This episode is brought to you by ChiefAIOfficer.com. Most companies know AI can slash costs and free up teams, but they get stuck on the first step. ChiefAIOfficer.com can identify your highest value use cases, train your people, and build the workflows that do the work for you. Book your free private 15-minute executive briefing by going to ChiefaiOfficer.com and scheduling a call. You'll leave with a clear, no-jargon roadmap for your goals. Now, enjoy the show. And a quick note before we start this episode. Starting August 29th through October 29th, we're actually taking our AI executive immersion on the road. This is a free, half-day, in-person, no-fluff workshop for executives of lower middle market and above-sized companies. You'll leave with a 90-day plan, a simple AI policy and guardrails, and a personal AI stack that gives you hours back every week. If you'd like to bring your executive team at no cost, go to chiefaiofficer.com forward slash roadshow to see the dates and locations where we'll be. Seats are limited to keep it hands-on. Hopefully, this is an opportunity for us to meet in person and for you to learn exactly how we're teaching busy executives to take advantage of AI and their role and across their companies. Now, let's start the episode. Welcome to Using AI at Work. I'm your host, Chris Daigle. Each week we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs, and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech. Let's get started. Okay, everybody, welcome to Using AI at work, uh, the podcast where we discuss how to use AI at work and how others are doing it and the interesting ways that AI is being applied to where we spend a lot of our time, which is uh in our vocation. Our guest today is Dave Martelli. He's the founder of Guild Hall Studios, and they do some fantastic stuff. So, Dave, before we jump in, if you don't mind, just maybe share a little bit about your background and and um how you got into the AI space and uh we'll get going.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Um, so I uh originally started off as a systems and software engineer. Uh, did that for a bunch of years um between the Department of Defense and a couple other startups uh that were a lot more fun. And then uh I kind of burned out from it. So after just spending so much time just hammering between locked behind locked doors, it was uh kind of soul soothing to be able to find my way into education. I've always loved teaching. I've always loved kind of being able to pass down knowledge and explore different things with uh with students, be it kids or adults. Uh so I ended up being a uh head of uh computer science and engineering for a school uh around the Boston area. Um as I had a weird teaching methodology because I wasn't necessarily um from a traditional educational background. Um it is my wife likes to put out pretty often that I have failed basically every school I've ever attended, uh including grade school. Um but didn't seem to slow anything down after I got out of that world. Yeah. Uh so um once COVID hit, my my teaching style was that every single kid had an individualized learning pathway. So I had a structure within computer science and engineering, but I really had a free, I built the program. I built several makerspaces within that school to be able to support the program. So they let me do kind of whatever I wanted and they trusted me, which was a thing that most schools won't do it. So I'll credit uh to them. Um it was pretty okay and not terrible for me to support 150 different projects all on different vectors uh at the same time. When I was there in person, COVID made that a lot more challenging. Uh so I was like, okay, how do I how do I manage and understand and support, you know, 150 kids from kindergarten to to high school on their projects and make it so that they're actually continuing to go forward um even without me needing to be there. Sounded like a good software startup. So I started Guild. Um Guild was, and this is before chat GPT, right? Guild was meant to be an AI-assisted software and learning platform that understands your capabilities, your background, uh the things you did within the studio, uh within the studio that we're running, um, and just your interests as well. And it would map out individualized learning pathways and give you all the supporting media necessary for you to be able to continue on. Meanwhile, also throw me back rubrics so I can actually give you a grade and make my administration not fire me. Um, so went from there after COVID, decided it was uh it still needed some work. So um I decided to start a couple of schools so I could enclave out the process a bit and just understand it better. Um so we run, yeah, six places now. Nice.
SPEAKER_01Well, congratulations on that success. This is a topic that we have never covered really before in um however many episodes we've done of the podcast up to this release. And I'm particularly interested in it because I'm father of five who is in the AI space, and I don't have an answer for um what that path of adoption needs to look like for my own children. Um, I've been particularly interested in some of the stories that are coming out in the media now about some of these AI assisted schools. Our headquarters is in Austin, Texas. I think there's actually um a school here that's getting some recognition for what it's doing. And I'm I'm fascinated with to me as a professional in the space, I get it. It's obvious that AI has the potential to be uh better suited to the individual student. So um with that being the case, I guess let's let's start with a couple of things. First off, for the other parents or aunts and uncles uh out there, um what would you suggest be kind of the protocol for the introduction of generative AI to children?
