In this Open Web Convesations episode, we pulled some quotes from episodes since the beginning of the year, and we’re hearing the positive, the skeptical, and everything in between when it comes to AI. This episode features insights from both our hosts—Bob Dunn, James Kemp, Dave Lockie, Katie Keith, Robert Jacobi, Carl Alexander, Derek Hanson, Adam Weeks, Zach Stepek, and Nathan Wrigley—and our guests—Matt Mullenweg. Marc Benzakein, Brian Coords, Kimberly Pace Becker, Birgit Pauli-Haack, Alex Standiford, Paul Kinlan, and David Snead. Join us for a fast-paced look at the hopes, hurdles, and realities of AI today.
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Takeaways
AI Is Rapidly Transforming the Industry: James Kemp points out that AI is accelerating changes across technology and business, and this momentum is expected to continue compounding over the coming year 00:34.
Hype vs. Real-World Adoption: Matt Mullenweg reflects on the frequent disconnect between hyped software innovations and their actual impact, suggesting AI could either revolutionize commerce or turn out like Google Glass—a great idea that doesn’t quite fit real-world needs 00:49.
AI Increases Productivity—and Expectations: Dave Lockie and Adam Weeks discuss how AI allows them to accomplish more in less time, but Adam Weeks also highlights how this can skew client expectations about how quickly agencies can deliver work 01:35, 04:52.
General Public Adoption Lags Tech Enthusiasts: Katie Keith observes that while some rely on tools like ChatGPT for daily tasks, many still don’t engage with AI regularly, revealing a disparity between early adopters and the broader population 01:59.
Bots Dominate Web Traffic: Robert Jacobi notes that the majority of web traffic is now generated by bots rather than humans, raising concerns about who actually benefits from online content and how small businesses interact with real customers 02:20.
Human Connection Becomes More Important Amid AI and Automation: Carl Alexander argues that as AI-generated content proliferates, people will crave authentic, human-centered interactions—leading to a resurgence in partnerships and in-person networking 02:57.
Rise in Low-Quality and Rapid-Fire Products: Zach Stepek sees a trend where individuals quickly create and launch AI-powered software products—sometimes without fully understanding, maintaining, or supporting them—potentially undermining long-term value 05:22.
Human Oversight Is Essential: Marc Benzakein stresses that AI is not replacing humans; instead, humans need to develop skills in evaluating, correcting, and efficiently managing AI outputs 05:49.
AI Is Becoming Integral in E-commerce and Development: Brian Coords shares that integrating AI into platforms like WooCommerce is becoming common, with future advancements likely leading to AI agents writing much of the code 06:12.
Confidence Bias and Misinformation: Kimberly Pace Becker warns about AI’s tendency to express information with unwarranted certainty, which can mislead people lacking a critical perspective into accepting inaccuracies as fact 06:40.
User Expertise Remains Crucial for Reliable Outcomes: Derek Hanson recounts how even confidently presented AI-generated code may be incorrect, emphasizing the necessity for knowledgeable users to verify and refine AI-generated outputs 08:17.
AI as a Tool for Non-Technical Content Creation: Birgit Pauli-Haack points out that while AI can’t match human creativity in writing, it can help bloggers with technical aspects like SEO and accessibility where expertise or time may be lacking 09:31.
Risks of Burnout from Overuse: Alex Standiford describes how constant engagement with AI tools can blur work-life boundaries, leading to unnoticed burnout and the need for clear boundaries with technology 10:08.
Ethical and Societal Concerns Around AI Advancement: Nathan Wrigley expresses worry over the rapid, unchecked integration of AI and its potential misalignment with human interests, including the possibility of sudden mass unemployment 11:00.
Preserving Human Voice in Content: Bob Dunn values the nuance of human language and cautions that excessive reliance on AI tools risks eroding the distinctiveness of the human voice in content 11:37.
The Web’s Future: Opportunity and Uncertainty with AI: Paul Kinlan suggests that as AI reshapes software and content creation, the web might face tensions between openness and closed ecosystems, but also a wave of new creators—even if challenges lie ahead 12:05.
AI Agents Are Now a Reality: David Snead summarizes that we have entered the era where AI agents are not just experimental—they’re becoming a practical and present part of technological development 13:33.
