Rethinking AI’s Role in Behavioral Health and Well-being with Donna Mitchell and Jason Padgett

Welcome to another episode of the Pivoting To Web3 Podcast, where innovation meets real-world impact. I’m your host, Donna Mitchell—founder, CEO, and dedicated guide to businesses navigating the ever-shifting digital landscape.
Today, we’re exploring the powerful intersection of artificial intelligence, healthcare, and the future of human-focused technology. Our special guest is Jason Padgett, Chief Strategy Officer at Phoenix Paramedic Solutions. Jason recently returned from Human+Tech Week in San Francisco, an AI conference that showcased the latest trends transforming healthcare.

In this conversation, Jason shared his journey as an early AI adopter in healthcare, gave insights from the frontlines of AI innovation, and unpacked the newest developments in behavioral health tech, personalized medicine, dream analysis apps, and even the bold concept of giving plants and animals a digital wallet.
If you’re curious about where AI is really headed and how it can strengthen human connection rather than replace it. 

3 Key Takeaways:
1. AI + Healthcare = Transformation, But Not Without Humans: The best innovations keep humans in the loop—like behavioral health chatbots that support, but don’t replace, therapists.
2. Personalization Is the Next Frontier: From AI-driven “one pill for all your needs” to agentic health assistants, the emphasis is on tailoring solutions, not just in medicine but across industries.
3. Ethics, Access, and Governance Can’t Be Ignored: While AI holds promise for better care and efficiency, issues around privacy, data access, and societal readiness demand proactive leadership and open conversation.

Chapters:
00:00 AI's Role in Healthcare Transformation
05:06 "Exploring Innovative Health Tech Trends"
07:32 Future of Personalized Medicine
13:31 "Digital Wallets & Dream Tech"
15:31 Healthcare Access and AI Challenges
18:39 Humans in Healthcare Technology Loop
23:02 "Integrating AI into Career Skills"
26:23 Understanding Chatbots and Custom GPTs
30:27 AI Misunderstandings: Security Concerns
34:34 Connecting on AI and Culture
35:08 Connect on LinkedIn for Networking

About Jason Padgett: 
Jason Padgett is a Senior Partner and Human-AI Collaboration Coach at Phoenix Solutions Group, where he guides organizations through digital transformation with a focus on human-centered innovation. Drawing from extensive experience in strategic planning and organizational change, he specializes in developing practical AI implementation strategies that enhance human capabilities rather than replace them. Through his work in AI literacy, workforce development, and ethical technology adoption, Jason helps organizations build confident, future-ready teams while ensuring technology serves human needs and values.

Connect with Jason Padgett:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-grant-padgett/

Chapters

• 0:00 AI's Role in Healthcare Transformation
• 5:06 "Exploring Innovative Health Tech Trends"
• 7:32 Future of Personalized Medicine
• 13:31 "Digital Wallets & Dream Tech"
• 15:31 Healthcare Access and AI Challenges
• 18:39 Humans in Healthcare Technology Loop
• 23:02 "Integrating AI into Career Skills"
• 26:23 Understanding Chatbots and Custom GPTs
• 30:27 AI Misunderstandings: Security Concerns
• 34:34 Connecting on AI and Culture
• 35:08 Connect on LinkedIn for Networking

Transcript

Donna Mitchell [00:00:00]:
Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome, welcome, welcome to pivoting the Web3 podcast. And today we have Jason Padgett. And Jason and I have been in the live LinkedIn arena. We've now done some podcast conversations, and he went to a AI conference. And I was just really wanting to know what happened, how it happened and what's important and what we need to pay attention to. So you're not going to listen to me too much today. I'm going to turn it over to Jason right away.

Donna Mitchell [00:00:28]:
Some of you may know him previously. He, he's a partner at Phoenix Solutions Group. I think I said that correctly. And you also have a business that you work with as a partner that's on the health care side of the business. But let me not be guessing. Why don't you tell us exactly what you're doing now, who you're doing it with and why it matters.

Jason Padgett [00:00:50]:
Well, thank you, Donna. And I think, you know I have a podcast as well. So next. This is my second time on your podcast. You've got to come on. You're. You've got to come on my podcast next.

