Staying Relevant In The AI Era: Future-Proof Your Career With Dr. Milton Mattox

Staying Relevant in the AI Era: Future-Proof Your Career with Dr. Milton Mattox #artificialintelligence #ai #futureofwork
 
Worried about how AI is changing jobs? You're not alone. The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence is reshaping industries, and staying relevant requires adaptability, continuous learning, and the right mindset. Please visit our website to get more information: https://swangroup.net/ 

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Milton Mattox, CEO of the United States Artificial Intelligence Institute (USAII®), to uncover the strategies professionals need to stay ahead in the AI era. We discuss how AI transforms job roles, the impact of automation, and how you can leverage AI to boost your career instead of fearing it.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

• Why continuous learning is the key to job security in AI-driven industries
• How leaders should approach AI integration in the workplace
• The future of AI, cybersecurity, and ethical concerns
• Practical steps to embrace AI and future-proof your career

Links from this episode:

• Get to know more about Steven Swan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swangroup
• Get to know more about Dr. Milton Mattox: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miltonmattox
• Check out Dr. Milton’s website: https://miltonmattox.com
• Learn more about United States Artificial Intelligence Institute: https://www.usaii.org

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:04 About Dr. Milton Mattox
• 1:20 How AI is transforming job roles
• 7:13 The importance of staying relevant with AI
• 12:52 AI in cybersecurity and decision-making
• 19:05 What leaders need to know before implementing AI
• 24:43 The future of AI and its ethical impact
• 30:50 How AI can enhance—not replace—human skills
• 36:03 Practical steps for professionals to adapt to AI
• 42:18 Final thoughts and career advice from Dr. Mattox

Transcript

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:00:00]:
You look at these things again, AI quantum computers, which leverages, you know, quantum physics. My advice would be is don't worry about it. Just read it and keep going, right? Don't let some piece that you may not completely understand hold you back. Just keep going. There's nothing you can change in the future by worrying anyway. So just embrace it, grab it, and you'll find it over time. You will get your arms around it.

Steve Swan [00:00:33]:
Hi, I'm your host, Steve Swan. Welcome to Biotech Bites, where we chat with technology leaders on, on things that are going on today in our marketplace. Today I have the pleasure of being joined by Dr. Milton Maddox, who is the leader of USAII United States Artificial Intelligence Institute. Doctor, thank you very much for joining me.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:00:54]:
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Steve Swan [00:00:56]:
Yeah, sure. I'm really excited for this. This is, this is going to be some good stuff. So, um, you know, first things first. I always like asking folks just to give me a quick rundown of their background and how they got to where they are. So can you give my audience a quick, quick synopsis of you?

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:01:12]:
Yeah, sure, sure. I'm generally considered a technologist, if you will. So I started my career some 40 years ago, interestingly enough, actually writing code design and operating systems. Then I moved on to designing application levels and then to managing people to do that and then to leading organizations that do those things. Traditionally, people will hear that, as you know, you work in IT or some sort of software support or design. But I've led teams in different industries, different size companies, global teams, if you will. I spent literally a good majority of my career doing that. Most recently, recently being over the last four or five years, I've started moving more towards how do people learn about this technology that we work on? Right.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:02:09]:
And so the type of technologies I've worked on to be, you know, what we now call artificial intelligence, data science, Cybersecurity was a big one for me and still is. Encryption and cryptography within cybersecurity and then quantum computing as it relates to that, the advancements of computers and processors in general. And so as I was managing people and leading these teams, as a practitioner, I started realizing that teams were having a challenge understanding the emerging technology because of the pace of which these technologies were advancing. And so four or five years ago, I moved into, let's help educate not only engineers and other technical people, but more importantly non technical people on what is this technology, these emerging tech, this artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data science, quantum, what are these things? And then how do we get our arms around it and then how do we use it or leverage it to be the best that we can be in our jobs and the things that we're working on. So it's a little bit about me, but you know, that's been my focus literally for 40 plus years now.

Steve Swan [00:03:23]:
That's great. So, so you started out as hands on technologists and now you're getting to the point where you said to yourself, okay, there's so many different things going on out there, let's all get on the same page. So you're actually teaching folks, right? What a lot of these things mean? Is that what I'm hearing? You're not teaching the technical, you're teaching, hey, let's all talk the same language, right? Leaders from technology and business side and all sorts of things. Let's, let's, let's figure out what all this means, right?

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:03:50]:
That's correct. That's correct. Yeah. The team and I at like say United States Artificial Intelligence Institute or usai, we actually put together a curricula across different spaces to say for AI. And then we allow individuals or give them the ability to go through and focus and study and learn various things about AI, large language models, deep learning, things like that, and then they take an assessment and then they get certified at the end. The thing that makes us different is that we focus on relevancy and that is what employers are looking for today and what skills that they're looking for in individuals as it relates to say AI. And then we make sure that they're getting that experience or those learnings right away. And why is this important? It's because the technology is advancing again exponentially.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:04:53]:
It used to be this nice linear curve as it was advancing. Now it is almost straight up these days. You know, you and I were talking beforehand, it's like every week, man, you get something that's new out there and so how do you stay relevant? Right? Universities can teach AI and other educational institutions, different companies can teach AI, Whether it's Google or Microsoft or Apple or any one of them, they can teach it. But we focus on staying relevant and we focus on being platform agnostic, meaning we're not just Google, Apple. The things that you learn when you finish, you can go work with a Google, you can go work with an Alpha, you can work with the Microsoft or any other company that's doing that needs AI. So that's the idea. But we, we certify individuals, we train individuals and we consult with companies and individuals to help them understand how to leverage this Wonderful technology that's before us.

