Demystifying AI: Impact on Jobs, Industries and Personal Interactions with Sophia Matveeva

Conquer the world of artificial intelligence (AI) with Sophia Matveeva, founder and CEO of Tech for Non-Techies, as she demystifies AI, its impact on jobs, and its potential. Our conversation is a fascinating exploration of the future, not through the apocalyptic lens of job loss but as a study of the revolutionizing effects of technologies like Chat, gpt.

We tread the exhilarating path of content creation with AI, discussing our own experiences in generating titles, descriptions, and blog posts. Hear how Sophia navigates the slower-than-expected adoption of AI in traditional banking, and the unique opportunities it presents for entrepreneurs. Hold on to your seats as we also unpack the impact of AI on retail and luxury markets – a discussion where a rational approach might not always be the best.

Finally, we delve into the heart of the matter: the impact of AI on human interaction. With companies like Stitchfix integrating AI in their processes, we imagine a future where human touch and creativity become a luxury in certain services. Tune in to comprehend the true value of AI in our lives, the future it's shaping, and the importance of the human touch in an increasingly automated world.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:21

Welcome to the podcast that challenges you from the inside. Welcome, be More and Discover the Agile Within. And now here's your host, greg Miller.

Speaker 2: 0:35

So we're back. So it is November. You probably listen to this. When it comes out, it'll be around Thanksgiving time in the US. So Mark and I are in the midst of the football season here. My bangles just beat the bills. Yay, mark, we went to a trip over to Atlanta where you got to see the Falcons in person. Right, and that was the Vikings.

Speaker 3: 1:00

He and my wife and I took a trip yeah, got to see the Vikings play and actually have a really close friend who's a lifelong Vikings friend, so he had. He spared no expense of texting me after the game about the outcome because the Falcons lost.

Speaker 2: 1:18

Yeah To a quarterback who just basically didn't even know the playbook came in and won the game. Sorry to do that to you.

Speaker 3: 1:28

And did you know? He's actually a rocket scientist too.

Speaker 2: 1:32

Yes, I heard that today that he actually, he actually like I think it was like last summer or sometime. I heard just today on the Dan Patrick show that he spent some time at Cape Canaveral at NASA. He his his goal in life if it wasn't football was to be an astronaut. He wants to go to the moon.

Speaker 3: 1:50

Yeah, it's not that long Pretty sharp guy.

Speaker 2: 1:53

They said he's like probably one of the top smartest guys in the NFL player.

Speaker 3: 1:58

So yeah, so don't feel too bad that he beats you so well, if you have to lose somebody, I guess, lose it to a future astronaut.

Speaker 2: 2:05

Yeah. That's how you want to do it. That's American football, not switching subjects. Our guest today is used to the worldwide football right, what we call soccer right. She lives over in London right now. She's originally from Russia. She is the founder CEO of tech for non-techies, where she also has a podcast. It's an educational company. Welcome Sophia Modveva to the show.

Speaker 4: 2:35

Wonderful to be here and thank you so much for that perfect pronunciation of my surname. I'm very impressed.

Speaker 2: 2:41

I practiced it for weeks leading up to the show to get it down just for you. Yes, I did that, thank you.

Speaker 4: 2:48

And I'm also very glad that you pointed out that the rest of the world, our dear American friends, the rest of the world thinks that football is something entirely different.

Speaker 2: 2:57

Yes, they do. I'm well aware of that.

Speaker 4: 3:00

Have you seen the David Beckham documentary on Netflix?

Speaker 2: 3:02

I did it was wonderful. I loved it, it was really good.

Speaker 4: 3:06

I was never interested in football, but I had a great interest in David Beckham.

Speaker 2: 3:10

Yeah, I mean, he seems very down to earth person. He doesn't seem cocky here again, he's just, you know. Yeah, it was great. If you haven't seen it, mark, you should watch it, it's good.

Speaker 4: 3:24

I think men and women are watching it for different reasons.

Speaker 3: 3:26

But yes, they are.

Speaker 4: 3:27

I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2: 3:28

Sure they are, I'm not going to say anything, but yeah, david Beckham, yes, we all know he's got a lot of tattoos now, since when he was playing I didn't realize that they were showing the old video and he's all covered with tattoos now.