SPEAKER_00Kids like to play. So within the safest realm that you can, let them play. Um, so I have uh four-year-old and an uh now nine-year-old, she's um myself, my uh, and both my wife and I are are big into starting businesses. So my wife runs uh almost half a dozen daycares. I run uh these schools and other things. So she wanted to be in with that. She's like, okay, what do you want to do? She decided she wanted to do a 3D printing business, right? But she did, she's okay at 3D modeling, but she's like eight when she started it, right? So there's only so much you can do. So we introduced a generative um model for coming up with 3D meshes, right? That then she could kind of poke in with the thing, right? Like, okay, come up with your brand, figure it out. Oh, you need a logo. All right, let's work together on Chat GPT or um or or a DALI, right? And come up with something that way. Like, what is a problem that you are do not have the skill necessary at the moment to have an okay solution to, right? And how can we use the tools that are available to be able to do it, right? And it's the same as any other tool, right? If if I'm using a penny hammer to knock in a nail and I'm okay with that, my four-year-old is going to have a hard time using that thing, right? She'll need a sledgehammer that's light enough for her to hold so she just doesn't miss every time, right? So I will find whatever tool it's necessary for her to help me build, you know, our chicken cooper, whatever, right? Generative AI tends to be the same thing with little kids. I see is have them start with a purpose before you just throw it at them. Uh so they're trying to, they want, um, oh, the latest thing with the nine-year-old has been she wants, she takes singing lessons, right? And she couldn't find a song that she wanted to uh to sing outside of the one from K-pop Demon Hunter that's been going absolutely insane and I can't listen to anymore, right? So, all right, here's a great, there's this thing called Suno, right? Let's use Suno, come up with your like talk about your day, right? We'll go talk about your day, we'll put that into Sono, it'll generate lyrics for you in a in a background sound. Okay, now how do you does this not sound quite how the way you want? Are you looking for more upbeat? Now more downbeat. Let's diagnose and debug what the output of this was, right? And try and gear it more towards what you're looking for, right? And that gives them the agency to be able to play with it and not just assume that everything it gets it that it gives to you is correct, right? It's a, you know, generative AI is a conversation that you should have, not a just give me this and I get whatever you give me, right? So that allows them to play with it just like any other toy, right? Any other tool, and they'll understand it better. That's that's would be my recommendation.
SPEAKER_01A couple of takeaways. I love I love the idea of the kind of the gamification or giving it a like a reason why we're sitting down in front of the keyboard today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, second would be you're involved in that process as well.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, for a couple of reasons too, right? Like it's new. It's only a couple of years old, right? Um, you know, we heard the the great thing about uh Grok turning into Mecha Hitler the other day, right? So like it there is stuff's going to go weird. Yeah. And I'm not I'm not necessarily going to shelter my kids from that because that's a reality. Obviously, if there's something that's vastly lewd, like that'll like all within certain appropriateness, and every parent should choose where that is, right? But like, oh, that's not what I was expecting. I wonder why it's doing that. That's kind of funny. Let's figure it out. And that gets them involved in how do we research why it's doing what it's doing, right? This is, you know, you can't get your kid to sit there and read or watch the news for latest current events, have it happen to them. They'll be a little bit more interested to actually go out and research on their own what's going on, right? So it puts the power again, it's all about putting power in their hands, right? And you to be just like in every other aspect of their life, a supporting role model, right? That's there to push them and nudge them forward and also make sure they don't get smacked in the face by a car, right?