Steve Swan [00:05:57]:
So you can get as deep as you want. Right. Or as deep as somebody wants or somebody that you're training once with, understanding the technologies and how to use it. But you could also get as high level. So make it up. You know where I sit, right. The people I talk to, the CIOs, they want to make sure that their business and their executives from a high level understand AI, understand terminologies, understand what a can and can't do those kinds of things. So you could cover it from that.

Steve Swan [00:06:24]:
I don't want to call it surface level, but from a decent level. But you could go all the way down and then help the IT folks really get involved with what are we trying to do. Okay, so you got all that covered?

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:06:35]:
Yeah, I mean, you're, you're spot on, Steve, on that. Right. Because we have some certifications. Let's say we have a certified AI engineer. That particular certification goes into a lot of programming and things like, you know, how to do, how to code with Python as an example. What is an LLM, what is deep learning? What is machine learning? And it dives really deep. Right. And then you go to the other extreme where we have a certified AI transformation leader that's focused on decision makers and things like that.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:07:05]:
They go through the program and they look at how do we implement successfully AI in the organization, where is it needed, where is it not needed? Right? Which is actually a very important question. And then how do we implement it? How does it become the core of what we do? And how do we train people to make sure that it's helping individuals be much better at doing the work that's been assigned to them? And then how do you leverage that core of AI for a competitive advantage in your space? So that's a very different thing. So one side, you got people going, oh, let me write some code. On the other side is, how can I implement this in my organization so that it's successful, successful when we actually implement it? So many companies are jumping on the, you know, the fomo, the fear of missing out, and they, they jump right into, you know, AI, just implement it. And then they say, wow, we're not getting the returns and things that we hope for. We tried to help, you know, say leaders plan for these things and understand, you know, methodically how you roll it out, how you measure return on investment, and then how you know that you. And how you quantify that you're achieving the goals that you want to achieve. The other thing that we do, and I Just leave it at this last piece is that we don't, you know, go out and preach the idea of let's use AI to try to replace roles.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:08:34]:
We actually don't believe that that's ever going to happen. You know, no matter how smart AI is, we go out and say to leaders, especially into individuals, let's leverage AI to help us do our jobs better and to give me more time to focus on those things that truly makes me uniquely human. So it's really ironic that right now people believe some people, not all a, it's going to take my job. But at the end of the day, if you go in and understand it and then you leverage it, it can actually help you do your job much better and to actually do different fields that you had never even dreamed of doing. Because, you know, you, you know, how many lives do we have that we can go off and get a degree in this, get a degree in that AI can actually help you become, you know, a pseudo subject matter expert and multiple fields and help you leverage these things and get much more done. And so that's what we want to help people do, is to go from, you know, is it going to, you know, the fear of it to leveraging it to do a lot of really good things and be incredibly productive, which is just one metric, but the next higher up level, what do we do next? You know, I think that we humans, if I may use the term mired in detail and distractions, right? Because, you know, if I'm going to do a presentation, how do I put together my PowerPoint, right? And so if we're going to do a podcast, you know, just talking about this, how do we get this all set up correctly and things like that, let's let you know something else, let's call it AI, take care of all of that. Then we can focus on the conversation that we want to, you know, convey and the messages that we want to convey during the conversation. So that's the idea, if you will.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:10:26]:
But you're spot on. Really are.

Steve Swan [00:10:29]:
Yeah. So as opposed to. Because again, to go back to the replacing humans comment, you know, some folks will measure, or I've heard read that some folks will measure the ROI on AI replacing headcount. But what we're talking about is before we get into AI or whatever form we decide to take on, let's decide what metrics we're going to measure. Let's measure these things, right? And then we'll measure it afterwards or as we're implementing AI and it's not A replacing headcount. It's a, this person's able to do this at a higher level or do something else quicker or better, faster, whatever, because they're using AI. So that's. You're okay.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:11:08]:
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly it. I mean there, don't get me wrong, there are some companies out there. I just saw an advertisement the other day where the company said, you know, replace all your humans with AI really and drive your, you know, your budgets, you know, get them under control. Because the biggest expense generally in the budget, those of us that people, you know, the people part of it. And so it's like replace all the humans with AI. And there are some companies in the short term and some leaders who will try to do that. Right. That's very short term thinking, but they will try to do it because that's just the nature of new tech being introduced.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:11:50]:
Right. What's the low hanging fruit? Ah, you know what? It used to require me 10 people to do X job and now I can do that with two people along with AI. Right. So you will have that occurring early in the early stages. And we're still in very nascent, urgent early stages. However, you will see the other side. There's been so many jobs created and you know, and so what does that mean? You know, how do we know? How does I as a, say a non tech person, if I were not tech, how would I move into those jobs? And what does that mean for me? And this particular tech AI will allow us to move into these things and learn about these things and actually become very proficient at it. And if we can learn that, you know, if I can, you know, bottle, you know, this energy, then, then we can move forward.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:12:44]:
Right, Then we can move forward. So I, I think it's, we have some really, you know, interesting times ahead. Yeah. Short term, short term, there will be those people. Yeah, let's replace humans and let's do these things and you know, save the company a lot of money. But you know, we will be forgetting and we'll be remiss for not realizing the value that we humans bring to the table.

