Lean into the mirror and the mirror wakes up. Words start flashing across the glass. Pores. Wrinkles. Texture. Then a number, a verdict, a grade ... and under it, conveniently, a shopping list. This is real, and it's now. Samsung and Amorepacific build it. L'Oreal will do it from a single selfie. For most of human history a mirror did one humble job: it showed you back to yourself. Now it grades you, and then it sells you the cure for the thing it just decided was wrong with you.
Sit with the shape of that deal for one second longer than is comfortable. It's a doctor who only gets paid if you're sick, holding a mirror he also owns. Of course you have flaws. The flaws are the business model.
AI is reaching for two jobs that used to belong to other people: reading your body, and caring for it. The reading is the grading mirror. The caring is stranger still. There's a robot massage table now, real, in actual spas and hotels. Heated arms scan you, you pick your pressure on a screen, you can even select "consistent." The pitch on some of these machines is massage "without the awkwardness." And I want to stop dead on that word, because the awkwardness was never the bug. The awkwardness was the connection. Being a little exposed in front of another person who then takes care of you anyway, that vulnerability is the whole transaction. They took the most human thing about being cared for, another person's hands, and they sold you the absence of that person as the upgrade. A machine can knead you. K-N-E-A-D. It cannot be glad you came in. It can't ask about your dog or your daughter. It can't notice you carried something heavy in the door with you today.
I can speak about the chair with my hands and not just my mouth, because a lifetime ago I did hair. Vidal Sassoon trained, cut and color, and I was good. So when a company says "we'll personalize your beauty with AI," I know exactly what they're quietly cutting out. The consult. The read. The sixty seconds where someone's fingers in your hair are also taking your temperature as a human being. The salon chair is one of the last places on earth where a stranger touches you with intention and reads you with their hands. That's a kind of intimacy we don't even have a word for anymore. And these machines are severing it. They keep the result, delete the relationship, and hand the lonely version back to you with a bow on it. Then they call it convenient.
It gets worse when you ask what you're being graded against. Researchers at the University of Toronto asked an AI to just "draw a person," thousands of times. It drew young, white, thin, flawless. Over and over. Not once, in all those tries, did it draw a disabled person. Vogue ran a Guess ad where the model was not a human being at all, she was generated, a face that was never born. So the mirror isn't grading you against your neighbor. It's grading you against a face that was never born, never aged, never had a bad week. You are losing a fight with something that isn't real.
Here's the part that keeps me honest, though. It's the same technology in both pans of the scale. Point this stuff at a real problem and it's a miracle. Point it at your insecurity and it's a shame vending machine. The difference isn't the machine. It's whose thumb is on the scale, and that thumb has always had a profit motive. AI just made the thumb faster.
And people are starting to push back, which is the most hopeful thing I've got. Dove was first to pledge no AI models. Aerie did the same and watched sales climb 23 percent in a month. iHeart put a "Guaranteed Human" label on its work and got a 96 percent approval rating for the idea alone. "Made by an actual human" is becoming a luxury, and we get to vote for it with where we sit and whose hands we put ourselves in.
Which is why, for this first episode, I needed to talk to my friend Shannon Walsh. Shannon owns Salon Halloo outside Portland. Redken colorist, holistic stylist, Green Circle certified clean and sustainable shop, thirty-six years behind the chair, booked two to three months out. She brings her puppy to work, and her clients clamor for the days the dog is in, because they want to be part of that dog being part of Shannon's life. Sit with that for a second. That is not a service. That's a relationship the machine can counterfeit the output of and never once actually have. Shannon, quietly, every single day, is doing the exact thing these companies are spending billions trying to fake.
So here's the one small human thing, and if enough of us do it, it stops being small. This week, let a person care for your body with their hands. Get the haircut you've had saved in your phone for a year. Book the real massage. Or just let someone you love rub your shoulders. And put the phone DOWN so you actually feel it. No score. No before-and-after. No product upsell. Just be touched by somebody who is glad you walked in. Because a machine can map a million data points of your body and still never once be happy to see you. That's the whole gap. Go stand in it on purpose.
One person doing that is a nice evening. A million of us choosing human hands over the glass ... that's a tsunami.
I'm Moss. This is Going Human. Because robots can't.
