Start the Riot: Inside Automotive's First AI Cohort

It’s January 1978 and the Sex Pistols have just self-destructed on stage in San Francisco. This symbolic implosion marked the end of UK punk’s chaotic first wave. Performative, provocative and, importantly, (to some extent) absorbed by the very systems they sought to disrupt. UK punk had inadvertently caused an era comparable to what it had initially set out to refute in the early 70s. Commercialized, co-opted, and ironically institutionalized. What began as a rejection of the establishment became just another product of it.

But something louder, faster, and more self-reliant was rising across the US.

Hardcore Punk.

From garages in D.C. to skate parks in Southern California, a new wave of punk was built from scratch: DIY everything, zines, venues, distribution. It was a reaction to commercialism, the Industry and a litany of social and political mores - the numbing status quo.

This is a story about a few invited people who meet on a Wednesday evening.

About why I wake up at 3am to join them.

And about what it actually takes to start a movement.

The Study Group works because it’s not a download, it’s a dialogue

The group is the brain-child of Brent Wees, widely known for his unique approach and orchestration of some of the most thought-provoking, interactive conference content the automotive industry has seen.

The first cohort will meet online over eight weeks to participate in an interactive AI workshop. Wees has handpicked three AI subject matter enthusiasts to join him in leading four core components, prompts, data, agents and image/video creation. This article is part one of a three part series.

Why AI Education Matters and Why its Execution Matters Most

“AI has a significant impact on every single person in every single industry,” - Shaun Raines

When it comes to the automotive industry, “it matters because there has been an absence of truth often when new things come into the market,” Shaun shares.

Shaun Raines, the CEO of Hired Guns Agency, will be leading the third component in the syllabus, AI generated image and video.

He quips that the real definition of insanity is not “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome”: “What’s really insane is going to countless conferences, signing up for every single webinar and never executing against it.”

This sentiment is particularly emphasized in the way in which Brent Wees has set up the cohort.

“The group doesn’t come in every week to sit and listen. There are exercises for the cohort during lessons. We focus on actionable things, discussing the different ways AI is affecting our professional lives. We send everyone away with homework after every meeting. People have to be accountable and do the work,” Brent says.

He describes the traditional model of passive learning—what Shaun criticizes—as part of the problem:

 “There’s lots of webinars, meetups, clubhouses, and in a lot of those cases it’s just people wanting their time on stage to share their insights. That’s alright, but I feel there’s not a bridge to helping those attendees move into actionable practices that can be beneficial.”

For Brent, learning isn't about broadcasting information. It’s about structure, accountability, and shared experimentation. “I want to evolve this into something that celebrates learning, collaboration and building.” This is why attendance matters, too. “One of the rules is, you miss two sessions in a row and you’re out.” He explains, “I want people to be accountable for this. I want people to show up.”

The more you understand the nature of the AI Study Group, the more prevalent the philosophy of DIY Hardcore Punk becomes. It’s more than anecdotal. It’s about shared responsibility, anti-gatekeeping, and community-built progress.

Just a Chatbot: How We Gaslight Ourselves About AI

“It’s either full-court press or nothing.” – Bill Playford

The danger of pejorative reasoning is that it invites risk. Writing off AI as "just a chatbot" allows legacy mindsets to maintain control. “There’s a major disconnect,” says Bill Playford, Partner at DealerKnows and Co-Founder of Auto Agentic. “You’ve got people out there pushing AI at full speed, posting on LinkedIn, speaking at conferences about concepts that aren’t fully baked. The cart is still well ahead of the horse,” referring to the lack of nuance that can directly impact adoption and trust. Having spent years inside dealership operations and leveraging over a decade’s worth of tech consulting when it comes to interpreting tools; Bill highlights that some of the technology lacks the kind of refinement that real-world operations demand.

“These tools can actually mess up communications,” he says, because they’re still not designed with a dealership’s logic and deployed without transparency. That’s the blind spot. Dealerships are left jaded, not curious. Generically and blindly adopting just a small fragment of AI as an additional “layer of tech” can actively break communication, damage trust and leave dealers feeling that if the chatbot doesn’t “work,” the entirety of AI also doesn’t “work.” This is the real innovation challenge. Beyond just the way in which the technology is being built, marketed and deployed, the way in which we actively engage with it on an on-going basis is truly the make-or-break moment for automotive as an industry.

Innovation extends to include how we incorporate AI. How we experiment, play, invite and include AI into our operations. Play is encouraged in the Group with several members sharing their own experiments, unprompted and not required but encouraged by the Group mentality.

DIY AI

“The only way that many of the bands I love got their music out there, planned tours to get in front of audiences was to do it all themselves... Nothing was given to them. They had to create their scene.” – Brent Wees

Punk wasn’t polished, and it wasn’t about being the best. It was about truth, effort, and ownership. The substance of the Study Group sets it apart. Everyone contributes, everyone is accountable, nothing is handed down from a pedestal and progress is earned, not packaged.

Showing up to this feels different. Participants are spread out across the US and Canada. The Group is made up of dealers, GMs, agency-owners, CEOs, marketing specialists and award-winning humans who are changing the way automotive works. Some join from their cars, others from their desks, couches, offices, hotel rooms, airports. But everyone joins.

I join, several timezones away, from a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. I join because I need and want to know. We all seem to have that in common. Being a part of this group has in a sense demystified what it means to be an early-adopter. I have come to understand that tech-fluidity is not the indicator. Curiosity is.

This article is part of a bigger conversation, an ongoing series that documents the rise of something raw, real, and rooted in mutual accountability.

In other words:

We’re building the scene. From scratch.