Steve Swan [00:13:08]:
Well, yeah, and I'll give you, I'll give you a prime example. And I only know, you know, my sample size is me, right. So I know this, I know what I do. Right. And you know, and I've thought about AI and I look at AI, right. With what I do and AI is probably able to do maybe the front, the very beginning, the front 1 25th of what I do. Right. Meaning help Identify somebody that potentially that could be right for a role because of what they mentioned on their, on their, on their CV or on their resume.

Steve Swan [00:13:39]:
But data can be different. People write things differently. So it doesn't necessarily have to pick that up. It can't really read between the lines. But let's, let's suffice it to say that it does that because after that, in the process, not only do we identify, then we have to qualify. AI is not doing that. That's. And they, some people are getting some interviews, right, with AI but you got to qualify them, then you got to make sure, get them interested.

Steve Swan [00:14:02]:
Then you have to really, you start wearing a lot of different hats. As you go through what I do, you become a salesman, right? You become an arbitrator at a certain point, you become a negotiator, you're someone's agent. I've spoken to spouses many a times. You know, I don't want to say I'm a, I'm a marriage counselor, but, you know, a psychologist, I guess you could say, right? And then sometimes you got to, okay, now I gotta go back to be the, the, the, the, the arbitrator again. I was just a psycho, you know, so all sorts of different things have to go on. So again, AI can help, but it can help in the very, very, very front end for identification. And then you got to help close somebody, right? So you're going between the company and the individual to negotiate, right? A is not doing that, you know, so anyway, it's. Again, my sample size is only me, but I know how much further it's got to go in order to get to all the different aspects that we do all the way along the way as an executive recruiter, you know, I.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:14:55]:
Love the, the, the example that you just gave because again, you're hitting the nail, you know, on the head here. It handles, you know, this piece of what we do. But as you were describing it, you look at all the roles, the hats that you stated that you're wearing, you know, this is what we do. This is what humans do, right? And so, and there are other pieces that AI would be challenged to do for, well, future. And that's the emotional intelligence piece, the connecting with people, right. I still like to, you know, if I'm doing, you know, that's going to a sales meeting or trying to land a new prospect, you know, I still like meeting with them, shaking hands, having that discussion and then getting to know those individuals, right? And then we can connect at a very, very human level and something is very visceral about that. And I think we do ourselves a disservice if we discount those things that, you know, I mean, it would be really challenging, right? We're seeing AI do some amazing things. You know, we got these, you know, these robots that are looking like, you know, doing things and all of that.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:16:05]:
But is that robot sitting down and say, I truly, as Bill Clinton said years ago, I understand your pain. Right? You know, it may say that, but does it truly do that? And we know when we have that human connection, you know, let's not discount those things, right? So let's let AI do what it does, and it allow us to spend more time to do what we do best, and that's to make that human connection. And that's the trends. You know, the thing that's going to be transformative, I believe, in society is when we truly understand that and no longer we worried about, you know, oh, AI is taking this job or that job, it'd be, now I'm allowed to do some really amazing things, right? I can't even imagine. I can't even fathom what those things are going to be. I just know that they're going to be there, but just from history, that we are on a path that is going to be amazing, right? And so now I don't want the audience. I do have to say this because a lot of my colleagues will say, hey, you know, you're always talking about the positive side of, you know, but, you know, what about AI hallucinating? What about bias, you know, and all of those things, those things are there and we have to work through those things. And it does hallucinate for those who understand, it makes stuff up.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:17:21]:
You know, sometimes it's biased because of the data that is reading and it's gathering. It reads the bias in there and it, you know, just goes off and implements. Because it's not a human to go off and do those things. We have to train it. And so those things are there, but we will get past all of those things. Just like everything else we've gotten past, you know, in the, in, in our, you know, in our history, you know, we will get past these things and it will get better. So I don't want to discount that. You know, AI is, you know, it's just perfect today.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:17:55]:
It's not. And we have a long way to go. And it, and it does has bias, which I think we need to deal with. It does hallucinate, but there are ways to check the data, to check its output and to make sure that it's accurate. And then you build on that and you teach it and it's learning every time you, you help to improve it. So, you know, I don't want to give the impression that it's, you know, it's all, you know, roses at this point. We still have a lot to do.

Steve Swan [00:18:24]:
Well, yeah, a lot of my folks, as I talk to them, a lot of my CIOs, they talk about make the analogy that we're in the Wild west, we're in 1990 when for like when the Internet came out. You know what I mean? We're getting there. We're getting there, you know, I mean, and to your point, technology is just going straight up, you know, I mean, just this week or so ago, and you and I were talking about this, Google came out with a chip or some sort of technology that processed something in 10 minutes that would have taken, I don't how many years I, I read it, but I didn't understand what it said because I never saw that word before for a long time.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:18:57]:
Accept.

Steve Swan [00:18:58]:
Yeah, I miss that on the SATs, you know, so, yeah, so would have taken a long time. Let's go with that. Right? You know. Yeah, Crazy, crazy, crazy stuff. And that's again, that's where the technology is going to make me or you better. Right? Because it can take all that data, whatever that data was or is, assuming the data is right like we just said there, or, or, or accurate for what we're doing and get it done like that for us. And now we can move on to the next thing and, and continue writing our PowerPoint presentation or whatever. We're writing our white paper.

