This is sabotage

mlns='> Does fear of collaboration lurk where you work? [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 4.14.23 Connect With CMI  [How To Get Your Audience To Give Their Data for Personalized Content]( If consumers find personalized content valuable, they’re likely to exchange their personal data for it. Follow these tips to foster that environment and gain helpful information to create even more customized content. [Read more]( By Jodi Harris More of the week's best stuff: - [CMI News: Why the Martech Debate Only Delivers Wrong Answers]( The Content Marketing Institute Team - [Write Like You Talk: 12 Tips for Conversational Content]( Darek Black - [How a Weak Point of View Sabotages Your Content – and What To Do About It [Rose-Colored Glasses]]( Robert Rose - [Get Executive Buy-in for Content Marketing (Even in an Economic Downturn) [Sponsored]]( JD Metz  This is sabotage Did you read the open letter from The Future of Life Institute? That [call to pause AI experiments]( more powerful than GPT-4 emerged a couple of weeks ago, and more than 6,000 academics and business leaders have signed it. This fascinating read offers a takeaway that has nothing to do with AI. The letter demonstrates how a well-meaning and even learned team of communicators can sabotage their message. Let me explain. Business writer and former Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff called the letter [weak and toothless]( filled with “passive voice statements about stuff that should happen, with no indication of who should do it.” I agree. For example, the authors write: “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive, and their risks will be manageable. This confidence must be well justified and increase with the magnitude of a system's potential effects.” Put more simply: Developers should only do things they are confident will produce a positive result with manageable risks. No one could debate that opinion or possess a different point of view. But that statement fails to explain what needs to happen. The rest of the letter reads similarly vague and pointless. In fact, the actual verbiage asking for a pause feels so surprisingly confident that it seems like a last-minute addition: “(W)e call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.” Therefore, the uniquely specific CTA stands out in a bad way. As the only actionable item in the letter, it fails to prompt a broader response – something every thought leadership piece should ask: What's the best next experience the reader should take? The authors sabotaged themselves. To have the best next experience, readers must agree or disagree with the requested pause on giant AI experiments. Is that what the authors hoped for readers to do? Did they want the pause to be the only action taken after reading the letter (it seems to be, given the resulting coverage)? Or did they want readers to take steps to address the complex and important challenges the authors brought up? The writers fell into a common trap experienced by publishers of B2B white papers – their thought leadership is just a series of general benefit statements. In [Rose-Colored Glasses]( this week, I discuss how more specific and prescriptive thought leadership content helps avoid this trap and drive more impactful responses. But what do you think? Is it better to hedge your bets or go out on a limb to stand apart from other thought leaders? Send me [an email](mailto:Robert@contentadvisory.net?subject=Thought%20Leadership%20Sabotage) or leave a comment on [the article page]( to let me know. 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