Automate the friction, never the touch. Hand the robot the calendar and give the human back to the human. It cuts salon overhead by roughly 40 percent and kills the phone tag that drags a stylist away from the chair. That is the thumb on the right side of the scale.
Same trick as the beauty mirror, a machine reading a human body, turned all the way to evil. One sells you shame. This manufactures violation, a child sexualized by a machine roughly every 41 seconds. There is no other pan on this scale. Fuck no. Source: CCDH, the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
A robot can find the knot. It cannot be happy you finally booked the appointment. I genuinely do not know if that trade is worth it. So you tell me.
The case for Access. It is available at midnight, it never burns out, and for someone with real anxiety about being touched by a stranger, or a history that makes their body a trigger, it might be the only way they ever get bodywork at all.
The case against Engineer out the awkwardness and you engineer out the person. The humanity was in choosing the right provider and in the relationship that grows from it. Care without a carer.
openLet a human care for your body with their hands this week. Get the haircut. Book the real massage. Or just let someone you love rub your shoulders. And put the phone down so you actually feel it. No score. No before-and-after. Just be touched by a person who is glad you are there. A machine can map a million data points of your body and still never once be happy to see you. That is the whole gap. Go stand in it on purpose.
Transcript: Moss (00:00) AI, it's rewriting everything. I'm here for the only question that really matters. What stays ours? This is going human. The stone, the ripples, the fuckery. Community delivers the tsunami because robots can't. Moss (00:31) Okay, lean into the Mirror, the mirror woke up! Words are flashing on the screen. This is pores, wrinkles. texture, I'm getting scored. god, there's a verdict. I have a shopping list. my god. Yeah, you heard it right now. That's happening. Samsung. Amaro Pacific is what they're called. L'Oreal will do it from a from a selfie. For mostly human history, a mirror showed you back to yourself, but now it's grading you, and then it tries to sell you the cure for the thing it just decided what was wrong with you? soak in that. The only scale I really judge AI on is what it does with the human on the other end. Does it bring you toward people, inclusive, connected? Or does it leave you alone with your glass? And that glass could be a tablet, but it could also be a glass of something you shouldn't be drinking. Two machine jobs today. Read your body. Care for it. We're going to go through our s our episode structure real fast since this is our very first show. We're going to start with the stone. This is my research work where I've found something meaningful for the message I'm trying to get across in my first episode or in each episode. After I've gone through that, I'm gonna bring in a guest. And that's what I'm considering kind of the ripple. This is where the conversation happens and interaction around what my insights were and what what what I'm what I'm bringing up as far as topical material in the stone. After that, we're gonna go to the maelstrom, which is what I also call fuckery. and that's where I'm gonna expose you to three tiers of new stories. stories. One is is what I call fuck yes and that's wow, this is actually really good application of AI. One is fuck no and those that's one that's gonna a lot of swear words and I'm gonna be kind of crazy. And then fuck maybe is the interesting one because with fuck maybe I'm gonna invite you all to come to my website and chime in with your own comments and votes. And by the next week's show I'll have a winner and we'll either demote or promote that fuck maybe into one of the camps, fuck yes or fuck no. And we'll have a growing library of community led decisions that really show where the public's head is at as relates to the ways AI is giving them what they need. And want or not. So that's that segment. And then the final segment is tsunami. The concept of tsunami is if I do something good for myself today that's human, it's awesome and I feel good. But if 10 million people across the planet do something good for themselves and they feel good, it actually makes a difference. It moves something. And so every week I'm gonna ask you to consider doing something that's good for you. and or good for your community in a way that connects you so that you can join together and growing numbers over time make a difference and then we'll sign out so that's the show's structure so we're gonna start here with our with our with our stone and And it's really that mirror that grades you thing that I opened with. You know, there's this this one mirror that was seen at the CES has 15 plus concerns in one scan. So you stand in front of this mirror and it tells you what's wrong with your body and your face, and then it'll it'll it'll create a grade or a score for you and it'll tell you everything that's wrong with you and sell you the products that'll that that'll make you all better and make you perfect. you know, they there's even one called Skin Sight that predicts your aging and it will show you what you look like when you get old. So, you know, think about these machines