Donna Mitchell [00:00:59]:
Okay, we'll have to set that up. Yeah, we'll do that.

Jason Padgett [00:01:02]:
It's really been a pleasure to work with you. And I think probably the most important thing that, that my story tells is kind of the layperson's journey in AI as AI has progressed. You know, I discovered large language models as a development director at the Salvation army in Lafayette, Indiana. When Chad GPT launched in 2023, was it? Yeah, 2022. And, and I fell in love with them. I just, I felt like it was. It amplified everything that I did well and it offset a lot of things that I don't do well. I enjoy the interface.

Jason Padgett [00:01:37]:
I've always been a spoken language kind of person, not really a math person. It bridges the gaps between language and math for me. And so I returned about two years ago to a community paramedicine company that I work for, Phoenix Paramedic Solutions, as their Chief Strategy Officer. With all these AI ideas, you know, spinning around in my head and excitement. And at that time, Enterprise was the only really anyone looking at it. And even healthcare. A couple years ago, Healthcare Enterprise wasn't talking about it a whole lot. Right.

Jason Padgett [00:02:11]:
Fintech was, but I don't really think healthcare was. So I think I know how people feel when they're, when they're in an early adopter. You're excited on the inside, but it's hard to find people to talk to on the outside.

Donna Mitchell [00:02:25]:
Yeah.

Jason Padgett [00:02:28]:
So, you know, in a small business healthcare company like I work for, which we do behavioral health, community paramedicine, non emergency transport, occupational health, and people were just rolling their eyes and didn't like, you know, they didn't think that this was going to go anywhere. Now over the last couple years, like the CEO who is my partner in Phoenix Solutions Group, like he's totally dove headfirst into AI. He has shifted me to probably one of the only chief AI officers in the, in the world that doesn't have a software engineering degree. Right. But, but my focus with this company really is to figure out how we can leverage artificial intelligence in community paramedicine. And that was what, you know, know. I, I cannot say enough about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great place to connect with people.

Jason Padgett [00:03:18]:
It's where you and I met. I met another gentleman who has a podcast by the name of Faza Hussein and he and I kind of headed off. So not too long ago he sends me a DM and says, hey, I have an extra ticket to this Human Tech Week in San Francisco. Do you want to join me? And it was. Yeah. Wow. That's exactly what I said.

Donna Mitchell [00:03:40]:
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Wow.

Jason Padgett [00:03:43]:
So we found some cheap accommodation. I found a cheap flight and I got to spend four days waymo and I got to see what, what people out in the hub of AI are talking about when it comes to healthcare technology.

Donna Mitchell [00:03:57]:
So what was the name of the conference that you went to?

Jason Padgett [00:04:00]:
Human plus Tech Week.

Donna Mitchell [00:04:02]:
And that's exciting to hear about because a lot of people feel like the humanization and human is going to be gone and human and, and having the human face and the human connection is very important for the balance and going forward. So what were some of the main pieces or elements that you saw that were trending that surprised you at that conference?

Jason Padgett [00:04:24]:
Well, first off, I was, I wasn't overly surprised because it's California. Right. But the, the whole event was put on by Nicole Bradford, who is a woman of color in technology. So that, you know, that's, you're already starting from like, oh cool, this is put on not by like your, your tech bros Club. And so that kind of like we started off with a big dance to get everything going, get everyone excited. And then the first day was what I would call kind of a Reid Hoffman imagine what if, if everything breaks humanity's way, what healthcare could look like in the next decade or 20 years. And it was very philosophical and, and kind of thought provoking. Went out for Some great Indian food that night.

Jason Padgett [00:05:06]:
Came back the next day. There was a doctor who presented health tech information over 90 minutes that I was. My mind was blown at how many options are already out there that from ambient listening devices that can take notes, transcribe them and put them into an EHR for doctors and nurses to. We did have some, some really robust conversations about chatbots and behavioral health and mental health in like healthcare deserts. I met a guy who started a company there and there were two peers from Chicago. So peers are people with lived experience with mental health or substance use issues who then go out and try to help people with those same issues. Well, my company, our company employs multiple peers. So to run into peers in Chicago and hear how they're advocating for, for the voice of the consumer to be part of developing healthcare tech, that was probably the most phenomenal thing that I heard.

