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The John Batchelor Show

26: Small Business Economy Steady; AI Remains a 'Toy'. Gene Marks reports on the small business economy, noting steady activity among machine parts manufacturers, often preparing for an "onshoring boom." Construction and housing are holding steady but anticip

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Arts, Society & Culture, Books, News

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Small Business Economy Steady; AI Remains a 'Toy'. Gene Marks reports on the small business economy, noting steady activity among machine parts manufacturers, often preparing for an "onshoring boom." Construction and housing are holding steady but anticipate a future boom as interest rates decline. Tariffs have a muted impact, often absorbed or passed on as separate invoice line items for transparency. Marks demonstrates that AI, despite its advances, is not ready for prime-time business use, failing to accurately generate a requested image of a Yorkshire Terrier hitting a home run.



Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:02.0

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0:04.0

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0:06.0

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0:07.0

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0:10.0

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0:13.0

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0:15.0

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0:18.0

Visit sumup.co.uk to learn more.

0:30.1

This is CBSI in the world. I'm visiting with Gene Marks, my good colleague who's been on the road, but he also has been looking very carefully at AI in the business place and in the home,

0:42.4

and as it reproduces itself every day with large language models, is it effective? Is it overcoming its initial understanding of hallucinating,

0:48.6

that is error? And what use, and do we see it replacing people? All those questions can be answered over a variety of days.

0:57.2

But right now, we testify that Gene tried to create an image.

1:03.5

I've never tried this.

1:04.8

You were using chat and grok, both, is that correct?

1:09.3

And Gemini, three.

1:14.1

And what image were you making and what happened so and by the way i told i i spoke yesterday i was in ann arbor michigan speaking to another

1:20.4

credit union group um you know in the michigan area who um all about ai it was a full hour on

1:26.6

and uh and i told them the same

1:29.0

story that I'm about to relate to you in which I wrote about in Forbes. I mean, um, here's what sums

1:33.4

up AI in 2025, John. Um, I, I just simply went to Grock and Google Gemini and to chat GPT.

1:41.9

They all have their image generators. And I gave it just a straightforward prompt saying, please create for me an image of a Yorkshire

...

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