Speaker 4: 3:42

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:44

If that's good or bad, I don't know. Anyway, all right. So Sophia, we've been wanting to talk to her. She's a very interesting topic. Today it's all about AI. Mark and I have been wanting to have folks on to talk about AI, since it's a hot topic Chat, gpt, writes, all over the internet, linkedin everyone's talking about it. Sophia has interesting take on it. I don't know if people have seen right now it's early November. Sophia and I were talking about this at the preemie. Elon Musk has recently had an interview with I thought was interesting with the Prime Minister of England, I think about saying that artificial intelligence is going to get rid of all the jobs in the world and there'll be no need for jobs anymore. I thought some conversation on LinkedIn was interesting about, well, what would we do without jobs? Right, and Sophia has a little bit of a different take on that. So let's start off, sophia, what is your? What do you think about the state of, maybe AI at the moment?

Speaker 4: 4:52

That's quite a wide question. So you know I will. I'll ask you are you using Chat, gpt in your work or in your life?

Speaker 2: 5:00

No Interesting yes for me yeah.

Speaker 4: 5:04

I think this is actually a really good mix, because I'm using Chat GPT, but I also know that I could be using it a lot more, and so I'm curious to the person who said no, what's stopping you?

Speaker 2: 5:20

Well, I use. So I use AI for this podcast. So maybe back up, I guess I don't use chat. Your question was Chat GPT. I don't use Chat GPT. I use AI for this podcast. It helps me to generate titles, the description, blog post, which speeds it up for me a lot. I just have to go in and edit things like that. What's stopping? I looked in the Chat GPT like a little bit Like I heard there was a free account out there and I looked into it and I tried. What's stopping me? Maybe, to be honest, I think tooth and at time and I just I don't know that I can't say that I have a strong interest in it. To be honest with you.

Speaker 4: 6:03

Interesting. Now, the person who said yes, I am using it. Is that Greg?

Speaker 2: 6:09

That's Mark.

Speaker 4: 6:09

Oh sorry.

Speaker 2: 6:10

Yes.

Speaker 3: 6:11

I'm the only one left.

Speaker 4: 6:16

So tell me, how are you using it.

Speaker 3: 6:20

So the way I use it is, I really use it as a conversational tool, which may be different from how other people use it. So I just start a conversation. Let's just say I want to create an article to post on LinkedIn and I'm having some writers block, and so I'll just ask chat, gpt, you know, I'll use up some prompt and I'll just start a conversation Saying I want to create an article for LinkedIn that is highly engaging and is around this certain topic, and I'll get some results right, and I don't really, you know, it's not exactly what I want. So then I'll say okay, I Won't say okay, but I'll say now expand upon this portion of the of the topic, and Then it returns some more results. And then there's a certain section that I really don't like of that and I'll say okay, this, the second paragraph is too wordy, summarize that in one to two sentences for me, and then I'd use that till I get something that works.

Speaker 3: 7:25

And, quite honestly, sophia and Greg, a very rarely, if ever, just copy paste I, I take the results and then, okay, now I can put my personal touch On it, but it helps me get a starting point Much sooner than, like I say, hitting that, that writers block of looking at a blank sheet of paper and Just trying to come up craft a first draft myself.

Speaker 4: 7:51

Yes, I've heard people describe chat GPT in generative AI for writers blocks, sort of like Like having an intern. You know they, maybe they want to really go to college and as their first Summer role out of college, so they're smart and they can do research, but they really don't know the subject matter, they don't really know the world of work. And you know you as a professional, you could, you could certainly use your intern to help you. That you should. But you shouldn't pass off the interns work as your own Right because they're an intern and I I kind of have the same attitude.

Speaker 4: 8:27

To chat DPT, yes, it's useful, it's good to kind of have this Discussion with, but you know, if we're passing its work off as our own, then we're probably not very good at our jobs. But what I wanted to say here is that in this case, chad GPT and these other forms of generative AI, they are what's called a point solution, and a point solution is something that improves an existing procedure and it can be adopted independently. So, for example, your entire life as a content creator, as a podcaster or as a writer it hasn't been changed. You know, you're still sitting there at the same laptop, you are still Getting guests, you're still having conversations, but then a part of that process is being made easier. And also you know it has been made easier but like not mind-blowingly easier, because when you are using Chad GPT you know that sometimes you spend so much time kind of Adjusting and writing and giving prompts that sometimes you're like what it have been easy if I just did it myself.