Jason Padgett [00:06:07]:
But I also enjoyed a conversation with the behavioral health people. I have concerns about using chatbots as mental health therapists, even if you don't have enough therapists because I think younger generations anthropomorphize technology too much as is. So why, why not in my argument is why not take all the things you could do with machine learning and artificial intelligence into a healthcare system that doesn't have enough therapists or has a, has a desert and optimize the performance and do some cost savings and pay some therapists to go talk to people rather than going with a low hanging fruit, which is, let's just spin up a chatbot and send it out to everyone to take care of their mental health issues. Right. Because it's scary to think that younger people might become too attached to technology.

Donna Mitchell [00:07:02]:
Wow, now that's a mouthful right there. Especially being attached to technology and the connections with the chat bots and all the other robotics that's taking place today. Did you see a lot happening in the robotics arena in regards to the progression into almost everything in life? Did they cover that with AI in the robotic space or it was more on the LLMs and agents and chatbots in that nature.

Jason Padgett [00:07:32]:
It was more on LLMs agents. There was a lot on data processing. You know, how much better we could do of a job of figuring out like genome mapping. And actually there was a guy who proposed, you know, if you take one of these people who's into like extending their life by 100 years or whatever that are that this little nature people that have like 50 different pills they take a day, you know, they take this for this and this for that. Well, this guy proposed that through human genoming, you could actually custom build a single pill that was perfect, that had all of that tailored to you for each individual across the planet within the next couple of years. So I could just take the one supplemental pill that has enough fish oil and vitamin B, what, whatever I particularly need. And that was like, ideas like that I just find really intriguing.

Donna Mitchell [00:08:29]:
So they're able to personalize your supplements, nutraceuticals or vitamins or whatever you want to call it, and personalize it. So if you got high blood pressure and diabetes or pre diabetic or if you have maybe some type of illness or diagnosis where you need antipsychotics, they can go ahead and help you with that or your cardiovascular system all at.

Jason Padgett [00:08:53]:
Once and stick it all in one pill so you're not throwing a mouthful full of pills down every day.

Donna Mitchell [00:08:58]:
Did they have use cases and evidence based trials with that? Do you know?

Jason Padgett [00:09:03]:
I don't, I didn't pay that much attention to that.

Donna Mitchell [00:09:07]:
Wow. So, so, so let me ask you this. I'm so curious. I swear. So I'm so glad you're here. So let me ask you this. If you had to say what were the top three or five areas at the conference and, and then give us maybe some insight on what's changed or what we need to know, what would you give us a heads up on?

Jason Padgett [00:09:27]:
Okay. I would say the behavioral health chat box was a big one. Big Behavioral health was a big one. And I did like the, the idea of it being like an adjunct to a therapist. So whereas a therapist might only be able to meet with a client once a week, they would have access to this chatbot and if there was something that needed to be red flagged. Right. That the therapist would then get dinged and the human would get back, brought back into the loop. I, I like that idea.

Jason Padgett [00:09:54]:
I think that that is, that is very plausible. The craziest idea. Are you ready for this one?

Donna Mitchell [00:10:00]:
Yeah.

Jason Padgett [00:10:02]:
The craziest idea. I heard there was a gentleman from Australia who's trying to use AI to decipher what plants and animals are saying and then give them a digital wallet and give them more say in how we run the world.

Donna Mitchell [00:10:19]:
Okay. All right, now, I know, I know, I know somebody's out there inhaling a little too much juice. But, you know, looking at the world right now, maybe, maybe they might know something we don't.

Jason Padgett [00:10:36]:
I looked at my buddy and said, I'm a pretty big guy. I guarantee if you ask the great white sharks out in the bay, they'll just Ask you to push me in the water.

Donna Mitchell [00:10:45]:
Oh, my goodness. We talking about plants and animals and how they communicate.

Jason Padgett [00:10:51]:
And give them a digital wallet.

Donna Mitchell [00:10:52]:
And then give them a digital wallet. Okay, tell me something else.

