53. Coffee with Anna & Dana: Reimagining Daily Life with Automation

Ever wondered how your life could be simplified by the wonders of automation? We promise you, by the end of our chat with dynamic duo Anna and Dana, you'll have a completely new perspective and insight into the fascinating world of automation - from automated driving and smart cities to the concept of robotic home assistants. We explore critical topics like privacy, data security, and the role of AI in automation.

In this tech-saturated episode, we step inside the future, where mundane tasks like cooking, cleaning, and organizing are all taken care of by automation. Imagine having a personal robot assistant seamlessly integrated into your life, lending you a hand (or a wheel) to manage your time more effectively. Anna, Dana, and I share our personal experiences with home and work automation and how it has transformed the way they live and work - for the better or worse. 

Wrapping up this tech bonanza, we delve into the world of digital assistants and reveal the importance of control and transparency in the decision-making process. We weigh up the benefits and challenges of automation in our daily lives and share our favorite tools and tips for making the most of this revolutionary technology. Join us for a fascinating journey into the future, where the line between human and machine becomes beautifully blurred. Remember, technology is here to help us apply our human potential to the things we are passionate about. Tune in, learn, and let automation take the wheel!

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Transcript

Anna: 0:00

there are so many to do lists out there that we create for ourselves and apps that help us with recurring tasks that we need to be reminded of on a regular basis. That could free up our brain capacity, maybe. So if you have any good tips out there, I think that would be great to have. Suggest, maybe even talk. What do you all do To remember all the things that need to get done in your to do's all, private or at work? How do you organize your time? How do you optimize your use of time and how do you prioritize the new Demands of your time hail in, I mean the trickle in continuously, right, we all kind of paddle through that so that maybe I can leave as a food for thought and we can see if you want to pick it up sometime.

Klara: 0:48

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Grand Slam journey podcast, where we discuss various topics related to Grand Slam journey of our athletic endeavors, business and technology. Today's conversation is one of my coffee chats with Anna and Dana. Today, anna introduces the topic of automation and it's increasing presence in industries and our daily lives. We all share our thoughts and experiences with automations in our personal and business lives. Which automations we appreciate, what we enjoy about them, the current state of technological advancements that are supposed to simplify our lives, but many times they do opposite they make it more difficult and complicated. We talk about the importance of privacy and data security in automation. We cover things from automated driving to time management, exploring time wasters and various other use cases for automation, from cooking to cleaning to food. Waste reduction, to traffic optimization, smart cities To the pros and cons of automating travel planning. How do we gain the next level of efficiency gains, including challenges with business cases of scaling automations that may be useful to us but aren't seem to be picking up the deployment scale that we would like to see, as well as challenges and limitations of current digital assistance.

Klara: 2:40

This is your host, clara Kosova. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone you believe may enjoy it as well. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode, and consider leaving a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. Opinions discussed in this podcast are of our own and shall not be attributed to our employers, apple, dell and Ericsson. Thank you for tuning in, and now I bring you my conversation with Anna and Dana. Enjoy the listen. Should we kick off? I know we have just an hour booked, anna. If you want to kick us off, a specific yeah, okay.

Anna: 3:26

So today I thought for our podcast we could talk about automation and why. Well, automation is coming everywhere. It is such a theme that no one will be able to escape it eventually. There's so many aspects of it that we'd like to talk about. You could see it in industries, and big corporates are looking to automate Certain repetitive operations that could be automated by machinery and be done consistently without the human factor changing things and then also optimizing the speed of things and giving the opportunity to free up resources to do other type of tasks that may not be as easily automated.

Anna: 4:17

So see this in industries as manufacturing, car manufacturing or what it might be, and we are seeing that more and more into our private life, with automated little vacuum cleaners, automated Lawmowers, and I thought I find this interesting and I wanted to throw out the first question to you for us to kick start and elaborate around. What would be the thing if you could automate it, whatever task it might be, in your either private life or somewhere else? If you could automate it, what would it be To free up resources or your time to do something you'd rather be doing?

Klara: 5:04

Yeah, my first one is social media and this love hate relationship with social media, and so I feel like it's easy the way to use it to let others know that you're doing something great, or even this conversation or any of my podcasts and projects are Alive, and so if you have connections, it's just the most simple way or at least what I see to kind of spread this.

Klara: 5:28

Something is live and you may be interested in this and it's just such a time consuming activity. So I found like a little way to automate it. I use I usually check GPT to sometimes write my posts and Kind of create automations for the podcast and the video that AI chooses actually on its own, because even choosing the snippets used to be such a time consuming activity for me, and then I just kind of string it all together. But even stringing it all together takes like a one and a half hour probably across like the week of you know my campaign for when it podcast episode and I just dread that one and a half hour. So I have to create like an appointment with myself on the counter, otherwise I would never do it and I literally just Force myself to it. But yeah, I have to say, social media is just. I just do it because I feel like it's part of the job now, but I hate every single thing about it.

Anna: 6:30

That's so smart, though I haven't actually reflected. But it's true. You can kind of outsource some of that work that is repetitive. It comes back right with even AI. I hadn't thought about that. Oh, it's a good one.