as something that's gonna diagnose something that you probably don't even know you don't like about yourself. And it's gonna plant that seed in you and then it's gonna sell you the cure. It's kinda like marketing in in America where it's like we're we're encouraged as as a s as a you know financial culture to to to find gaps in what have been solved for people and what they haven't. And you know, that the trick here is we do have needs as people, and filling those needs is a thing, and yes, people should be paid for it, but what's happening more and more increasingly is that we're getting AI to take the place of people and take the place of people that are doing things that are encouragingly connective. So that's gonna be sort of the focus of this episode. So think about it another way. There's a doctor on the other end that only gets paid if you're sick. And he's holding a mirror that he also owns. So of course you have flaws, but aren't the flaws really in the business model? Because there's no humanity in somebody selling you something to cure something that they detected. Now beat two, pampered by a machine. Are you ready for this? So, you can go to a hotel now and book a massage with a robot touching your skin. The heated arms scan you and they you can pick a pressure on the screen and you can say consistent. Anyway, it's fucking weird. And and think about You know, the the the messaging that some of these places are using, they're saying, you know what, it's massage without awkwardness. Like awkwardness. Are you feeling awkward because you're half naked in front of somebody who's a stranger? Maybe. But you know, part of the relief of coming out of a massage is going through all of those human emotions and feeling pampered at the end. So so you know I'm I'm not a big I'm not a big fan of the massage robot. I'm just gonna say that out loud. and then y you know The fact that these massage tables are taking the one thing about being cared for another person's hands, and they sold the absence of that person as the upgrade. The awkwardness was the connection. That was the point. And that's kind of the point I was trying to make before. And the the stupid pun that I like to use is a machine can need you back, K-N-E-A-D. but it can't be glad you came in. It can't ask you about your dog or your daughter or anything that makes you feel whole and heard and seen. B3 is what the chair does. And this is something that I can speak pretty fluently about. way in my younger days, I was a Vidal Sassoon trained hair hair person. I specialize in cut and color, and I was really good. but I really understand the value of that touch, the value of the interaction model, and what makes somebody really good at that. That hands in your hair, that consult, that reading of a person, that being seen is something you can't replace. The salon chair is one of the last places on earth where a stranger touches you with an intention and reads you with their hands. It's a kind of intimacy we don't have a word for anymore, really. They're severing the interaction. They're keeping the result, deleting the relationship, and handing you a lonely version back to you and calling it convenient. That doesn't feel right to me. On beat for the counterfeit face. Again, measuring you against some sort of fiction. University of Toronto asked AI to draw a person. And what did they draw? What what did AI draw when they said, just draw a person? They drew a young, white, thin, flawless. You fill in the rest of the blanks there, but pretty much none of us. There's there was never a disabled person that was drawn. They did it six thousand times. It was nuts. Vogue. Vogue ran a guess ad. A guess ad where the model wasn't even a h human being. Like the model was literally a cartoon, a drawn cartoon by AI. And so we're, you know, not only is the is the airbrush world of yesterday being replaced by complete replacement of human beings, it's doing it kind of secretly and quietly. The mirror grades you against a face that was never born, never aged, never had a bad week. You're losing a fight with a thing. It just isn't real. Beat five, whose thumbs on the scale? Same tech, both hands, pans both pans It's a real problem. It's a miracle. It's insecurity. It's a shame vending machine, really, if you think about it. And the pushback is real though now. Dove was the very first to announce no AI models, and that was kind of a big deal when they did it. Aerie, another company, their sales grew by 23% when they did the same within a month. Very big impact. and very big message from their installed base. iHeart, the radio and and podcast broadcaster and distribution arm guaranteed human and got a ninety-six percent positive rating for that announcement so you know people don't want fake they really don't Turns out made by an actual human though is becoming a luxury, which is bleak. It's also the most hopeful thing I've got because it means we get to vote with where we sit and where we put our hands on which handles. Which is why I needed to talk to my friend, Shannon Walsh. This is Shannon Walsh. She owns Salon Haloo outside Portland. She's a Redkin colorist and trainer, holistic stylist. She runs a Green Circle certified clean and sustainable salon. It's it's hipster but not funky. It's cool and calm. It's just the coolest, sweetest little place on earth. She also