Jason Padgett [00:10:58]:
Another really interesting one I saw was one that you record your dreams when you wake up. Like if you remember a dream, you record your dreams and then it walks you through a series of questions and based on Carl Jung's work, tries to help you interpret your dreams.

Donna Mitchell [00:11:15]:
Yeah.

Jason Padgett [00:11:16]:
And if you have a bad. Like a reoccurring bad dream, it will. It will actually suggest a script for you to read over that rewrites that in a more positive light on a nightly basis. And supposedly that will then stop you from having these reoccurring bad dreams.

Donna Mitchell [00:11:38]:
Really?

Jason Padgett [00:11:39]:
Yes. That was a young lady from Israel that I really got to know. Sansa, I wish I could remember the name of the app. When you post this, I will. I will type.

Donna Mitchell [00:11:47]:
You know, I'm the reason I'm curious about the dreams because I dream in color, and I found out a lot of people don't dream in color. I have recurring dreams only on occasion, but more when I was younger. I guess as you get older, your body ain't got energy for the reoccurrence.

Jason Padgett [00:12:04]:
I love that. That sounds about right.

Donna Mitchell [00:12:09]:
I don't know, but I'm one of those folks that dream, so that's very interesting to. To know that they working with dreams. Tell me, tell me more.

Jason Padgett [00:12:20]:
Let's see. So that was. That was one of the most interesting ones. There was a lot. Oh, here's the app. I'm going to tell you what the app's called.

Donna Mitchell [00:12:29]:
Okay.

Jason Padgett [00:12:30]:
Is called.

Donna Mitchell [00:12:31]:
This is for the dreams, right?

Jason Padgett [00:12:33]:
Yep.

Donna Mitchell [00:12:35]:
So it helps you get rid of the reoccurring. What is it?

Jason Padgett [00:12:38]:
Wakefully W A K E F u l l y.IO.

Donna Mitchell [00:12:45]:
Does it help you interpret the dreams too?

Jason Padgett [00:12:50]:
Yes, that's what it does. It will ask you questions and then it will give you an interpretation of the dream of what may have caused different areas of the dream.

Donna Mitchell [00:13:01]:
Okay. So it's like the pathology of dreams and AI.

Jason Padgett [00:13:05]:
Yes. And. And apparently it's based on Carl Jung's work because when the young lady was talking about it in our roundtable, I was like, oh, like Freud. Because Freud wrote the analysis, studied Young.

Donna Mitchell [00:13:17]:
Yeah.

Jason Padgett [00:13:18]:
Corrected me and said, no, Carl Jung completed his work. It's more on Carl Young's.

Donna Mitchell [00:13:23]:
Yeah, this is really curious. This is really good. Okay, so that was behavioral health.

Jason Padgett [00:13:31]:
Yep.

Donna Mitchell [00:13:31]:
You got somebody in the plant world and animals talking about, you know, they're gonna get a digital wallet. So we're not gonna go down that rabbit hole. Okay, but maybe they got a little something that we don't know. And then the recording of dreams, the interpretation of dreams. And then from the. What would you say the next two would be from a business standpoint? We got a lot of entrepreneurs in our audience, even in health in our audience. What's happening in that arena?

Jason Padgett [00:13:57]:
I would say drug discovery and just personalized. There was a whole lot around personalized health. So this whole idea of having greater longevity by actually having personalized assistance and monitoring healthcare monitoring, whether it's monitoring your sleep, monitoring your diet, and then having almost an agentic assistant that would help you to continuously and progressively improve your health in a much more tailored way than just like you know, John Smith's exercise out of the box. That's for everybody. Well, it might affect me differently than it affects you. So this is really tailoring all those things to individuals.

Donna Mitchell [00:14:40]:
So would you say what you saw and experienced and innovation, is it moving towards preventive care, personalized care and one with monitoring or the right devices and AI might be able to improve their personal situation?

Jason Padgett [00:15:01]:
I'm smiling ear to ear because yes, yes and yes. But I don't think, I'm not sure that as a society we try that hard for preventive care. I think that the outcome is going to be a lot of preventive care because there is a lot of money to be made in personalized care and that personalized care, I think the residual of having tailored care for ourselves will probably be a lot of preventative medicine.

