR since 2014, with research articles, annual industry reports, case studies, and now 12 seasons of podcast episodes. On each episode, corporate leaders, cutting-edge researchers, and AI policy makers join us to break down what separates AI hype from AI success. Hey, listeners. Thanks, everyone, for joining us again. Our guest today is Todd Bishop. He's the co-founder of GeekWire. Todd's got a deep background in journalism, starting back in the day, I think, on student newspapers, but more recently, founding GeekWire back in 2011 So Todd, let's start there. Give us a little background about GeekWire.

**Todd Bishop** (1:19)
Well, my colleague, John Cook, and I were long-time newspaper reporters, and we saw the blogging revolution happening back in, I don't know, 2007, 2008, and from that moment on, John has kind of been my co-conspirator and somebody who's inspired me to really push the envelope with embracing technology in reporting. We were writing for a daily paper in Seattle called the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which no longer exists. In part, I theorize because the name is so dang hard to pronounce.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:51)
As if it's-

**Todd Bishop** (1:52)
We, through a variety of different twists and turns, ended up starting GeekWire in 2011 We're based in Seattle and we like to say that what happens in Seattle matters everywhere. The whole notion is that there's a worldwide audience of people and companies and all sorts of things that basically want to know what's happening in the Pacific Northwest. That is our niche. GeekWire is a small media company, events company. I have just been really thriving from my perspective over the past two years in this new AI world based on two things. One is the much more interesting landscape that we have to cover and the extremely powerful tools that we suddenly have at our disposal to use in the process of reporting.

**Sam Ransbotham** (2:35)
Well, you said very interesting and I think that's a nice euphemism. It's a little chaotic at times, isn't it? I mean, just for background to our listeners, Todd's got a podcast. What do you see is different about the world from when you started this GeekWire approach in the podcast to now?

**Todd Bishop** (2:53)
I would say there's one thing that really stands out. Obviously, there's many different things that stand out. But in terms of just the illustration of how different the tech world is today, we have a feature called the GeekWire 200, which is ranking of Pacific Northwest startups.
And from the very beginning, our core metric was employee growth. And the question was, are you growing? Are you raising money? And are you adding people? And if so, that was our barometer of success. And that has just been flipped on its head to the point where it's almost the inverse, where if you're growing and succeeding with fewer people, frankly, you're probably more successful, at least in terms of reducing your cash burn and doing more with your money.
And to me, amid all the change, and we could sit here for an hour talking about everything that's changed, that to me is the clearest illustration of how different the world is today.

**Sam Ransbotham** (3:49)
Actually, I hadn't thought we'd get into this part so quickly, but you brought up the specter of jobs. We've seen so much talk about jobs and how much, oh my gosh, you know, AI is gonna take over all the jobs. I'm not seeing it, are you?

**Todd Bishop** (4:04)
I'm seeing AI take over tasks, not jobs, and that to me is the big difference. And in that way, I think it's emboldening executives, especially these larger companies, to let people go, to assume that the people who are left will be able to do more with the AI tools than the large numbers of employees would have been able to do without them. And so in that way, it's an indirect impact on jobs, but it's very hard for me as a reporter to point to a job, especially in the tech industry, where it's one-for-one. AI is now doing this particular job, and therefore that job no longer exists. It's a little more indirect. But what are you saying?