Klara: 6:44

Yeah, so anybody who follows me on social media, 90% of my posts are written by AI. Now, wow, I used to think about it and it took so much mental effort and then I wrote it into the AI and sometimes it chooses these words that I think are really. It also makes me think about you know, this is an interesting word. Why would I not choose that word normally myself? This is a really powerful word. I'm just gonna go with it.

Klara: 7:07

Ai is smarter than me in this, really, so I'll just use that, and so it actually really improves the quality of an experience. So I don't have to think through it and it just automates that process of. I just now had to Figure out a software. So if anybody's developing something, I need a software that bridges. Once I learn to the episode, it feeds it to my two softwares that I'm using, which is Chaggivity and headliner, and then from there it makes the full loop and automatic connection to all of my social media. So I don't have to do any of it. My life would be so much better. So it sounds like there's a thread through it, like.

Anna: 7:51

Maybe the question should be a what are your time stealers? And then, what would you free up your time do? Rather right, which activities? What would you automate?

Dana: 8:02

that's exactly how I thought about this question well, where do I the most amount of time? And I said reflected it for me it's transportation. That's a big time waster and I look forward to the time where either we have, ideally, the deportation, but that's not going to happen. Second option is hyper loop in an economic way that you can still use it for short distance travel. And then the third one I would think would be autonomous driving. That is responsible, that is fast, that's trustworthy, so I can be doing other things while I'm being transported somewhere. Yeah, that's so interesting.

Klara: 8:48

I love the automated driving and I can call in a little bit from you. Know, I've had Tesla for a while and I have the self driving beta, which is nowhere close to perfect, but the first time when I got that upgrade I was driving, especially from Cupertino. I actually think the automated cars Do better when they're in a restrictive environment, which I think, as humans, do better as well. If you don't have too many choices right, you just kind of follow a path which, if you're driving in Cupertino like from, it's pretty much back to up, so that's when.

Klara: 9:22

I get most frustrated and that's when the car does best, because it just kind of follows. And I think the first time when I got it I was just responding to my email, because it just kind of goes and I spend an hour at least doing productive things. And then they added this automation to where you literally have to, like, hold the wheel all the time and it somehow knows, I think, when I'm distracted. I wonder if they're starting to use more the internal camera that's pointing towards you. And so I got flagged those like if you do this again and you don't have your hands on the wheel, we're going to take yourself driving beta away as like, oh my god, what am I going to do about it?

Klara: 10:02

So it is interesting, I agree, especially when you're in a traffic where it's heavily just backed up to where you were, literally don't need to use your mind for anything else. I think more. I think my mind gets really stressed out in that type of situation. That's why I can, I just give my driving up to the car and then I don't have to think about it at all, and you just even like listening to a podcast or music becomes just way more enjoyable. There you go. I mean you have some nuggets in what you're both saying.

Anna: 10:34

So hey, what is your time waster and B? Why do you consider it being a time waste? They're well, it's because probably it's monotonous and it's not adding value to you At that time. You could do something better, like you want to optimize your use of time, right? That's what I'm hearing. Yes, so pinpointing those could be different for different people, maybe in the private sector, in the industry sector could be maybe more commonalities for, let's say, car manufacturers or any type of other industry that you just want to automate, optimize speed so that you can have a higher throughput of some of those repetitive tasks. But I find it very, very, very interesting in the private sector, like I've asked this question to many different people and different answers, because everyone is unique and everyone values their time differently, and that's why I find it so enticing and I thought I want to throw this question out here in this form for us to elaborate and grow. What are the things that could be potential use cases, right, that we may not even have seen yet?

Klara: 11:53

What would you automate, anna? And I'm curious was there most common answer you've gotten from when you were asking your friends or colleagues of what they would automate?

Anna: 12:04

Well, some of those are what most people are finding tasks that are recurring maintenance, types of repairs or like, if you own a house, there's always those things coming back to you over and over again, like, for instance, weekly lawn mowing. That's a common one. People are like, oh, if I could automate that and I didn't have to have any part of it, that would be great. Some people outsource it and pay money for it. But if you could kind of automate it on your own and have a device that takes care of that on a regular basis for you, so that you can set certain criteria, this is the outcome of your lawn. You want it mowed every week or whatnot, and anything should be done this way or that way. That's interesting to hear.

Anna: 12:53

At home organization I've heard some people mention that how much time some spend on putting things back where they need to be.

Anna: 13:05

Some get frustrated when things laying around and it's just the vision of things clutter, just being everywhere. I mean, you've seen how much is exploded on Netflix and whatever streaming channel. But all these home organization videos or programs, just like we all enjoy watching those end results when everything's neat and tight and put away in our spaces but our lives don't usually look that way. Right, it's just stuff that get parked or piles that build up, so things like that. I've heard and discussed cases where if you would have some sort of robot home robot that now we're getting into that whole future home robot some people could not even imagine themselves living with a home robot that actually can do a lot of the tasks that we do with our hands and feet, basically just knowing each and every item you have in your house, what place they reside in, and can put them back in much quicker speed than maybe us and we don't even have to be part of that previous task.

Anna: 14:13

So there's many examples I've heard and, like I said, every person is different. I think a lot of people would fringe when they heard what my personal preference would be. But I hands down. If I had any choice I would automate cooking. Most people find maybe cooking as delight therapy. It's enjoyable In my world.