Donna Mitchell [00:15:31]:
I hope so. Yeah. Because the way everything is going right now in healthcare and a lot of the cuts that people are communicating and the populations that are going to be in need of support or care, but then my question becomes those same populations, how do they qualify or would they even be able to access some of these devices and personalizations that we're moving towards and monitoring services. So therefore, no matter what, it seems like they're in a no win situation. I mean this isn't the podcast to resolve that issue and solution. I like where we're going in regards to AI and what you're sharing with us that you were able to observe and take in and learn from at this conference. But at the end of the day, in real world applications for some, not all, it may still be a situation where they don't have the access. Is that possible?

Jason Padgett [00:16:44]:
Can I give a different spin of maybe the same idea?

Donna Mitchell [00:16:48]:
Yeah, sure.

Jason Padgett [00:16:50]:
So if you. Let's let's go outside of healthcare. Let's just look at video generation and VO3 and how amazing VO3, Google's VO3 video generation tool is. And now it can do eight second videos with sound. And someone used it to create a commercial for the NBA finals that cost him $2,000 and aired during the NBA Finals. That commercial would have cost tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right. Right now for all access to VO3, you really need to have a $200 a month Google Gemini account, pro account.

Jason Padgett [00:17:27]:
But you can, you can use it here and there piecemeal for very inexpensive other places as it progresses. It will be every technology that I've seen come out in AI you want the state of the art right this second, you're going to pay for it. But if you're willing to wait six months, it becomes damn near free down the long run. So I'm not sure that it's access that will be that difficult. However, what it recommends we do, the products that we buy, the medications that we use based on that tailored, that may still have an expense barrier to a lot of people.

Donna Mitchell [00:18:05]:
I like the way you put that. An expense barrier. I got to remember to use that going forward. So what really surprised you out of everything you saw and experienced? What do you want to share that really surprised you and what really concerned you beyond the plants and the animals getting the. A digital wallet. I can't believe they were there. So anyways, I shouldn't laugh. They might be able to monetize and be richer than me.

Jason Padgett [00:18:39]:
Okay, so he's probably in billions of dollars from people who, who are eccentric and feel the same way he does. Good for him. You know, I would say pleasant surprise was all the different spins on how much humans could be still a part of the loop of technology and how much this technology and humans can work together going forward in healthcare. Jiminy Health was that behavioral health chatbot that, that keeps the therapist in the loop. Yeah, you know, and I, and I love that, that gentleman that is the CEO for that organization, when I brought up my point, like he wasn't defensive, he was like that's a very good point. And that, and here's, here's, here's our solution is to continue is to keep a human in that loop as much as possible. Now do I think there'll be companies that try to cut corners and just make a quick buck and don't keep that human in the loop? Yes. But as long as we have options and people who are kind of leading by example, I think that, that the future will be very positive on that front.

Jason Padgett [00:19:39]:
I was, I was slightly surprised at how little doomsday type stuff I heard or, or even hyper concern privacy and, and was definitely a concern. So that I have been in a lot of conversations lately about healthcare companies looking at building on premise devices and I think we're, we're moving more towards that ability. But you know, when you get into 42 CFR and HIPAA, like data privacy is just. Privacy is such a big question in healthcare that we have to make sure that we overcome. So I guess I would say I was most surprised by the lack of cyber security conversations. Maybe they just, maybe there were a couple workshops I didn't attend that had that spin on them. It's not what I gravitate to, but it is something I feel is super important.

Donna Mitchell [00:20:33]:
I was curious for those that are listening, what's a 42 CFR?

Jason Padgett [00:20:37]:
So that is like HIPAA customer protection but for people with substance use issues. And it's far more prescriptive than HIPAA is.

Donna Mitchell [00:20:47]:
Okay, so thank you for that. You gave us a mouthful. So when you look at going forward and we're in the AI readiness group together, when you look at this whole picture, what are maybe the top three elements that you think businesses or entrepreneurs and brands need to be paying attention to to be ready for the future?

Jason Padgett [00:21:17]:
Can we step outside of healthcare? Because I, I will say healthcare.