Speaker 2: 9:31

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 9:33

And how many times have we had that same thought process with a new employee, when you were like, oh god, I have to train them. Like I recruited them, I have to train them. But sometimes you know that it would just be easier if you just do it yourself. But then you know, okay, that's not the way we grow. No, I need to invest in my employees. It's exactly the same here. But anyway, this point solution is, I think, where we are in terms of AI today, and I want to give credit where credit is. You is do. This is not my idea, unfortunately. It comes from this wonderful book which I really recommend everybody, called power and prediction the disruptive economics sorry, excuse me this, the disruptive economics of artificial intelligence. And I love this book so much I had two of its three authors on my podcast, so I.

Speaker 4: 10:25

I find that it's. It's a book written by economists about AI, and I like it because we have the technologists talking about AI and Then we often have business people who don't really understand what it is. But they need to have a view because, you know, this is what you're supposed to do. The boardroom has questions. Right, I was asking questions. They don't really understand the question that they're asking, but I like. What are we doing with? Ai.

Speaker 4: 10:52

This is why I find that business leaders they do need to have an understanding, a basic understanding of what it is and it's limitations and it's technically is. You mentioned, it's an education company. In just before we hit record, you asked well, what is, what sort of education is it? And it is education for business leaders To know enough about technology so they can do their jobs properly. And this really is my mission, because I think there are technologists who really understand technology and they want us business people, they really want us to know so much about technology that it's overwhelming.

Speaker 4: 11:32

It is and you know, some of us, some of us were just never changing to right. Yeah, and so in your podcast, when you are speaking to technologists, what do you find that they're most frustrated about when it comes to the business folk?

Speaker 3: 11:51

Resistance to change.

Speaker 2: 11:53

From business.

Speaker 4: 11:55

They don't want to learn new stuff or they don't want to implement.

Speaker 3: 11:59

Changing ways of working.

Speaker 4: 12:01

Yeah, so how do you think they reacted to the pandemic? And working from home and all that?

Speaker 2: 12:09

Oh gosh, yeah, that good. Well, yeah, no, because it's. I was talking with somebody the other day at work and this was coming up and they were like us and IT. It was easy. For us that was no big deal because we know we can just take our laptop and work.

Speaker 2: 12:27

For many, we already knew that they were like freaking out because, oh my gosh I mean I guess rightfully so, because there were a lot of things that maybe we in technology weren't aware of, that they weren't prepared for, like oh my gosh, if all these people are suddenly going to be working from home and contractors, and how are we going to do blah, blah, blah, blah, stuff. That was probably a fair point to think about, but I don't think that the business people I know they fully don't understand what our day-to-day job is like and what. Why can't you have this thing out? What do you mean? You can't have it out next week? You know this as an as I'm a scroll master for teams and I hear well, and you know I have always coached devs never to tell a business person that, oh, it's just one line of code will take me five minutes, that's. You know that's a death.

Speaker 2: 13:15

Yeah, never say that Never say that, oh my gosh, yeah, so anyway. But when the business person spits that back in your face, well, bob said it would just take it's one line of code, it would take him five minutes to do. Yeah, that's Bob's part of it. But they don't understand everything else involved in getting something out the door to them that will work, that's been tested right, and all the processes. They don't truly sometimes appreciate what we have to go through.

Speaker 4: 13:42

Well, absolutely, and so I had to learn this the hard way when I started a tech company straight out of business school, and so I went to Chicago booth that's the business school at the University of Chicago, and I previously worked in private equity in London and so, yes, I really understood business, didn't know much about technology, but you know, when you have that kind of background, raising money isn't too difficult, frankly, and so I did raise some money. I remember my first developer hires me and he's the first back and developer ever hired.

Speaker 4: 14:14

His name was Nikolai and I remember we went to get cake together and I was so nervous because I'm thinking well, I just hope he likes this cake, because I have no idea what he's talking about. And so. I'm just going to feed him cake, that's all I've got. You know when you're a CEO and you're trying to defend yourself with cake? You've got a great position to be in right.

Speaker 2: 14:40

Exactly.

Speaker 4: 14:41

And I remember he was talking to me about building the back end on Ruby on Rails and I was like why is this happening to me?

Speaker 2: 14:50

What are you saying?