Anna: 14:40

I just hate it. It comes back all the time and as soon as I've cooked, cleaned up, it takes about two hours until someone else comes and says I'm hungry again and I have to pull out everything again and cook again. So I feel like cooking is such a recurring thing that always comes back and I never get rid of it. I can never check off that box and to me it's just getting to me. I just feel I no longer live alive. Like everything goes so fast and high speed, like you work, you did this, you did this, you drive here and there. And in the past, in the good old days, I still remember my grandma. She was in the kitchen all day. That was her purpose, right? She cooked, she had the breakfast and then, as soon as she finished breakfast, then started preparing for lunch and by the time we got to lunch that was ready, and then the same drill for dinner, so like she literally lived in the kitchen, None of our lives looked that way, so that would be mine.

Klara: 15:39

That's a good one.

Klara: 15:40

I have to say, the cooking I can relate and I've simplified it so much to where I don't have to think about it Like I create a lot of things that are repetitive. In some ways I've actually found a way to automate them to a point where I put such a little thought and time investment that it's almost like automatic. But I think it's harder especially the cooking, if you have kids, because for me it's just my partner and I my dog, it's what we eat. Sometimes she doesn't feel like eating it. So then I got to try to think God, she's the most picky one what she wants to eat for dinner or breakfast today, but she mostly eats, you know, the same diet that we eat.

Klara: 16:24

So actually for that reason we also adjusted our diet for Ali, so she kind of eats what we eat and we eat very plain now. So we removed some spices and vegetables so you know she can eat our food. So we eat a plain and very simple. But if cooking, if preparing food takes me more than 10 minutes, I probably won't do it. Now I can bake, like baking. I feel like there's sort of this process that I'm more enjoy. So I am willing to invest sometimes up to an hour or two for like a really good some sort of dessert, but for cooking just a meal I find if it takes more than 10 or 15 minutes it's too much.

Anna: 17:04

Yeah, I think maybe the everyday cooking is what I think I'm referring to, because cooking can be a very social activity. Especially, I like when I'm cooking for more people and we're all engaging, rather than having a crowd just sitting for you to finish cooking for them. It's a daily dinner. I think it's more fun when you all stay in the kitchen and spend time together and no devices are around and you're really talking through the day, or you're having friends come over and you're cooking together and then enjoying it together over really nice conversations. So that's, I guess, how human beings we enjoy. That's why maybe we find pleasure in the cooking that way. I wouldn't want to take away, so it's maybe more on a voluntary basis. Definitely one can take. Same thing as the self-driving car Nope, today I feel like driving. So you're overriding that feature. But having that as a base foundation, I think would be great to have some sort of automation there. Just one example I love it.

Klara: 18:06

Dana, you're quite a cook. What's your take on it?

Dana: 18:09

Yes, I love cooking. I enjoy it. It's a creative outlet. I like to try new things. At the same time, you cannot do that three times a day Every single day, with a busy life and children and work and all that. So what Anna mentioned made me reflect that even the things that we enjoy doing there are time leasters there. So what I've in the continuous quest to optimize, we've been for the past three, four weeks.

Dana: 18:42

Since school started, I got this magnetic menu planner with paper tearouts that's hanging on the side of my fridge and every weekend, on Saturday, I gather the kids and I say what are we going to cook next week? And we come up with a meal plan and we write it on the fridge. And whatever is not on the fridge is not going to be made, because I've got three different kids, different days. Everybody complains at one point or another and I think to the habit. It's not on the fridge, I'm not making it. And so on Sunday I go and I do my grocery shopping based on that list and then during the week now I don't have to think about dinner, it's on the list and I just go into robot mode and I need the creative outlet for the meals that you want to grill and experiment with new recipes for Friday evening and the weekend lunch. So that gives me that balance. But it's been a good experiment so far. I love it, Dana.

Klara: 19:41

That's such a great process. Thanks for sharing it. That's really good.

Anna: 19:46

Can I jump in there? I love that. So I want to take it to the next level. So what if you, on Saturday, did this and then, once you know whatever one selection is, you had, let's say, a little monitor you could enter just either you feed in the recipe as it is, just enter it, or import it and then you specify I want to dimension this based on six people or whatever it is right and then, with a little bit of planning, you can enter. Most groceries offer this, now that they do the shopping for you and you just go and pick up. What if you fed in your recipe? You put in just the number, which parameter that the robot or whatever is behind there, the a I calculate it for a cake Generate the shopping list for your next week already feeds into your preferred Grocery. You would have a second or third preference to, if they're short on stock on something. Just enter those shopping lists and then it gets delivered home to you and maybe a robot could swing it all together. Then you don't have to do anything.

Klara: 20:58

You just basically say what you want, something like that yeah, for one danis smiling light and seems like she's really thrilled about the potential idea of next level of automation.

Anna: 21:12

Yes, Some of those fragmented use cases do exist, is just that they're not linked.

Dana: 21:18

and yes, and then that makes for a good business modeling exercise After the podcast exactly what's the value?

Klara: 21:32

how much more would you be willing to pay for even this grocery automation to where people just insert this is kind of what we eat for the week and it just that's the rest of the processing from that point for you.