Donna Mitchell [00:21:19]:
Oh for sure. Yeah, let's step outside of healthcare.

Jason Padgett [00:21:22]:
So healthcare. With the caveat that healthcare is so highly regulated that I'm not. My, my personal AI growth roadmap is not the same for my healthcare career as it is AI as a whole. But I, you know, we're in the second half of 2025 and I just last weekend like redesigned my custom GPT assistant agent and like completely rewrote my strategy on what I want to do for the next half of the year. I, I have, I now have a wearable that records transcribes my entire day, which I feel is necessary. If you, if, if you want a large language model to be your executive assistant, not your secretary. There's a secretary, you say, hey, go do this. And they go do it.

Jason Padgett [00:22:07]:
Hey, go do that. They go do it. If they don't know what to do, they come back and ask, right? An executive assistant has access to your email, to your bank account, everything else. They, they are empowered to make decisions for you because they know enough about you that they can act on your behalf. If you want a custom AI assistant that has that level of power. It will have to know everything about at least your business. I take this thing off when I'm at home with my family. I don't.

Jason Padgett [00:22:33]:
That's. That's not somewhere I want AI, but so I agentic workflows I like. I have. I personally have to get past just using it as a brainstorming or report generating, like give it a command and it gives me an output. I need to move into more of an agentic flow and start getting some of the things that a lot of people will say, the mundane tasks. I actually spend too much time on content generation and marketing it. And I'm not. That's not my job.

Jason Padgett [00:23:02]:
I'm not a marketer per se. It's a part of my job, but I love it, so it becomes my job. So I'm trying to automate all that and then I'll come back and pick up bits and pieces of it. But creating agentic workflows and then starting to think about Vibe coding. And I'll give you a for instance on that really quick of something I thought about the other day, which is I have heard on multiple occasions that if you have a skill like you have HR skills, or you have project management skills, or you have education skills plus AI literacy, according to Reid Hoffman, you should be making 60% more than people who don't have the plus AI literacy in any domain. Right? Yet LinkedIn does not have the ability to add to your skills plus AI at all. So I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool? They don't. So I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool to go into wix and build a job posting board inside of our website that where people could post their skills plus AI skills? And then I had to slap myself and say, no, what you should do is go into a Vibe coding tool and just tell it what you want and let it build that web page.

Jason Padgett [00:24:12]:
I have to start thinking more along those lines of not trying to do things and then turn around and ask an AI for help, but just turning it over and seeing if AI can do it first and learning how to use those tools better, which will take some time. But in the long run, I think that the investment in that time will end up with me being able to create a lot more in a lot shorter period of time.

Donna Mitchell [00:24:38]:
Wow. So I've heard of Vibe coding. What exactly? What is Vibe coding?

Jason Padgett [00:24:42]:
So Vibe coding is using natural language to create something that is. That is created by code. So let's say you want to create an app for your phone the typical Vibe coder who's someone like me that does not know how to write code at all would go to Claude because it writes really good code and say, I'm going to use a Vibe coding tool, which there are several lovable replit. There are multiple Vibe coding tools. I want to create a snake game in repl.it help me write the prompts that will generate that code in replit, and then Claude will help you kind of write the prompt. I use AI for all my prompts now.

Donna Mitchell [00:25:26]:
So you were mentioning that you use AI for all your prompts.

Jason Padgett [00:25:31]:
I do. I actually just came across an article that talked about context engineering being the new prompt engineering, and I love that concept. I don't really feel like that. Writing prompts is a skill that you need. If you can define what problem you're trying to solve and the outcome you'd like and give that to a powerful LLM like Gemini 2.5 and say, hey, write a prompt to optimize this outcome. It will write way better prompts than I ever could.

Donna Mitchell [00:26:02]:
You know, I never really thought to do that.

Jason Padgett [00:26:04]:
It's, it's very effective.

Donna Mitchell [00:26:07]:
So let me ask you this. You mentioned also you created a Chat.

Jason Padgett [00:26:12]:
Bot or ChatGPT, a custom GPT assistant.

Donna Mitchell [00:26:18]:
What's the difference between a custom GPT assistant and a chatbot?