Episode Transcript
Bob Dunn:
Hey Bob here and welcome to Open Web Conversations. I pulled something different together for you this time and that’s some quotes from various shows since the beginning of 2026, sharing views on, well, you guessed it, AI. So we’ve had a lot of shows talking about AI. This could have been very, very long. But instead I pulled out a few from various hosts and guests which you’ll find in the show notes. So let’s get right into it.
James Kemp:
I think the AI angle is going to change a lot of things and it’s moving very quickly and I think those changes are just going to keep compiling over the coming year. So that’ll be cool to see.
Matt Mullenweg:
This happens in software kind of frequently is occasionally there’s something that everyone’s like, oh, that is the best idea ever in the world. And it gets a ton of hype and a ton of everything and then once it kind of lands in the world, users are like, nope, doesn’t fit or there’s something missing. Now I’m not saying that agenda commerce 10 years from now won’t be like a double digit percentage of commerce or something like, you know, we’ll probably figure this out. But it might also be, you know, the Google Glass, one of these things that, where you can put a bajillion dollars into and it seems like the coolest idea but like when it meets the reality of real world, there’s something about it that just kind of like doesn’t make it gel.
Dave Lockie:
I would say. I feel like my 2026 has been significantly expanded in terms of time just because I can get so much more done. And I feel like there are like now multiple Daves doing multiple projects simultaneously. So I’m wondering whether we have actually compressed all of 2026 into one month already in terms.
Katie Keith:
And sometimes I see stats that the typical person is not. And even like in my family, everyone is always laughing at me for going to ChatGPT for everything and like it’s not what everybody does. And so it’s really interesting to hear those projections about figures across the general population and how it will continue to escalate.
Robert Jacobi:
There are less humans on the open web than there ever have been and it’s only getting worse. I mean even where I’m at now at Blackwall, you know, we do these internal reports on how much traffic we’re seeing and it’s, you know, 55, 60% of all traffic is bot agent driven at this point. So who is actually benefiting from all the content? How are you as an SMB, whatever platform you’re using, you know, benefiting from the content. Are humans actually even interacting with you at all?
Carl Alexander:
Super optimistic about it. I just think it’s very like we talk about, like it, it upends about things and it puts even more. And to like loop it back to your, your, your thing is that because there’s so much AI slop, because there’s so much fakeness in everywhere because of it? I think partnerships and partnership programs and like the human aspect, the human centeredness of it is important because I think there’s a shift back to that, shift back to in person networking, in person, events, in person. This because of that. Right. And that affects partnerships too. You know, partnerships is about people at the end of the day. And AI focuses on that. Right? It reef. It refocuses on the importance of that.
Derek Hanson:
I should say.
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Adam Weeks:
there are pros and cons. And one of the con I would imagine is the expectations that it can upset. Whereas a client may have expected, hey, like this, this should take you this amount of time. But then, you know, someone was telling them about, hey, my Claude bot or whatever it is I was on, you know, using Claude and look what I spun up over the weekend. Shouldn’t your agency be able to do that too?
Zach Stepek:
People who think that they can, you know, just vibe code an entire SaaS product and release it to the public like this is, this is a reality that we’re dealing with, that people are vibe coding entire products and then releasing it and charging people for it and then disappearing in some cases because they don’t know how to handle the support, they don’t know how the code actually works, they don’t know how to fix the bugs.
Marc Benzakein:
I think that the key for humans is to say, look, AI is here and it’s not here to replace us. What we need to do is get better at recognizing the patterns that AI is throwing out there and being able to see what’s wrong and, and be able to fix it and do it in the most efficient manner possible.
Brian Coords:
We have spent the last year really just leaning heavily into AI for a number of things. Whether it’s from like managing like understanding what’s in WooCommerce and using it to like help problem solve and stuff like that, to just like, how can I build with it, how can I build on top of WooCommerce with AI? And because that really seems to be, I would say like the future forward is, you know, agents writing our code for us and so we’re trying to be at the front of that as much as possible.
Kimberly Pace Becker:
Any language that is stripped of uncertainty is, is sure to eventually lead to misinformation because certainty has to be baked into everything we do or uncertainty. It’s on a, you know, on the spectrum. But that’s what I’m mostly concerned about is how sure they sound. Confidently wrong they sound. And people who don’t have a critical eye see their accuracy, see their fluency as the be all, end all. And it’s really not. The world just isn’t black and white like that.