Steve Swan [00:19:31]:
Right.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:19:32]:
You know, so I mean, again, I love having these conversations, right? Because, you know, things come up that when normally they come up like from speaking with the team and we're talking about some AI or some this, we tend to get into this box. But you know, you're talking about things now where you're slightly outside of the box and that's where innovation occurs, in my opinion. And so, yeah, the Google Willow chip advancement and there's actually, it's interesting the name of that, that group or that division or that, that sub, you know, division of Google is, is quantum AI. And they came up with a, this chip, it's a quantum chip that basically reduces or improves error correction. Right. And that's the biggest problem at the quantum layer is that we need so many what's called quantum bits in order to make sure that the data is accurate. And so we do it very easily. With classical computers today, it's easy now.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:20:35]:
It wasn't easy some, you know, 40 or 50 years ago, but it's easy now. And so, Willow, the chip made a huge advancement in this space and solved this problem that they gave it, right? It was in five minutes, but they say it would take supercomputers a ten times a septillion, basically longer than the age of the universe. That's all right.

Steve Swan [00:21:02]:
Oh, really? See, I don't even know what it means.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:21:04]:
And so it's like, you know, I mean, this is, you know, you're not. You and I talked about this, right? If we could just take a moment, right? Again, I'm a glass half full person, right? And so I haven't warned everybody that. But if we can just take a moment, moment. And we have a lot of distractions going on in the world and a lot of things happening, and we've got to deal with family putting food on the table and all of these things, which are incredibly important, right? And those things are very important. But if we can allow ourselves just a moment to just stand back, even if we don't understand it all completely and just look at what's happening. You know, the technological advancements are absolutely amazing, right? And so, and we've seen this throughout history. I go back before the Wright brothers and the guys out there on his bicycle with wings, and we're going to have, you know, planes flying. And now we travel all around the globe in these planes.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:21:54]:
We don't even think twice about this heavy piece of metal being lifted up in the air to fly away. Think about what people were saying back then, right before he goes, are you going to be flying this from here to the other side of the world? We don't even think twice about that today. Likewise with going from horse and buggy to cars, right? Going from, you know, cathode raid tubes for the, you know, computers back in the day to going to microchips and compressing, you know, things in smaller, smaller spaces so we can continue to get faster at what we're doing. We don't even think about these things. The Internet, the, the iPhone, and what that did for mobile devices at the time, it was like, oh, wow, now we don't think about it, right? I believe that AI will be the same way in quantum computing, which is down the road here, will also be the same way. But it's going to require us to think differently about the things that we do. So I just like to take a moment every so often. I do it now once a week and just sit back and spend literally a good solid 30 minutes.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:23:04]:
30 minutes just thinking about and reviewing the amazing amount of accomplishment that we, you know, not just the U.S. you know, not just, you know, Europe and not just Asia, but we, the world that we are achieving. It's just amazing. So, you know, I. I would advise people just, you know, just take a moment and I think that we'll all be very surprised and happy with the progress that we're making. And then we can go back to, you know, to help those manifest grind.

Steve Swan [00:23:33]:
Right. You know what I love about that? Again, I'm going to sidetrack and go, you know, I have several CIOs that do tell me that they set aside throughout the week, you know, a total of a couple hours to sit and think or to have conversations like this to make them think a little bit. And then you also read up on a Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett, right? They do that every day. They set aside an hour, two hours, three hours, like you said, just to think. Just let's see what's. Let's think about what's going on. Let's think about how things are fitting together, what's changed since yesterday or the day before. And, you know, let's, let's.

Steve Swan [00:24:12]:
Let's try and piece it together because otherwise there's a lot of static going on. There's a lot of things that we're. We're pushing towards. We always got a goal right, you know, moving towards.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:24:20]:
It's.

Steve Swan [00:24:20]:
It's almost a. It's almost a meditation kind of thing, really, is what it is.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:24:23]:
It is, it is. Yeah. Yeah. I like that, that metaphor, by the way, because to me, it is. I put myself in a meditative state and just really think about these things. Right. And reflect again. You know, we humans do this, you know, innately, and if we allow ourselves time to really do it, we actually can get very good at it.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:24:47]:
Right? So I, I always recommend to people if I'm coaching someone or I'm being coached, I continue to be coached. But if I'm coaching someone is like, you know, meditate, reflect on the things that are happening and all of these things and read and read and read. Right. And I really don't, you know, I'm still a physical book type of person. You know, I do touch the book. And that tactile sensation is still important to me, you know, but I like to read as much as possible. And AI is actually helping me, you know, to, you know, as I read my book. And then I say, oh, oh, geez.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:25:28]:
They just went over a concept. I didn't go to AI. And it gives me so much backstory, if you will, Right? And so, I mean, imagine this, Steve. We're in the information age, I like to call it technology. Well, let's say it's the information. It's just data, data, data everywhere, right? How do we deal with that influx? Right? You can sort of overflow your senses, right? Imagine if we can just say, well, we got this now, this tool that's very good at synthesizing data, and a lot of it, a lot of data, right? Maybe this is what was supposed to naturally occur, this development of AI to allow us to synthesize this stuff so that we can then do what we do best, and that's to make sense out of this data and figure out where we go next. Right? So I think it's all coming together. And so, and for the.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:26:25]:
Again, for the audience and people that are listening to this now, we can certainly dive deep into, you know, well, how do I use AI and how do I do this and how do I do that? You know, I think that that's. I think, you know, and unless you tell me otherwise, I think that's for a different podcast where we can dive deep into, have like a master class or webinar or something, but generally just discussing, let's know, you know, what can we do with it? Let's get people excited about that, and then let's figure out where we go. Right? And so again, like you mentioned in your work, right, I. I like to sometimes spend time writing books. And so I have a book on. It's called Next Gen CyberSecurity with modern AI that talks about how AI is impacting cybersecurity. I'm writing a book right now called Catch the Way where AI will Not Replace Humans. And so I'm talking about that.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:27:23]:
And then those books, kind of meaty, if you will. And then I just launched a children's series of coloring books and activity books where I'm introducing ideas like concepts at an age, you know, specific level that says, you know, this is AI. And I created a character and stuff like that. So how does one do this? Right? You say you're a CEO, you're doing certifications, you do public speaking, you write books. How does one have time to do all of these things? I now, at least to me, I don't use it to write the books, but I definitely use it to do research, right. Which used to take me sometimes years to do the research. Now I can do research in a couple of days and just really in deep research, I mean really, really deep research. And then I use that to make sense out of it.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:28:17]:
And then I just write and I just go off and write. And so at any level write children's books, books about AI. I do self help books, motivational books. And so it's like, how does one do all of these things? We look so capable if we just allow us as we get out of our own ways, you know, we can do a lot of things and I believe AI gives us that ability.