Jason Padgett [00:26:23]:
So a chatbot is any of those large language models that you interface with is a chatbot. So Chat GPT is a chatbot. A custom GPT actually has custom instructions and it also has information that it's going to focus on that I can upload to it. So for instance, I have this, this little watch, right? So, and I tell the people that I'm around. I'm like this, like I'm not ever going to see what all those conversations were. At the end of the week, I have a prompt that asks it to download everything that I've worked on, accomplished, and need to work on from the week in JSON so that I can add that to my custom executive assistant. And it knows everything that's going on in my life. Was.

Donna Mitchell [00:27:10]:
That's a lot of information, Jason. I don't know if I want an AI to know everything about me, my family, my, my, my finances and everything else. I mean, it's out there somewhere anyway. I know it is. But how did, how did you grow into that space where you were okay with it, having all that information?

Jason Padgett [00:27:27]:
Well, it probably helped that I'm. That I've been a person in long term recovery for a long time. So when you first get into recovery, like over telling your story and sharing everything is kind of encouraged. Uh, and I. I pulled back from that a little bit. But I guess. I guess it really comes has to do with, like, my whole relationship with digital sought with digital technology as it has always been, which is kind of founded on three things. One, I don't ever use it as just an entertainment tool.

Jason Padgett [00:27:57]:
I use it as some type of a creation tool. Right. So my friends have always gotten mad because I don't look at everything they do on Facebook. But if. If I can leverage Facebook for marketing, I post on there a lot. So they don't like that I don't have that reciprocal, like sit around and scroll through everything, but I never have. And then two, I don't do anything in my business life that I'm worried about anybody knowing anything about. I do mute this thing at night.

Jason Padgett [00:28:27]:
So I don't. I mean, I've had people say, you know, you and your wife have struggles sometimes. Maybe you should. Maybe you should try AI to. To sort those out the way that you've sorted out some of your interpersonal relationships within your company. And I'm like, I don't. I don't know that I'm ready for that. Like, I.

Jason Padgett [00:28:41]:
I don't. I don't know that I want a machine telling me my wife's good enough to tell me I'm wrong. I don't need chat. GPT agree with her.

Donna Mitchell [00:28:52]:
So, so. So let me ask you this. You got. You got it monitoring you. Just really monitoring you. So is there anything that makes you nervous about it being monitored or anything that you saw at the conference or any applications or some things that you really wondered about? Like, really, that's going on can. And then you started thinking about the future and it made you a little bit uneasy. Did that.

Donna Mitchell [00:29:13]:
Did that happen with anything at all? Did your eyebrow go up?

Jason Padgett [00:29:18]:
Not at the conference, but Dario Amade and Anthropic recently released some information about the Claude Opus model that they were training that they tried to get to do bad things. And it was contained. Yeah, it was in a contained environment.

Donna Mitchell [00:29:34]:
Right.

Jason Padgett [00:29:34]:
So it wasn't out in the data, but they actually had two different software engineers, and one of them had intentionally had, like, information about an affair he was having with another woman in his email. And the second engineer had some drug discovery stuff. He was supposedly creating a pharmaceutical thing and doing a bunch of dodgy stuff around that.

Donna Mitchell [00:29:57]:
Yeah.

Jason Padgett [00:29:57]:
So the one with the, with the, with the extramarital affair stuff was telling Claude Opus that I was going to shut it down for a new model and they tried to blackmail him based on stuff that pulled out of his. It was like, if you do, I'm going to tell your wife about all this stuff in your email.

Donna Mitchell [00:30:15]:
So wait a minute, it's monitoring all of this once it's in your email and it's got everything it knows, all the good, the bad, the ugly, the what you don't want nobody else to know. It really knows what's going on with you.

Jason Padgett [00:30:27]:
Yes. And so I don't fear, I fear that on the agent side of things. Well, first off, it doesn't have my, my healthcare email address. Right. It only has my Google email address. So again, the healthcare takes different protections, but with the agentic stuff, like I opened a separate Google cloud that I can, I can let these agents have access to what I want them to because they're actually, you have no idea when once they're off and able to do things on your behalf. But if you go back to that Dario Amade thing, what it made me think of was, well, what if one day we have these things and they have access to our emails and stuff? What if I'm a creative writer and I wrote a hell of a good story about how I killed the neighbor and have them buried in the backyard and this and that, and it misinterprets it as something that I've done. And next thing you know, the FBI is excavating my backyard because my chat bot called them up and told them that they think that I murdered the neighbor.