Speaker 4: 14:51

Yeah, and I think that on the business side, there is a lot of confusion about how much do I need to know, whether it's about AI or whether it's about you know what Scrum is like. How much do I, as a business leader, need to know and at what level can I stop? Because you know, as a business person, you can't micromanage a developer, right? I think that's impossible. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 15:19

So you kind of need to collaborate somehow, but I find that both sides don't really understand what the other one is doing. My aim is, to you know, to try to bridge that gap as much as possible, and I actually think this hype around AI is helping, because it's basically getting so much press attention and boards and investors are asking the leadership of very traditional companies like, how are you using this technology and what's your plan? And you basically can't really you can't wing it that much.

Speaker 2: 15:57

No.

Speaker 4: 15:58

Although people are trying.

Speaker 2: 16:00

Yeah. So I have an interesting little take that. So I work in banking in the US here a big bank and our CIO he had his all hands this week and he said that he's very transparent, which I love it. Our bank is very, very agile. I'm happy with our progress.

Speaker 2: 16:24

And he was talking with in Washington DC this week with all his CIO friends from all the big banks around the country that you can think of, right, and he had a surprising he learned. Something that was surprising to me I think to all of us is that he said and they were talking about, they started talking about AI and we, we are starting to use it. We're like, look into it. His opinion was I'm talking to folks. He said they're saying, oh yeah, we're not even using it at all. And he's like he compared us to them. He's like we are like, even though we're barely using it, we're so much further ahead of them. They're not even. They have no plan for it. They don't know what to do with it. In banking in the US Is is what? Are you hearing similar things?

Speaker 4: 17:12

Well, you know, I find that they finance system. It's really, it's really odd, right, Because in some parts of it there is huge innovation. I mean, I'm not even talking about the crypto people, because that's a whole other discussion, but I mean, for example, there are these new challenger banks like Revolute, which started in London and is now in the US, and you know, I'm a customer of Revolute, I absolutely love them. There's Monza and various other the of these kind of digital banks in Europe, in the US and in Asia, and there is a reason why customers are flocking to them, right, Like I was banking in my business and as a person with traditional banks but the service was so terrible, like the apps were terrible, the customer service was awful. You know, you basically get treated terribly and then this company comes along and basically just says we will not treat you like dirt and you'll be able to look inside your account quite easily.

Speaker 2: 18:12

Very very low bar right. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4: 18:14

Really low. That's the key to happiness, you know. Keep your standards low and you'll be happy forever.

Speaker 3: 18:23

There you go.

Speaker 4: 18:25

So on one side you have these players that, yes, I'm sure like Nikolai Seransky, who is also another Russian immigrant in London, he will tell you about all the amazing deep tech that they now have on Revolute, which you know, I'm sure they do but at the beginning, the UX of their app was just good and they just had good customer service, I don't know, probably somewhere in the Philippines, so if something went wrong, it was an actual human via a chat window that you could speak to relatively quickly.

Speaker 4: 18:57

So this isn't like huge tech innovation. So the reason why I'm bringing this up is that I think that, like what you were saying about, okay, some companies are using it just barely and some are just like, yeah, it's not a thing that we're still using, I don't know feathers dipped in, ink Right, exactly, and this is to me this is what the finance industry looks like, because if it wasn't like that, you wouldn't have these challenger banks basically becoming so successful so quickly, because there's clearly a problem. But what I find fascinating is that these legacy institutions are still managing to survive. Like this is what I don't understand how can you be essentially so backward and yet still making so much?

Speaker 4: 19:46

money in a market economy where there is competition. This is why I'm quite excited about FinTech innovation, because I think there is so much opportunity and often I think you don't even have to be excellent, you just have to be not terrible.

Speaker 2: 20:05

Exactly, and I think to your point. I mean some of the banks over in the US, the ones that are giant ones I think they're ever going to. They're too big to fail, right, they're giant, but I know, for us we are. I think we actually either we partnered with a couple of FinTechs or we bought them outright because we use I know we're really close with a couple of them over here and, of course, what our CIO says we're different than everyone says that, right, oh, we're different, right, but I don't know, based on what he said there, I thought that was eye-opening that the banks would admit other banks would admit to another CIO, a competitor, we're not even using AI.

Speaker 2: 20:56

And here's our CIO saying, yeah, we're looking into it. We're actually more than looking into it, we're trying to adopt our policy, figure out what our stance is on it. I've had emails come out saying that we're not allowed to use it internally. And here's our policy. And still, we're trying to address it. But, yeah, I mean, my point is, I guess, if for some of the other ones, if you don't keep up with the times, you're going to fail, right, you're going to be left in the dust and all these, the wake of all these dot-com companies and all these other companies that didn't stay up with the times, that fail.