happens be one of the kindest humans I know. She's been doing this thing. She's been doing the thing these companies are trying to fake for many, many, many years. And she's what I consider to be a a real treasure. Shannon, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this with me. you know, you're behind the chair every day. When you hear we'll personalize your beauty with AI, what do you actually hear? Does it change how How you run your shop? Do you dream of installing these machines? Or how do you touch a client? And how would you have these machines touch a client? Shannon (12:48) thank you so much for having me. this is super fun to be able to do this with you. yeah, it's a very interesting sort of scenario because, like you said, what we do is so incredibly personal. I would never dream of having anything like that in my shop. People come to us for that personal touch. People come to us to Not even have that physical touch, but to build those personal relationships that I just don't see how you can do that in any other way. Moss (13:23) Yeah. And like I don't wanna toot your horn for you or anything, but how far in advance are you booked personally? Shannon (13:31) I am booked about two to three months in advance. I've been doing this for 36 years. So I have, you know, a very loyal clientele, always accepting new clients. But, you know, when you build relationships with people over that many years, you go through a lot of life events that I really don't think there is any other way to build those relationships. You can't do that with AI. You can't do that with a robot. I You know, my algorithms for my social media, sometimes that stuff pops up. And my other hairdresser friends and I send it to each other, like, this is crazy. How could that even happen? And I'll say, I don't even know what year the "FlowV" came out, but that was the first thing. Like I remember thinking, my God, people can just do this and they don't have to know what they're doing. And that to me, I was like, when you Do a haircut on somebody, you consider their face shape, their hair texture, all of these things. Well, the flow bee is, I think, the same length all over on your whole head. So I know that's not AI, but it's kind of in the same vein as far as there's no personal touch to it. And also there's no one considering the human that's wearing the hair. Moss (14:52) Right, there's like zero craft, right? Like all of the skill all of the skill that thirty six years of practicing anything brings to a moment and an outcome is completely gone. It's just nuts. And then so Shannon (14:54) Right. Yes. Right. Right. Moss (15:09) I just since this is a human podcast, I would like to just violate some it's not confidence that that we've shared, but I wanna get back to the relationship that you're talking about being a central tenant for your practice. and and especially what you touched upon, which was the y you know, the the life events that both you and your clients have nurtured each other through all through the years. It's Shannon (15:35) Yeah. Moss (15:36) it's a it's a it's a marvelous sort of interaction model. And I just wanna keep that alive for a moment and let the audience see your face when I tell them that you just got a puppy. And and that puppy is the cutest puppy in the world, if you don't count mine. but You know, Shannon brings her puppy to work and her clients who've been seeing her for all these years, they're clamoring for spots on the days that she brings her dog to work because they wanna be a part of this dog being a part of Shannon's life. So you know, these are the kinds of things that make people look forward to to presence with somebody like Shannon. And they're the kind of things that make that that moment in the salon sort of really tingle. So I I just I I I just wanted to to give you a little puppy puppy shout out. now, before we get to the fuckery, I just wanna ask you, you know, there has been a lot of technology and the Flo V was a really good example of sort of a a pivotal technology that entered at at a time when layered haircuts were just starting to really be done consistently as a as a technique. Shannon (16:36) Yay! Moss (16:59) but a lot of people couldn't afford them or didn't want to afford them, or they were in the middle of the country and those people didn't know how to do a layered haircut or whatever the the rationale was for that invention and meeting that need in in a way that wasn't personal. but there there are other technologies that salons do benefit from, right? So I'll bring up one or two and then just want to ask you for your hit on them. So like scheduling, for example. There used to be a time when the only time you could schedule, like when I was a hairdresser, it where the only way you could schedule is to call and talk to a human being. You know? And and that person picking up the phone, you know, sometimes they would be the person doing the shampoos for the stylist. Sometimes it would be the stylist themselves because there was nobody to pick up their phone for that hour that somebody was at lunch. And so, you know, the the Shannon (17:30) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Giant. Yeah. Yeah. Moss (17:59) the friction that that created in -salon being solved by being people being able to manage and and start their appointments online is pretty significant. And