Dana: 21:47

I don't think we're far off from that right like now. With the available genitive tools, you can take a picture of the contents of your fridge. You can feed it into a. I can propose menus for you. Some of the stuff is a key, but it will get there with training right.

Anna: 22:02

Yeah and you can also do the data analytics right. Based on your preferences of what you've cooked in the past that you liked or dislike, they can better Offer suggestions for future or if you have dietary restrictions and whatnot.

Dana: 22:18

Yeah, you spoke to thoughts in my head. The first one is with automation analytics. One of the things that really bothers me is food waste and I know we do a lot of that in my household and I wonder, like, if there's a way to kind of Advertise, make available that excess capacity and have a way where it can be delivered to people who need it when they need it.

Klara: 22:43

That's a good one. I know that has been working on this already. Actually the Google acts has had big focus and Really the theory is there's still people who are kind of malnourished or undernourished, but majority of the developed world which they produce way more food than humanity needs overall in the world. The problem is the access to the food. So how do you let People who need the food know that this food is available or that they can pick it up if you have extra right that it doesn't get wasted, and even that like from grocery stores because you have some things that starting to expire. So I know they've been working on some of that stuff, also with food banks and I know there is an app actually here sorry, I'm in Austin, I was going to say here in Bay Area, not anymore In Bay Area there was like an app that restaurants actually could post like a cheaper package for like the food you know when you have coffee shops or stuff, so usually they have to throw things at the end of the day and I always find it such a food based.

Klara: 23:43

Why don't they just let some people especially in the Bay Area there's so many homeless people know that we have food extra but then they don't want the homeless people to specially come to some of the restaurants, right. So that's kind of bad. But you can sort of pre book on some of the apps, like a pick up the package. You don't know what's in the package, but usually just food that is good but just one day old. So I thought it was interesting thing and I was going to just try to see what's in the back because it's also like a surprise there was like an extra food available.

Anna: 24:18

It only cost like five dollars.

Klara: 24:19

I wonder what's in the back. So it has this, you know, surprise component. I thought it's interesting. It definitely needs some perfecting and taking it to the next level, but I know there's people that are working on it. Sorry, I just wanted to insert.

Dana: 24:36

So the other thought that I had bringing it back to business and corporate world. It baffles me how difficult it is to implement automation and drive ways of processes, especially in big, well established businesses. So I want to pick your brains if you've seen a use case of where automation, a efficiency, has worked pretty well Maybe some case study that you read about or something you heard about and if you care to share your thoughts I mean from my experience. The one that comes into mind is actually it was an AI back in the day.

Klara: 25:14

But when I worked at DARKS and we worked on the self optimizing network Right and I think the RF optimization, the song which is now becoming more and more even just the NR Out of the enable relations, like all of that ran because the conditions sometimes change and they also change based on the day of the time when you're driving Because there's more or less congestions on the road. So I actually think there's so much more improvement just with networks and creating smart mechanisms that can automate and you don't need engineers. I don't know what the stage of kind of the overall self optimizing networks is. I know back in the day they've been kind of more models around the machine learning. That's kind of the first stage. But I feel there's so much more ability to then feed the machine, so much more ability to then feed that self optimizing network with data measurements and analytics and then fine tuning it and it being more reactive really in real time and so much more potential to automate so many of at least the RAN network functions and then I'm sure that will go directly to the core. But that's kind of the first thing that comes into mind and I've really been a big fan of that product because I just feel like there's so much effectiveness in it.

Klara: 26:36

You still find some of the people I think the biggest problem we're in into because there's these RF engineers and they look after an area. I was like, oh my God, there's one change and made it wrong. I would never make that change and it degraded my performance. You find this 1 percent outliers where it doesn't work and that creates a problem of justifying this whole software and solution. And why does it not work 100 percent of the time? Obviously it was a person who knew that area very well. There's usually differences with topology. You have a hill and downhill, so that sometimes complicates it. But that was interesting and I really hope there's people who are continue to work on this more and more. Let me just stop there. I'm sure, dana Anna, you have other areas from your experience.

Anna: 27:30

Well, you talked about driving before and that being a time-waster too that removed you from things you'd rather be, or you'd rather be at your destination. I was thinking I haven't seen it fully as implemented as I would like to, but I'm sure there's a lot of players out there already doing a lot of things in certain cities, especially in congested cities, where you could optimize the traffic. And now I'm not talking about GPS as to suggest an alternate route where there are more congestions, but I'm thinking more traffic light optimization, allowing more throughput in those paths or those directions where traffic is traveling at certain point in time during the day, things like that to make the green wave flow. Anyone who lives and drives in a city that has a grid system knows how annoying it can be where you maybe have 13 or 14 traffic lights you need to get through in intersections that are not synchronous or kind of synced with each other. I'm thinking a grid system of traffic lights being better coordinated and optimized is something that would be really appealing.

Anna: 28:47

I think of it daily when I'm driving. It's very frustrating. You get through one traffic light but then you sit in another. That's not at all in sync with the first one and the speed people are traveling between them. It's quite complicated but it's not hard to make happen. Sometimes, the more people that move into a city, the more you have to wait to get through a traffic light. Sometimes you have to sit through one, two or three intervals until you can get through. It becomes harder to predict your total travel time to get to destination, even to find it reliable on the GPS. That's an area I definitely feel that we could do more.