Speaker 4: 21:33

I think it's going to be more of a kind of a slow decline, because this is what we're seeing right and in terms of AI and I know, greg, we discussed this on our pre-recording call is that we're in these middle times. And I find this time in the world of digital innovation, technology and AI really, really interesting, because, on one hand, you have these technologies that exist, so they exist, and some companies are using them, and then you have lots of other companies and lots of other people who are not using them at all, and this is what the authors of that book that I told you about Power and Prediction. This is what they're calling the middle times, and actually you can see this anytime a new technology is created, there is a time between the innovation actually existing, so the technology existing and it changing the world. And this is where there is great opportunity, basically for capitalist value creation, because when everybody's using it like, look at electricity, the time to be in electricity barren was when not lots of people had electricity you want to be in an environment where electricity already exists Enough people are using it.

Speaker 4: 22:53

That lots of other people wanted and they see the benefit and they're like, oh look, our factory keeps on going on fire because we're using I don't know candlelight, whereas this other guy's factory seems to be working 24 seven because they've got electricity. Okay, we want electricity too. So, as an entrepreneur or as a business, that's when you want to be in the business of electricity. Being in that business now it's not really high growth industry, right.

Speaker 4: 23:17

No we've all got it, so it's not that exciting. But, it's predictable.

Speaker 3: 23:23

Go on, sorry, yes. So yeah, Sophia, I just want to throw in, maybe, maybe play the devil's advocate role. Have you seen cases where AI is a solution looking for a problem, meaning we're just applying AI just because it's the hot thing to do and it's in vogue and everybody's doing it, but it might not necessarily be the best fit in this certain situation?

Speaker 4: 23:58

So yes, I have. So first, the first example is basically just founders pitching AI because, like, even though it's not actually in their business, really they're like okay, if we stick AI in there.

Speaker 4: 24:16

We stick a paragraph on AI in there, then things will be good and the thing is I would actually say, continue doing this because it works. This is the time that we're living in. You know, she maybe do build in some AI, but like it doesn't even have to be that complicated, right. But where I've seen it most is my first company was in the retail tech space and, for full disclosure, we had to close that company during the pandemic because basically our customers were retailers and we all know what happened to them. But that's when I saw a lot of, basically, developers who had no understanding of the retail market and especially kind of fashion retail or women's retail. They didn't really understand that market and that market is. It's a very competitive market, so it's definitely kind of very commercial, very capitalist, but also it's very emotional. Marketing really matters there and I often saw developers going into this market with intentions that were too rational and so, for example, you know uses of a I to try to suggest clothes for women.

Speaker 4: 25:34

And they develop by a bunch of engineers who probably don't really know many women in the first Solutions actually just annoy the women far more than you really think.

Speaker 4: 25:48

I'm going to wear this and I'm not, you know, good example of this is actually amazon. So amazon well, we all know alexa, she'll start speaking for so many time she is here. So you know the device, amazon device. So, at a few years ago, they had this thing called Alexa echo look and the aim was that it was going to be this a stylist. So essentially this Stylus to word, look at you, so you. It would take an image of you and it would then make suggestions about what, how you could start now it's better, what you could wear, and then you'd say, oh, yeah, sure, this is great. And then you know, magically, amazon fashion would deliver it to you. Right?

Speaker 4: 26:36

And I actually know one of the people who is leading this project and they and there is a reason why you haven't heard of it, maybe because it doesn't exist anymore. Yes, it is one of these things that they tried and you know they had resources. They had a lot more resources than a text startup. They tried it, they gave it to go, but what's kind of logically, they thought it would work like we can, we have all this customer data, we can enter this market, we've got the best engineers. But actually, in this very emotional, very individual world of what women choose to wear. I just didn't work to where they wanted it to work, but, and so basically what they did is they took the algorithm and they combined it with their recommendation engine because there was some good work done. What, having a completely AI stylist, amazon found it just didn't work and work.

Speaker 3: 27:38

Amazon is really good at experimentation and having that agile mindset of not being afraid to try things and not being afraid to fail, because there's quite a few things that amazon puts out that are just flops, but they certainly are not floppy as a company.