Steve Swan [00:28:40]:
I believe the same thing, you know, just to get back to, you know, the emotional intelligence. And that's what we're, we're, we should be doing those kinds of things, right? You know, and to get back to, you know, tie it in with Charlie Munger and I mean I can make us better at everything we do, right? And I part of what I do again going back to the recruitment process. When I come around the tail end of a recruitment process, without fail an individual. So we're human, right? And humans, over the last 10,000 years we've honed the skill, you know, running around in the woods of when our emotions get heightened. We're either going to stop and fight or we're going to run, fight or flight, right? And that's what happens when we get to, we get close to buying a house, buying a car, buying a stock, changing jobs, our emotions get heightened. So we don't know what to do. We weren't made to do these things. We weren't made to buy stocks, we weren't made to make these decisions.

Steve Swan [00:29:34]:
We got to somehow get rid of that emotion and get the, like you said, emotional intelligence in there. And AI can help you do that. AI can help you get more logical about it. Because what I try and do when I talk to folks when we're getting near the end to ground it in ration as opposed to emotion is let's look at this decision, Yay or nay, two weeks, three months, one year, five years out. So it grounds your, your, your intelligence because it's, it's, it's logic that brought us to that point. It wasn't emotion, right? There was something they were trying to change. Because I know a company's got drivers and individuals got drivers of what they need and what they need and I'm mash them together and once I get them to match together then we know it's a logical decision. But when emotions get involved, that's when we Start having a problem.

Steve Swan [00:30:20]:
And that's where, you know, we got to really start grounding ourselves. But anyway, that's. That's a whole different ball of wax. Again, that's a different podcast, I think. Right. But. But AI can help you through those. Those.

Steve Swan [00:30:31]:
Those logical steps and get you through those. Some of those things. But you still have to. From human to human. You still got to try and. To take that one step at a time and get that sort of that connection. Right?

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:30:44]:
So, yeah, yeah, I mean, again, you're. You're hitting the. Again using old, old metaphor, but you're hitting the nail on the head, you know, and so it's, you know, I. Now I'm gonna talk to the technical people out there, technical leaders. The cio, you know, is so much of our time is focused on, you know, I call it the bits and bytes and getting, you know, the technology correct, getting the computers correct and getting the programming correct. But then. And how do we get these things done? But if you really want to motivate a team to be as, you know, the best that they can be, you have to connect with them at a very human level. Technical people generally, not always generally introvert, you know, and, you know, you want to be out there.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:31:32]:
You know, how do we connect and that sort of thing. I like to, you know, spend the time now to connect with people, to understand the organization, what makes this individual tick? You know, within reason. Right. I want to get into their personal lives, but what makes them tick, what's motivating them, and if that can help, you know, drive or resolve or, you know, address some of those things. It's amazing what we can. Ach. We can achieve. I think that's where we operate best.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:32:04]:
We humans operate best. Right. You know, I've spent many a times, you know, one role that I had, I was even as a CTO Chief Technology Officer, leading a technical team. I was spending so much time, you know, oh, we had a bug in this application that we're doing, so let me go through the code over the weekends, all this other stuff, and I'm. I'm going through it and looking for, you know, oh, geez, I found it, and stuff like that. Great. But at the same time, it's like, oh, this person's getting burned out, that person's burnt out. We could have found the know to fix faster had we done this.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:32:38]:
And then again, paradoxically, I found that, you know, I would drive a team, drive and drive and drive and drive, you know, and, you know, we get a fix for Some problem, say some two weeks down the road. And I found over the years that, man, if we just take a moment, take a break, and, you know, do something totally different, right, to, you know, what we do. I found that we humans generally solve problems when the mind is focused on this, you know, all of a sudden you come back to and go, hey, wow. We were out there playing, you know, you know, whatever, you know, we'll be out there playing around and maybe playing a pool or something, you know, I came up with an idea of how we might be able to address this problem, and we were able to solve problems faster instead of just drive, drive, drive. People get burnt out. And so, and so my technical peers out there connect to the human side and understanding people and then work with them and then maybe, maybe let's not drive them over the edge, if you will. And, and, and then watch what we get out of them as far as measuring, you know, quantifying it, using productivity. Watch what happens, right? So it's an amazing thing, right? You know, but we generally don't have time to do that because we got so many distractions.