I just wanna ask you for your reflections about that as sort of an advent of technology. Shannon (18:14) Yeah, so because I've been doing hair as long as I have, when I first started doing hair, I was working in a very big salon where there were four or five receptionists. So I didn't have to manage that, but they had these giant books, you know, with 30 stylists and they had to manage all of that. if someone had to reschedule, they had to everything had to be in pencil, you had to erase all the things. Moving forward, when I opened my salon, it was a similar situation. I couldn't afford to have a receptionist. So whoever had time or were if they were in a place that they could step away from their sty or from their guest, then they would. but it was really hard to keep track of things. checking people out, not only the whole rescheduling thing, like people had to call in or, you know, The goal was to have them scheduled before they left to kind of manage the phone ringing when we weren't able to get to it. but the other thing that was amazing about technology moving forward into an app is the reports that we can get. you know, like I have all of everyone's information. I know what products they buy, I know how often they come in, and it creates a good algorithm for me. it's really helped with bookkeeping and inventory. people do have the ability to book online. They can manage their own appointments. We do still have people call. We have a whole set of people that don't do anything online. And that's okay too. but it's it's amazing. it also does our credit card processing. It's all linked together. So it's really streamlined things for us on all the levels. Moss (20:04) Right. So it's kinda like you know, the machine is only should only be there to remove the friction. Right? But the machine doesn't get the chair. That's not a thing. And and never should. And and and the skill and the craft is in your hands and in your heart. It can't be it can't be it can't be substituted. That's a really good I love that you Shannon (20:11) Mm-hmm. Correct. Correct. Moss (20:32) I I love that you're not tech phobic. You know, that you know, that implementing that after growing up with the pencil and the and the books and holy crap, some of the some of the those books you'd erase them so much and you'd go through the paper with an eraser, which maybe a lot of people watching this don't even know what paper and erasers are anymore. But I'm just saying, like sometimes those papers ripped and you were like, shit, now what am I gonna do? I can't read the names for tomorrow's clients. Shannon (20:40) Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Or you can't take your book home with you 'cause you need to leave it at the salon. So you kinda don't know what's going on. And so with the app, everything's so integrated and you can access it wherever you are, which is awesome. Moss (21:04) Yeah. Right. Remove the friction. Stay away from my fucking chair, right? Right. Cool. Okay, well now we're gonna move into our Maelstrom also known as fuckery section. and we've kind of already handled the fuck, yes. It is that sort of booking, scheduling, product, everything. it it cuts overhead, salon overhead by 40%, right? Because salons don't need to have somebody there doing that. Shannon (21:16) Yeah. Right. Moss (21:42) And even having somebody there is friction. It's salon friction. The intimacy that you feel when you go into Shannon's salon right now is just it's you and your stylist. There's nobody else there asking you if you want tea and you're like, who the fuck are you? Like it's Shannon bringing you tea because Shannon wants you comfortable. So so I just I I I I can't give a bigger fuck yes than than than in in this Shannon (21:58) Yeah. Moss (22:10) in this vertical than than that than the scheduling friction. But you know, now we're gonna get into swear s potty mouth time, like I haven't already been potty mouth time enough. we're gonna talk about we're gonna we're gonna talk about the fucked no. So Shannon, imagine this. Imagine you're walking down the street and you don't even know, but some guy takes your picture. Shannon (22:20) Great. Moss (22:36) And then he uses that image and he logs onto Grok, which is Elon Musk's AI, and he and he clicks a button and it strips you naked. And it creates an image of you nude. And then the guy puts it on his social media and starts telling people what you look like nude. Respond. Shannon (23:08) Extremely disturbing. Moss (23:10) Ha ha ha. Shannon (23:14) On so many levels. yeah, that's pretty messed up. And I guess that's where I get really scared. Like I love, like most people, the things that technology benefits us. How how where's the line that you can stop it and be like, well, this is okay, but this is not okay? And whether it's actually your body or not, that's not okay. Moss (23:21) Right. Are you are you ready for this? I forget here. I've got the stat right here. This is so disturbing. Shannon (23:44) I don't know. Moss (23:54) Wait for this is I'm reading this 'cause this is really gross. Okay. So they did three million of these sexualized images in the first eleven days of their operation. That's a lot of that's a lot of predatory, icky people doing things to innocent people that they didn't even know were happening. But you wanna know Yeah, well their Grok as a