Speaker 4: 27:55

Oh, exactly, and I think, I think that when you have a company that is, you know, attack first company like amazon, there is the temptation to create algorithms and use AI and use technology in fields that are Less logical yeah and so, for example, you know the world's richest man according to for this, not a tech guy, it's bernard arnaud who owns lgmh, and they literally make leather goods and champagne.

Speaker 4: 28:28

Yeah, right, yes, right and luxury industry is very famously like. It's very analog. A lot of these companies didn't even have websites. They refused to sell online until recently Because they were like we've got master craftsman who worked in this handbag. You need to go and feel it right, right. And this is why I think in these places you have to be really careful about how you use technology, because technology is very logical, binary. Right code is binary yes but not in all of life decisions. Do we actually want that?

Speaker 2: 29:09

That makes sense yeah, well, I mean, that's exactly what mark was saying, yeah, and you and I were talking Sophia and our premeet about. Contrary to what you, on musk, you were saying, ai is not going to take over the world. Just your point, right? Your point is you just made your point exactly it's not going to be Everywhere. Just because it's out there in hot right now doesn't mean that it fits every single, every single place. I don't think, yeah, I mean they'll be right. I mean to be fair yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:40

Well, yeah, yeah, and that's what. So fia was saying she's like it's going to take time, it's not going to like we're not all going to lose our jobs tomorrow, right, we're not all going to lose our, maybe not even in, maybe not even in our careers, who knows but it will take away some jobs. But I don't, I mean it is in the in the end, right, it is developed by human being, still a human being behind their developing. So it's not like a computer. You know these movies that say all the machines take over, right, I don't, I don't see that happening. I mean, because it is still human being behind it.

Speaker 4: 30:17

And it takes time. You know I was. I just saw that in 1994 it was predicted that quantum computing was going to break all encryption, I think like within the next four years. And you know we're still like okay, great right. And so these conversations about a I taking the world, taking over the world, they've been happening for a really long time.

Speaker 4: 30:42

Yeah and so I'm not saying that I is not going to change the world the way electricity change the world. I think what we're discussing was that if somebody from the middle ages Could somehow teleport into the world today, they would think it was this kind of magical. I don't know whether they think was heaven or hell, but they would definitely think it was Weird and other worldly.

Speaker 4: 31:03

Correct but to us, seeing the changes every day, we're not going to have this Completely dramatic shift of okay, one day we're sitting there, you know, speaking to terrible chat bot that doesn't understand anything, and then tomorrow we're all unemployed because I think what it's it's like it's I don't know why we always make those leaves.

Speaker 2: 31:27

and I say always because in history, you know, in my lifetime, the history that I know is that, like we were saying, you know, I remember when, of course, we all remember when the internet came out, and I remember when retail started selling online, started having websites, and I remember hearing all that's the end of brick and mortar. I remember that vividly, hearing that in the news brick and mortar is done, all the stores are going to close. Right, people be at a jobs. Well, yeah, they've closed, some stores closed. But At the same time, I also see in my area stores like skulls, walmart, going up constantly, target their building brick and mortar stores, even though they have an online presence. So we were saying before working together, right, it'll, it'll work together. Help us improve we. It doesn't need to be One of all and nothing of the other. It's a combination of working together to make us better.

Speaker 4: 32:23

And you know. So I'm sure a good example of where I was using this very kind of emotional world of clothes and fashion is what is happening at stitch fix, because and this is what I'm, this is kind of what I'm didn't get right is that I'm was on try to do everything with the I was a stitch fix they. You know, it's a company where a woman is going to essentially, you know, put in her measurements and preferences and so on, and is going to make suggestions out of the stock of what outfits should be sent to her, what outfit should buy, but then a human stylist is going to review. Say, the human stylist gets sent Twenty suggestions, but the a I, the human stylist, is then going to look at those twenty suggestions, mix and match slightly, change them and then suggest, say, three or four, to the customer.

Speaker 4: 33:20

Okay and so this is what I'm finding in how companies are using AI today is that it's kind of 80% AI but it's human finished. Right so.

Speaker 4: 33:35

AI, and this is exactly what you were saying about how you're using chat GBT. It gets you somewhere faster, but then the final output is yours, the final editor is yours, right, the intellectual property is yours. And also, as you were saying, who actually puts in the input? Is it the prompt? And to chat GBT, is it the kind of data you're putting into the algorithm? There is a person making these decisions to feed into this machine, and so, yes, I think eventually we'll get to the point where, okay, now it's maybe 80% AI, 20% human, and this is like in the most forward companies, right?