Steve Swan [00:33:56]:
My daughter calls it code block. My daughter's a computer science major, data science, statistics. And she's like, I get a code block, so go for a walk, go do something. And it comes to me. She's like, it'll come to me in 20 seconds, Joe. I do my best thinking when I'm asleep. I come into the office and I'm like, I figured this out. Or, or sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll write an article that I'm gonna put on LinkedIn or something.

Steve Swan [00:34:17]:
You know, I'm like, I gotta write this. 3:30 in the morning, the lights in the kitchen are on. My wife's like, what are you doing? You know, so, yeah, no, I get it, I get it, I get it.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:34:26]:
By the way, I like that.

Steve Swan [00:34:28]:
So, yeah, no, it's, it's. So you're seeing it from both the technical and the business side. So that's, that's good stuff. And you guys handle it from both sides, right? From a, from a training and certification perspective, which is great. You know, have you seen, I mean, you know, have you seen, I don't know, anything that you think that we aren't thinking about that's going to happen in, you know, 2025. I just did a podcast with a bunch of leaders, right? And they all could. So some of them had talked about how they're, they're, they're Hiring folks for training or talking about hiring folks for training and so on and so forth at different levels, you know, and, and I also have heard what you brought up earlier because your specialty was security, right? I've heard that AI is really helping the security folks, especially on the operations side for identifying things and. Because I had one CIO tell me, you know, when he joined his company a couple years ago, I don't know, maybe they had a million sort of attempts, you know, last year they had like 14 billion or something, you know, and it's a small biotech.

Steve Swan [00:35:27]:
I mean no one's keeping up with that. That's what AI does, right? You know, I mean it doesn't very.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:35:32]:
Well, by the way. It doesn't very, very well.

Steve Swan [00:35:34]:
Yeah, but are you seeing any other trends where. Because I was shocked when I heard that. I'm like, that's perfect. That's exactly what AI should be doing. And you know, helping that individual out. That's, that's monitoring those logs or whatever you wanted to call it. But what other stuff have you, have you seen or do you see coming? Anything we can talk about or we have, we kind of hit on it?

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:35:55]:
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, you hit on the one, I'm going to call it the low hanging fruit one, which is, you know, when you're looking at, you know, cyber threats and things like that, data breaches and all of the things that are occurring, AI is, is helping us get much better at that. Before we would, you know, write these rules and we would go out and look for things and, and say up does this, you know, does threat fit this rule? You know, how many times somebody tried to enter a password and things like that. You have a rule that does that. Then, then we're, you know, raising alarm in the SIM system that was out there, you know, system information, event management. But now you can use AI to go through and actually learn from these things and get better at it and get much better at predictive analytics as it's going out to do this work. So that, that part would be. That's great.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:36:54]:
So we talked about that. You know, by the way, there's the flip side of that where the hackers are also using AI and so, you know, and they're getting better, they're getting smarter too. Oh, they're getting better. I mean, you know, in one place that they're using is like in and phishing emails, right? They can now go look at an email that you normally say to get access to your email system and they look at how you write emails or AI does, and then they can have an email that comes from you, written in your style, and that'll cause humans to sort of believe that it is truly you because waste the rights, right? That was a little more difficult to do pre AI or pre generative AI. Now it's much easier. And that's just one example. So you got this digital arms race happening. You got the bad guys actually using AI, you have the good guys using AI.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:37:48]:
And so they keep escalating it, what we call it the digital arms race. They keep escalating it to see how they protect. And we're going to see a lot more of that. But I'm not worried because worst case, you get into a stalemate. And what that means is that, you know, as long as the stalemate means that the data is protected or, you know, thwarting, you know, breaches, data breaches, then that's great, you know, so that, that piece I see continuing to grow. But the way we do work, right, and this is probably five plus years out, the way we do work across all industries is really going to just change. And I think we need to really get prepared for that, right? It's like, you know, geez, you know, what does that mean? You know, we mean we're gonna, you know, the way we do work is gonna change. I've already talked about the way you can write books and things and do research.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:38:43]:
That's gonna change. In education right now there is a huge pushback because they're saying, oh, you know, AI, this student uses AI, just plagiarizing and you're doing this sort of thing. They're using it to write the paper. Humans are going to get dumber because, you know, so there's a pushback and resistance. Some schools are looking at it and saying, oh, let's leverage it. Because we know that in order to survive in this new economy, you're going to really have to know how to use this thing. So why don't we teach students how to use it ethically, how to use it correctly, transparency, how to leverage it to do maybe the research and do all these other things. And as one, you know, administrative school administrator, university administrator, you know, asked me, you know, about a month ago, she said, yeah, but you know, how do you know when they write, they wrote that paper if they just didn't use AI and stuff like that? I said, well, we're going to have to change how we look at, maybe they should do a presentation at all levels.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:39:57]:
And at that point in time, you get an idea if they truly understand what they wrote. Right. And initially you get some kids, if we're talking younger kids, you get some kids to say, you know, they would get up and fumble and things like that. And. But over time you get kids talking about things at much younger ages that they haven't been able to talk about before because the, this groundwork has been done, you know, by the AI piece and then they've been consuming this information. Right. And so again, let's not sell ourselves short. Young people, younger age kids, as we're growing up from the time you're born to say maybe 15, they're learning at a rate that's incredible.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:40:46]:
Absolutely incredible. They learn complex constructs, you know, I have to learn to speak and how to put, you know, grammatically correct sentences without going through grammar. And all this kind of stuff that we learn in school, they just learn it because they're doing, they can learn multiple languages and things like that. Kids can consume this stuff. So if we get out of their way and allow them to learn even more complex constructs because AI is handling the quote, unquote mundane things, then we're going to see a change. We're going to see the change that I think we, we will, that we need in order for us to continue to evolve. So I just see a change coming in every industry. Education, you know, biotech, you know, and things like that.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:41:31]:
In finance, we're going to see the changes. In telecom, we're going to see the changes. Every single industry is going to get impacted by it. What does that mean? And I wish, and I hope that we will spend more time understanding this and getting prepared and embrace it as opposed to all of the pushback. We will eventually get there. But let's not do the normal human thing that we always do. Let's push back for years and years and years.

