Gary Vee’s Warning: Start Using AI or ‘You Are Your Grandma’

Gary Vaynerchuk has a blunt take on AI, for all consumers and investors. If you are not spending at least one hour a day hands on with AI tools, you are “becoming your grandma,” he said on a recent episode of the Earn Your Leisure podcast. He compared today’s AI skeptics to grandparents who couldn’t adapt to AOL, MySpace, and texting.

Vaynerchuk recommends daily reps with ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Runway, regardless of profession. “When people talk about new [stuff] and they [trash] it on some noble [angle], that’s the tell that they’re too lazy to do the work,” he said.

One caller to the show argued humanity has “created something more intelligent than ourselves, that’s kind of never been done before in human history.” Vaynerchuk brought up some history for context. In 1952, after two world wars, no one would have believed the nuclear bomb would sit unused for the next 70+ years, he said. Early electricity adopters were told “there’s demons in it” and that wiring a home meant “bringing demons into your home.” The advent of automobiles triggered a similar panic.

“Humans fear,” Vaynerchuck said. “Most parents parent with fear. Every politician weaponizes fear. Fear is how you control people.”

How Gary Actually Uses AI: Pattern Recognition for Investing

Vaynerchuk, AKA GaryVee, makes daily use of ChatGPT, which he calls “Chatty.” He runs it via voice for strategic thinking rather than writing.

For example, he recently asked it to analyze 40 years of loose-versus-tight clothing cycles to predict how long the current baggy ’90s revival lasts. His exact prompt: “Yo, Chatty … can you give me the last 40 years on, like, clothes being loose, then tight, then loose, then tight? And what is your prediction on how long this cycle of baggy will last.” GaryVee cited successful early calls on brands like Mad Happy, Kith, and Siegelman Stables hats, thanks to information he learned from extended conversations with AI.

What About Our Jobs?

Vaynerchuk conceded that AI innovation will cause significant job displacement, drawing parallels to past technological disruptions. He pointed to hip-hop’s rise in the mid-1980s diverting spending from rock acts like Van Halen and Bon Jovi, Google ending Yellow Pages sales jobs, and automobiles wiping out the thousands of jobs cleaning horse manure in NYC.

“There is pain that is coming with this innovation, but that always happens,” he said. “If you’re not a thinker, if you’re just a doer, if you’re not the architect and you’re just a mason, if you just take direction and you don’t use this, this is gonna be a f—ed up era” for you.