Speaker 2: 34:20

Right so.

Speaker 4: 34:22

Stitchfix is a really modern company, so they're like the frontier cutting edge. So even the cutting edge companies are 80% AI, 20% human and maybe it'll move to 85%, 90%. But that's going to be incremental change at the most frontier companies. So what's going on at every other firm?

Speaker 3: 34:51

So I'll give you a quick anti-pattern. Maybe an antithesis might be a better way to so. I recently wrote a proposal for my company to invest in some software that I believe would help us give us some metrics that we would be able to make better decisions, but it wasn't necessarily cheap. So I wrote a proposal highlighting the software that we have now, what its limitations were and what the advantages were to this new package, and ever so. So at the end I put a small hashtag and I put not created by chat GPT. And that was my way of saying I didn't just run this through an AI engine and give you something. This was my effort that I put through and you're getting an actual human's view on this that I'm giving to you. So I'm not sure why I'm really sharing that, but it just is, I guess, an opposite way of looking at AI and what impressions it can have.

Speaker 4: 36:03

Well, you know, I also had another interesting way of looking at it is that humans and the human creativity and the human touch is going to become a luxury. Let's take two examples. So let's take, like I don't know, we're 20 years on, so yes, it's the future, but it's not like crazy just in the future, 20 years on, and you have two options. You could so and you want to go to a therapist. So like, maybe I don't know, you're going through some stuff and you're going to a therapist and you've got two options. One is you could have an AI therapist, and you know that this AI has been trained in lots and lots and lots of therapy sessions. So actually, you know it's got good reviews, you've heard about it, but it's a robot. Or you could go to a human therapist and you know this is not like a therapist starting their career, but like an esoteric type therapist, like I don't know about you, but I would want the human.

Speaker 2: 37:04

Yeah, I was. Yeah, I kind of thought we were going with this. Yeah, I do too, because it's the human has the emotions that I do. I mean the AI is only going to spit back what it knows to spit back right.

Speaker 4: 37:21

And so, even if you know that the AI has been trained and all of this stuff, when you are, when you need a therapist, you want to be seen as a human, you want to be felt by another human right, and so something that I've been thinking about a lot is that AI is going to make lots and lots of services available, but the human is the human performing that service is going to be the real luxury. So, basically, the rich people are going to go to the therapist.

Speaker 4: 37:54

And then everybody else is going to speak to the generative AI therapist.

Speaker 3: 37:59

That's a great point, I mean. I'm just thinking, you know, I'm just thinking. You know a very simplistic case of that about how we're evolving. This is how many automated car washes we have today, at least in the US, I mean in my community they're popping up all over the place. But if you want to get a hand wash, detailed car wash, so that you're really getting that personal attention to making your car really shine, that's going to cost you. That's a luxury, right, Exactly? I can pay 12 bucks to run it through a machine.

Speaker 4: 38:35

And how do you think Ferraris are made? You know Ferraris are made by individual humans with care, where an engineer will know every single millimeter of that car. And then you contrast that with I don't know Volvo. How is that made?

Speaker 2: 38:53

Factory on assembly line and all that right.

Speaker 4: 38:55

Exactly so we already have that. We already have this differentiation between mass production technology is cheap and the human touch that's luxury, and AI is just going to give us a whole new frontier for that.

Speaker 2: 39:12

That's a great take. Yeah, I've. Yeah, that's the interest. Yeah, you're probably exactly right. That's probably what's going to happen.

Speaker 3: 39:20

So our skills really are what's going to be, what defines us in our level to provide a human interaction and human touch.

Speaker 4: 39:29

Yeah, essentially, our humanity is going to be at a premium. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:36

Do you want to pay to have interaction with a human or do you want to? Yeah, well, she's. I mean, she has a great point. I mean your first level, like if you go to, you know, if you go into a whatever company, your first level service will be the AI level service, to her point, which will be like 10 bucks to do your car wash or whatever. Oh, do you want our premium? Our premium is now, you know, you get four guys that will do your tires, they'll shine it, they'll wax it, all that good stuff. Right, it's going to take a little bit longer, but then you can pay for that. Yeah, yeah, I never thought of that.

Speaker 4: 40:10

So, and again it feeds to our emotions, because we then feel special, we feel like somebody's taking care of us, and so it's kind of interesting that actually, in this age of AI, emotions and humanity are actually brought to the premium, which? I think, like Elon is not talking about that.