Steve Swan [00:41:59]:
Right? Push back just because this is how we always have done it, right?

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:42:02]:
Yeah, yeah. And we push back on everything, right?

Steve Swan [00:42:05]:
We do.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:42:06]:
Again, if you take the time, you see it across everything.

Steve Swan [00:42:10]:
Yeah.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:42:12]:
You know, and so, you know, but yeah, I see a major change across all markets, all industries. Question is, how are we going to embrace and leverage and this, this new tech in order for us to continue doing better and be more productive and more efficient and do higher learning, construct processing, how we're going to leverage it to do that? We will get there.

Steve Swan [00:42:39]:
We will.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:42:40]:
It might be bumpy along the way.

Steve Swan [00:42:42]:
That's all right, though. Everything is right. And the eternal optimist just came out. That was Awesome. I loved it. Yeah, I loved it. That's good stuff. Well, so, well, so we're coming near the end here, right? And I always like asking my guests one question.

Steve Swan [00:42:58]:
I always ask the same question at the very end, and I don't tell folks what that. I mean, if you watched any of my podcasts all the way through, you know, it. But before I ask you that final question, any, any, anything else you want to, you want to cover before I go to that, and it's a non related question to technology, so.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:43:17]:
Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I, I would just say to people, right? You know, you look at these things again, AI quantum computers, which leverages, you know, quantum physics. And you think about that and you go, okay, so what makes a quantum computer so special, right? Classical computers use the very discrete zeros, and one quantum computer does, you know, a 0, 1, and then something called a superposition, everything in between. And so people are thinking, what does this mean? You know, it's the play. My, my advice would be, is don't worry about it. Just read it and keep going, right? Don't let some piece that you may not completely understand hold you back. Just keep going, you know, and do that with quantum, do it with AI. Do it with any other emerging tech that's coming, you know, augmented reality, virtual reality, all the different things that are happening, you know, don't worry about it, get your arms around it, read a little bit about it every day, you know, as much as you can do, and you'll find it over time.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:44:29]:
You will get your arms around it, right? So don't be afraid. Just go for it and learn it and you will get through it. And that's, that's our human history, right? And so, you know, saying go, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, one bite at a time.

Steve Swan [00:44:45]:
I was just going to say that.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:44:46]:
So, so yes, just go for it. Don't worry at this, you know, there's nothing you can change in the future by worrying any, right? So just embrace it, grab it, and then be amazed at yourself, you know, one month later, two months later, quarter later, a year later, how much you picked up, you know, so I just hope people just take a little information, just read a little bit, you know, every single day. You don't have to spend hours and hours, but do read, you know, and learn and research and just pick up what you can. And if it's too complicated, tell AI to make it simple, right? So, and it'll, it'll make it simple for you and it'll learn how you learn and. And present the information to you in the way that's best for you to learn it. And then again, you'll be amazed down the road, really, at what you're doing.

Steve Swan [00:45:38]:
You can't. You can't control it. But what you can control is your reaction to things that they come to you. Right, exactly. That kind of thing.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:45:46]:
So.

Steve Swan [00:45:46]:
Well, thank you. Thank you. That was great. So here's, here's the question I like asking folks near the end. I'm a live music guy. I like watching music. I like going to see concerts and things like that. So what I always like asking my guests, and some have answers, some don't, you know, so no pressure here, but live music, if you've ever seen a live band, or maybe you have, maybe you haven't, but if you have, is there a particular live act that you've seen at any point in your life that you look back on, you say, well, that was probably the best concert I ever saw.

Steve Swan [00:46:13]:
That was the best best live act I ever saw. Is there anything that sticks out in your mind or if you haven't seen any, that's fine too, you know.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:46:20]:
Oh, you, you. This is a wonderful question. It's a wonderful question. I'm. I'm also a musician. I play bass guitar and drums, and I wanted to gig as a teenager. My parents said, no, you understand math. You're going to become a computer scientist.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:46:37]:
I'm like, wow. So why would I want to do that? One band right now, Steve, that's resonating with me that I saw live years ago, and they've now resurrected themselves because of a tragedy that happened. It's a band called Linkin park, and Chester Bennington was the previous lead singer on some of their incredible. So I saw them live and I've not experienced anything like that. It was just this amazing. This new metal. They're doing a lot of different things in there. They got scratching and got rap, they got metal, they got the screaming, you know, and all of those things.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:47:19]:
And then, you know, 2017, I believe when, you know, Chester passed away, it was like, will this band ever come back? And they just dropped a new album this year. New singer Emily Armstrong, who, I mean, talk about a challenge, right? And so I've. I've listened to every one of the new songs and I am, I am, you know. Emily Armstrong.