Klara: 29:32

I know the smart cities have been around for a while and there's companies who do this. But I wonder if the business model is not as effective because it doesn't seem to be picking up. Because I totally see and agree, as the end user, we so value this. When you have this automated flow to make the traffic flow better, how do you monetize it? Because obviously it requires bigger financial investment. I wouldn't be probably willing to pay more money for that, just living that city, so you're not going to get more money or attract probably more people just like, oh cool, they have this really cool lights and automated traffic control. Let's everybody example live in Dallas. I don't think they would really drive more people to live in. But I think the business model in this case that's what I see is probably the problem where the adoption hasn't grown more.

Anna: 30:29

I think there are different drivers too. There's multiple factors that could drive it more than profitability To justify the investment. Think about this scenario the more frustration that arrives with the people that drive, the more they're going to try to beat the traffic light when it starts to change.

Anna: 30:48

We all know the situation and so if you statistically can see, I'm just giving a scenario of OK, some have been waiting a long time.

Anna: 30:57

I'm like nope, I had enough, I'm not going to wait for another interval, I'm going to blast through this yellow light. Hopefully I will do that before the red light hits. I see a lot of people doing that, especially in a grid system. I see a lot more people to do this because they need to get to their destination. And when there's not a good flow and they know that they're being prevented to get to their destination, more and more and more it builds up and that increases that prone behavior to try and chance through and that's where you have more accidents prone to happen and those I wouldn't say we negotiate with, because who wants to have their passenger side T-bone when somebody's trying to blow through? You've gotten a green light but somebody's just trying to blast through the intersection and T-bones and your passenger that you're carrying could be your child, could be impacted. That's just statistically. If you see that you were risking safety of our drivers or your vehicle people more, this could be another incentive to implement things like that.

Klara: 32:09

So you're kind of saying you gain efficiency because there's less accidents, less emergencies, and so that ties into everything like police, ambulance, firefighters, time waste created by that. I wonder if the city is able to think that through, because that requires a holistic process and accumulating of all of the accidents and time waste and additional resource waste through all of the different chains, and I wonder if this is something that they're even considering or are able to kind of state this is how much you're going to save in dollar amounts if you decrease your accidents by X amount. I think there will be a fantastic calculation, but I don't know if and unfortunately, I wish they made decisions that way, but I don't know if the cities do. Yeah.

Dana: 33:04

I think this is federal spending, federal investments, going to play like the latest infrastructure act. I know that there are funds there for cities Steve Delos is one of them, who's taking advantage of it for a more intelligent highway system because the auto line is very long term right, and so in those type of cases, I think federal investment makes most sense. I think we'll get there. It's just a matter of time, and as systems and people get smarter, we'll eventually start seeing those gains. Yeah.

Klara: 33:39

And every time, just to comment on that, you rely on federal investments. It's just going to take time, like when you add the word federal in any sentence, to me at least. Ok, it's going to take another years or decades until we get to the ideal point where, from user perspective, we'll probably enjoy being yeah.

Anna: 34:00

But I mean speaking of waste. What a waste if we are risking human lives, right? So until then, I would recommend everybody who gets through an intersection always look to your right, make sure you don't have anybody who's speeding there, and you'll be the first one in line that gets hit. I've gotten a bit considerate about this now that I've observed an uptick, especially here in the Dallas Metroplex.

Anna: 34:24

There's been a lot of people moving in and people are rushed needing to get to work. Morning traffic is pretty horrendous and I see a lot more aggressive driving and with that comes risks as well. Right, and also I find myself oftentimes frustrated. I've even started counting how many intersections do I need to get through and how many school zones do I need to get through to get to my destination. And it's tedious to sit in those traffic every day in and out.

Dana: 34:52

So in terms of another use case for efficiency gains and reducing time wasted, I know you all like to travel. I love to travel. I don't relish all the search I have to do to figure out an itinerary and a place to go and things that we would like to do. It just takes a lot of time and a lot of thinking through magazine articles and blog posts and whatnot, to come up with my own consolidated list. I've tried to use chatGPT in the past. It's just because the training data is old. I feel like some of the output, while it's interesting, can give me some insights, but it's not something that I can delegate 100% to without additional efforts. So what have you come across to make this a more automated, efficient process?

Klara: 35:46

I have to say I haven't really thought about automating and while I do share some of the time wasting, in some ways I enjoy it. But I think when I think of why I enjoy it, it's because I get a confidence and excitement about the research. And so, example we've been planning this Kilimanjaro trip, and I've been planning it forever, and so I did full research on what are the companies there that are best rated, what are the ones that give the most money still to the reporters and the people, because I didn't want to go with just the commercial one and then did research on the track and the safari and considered and I think there is a process through it that you've put in a lot of effort to once OK, I feel confident. This is going to be a fun trip because I've invested my time and effort. So I don't know if it's the best use of my time, but you kind of get to know the country by doing the research. But I do know there are trips that I probably would prefer to automate and I tried playing. I think after one of our conversations, dana, you did share some of the tips on planning vacation, about shared GPT, so I tried to go in and try to do it with, like scuba diving, because I wanted to plan a trip that is within X travel, flight distance from me and kind of what I want to see and where, and it was actually interesting some of the proposals that it created. But I don't know for the research, unfortunately I don't have any good tips.