Speaker 2: 40:31

No, he's not, no, you know, I don't.

Speaker 4: 40:34

I can't imagine Elon talking a lot about emotions. Can you know, humanity?

Speaker 2: 40:40

yeah, no, all I saw was what I told you. It was as a brief on. Somewhere on the internet I saw a brief little clip. It said he was in interviewing with the Prime Minister of I saw that great Britain, which I was like, oh my gosh. So and the the little. You know, the thing that sucked me in was all Elon says that AI is gonna get rid of all of the jobs on earth. That was his sweeping statement. I was like what in the world? So?

Speaker 3: 41:09

he's gonna do brain implants too right, doesn't he want to inject technology into? Probably Probably.

Speaker 2: 41:17

I think we're lining up.

Speaker 3: 41:19

Yeah, what that's worth not me.

Speaker 2: 41:21

I'm not lining up, so Unfortunately, we're almost out of time here, so let's leave on. Let's leave on a good note here, sophia. What, at the end of the day, here Our listeners here are in agile, their scrum masters, they're on agile teams. Their developers, product owners. What do we want to leave them with as far as AI goes? What would be your parting words for us?

Speaker 4: 41:48

Well, I would say, be enthusiastic about it, use it, experiment it with and, to be honest, I'm pretty sure that you guys are already Experimenting with it in all sorts of different ways but I would say they manage your expectations, because I think, the way we are with AI generative areas, like right at the beginning of a relationship, you know you meet this person and you fall in love with them, you think that they're faultless and they're absolutely perfect, but then you know, like six months in you, like you hear them fart or something, and then the whole mistake is gone.

Speaker 2: 42:20

It is.

Speaker 4: 42:24

Don't let and like that's not the reason to then think, okay, that me and this person have no future, like no, you just Discover that they are, that they have limitations and that they're really good at something but they're not good at other stuff, and like you can still make it work. I would, I would advise the same kind of attitude to AI. Yes, it's really changing things and it's really really amazing, but is is everything going to become completely different overnight? It's not. And also, what I would suggest is you know, patiently, kindly try to educate the business people About their expectations, because those business people generally have Boards and investors who are not particularly educated about AI, but they know that it's a thing and that it's changing things and that they need to use it to cut costs.

Speaker 4: 43:12

I think this is where, for the tech people, it's really kind of on you to try to explain to them that, yes, we can use it in these ways, but it's also kind of an imperfect system. It's like a 16 year old intern in many cases. So if you're not going to send out a 16 year old interns work of your own, don't expect AI to completely cut costs and completely change the company in five minutes. And also, if the business people annoy you, would their questions about technology, tell them to listen to the tech fun on techies podcast. There you go, and then they'll become much more educated and less annoying and more pleasant, yes, nice.

Speaker 2: 43:49

Yes, yeah. So, speaking of that, yes, thank you so much for joining us. And yes, where where can folks they have a podcast tech for non techies? Where can folks get a hold of you? So LinkedIn is my preferred channel.

Speaker 4: 44:03

Also, there's tech fun on techies on tiktok and on instagram so you can follow tech fun on techies there. Send me a message there. But generally I'm probably the most responsive on LinkedIn, so you could just find me on Sofia, my favor on LinkedIn, and I think I'm not sure if there are others, but I've written for the Harvard Business Review, sorry to Chicago booth. So when you see all the fancy names, that that's me there you go.

Speaker 2: 44:29

Yeah, I'll put that in the notes here the, the, your places to reach you and the things you've done. She's done a lot of wonderful things, so definitely Reach out to her. We've learned a lot here. Again, we thank you so much. Thank you, you want to reach us?

Speaker 4: 44:44

Hopefully you do.

Speaker 2: 44:44

You can email me, greg miller at the agile within Dot com, to be on the show. We've been getting a lot of, for some reason we begin a lot of uptake and people wanting to be on the show, which is great. I appreciate everyone reaching out. Mark and I've got a lot of good guests here to go through. If we haven't gotten to you yet, we will. We're going through our backlog. We have a LinkedIn page individually, mark and I do. We also have the agile within has a LinkedIn page. We're getting followers there. We have a twitter page x now Elon changed it to x and we have an instagram too, so you can reach out to us there. Thanks for listening everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this show as much as we have learning more about AI with Sofia. For now, this has been Mark and Greg. We'll see you later you.