Steve Swan [00:47:47]:
Yeah, yeah. Where did she come from? What band was she? What was she in?

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:47:52]:
Band called Dead Sarah, and she was one of the singers. I know it's one of those obscure bands.

Steve Swan [00:47:58]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:47:58]:
It's been out there for 20 years. And she talked about how she watched Linkin park, you know, some 20 years ago and said, I want to do that. Watching him screaming, you know, one step closer to the edge and things like that. And so. But now to watch them reinvent themselves, the hardcore fans. Well, I don't know. You shouldn't. You should change the name of the band, all of that.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:48:27]:
I am looking forward to seeing them and I want to see them live. I would prefer to see him. And it's weird, but I would prefer to see them live in London. I saw the. The original Lincoln park, the previous iteration. Yeah. And. Oh, my.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:48:45]:
My goodness. And again, you know, that. That was so electrifying. And so it's like, wow, I would love to see them, you know, in. In London, Sao Paulo somewhere, where these, you know, these different countries just really embrace these. These bands. Right. And so I want to experience that.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:49:05]:
And so they also brought in a new drummer who's very good. And, you know, but the focus is on the lead singer, and I like listening to the music and what the musicians are able to do. Right. And so. But Linkin park right now is the top of my playlist, if I would say. And so. But there's so many bands. I follow some bands out of Japan, all girl bands that are phenomenal, you know.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:49:34]:
You know, Band Maid is a phenomenal rock band. You know, the Jazz Avengers is just as they sound. They have some incredible musicians, incredible drummer out of Japan, and so all female groups, by the way. And again, if we take the time to look at what's happening in the world, people are these musicians, and these musicians thought were getting younger and younger and younger. And there's a band out of the Philippines called Mission Soul. They're a family band. The youngest kid plays drum. He's now 11, and the oldest is 15.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:50:14]:
The kid is a boy who plays the drum, and then the rest are girls playing guitars and bass, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, lead guitar and keyboard. And, and their parents play with them sometimes. We had a mom and dad. They are amazing. And you're really. It's kids, right? So you asked them, you know, this is good. Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:50:35]:
Well, also at the beginning, you said you play. You play instruments. And I'll tell you, you show me a. A decent musician, I'll show you a good programmer, a good technologist. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's amazing, you know, and, and a lot of the guys I'm watching on stage they don't even know it. They'd probably be awesome at Python or whatever. You know, they just.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:50:54]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I agree with that. I agree with that wholeheartedly. Because it taps into that creative part of the brain, you know. I mean, think about these people, right? Einstein was a musician and all, and I'm certainly not saying I'm an. Honestly.

Steve Swan [00:51:08]:
No, I know what you're saying. Right. But, yeah, drawing the parallels.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:51:12]:
You know, families, parents, you know, if you want to, you know, teach kids, you know, let them try. You know, they may not keep it up, but, you know, teach them, you know, music or, you know, I always recommend, you know, what instrument? Piano, if you can go piano. Because from there you can almost go anywhere. Right. And the thing that it teaches you, the dexterity that you need, you know, to do that. You got the bass clef and the trouble clef, you know, in the different hands. Then you move to a guitar, you move to something else, and you have these things that you learned from piano as your core. And so.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:51:49]:
And again, all the things that you need, from mathematics to creative thinking, you get in that. Right? Again, humans, let's not. Let's not sell ourselves short, right? So learn music. Learn theory, music theory and all this sort of thing, whether they do it or not. You know, my parents would not, you know, in my day, and I grew up in the south, in Atlanta. My mom said, you will not be playing in a, you know, in a.

Steve Swan [00:52:19]:
Band, in a club or something. Right.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:52:22]:
Yeah. And I was. I was. I was gigging at 17, right. You know, you know, going out there and I was playing drums and all this sort of thing. And my mom said, yeah, enough of that, you know, I need you to focus on school and things like that. And in those days, if mom said, no, you kind of.

Steve Swan [00:52:42]:
You. You did it.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:52:43]:
You kind of went with it or else. Yeah. And so. But I continue to play. Not as much as I used to, but I still play and I enjoy it.

Steve Swan [00:52:53]:
And it takes a great outlet. Right.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:52:55]:
Yeah, it's a wonderful creative outlet. So. Yeah, thank you for asking that question, by the way. I. Obviously, I get excited about these kinds.

Steve Swan [00:53:02]:
Yeah, no, well, that's. It's. I kind of. You know, it's kind of one of those things where if folks aren't expecting it, some are. Some aren't. Right. But, you know, it gets them on a more of a personal level, and you get to hear, you know, a passion or something for somebody that someone has, and then they kind of go off on their tangent again. Gets rid of the whole the technical thing and the technology thing.

Steve Swan [00:53:23]:
It brings them to a good place, a happy place, a place they want to share, you know? So that's why. That's why I ask it.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:53:30]:
So, anyway, well, perfect. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Steve Swan [00:53:33]:
This was awesome. Thank you very much. I can't thank you enough. And maybe we do another one on some of the other subjects that we talked about sometimes. Good thing.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:53:42]:
I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Steve Swan [00:53:45]:
Sure thing. Yeah. And if anybody needs you, they can find you. They can see your. They can get your URL for LinkedIn off the podcast. And anybody needs us, they know where to find us as well.

Dr. Milton Mattox [00:53:56]:
Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:53:57]:
All right. Thank you very much.