Klara: 37:15

What I do is that we use usually Google Sheets for organizations. We have an itinerary and I just plan each day and sort of add these things. So we kind of have a full schedule and I pretty much organize it that way and add everything in the calendar. But that's just the late stage, right, once I have it finalized and I decide what we're doing. But for the research itself, like you, I just use variety of things and I don't know if the new AI tools I think what it comes down to is. I want to see the transparency in that. So I think they just started adding right, where is it pulling the recommendation and the search, and so you can actually click on the exact link and kind of read through just to make sure that what it's suggesting is actually matching my style and what I feel like doing. That's what I feel like is missing from the tools right now and they're working on adding it or have to some extent, but I don't know. Anna, what do you?

Anna: 38:18

use.

Anna: 38:19

I have an attempt at outsourcing, I mean sort of automating that.

Anna: 38:24

What came to mind when you were answering, clara, was more like the sense of control and what task it is, and then it becomes individual right, like in this area.

Anna: 38:34

I agree that why maybe I haven't even considering automating that piece is because, yes, you kind of want to be part of the journey, of the planning, to arrive at a certain solution, I think from an AI or I would appreciate suggestions come in my way, but eventually I want to be in control of the decision making and then the important milestones, like planning up till the trip, to kind of be able to harvest that product at the end and say, hey, I arrived at a really good choice. When we enjoy the vacation, then, wow, this was a pretty good choice, right, and I want to do more, more of this. So the high level of engagement still from my end, but it's again what we all pinpoint as being time stealers and what we are willing to hand over for someone else to do or something else to do. I think what degree of involvement and control do we want to have in those tasks that we're considering?

Klara: 39:38

Yeah, I think what I came up with now when you're speaking, what came to mind, there's some percentage of it that I would outsource and that's the looking for the actual tickets. So if you have a complicated flight, I think you can do it in some ways. On kayak, you can kind of set up your ranges. But, for example, going back to the Kalimantra retreat, there's few seasons that would best fit our schedule and our best for kind of the overall experience based on the time and climate etc. And so that itself, like always looking for the tickets, you know it goes through a spike up and down.

Klara: 40:14

It'll be awesome if I could just set up this is the duration of the flight. I need this many days, minimum or max, to find the flights, and it would continue to search for flights automatically every day and I could just book once oh, my God, this is like a great schedule. I'll just book it now Instead of me, you know, thinking, oh, three months, I didn't have a chance to look at it. What is the best time to book a flight that is going to take 25, 30 hours to get there? That's true. You're going to spend quite a bit of money. So that portion I would love to figure out a better automation, or maybe there is one, and I just haven't found it yet.

Dana: 40:53

Yeah, it's funny with all the examples that we've given, you can have a human do all those things. You can have a cook, you can have a chauffeur. You can have a travel planner, travel agency do that Well, and people have been using all of those human assistants for a while. I think what we're driving towards is the convenience, accessibility, the cost efficiency that the digital assistant can bring to the table, right, yes, which is super excited to see how the world of generative AI and robotics and computing is going to continue to evolve so that we can have those digital assistants for the tasks that we desire, when and how we want to consume the service.

Anna: 41:39

Yeah, and I think adding another layer to that is that if you would hire a person not necessarily always do they know your preferences or styles and whatnot, but if you do this more through a machine, you can profile yourself in a better way so that it works only entirely with you in mind and sense, right? Yes, I think that's an elevation on top of all of those other benefits that you suggested, dana.

Klara: 42:07

Speaking of digital assistants, I'm actually curious Do you have one that you like using or use the most, or maybe opposite, most frustrated with? Because I think the digital assistant is such a great idea and I'm sure we all have tried probably all of them, if not most but to me it's so disappointing how they still don't work, kind of the way that, as humans, would like them to right, and especially for someone like me who's a pretty deep accent just translating Sometimes I have to use Trevor to translate to the digital assistant when I want to ask. I'm laughing.

Anna: 42:43

Clara, because I have my kids talk to the virtual assistant, Sometimes when I've said the same thing three times me as well, being with a Swedish accent, sometimes it doesn't get me and my kids get frustrated by knowing that I can't get things through. So they just said mom, know the way, I'll say it. And they say it only once. They've never had to repeat themselves. They say I'm American, I can make it understand. It is so ironic. It's just like oh my gosh. Yeah, that's why I was laughing. It's so funny.

Dana: 43:17

We have a heavy use of one type of digital assistant at home and I get frustrated that I have to pause when I call its name before I tell it to do something. It doesn't move at the speed I needed to move at and there's a long way to go. I mean you can, if you're willing to invest the time and the effort, you can automate through it a lot of things. But it's not super intuitive, it doesn't work all the time and you can tell, like from the way of the playoffs that happened late last year, a lot of these digital assistant programs that cut, which is unfortunate, right. But it goes back to the business case of this utility and the line of sight between investing time and resources in this utility and revenue for private companies may not be very obvious, which makes you think that, for the greater good of things, do you need to invest in a universal and standard buddy and universal interfaces that make it very easy to integrate between one assistant and the other, and I think you're starting to see some of that.