Derek Hanson:
I totally have leaned into AI like obviously like in my day to day work and things I’m like experimenting with on the side, using it for content creation and like for building things. And for instance like if I’m building a theme AI cloud code, totally sounds confident in how it like created or implemented something. But even though I’m not a developer, I have enough level of expertise and knowledge about how the, the thing should work that I can see when the confidence is like so sure. Like yeah, it should have this, you know, you know, put into this, you know, theme.JSON file. And I’m looking at it, I’m like, that’s not the end user experience. Like this is incorrect no matter how sure you sound. So there’s like sort of like the content creation and then like the, the code that’s developing it. Like I know recently Claude code has stated that 90% of their code to build the AI platform Claude is written by, you know, Claude itself. And to me like that could be kind of scary with all the hallucinations that you were mentioning, but if the right people are doing it, then maybe this is a way to transform how we can work day to day application.
Birgit Pauli-Haack:
It’s not the writing part. The writing part, Any blogger is, is a better writer than any AI could be. And that’s supposed to be that way. But I can see that the thinking about SEO, thinking about accessibility in content is a major burden for a few bloggers because they don’t have the technical expertise, they don’t have the time. So there can be and there are plugins that offer AI to check for SEO readiness or for accessibility on certain things.
Alex Standiford:
And that versus what it’s like for a technician pre AI or a person
Alex Standiford:
who isn’t using AI.
Alex Standiford:
Their exhaustion came from a very different place and it feels different to me. So the consequence of that is I’m not very good at identifying. I’m getting better at it, but I haven’t historically been great at identifying those signals. And I think that that was my one way ticket to burnout over the last five months between January and today. I didn’t realize it. I was like, oh man, I could do this all day. I’m not doing any of the hard work. I’m sitting there downstairs like watching tv and I’m like casually chat with AI about it, not realizing that I never turned off and this is just essentially like keeping slack on my phone and I’m just having casual conversations with people at work and stuff like that. I’m pulling back on that a lot. You know, I’m starting to set those boundaries and get a feel for that. But, but it, it definitely didn’t just, it wasn’t clear to me at the time that that was happening.
Nathan Wrigley:
Suppose the thing that’s troubling me about artificial intelligence is just how quickly and headlong we’re going into it and getting, getting so many things, full of all the AI that we possibly can and there’s this idea of the alignment problem. The alignment problem being whether or not it. This wave of technology aligns with the best interests of humans. Let’s go with that. Or I suppose you could be the do the planet. And I’m not sure it does because I’m not sure that suddenly putting a lot of people out of work is a great idea.
Bob Dunn:
Now. I don’t use a lot of these tools. And the reason being, after doing this for, oh, podcasting for I don’t know even how long it’s been, 12 years, I had to think about that. Had to go to that tab. Anyway, I love the human language with all its nuances, and I feel by eliminating too much, you lose the human voice.
Paul Kinlan:
There is a new technology that’s come out. It’s changing the way that either we think about building software, even creating content, discovering content. You know, is there a world where more people put their content behind a paywall because they don’t want the content to be consumed by, you know, these, these tools and a whole bunch of other stuff? And so. And trying to explore all the different challenges in that space because I think it’s important and I think there’s not enough people looking at this intersection of where the web goes. It’s either completely built into, like, I’m going to go LLMs all the way and I build my own app and then like, that becomes the platform or no, we’re not going to do it completely. And I say, I think the web has got an opportunity to thrive and be the place where it’s like we can create more content, more experiences, more apps, more games, more everything. And it’s also the view on all of that, right? We have all the text, turns out large language models like text. They like HTML, JavaScript and CSS, and they can output it really, really well now. And it’s like I’m trying to explore all those. All these different tensions and stuff, and it’s. It’s not going to be an easy time. I don’t think it’s going to be a pretty hard time and a rough time in terms of some of the change that’s coming through and kind of getting on top of it. And so we’ll see. We’ll see. But I’m also happy for, like, maybe there’s a, you know, what is it? Like, 25 million web developers, like, there’s a lot of web developers, might be 25 million more in the next couple of years. People building web experiences, they might not call themselves web developers, but I think the web’s looking lots of challenges, but
David Snead:
Now we’re talking about the age of AI Agents, Holy Christmas.