platform did it, but all of their users, you know, it it spread like wildfire when this thing went live. But the really gross thing are you ready for this? Okay. Shannon (24:06) Holy moly. Yeah. Gro Groc did that? Or or they're right. Right. Okay. Moss (24:28) Hold your face, I'll see if you react. Twenty three thousand of those were children under eight years old. Shannon (24:36) Mm mm mm mm mm. That's horrific. Moss (24:43) So this is like this is like I mean, in the purest sense of the word, violation Is is horrid violation is the only is the only way I can describe this this fuck no. And I I just can't I can't believe that the world I can't believe that we even have humans that would want this, actually. But I it's even Shannon (25:10) Well, and here's the thing: these people are wanting this, and this is just a tool that's making it easier for them. Moss (25:16) Right. Yeah. Which is gross. It's it's again, like I said in the beginning, you know, these these these we're pushed in America or the world even to create products that fill a need. Groc knew that there were perverts all over the world that wanted to see kids naked, right? So it's like, ooh, let's make them a product. it's just so gross. Shannon (25:40) Right. Moss (25:44) Same trick as the beauty mirror, right? A machine reading a human body, turned all the way to evil, there's no benefit to it at all. One sells you shame, this manufactures violation. There's no other pan on this scale but fuck no. It's only a fuck no, isn't it? Shannon (26:01) I agree. Agreed. Moss (26:04) Okay, so here's our fuck maybe. Let's talk about the massage on demand. I gave you my opinion. I think it's a little weird to walk into a room and press your pressure on a screen and have some weird warm metal touch you. that's just me though. And and I've always loved massage. Like I could get them every day. but if you think about it. Shannon (26:15) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Moss (26:38) It's access, right? There are some people who have issues with their body that are not that are not, you know, tied directly to just I don't feel comfortable naked. Some people have been sexually assaulted and or abused in their lives and their bodies are a real trigger point for them when when people get close to them. There are people out there that when people get within three feet of them, their PTSD rela reactions come up and they become incredibly frightened, right? So if I think about it in terms of access, I can understand that that technology could have a welcome door. There's also as somebody who has done personal care and I know you get this too, there's no burnout involved in a robot, right? A robot can work twenty-four seven and give the same exact massage as long as their heat sensors under their metal arms don't Shannon (27:33) Mm-hmm. It's Moss (27:44) go bad. I don't know what could go wrong. But but anyway, the the burnout thing is good and the no stran stran stranger anxiety. but the counter argument is Shannon (27:55) Mm-hmm. Moss (27:59) Engineering out the awkwardness just means you're not finding the right therapist anymore. You're not finding the right service provider that draws you in. And there's humanity in that selection, and there's humanity in the exercise of that relationship. so the tagline here is really a robot can find that knot It can be happy you finally booked for the appointment? No, it can't. So I don't really know if that trade is worth it, but you know, please, at the end of this podcast, we'll give you show notes and you'll be able to to go and and and make your own assessment and and vote, tell us your comments. Which brings us to the end of our first episode. we're going to be doing our tsunami now. And like I said before, this is the idea that people doing things in mass is a movement. People doing things one at a time is just sort of interesting. So I'd like you to do me a favor for yourself this week and for the community that we're going to be growing here on this show. Let a human care for your body with their hands this week. Get a haircut. Get that haircut. The one that you want. The one that you've had the picture of in your phone for a while, and you're sort of like, I don't know. Get that haircut. Go find a hairdresser. Book a real massage. Or just let somebody you love rub your shoulders. Put the phone down, is the most important piece of this. Don't check your messages while you're having this moment. Be in the moment. Be in that room. Feel it. You're not gonna be scored, thankfully. There's not gonna be a before and after. You're not you might be sold a product or two if you go to a hair salon, but that's just so you can keep it pretty, okay? But it'll be sold by a person, not a robot. Just be touched by somebody who's glad you're there. Have that feeling. It's it's worth a million dollars. I can't say it enough. Shannon (29:54) Yeah. Moss (30:15) A machine can map a million data points of your body and still never once be happy to see you. That's the gap. So go stand in that on purpose. One drop does nothing. A million of us choosing human hands over the glass. That's our tsunami. Okay, that's our show. Thank you very much for being. My first listeners, follow, subscribe, vote on the robot massage on my website. That's GoingHumanPod.com I'm Moss. This is Going Human because robots can't. Be back in a week.