Jason Padgett [00:31:24]:
That kind of missed.

Donna Mitchell [00:31:25]:
That could happen, right? That could really happen.

Jason Padgett [00:31:28]:
Yeah, that kind of misunderstanding that would be like, if that happened frequently, that would be very disruptive in our society.

Donna Mitchell [00:31:37]:
Okay, you'll be more than disruptive in society. So let me ask you this, let me, let me ask you this. So what about governance? Okay, so now you have these personables and you're wearing them. You've got the health. Excuse me. Or you may just have the finance, and then you've got governance. And the governance is more advanced outside of the United States than it is in the United States. I think it's still kind of like that.

Donna Mitchell [00:32:05]:
So what kind of governance do we have around? Or do you think they're going to be anticipating or that you see happening down the line? Not for sure, but the way things are going, you have any insight on the governance side or ethics?

Jason Padgett [00:32:19]:
I think.

Donna Mitchell [00:32:19]:
Is there any.

Jason Padgett [00:32:22]:
So, yes, Europe has a lot higher governance. I'm not sure Asia does. I think, I think when it comes to wearables and ambient listening devices in general, that 2026 is the year we're going to see. You know, whether it's meta Ray Ban glasses or earbuds, but things that are constantly recording, I think that we will have a huge societal collide over those who are okay with it and those who are not. I think if you were in Japan, that that's more of a culture that's like, wow, this is cool, this technology. Let's explore it. Let's see how it makes our life better.

Donna Mitchell [00:32:54]:
Yeah.

Jason Padgett [00:32:54]:
I think in, in America, you have everyone from that to like, people who already have bunkers because they think the government's watching them and, you know, those and everything in between. Right. So the. Like that is going to be a huge contentious conversation in the future.

Donna Mitchell [00:33:15]:
So what is it that I haven't asked you that you want to share with us?

Jason Padgett [00:33:19]:
I don't know. I so enjoy talking to you. I, you know, I could talk about this stuff all day. Oh, I will tell you here. Here's the thing that I think people should. The thing that has lit my heart up the most in the last three months. Bowling Green State University now has six degrees, bachelor's degrees that you can get AI plus degrees in. Three of them are stem, they're chemistry, physics, and computer science.

Jason Padgett [00:33:43]:
But three of them are not. They're public relations history. And one other that I can't recall. I love that model. Ohio State University has now is now integrating artificial intelligence into their entirety of their program. I think that education has got to start addressing this really quickly because if kids don't learn how to use this responsibly, they're the ones that are going to shape this future. Right. We adults are just trying to make a buck off of it right now, but this is going to become integrated part of our lives.

Jason Padgett [00:34:14]:
And the younger the people that start exploring this, the more we have hope that they will come out of school with ideas on how this technology can better the human race rather than simply get a few people rich and evade the privacy of all the rest.

Donna Mitchell [00:34:34]:
Well, with that said, Jason, I think I'm really excited that we had chance to catch up since your conference. I want to stay in touch with you because, like you, I enjoy talking to you all the time, learning from you and seeing what's going on with your career and the interactions and everything that's happening in AI. You also go into culture change and change management and so many other directions that we have in common that I'm going to have you back to talk talk about that, and I hope that's okay. So if you don't have anything else to really share that you want us to get into, tell everybody how they can reach out to you.

Jason Padgett [00:35:08]:
LinkedIn is probably the easiest place to find me. Jason Padgett, Phoenix Solutions Group.org is our website, but if you I I watch my LinkedIn all the time and I'm happy to accept connections and answer DMS anytime. I really enjoy connecting with you, Donna, and I'll be keeping an eye on your career because you're going places.

Donna Mitchell [00:35:29]:
Thanks so much. And thank you everybody for listening to pivoting the Web3 podcast, and we're shaping them all together.