Dana: 44:19

There's a I read the other day. There's this company that makes you use multiple digital assistants from the main players in one app or tool. I think we're getting there. But it's a matter of capital investments and does it make business sense? Or do you need again some sort of like federal intervention with a standard body because you see the greater good in making these digital assistants useful, especially as I think, as our population ages, right For an aging population having a reliable voice control digital assistant that can help somebody who may be mobility restricted as they age. I think there's a great use case there. Now we're going to be mostly old people by 2035 in this country, so there could be a business case that we may there. But yeah, people need to think that.

Klara: 45:12

And then there's two things that your comment makes me think about. One is the availability of languages, then, because in Czech Republic nobody cares about us checks. There's like 10 million of us, right, so it's not a big market. Even my mom or my grandma, you know, I often find why don't you just talk to your Apple Watch mom, because I gifted her Apple Watch? Oh, she only speaks English, which I forget. Like they don't have check because, again, small country doesn't make business case.

Klara: 45:38

And the second one, I think where it really starts breaking down and was the threat was the privacy, right, because none of us want these to start listening, and so I'm sure we've all seen the article that started popping up to, where they start recording and random times and you know what they're recording on and aren't they spying on you? And so I think that's been kind of the focus and probably a large setback for especially some of those digital assistants that are saying in your house and supposedly have been spying randomly without people knowing and recording conversations. So there's a little bit of that privacy and paranoia, which is either valid or not. I guess it depends who you are and from which side of the coin you look at it.

Dana: 46:22

Yeah, all I have to say thank God for the EU, because they're big on regulation. So we're here in this country big on free markets and innovation and all that. But then you need the flip side, where you have regulations and laws and the EU is leading the charge and I think eventually we're going to get the happy balance. But there's potential and there's, at the same time, a long way to go. So I guess a call to action to all the people listening there's a lot of tools out there that can provide utility. Unfortunately, you need to spend time and effort to experiment and if folks have good suggestions, maybe they can email you, clara, and you can let us know. Always on the hunt, how can I remove wasteful time from my day? I?

Anna: 47:06

love it. Yeah, oh, I'd love to see that conversation getting started. I guess there's so many things that we haven't even touched on in this podcast that may have spurred people's minds. What would you automate? How would you free up time from your life so that you can optimize your time and do something else with it? What would you rather do and send your thoughts into Clara? That'd be nice.

Klara: 47:34

Actually maybe closing questions to you all on that note Do you have a favorite? I guess it can be toy or tip or sometimes even habit. We have these things in our life and day that we tend to automate that really brings us more fulfillment or effectiveness or whatever you're after in that day. Anything that you've been testing lately that you really enjoy.

Dana: 48:02

Mine is very mundane. I love cleaning floors. I hate cleaning. Some huge fans of the Roomba, oh good, I just wish that they have a hardwood floor mopping one, that is good. So I'm looking forward to when that comes along. But at least a vacuuming one, I'm a huge fan, nice.

Anna: 48:23

Anna, I am quite the opposite there. I don't like cooking but I like the cleaning because I like to watch the progress. To me, progress is so valuable and I love to see progress being made in front of my eyes. So, like, if I see a dirty floor, I like to vacuum the crumbs and then cleaning it and then enjoying it. I have not used much automation yet, but I need it, I would say so I would definitely jump on Dana suggestion there. If you find a solution, I'll be on it. I wouldn't mind watching it happen in front of my eyes. As long as there's progress, I don't have to be involved in it, but I do enjoy a clean floor as well.

Anna: 49:13

I don't know if that answered, but yeah, we have a Roomba, we have one in the bedroom, but it's always running into things and getting stuck, and so sometimes I'm thinking like just what you said on the virtual assistant. I don't think we're really there yet because it requires some intervention and sometimes, from a bigger perspective I'm weighing the amount of interaction. It still requires me to step in and correct. It's worth the value gain from having those virtual assistants. So sometimes I feel like, nope, I'm more efficient just without. For the time being until this can catch up, if that makes sense, because then I know I can get done right the first time.

Klara: 49:57

Yeah, how about any of the smart blacks or logs or lighting? Have you played with that or tried any of those? Yes, because I sometimes feel like the smallest automation, like going back, these small, little repetitive things. An example which is really silly.

Klara: 50:13

Going back to my Tesla, one of the things that I really enjoy the most is that I don't have to ever worry about car keys, because usually we have these big purses and there's always this like 30 seconds to one minute me freaking out where the car keys are and you got to dig through all your purse, and so the fact that I don't ever have to think about car keys and it just worked with my iPhone seamlessly it's just been such a joy just removing this 30 seconds to one minute of stress multiple times a day that I lost my car keys. So, going back to, I think these are these tiny things that sometimes spikes your stress level few times a day and those kind of the simple automations I think still work sometimes the best and improves your quality of life the most. So have you tried any of those, anna?

Anna: 51:01

Well, yes, but I don't have that positive outcome that you have, but in that case I would. I'm thinking of the lights that we have in the kitchen. My husband and I constantly discuss around this. I want to go back to just one flip switch on the wall. Why can't we move back to the times when you just walk into a room, I want my lights on and I just press that little button and they will come on, and then, when I want to switch them off, they come off, as simple. It's not much effort from my side.

Anna: 51:34

Now I have to argue with this Google assistant every morning three times to tell it to switch all lights on or which light I want to see, and I have to say such a long sentence for it to get it. Saying that sentence takes me four times as long as flipping the switch Right. So now I feel I'm putting more effort in to get accomplished as tasks that could be done manually. So I think that part. I'm truly an advocate for optimizing time, but I think I'm going backwards in this case. However, the conversation we usually have is well, now you don't have to switch on all of the lights. They come on at the same time you would have to have multiple switches to switch on all the lights you want to switch on with the Google assistant? Yes, I would agree. You can configure which setup you have with which command. So there's some benefits there. But I'm still deep inside. I feel we're not really there yet. To simplify it, I'd rather skip all of the greeting phrases you have to say and they are coming more with that.

Anna: 52:41

Like, instead of hey, google, now you have a shortcut you can say for it to just recognize yours, what? Not Right. But sometimes if you have multiple virtual assistants in the house, you have to remember which device you're talking with and what sort of wake up trigger they have. And sometimes my brain just in something else and I want to talk to it and I forget the first phrase of this one for it to wake up, yeah, I don't know, I don't think I'm there yet, or the devices are quite there yet, if that makes sense. But your example, just to eliminate something that would cause stress more than once in your life, right, oh, that would be such a relief. So that's more of those please.

Dana: 53:23

I love it. This is the wallet I use. Oh, I don't have to rummage for my credit card and my wallet. I just use Apple Pay. I just wish that states would adopt something similar for driver's license, so you don't have to carry a wallet anymore.

Anna: 53:38

Yes, I love that one.

Klara: 53:39

Well, they're working on the driving license, right, but it's again state. I think there's only what is it? Three, four states now maybe have driving license, but I agree, I think all important documents should be digital, like even passports. Like to me, it's ridiculous If my check passport expires, I actually have to take a flight and then creating new passport physically. I was like it's so weird, like we're 2023. How can you?

Anna: 54:05

Yeah, no digital wallet. I agree with you, dana. So smooth. I'm so relieved. There are time I'm like I don't have to dig through my purse. I mean simplification, oh my gosh, it's wonderful, right? I mean I love just watching documentaries about minimalism, where you can kind of simplify your life, remove the excess tasks that are mundane and things like that. More of that, please.

Klara: 54:34

Yeah, and I just wanted to comment on your example because I thought it was spot on and fantastic. I think that's probably where exactly describes the state of automation, where we add and attempt to make it simple. Well, sometimes it seems like it makes our life more complicated. I think that's really where things seems to be stuck at on the macro level. Yeah, maybe.

Klara: 55:00

Just I'm going to share one that is really simple and works, I think is the smart plugs, and so I use them in a way to automate my routines that kind of help me stick with my schedule right, and these have been proven. For example, our coffee machine needs 30 minutes to warm up in the morning, so have it programmed to wake up at the exact same time and turn off at exact same times. Otherwise I could drink coffee all the way through 7 pm. And the same thing I do with my cold lunch. Like automatically it turns out as specific times. I know when I go out in the morning it's the right temperature.

Klara: 55:36

I think the smart plugs on machines that we use that helps making sure well, the cold planche is already cold. I can't skip because it's already on. So it kind of helps me stick to my routine and then finish time to my routine example with the coffee. I don't go overboard, that's good. That's my last one. I feel like we can talk forever. Any other closing tips or ideas? Ladies, I know we're a little bit over time here.

Anna: 56:03

One thing that came to my mind is just we could maybe talk about this in another podcast or, if listeners have ideas. There are so many to-do lists out there that we create for ourselves and apps that help us. Just with what you said, clara Recurring tasks that we need to be reminded of on a regular basis. That could free up our brain capacity, maybe. So, if you have any, there are any good tips out there. I think that would be great to have suggest and maybe even talk what each and you all do to remember all the things that need to get done in your to-dos all private or at work. How do you organize your time, how do you optimize your use of time and how do you prioritize the new demands of your time Hail in. I mean, they trickle in continuously right.

Anna: 56:55

We all kind of peddle through that so that maybe I can leave as a last note food for thought and we can see if we want to pick it up sometime.

Klara: 57:04

That's a good one. It could be actually a good set up for the next episode. It would be nice sequence that we can think about and play with, maybe even experiment for the next month and we can discuss. Or if there's somebody who wants to join us in the conversation from the guests and join the discussion and share their tips, we could do that too. Perfect, thank you.

Dana: 57:26

I just have one last reflection. I leave our chat with a sense of gratitude that we live in this time and age where we have the tools and the utilities to apply our human potential to what we love and we feel will add the most value to something that humans and other generations did not have. So I just feel very grateful to be here at this time, in this moment, with the ability to do so. Yeah, gosh love it.

Klara: 57:55

My drop Darren.

Dana: 57:56

It's a perfect ending.

Klara: 57:58

I don't have anything better to say after that I agree so good.

Anna: 58:03

Thank you, lady. It was great to have a fun time.

Klara: 58:06

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