SPEAKER_01So the interest level of kids, especially with the you know, screens being everywhere these days, yeah, um, isn't guaranteed. Nope. Beyond making it interesting for them, like like what has the engagement been like from your daughter? Was it instantly adopt like she adopted this and was like, this is a lot of fun? Or was there some I don't get it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, with some things, yes, with some things no, with some things it took time. Um, so uh she was uh we're we're big fans of anime in in this household, right? So um she was watching Avatar the Last Airbender, arguably not anime, but that's a different conversation. Um and she thought it would be really cool to make a VR game that where she could be a waterbender, because she's like, oh, I want to learn waterbender, right? So she did it for a little while, but the difficulty level, even with the assistants and me who's you know, teaches game development, right? At least at least part of the day, right? It was a little bit too much for her, even though her interest level was there. It was just too hard and she fit fizzled out, right? Um, we found another thing, wu-shoo. So now she takes Kung Fu and learns Tai Chi, similar thing, right? But as she's doing it, now she has more interest coming back to it later because she's starting to understand coding a little bit more, right? Or the other aspect be, oh, I can use my phone to take a motion capture of you doing these things, and now we can throw it into a game that someone else is making, right? Or she can go into Roblox and have it as an anime thing, right? So I would never recommend forcing it because there's nothing that makes a kid hate something more than being it done against their will, right? It kind of saps the love of it, right? Um, but realize like they're gonna go at their own speed, right? And if you're using it around them and they're seeing cool stuff, or you poke at them every now and it's like, oh, you want to make lemonade, you you know, you can draw on your thing lemonade, five cents, or you can design the board out and we'll print it, right? Your choice doesn't matter to me, right? And maybe just play there and show them, oh, check this out, isn't this cool, right? Engage and play with them. Um, that is that's tends to be the winning formula. Just don't expect to hit a home run every time. It would be you you can't do that with anyone, adults or kids, right? Sure. So so take the niche when you get it.
SPEAKER_01But so it kind of sounds like that's what you should be doing regardless of the activity with your kids, is kind of introducing them to them, supervising them, coaching them along, and then moving forward. You know, one of the um I guess one of the bigger questions about AI and education is what should the educators do? And in particular, you know, I I've heard across the spectrum, obviously I referenced the school in Austin that's encouraging it highly, but there's some schools that are like it's off limits. And yes, you know, I thought about this a lot um recently because somebody asked me, and and my response to them was that schools should be encouraging the usage of it. Is it cheating? I don't know, but it doesn't matter because this tool is going to be something that they need to learn how to use. And the sooner they get good at conversing with the models, the sooner that they will be more viable as, you know, uh an employee, a business owner, or whatever. So, how do you address this kind of conundrum of the old way of learning and this new paradigm that that isn't going to stop?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um so there are a couple of ways I can I can go about referencing this. The computer science way is all the people that learned punch cards were looking at the people that were starting to code using, you know, uh basic. Um, and they said, you're cheating. No, everyone wants to have bit level um addressing capability. You know, you'll never do it as good as me. This is cheating, right? And then they were wrong. And then the the people that came in with C, right, said it it was the same battle, right? And now we get right. So it every uh every single level looks at what they're doing. And remember, it's really hard to change, right? In order for you to change, the the pain of staying where you are tends to have to be greater, right, than the pain of doing something else. And there's a lot of fears like, oh no, what about my job will get replaced? I have to fight this, even subconsciously, I'm fighting it because I'm worried about it personally, right? Um so there's that aspect of it, and to which that I would say your job as a teacher is about the kids. How you feel about it doesn't necessarily matter. Um, I have the same thing with politics in school, right? Yeah. I can be and start ousting all of my political beliefs and everything to the kids, but all that does is bully all the kids that that think differently, right? Um, my job is to be there, encourage the kid to turn into the best version of themselves, even if it's something that I would hate. That's like obviously there's Ed Cage's. You should, if the kid's taking a knife up and starting to chase people, you should probably stop them, right? But within all normal, what we would consider realms of what we would see in our day-to-day lives, let them be who they are. Um I uh personal anecdote on that. I went to school in the 80s and 90s, right? And in middle school, I really, I really was a horrible student, like a straight F student, right? I really, really, really loved robots. I saw this thing called robot wars. Mark Thorpe did in San Francisco. Great guy used to bug him all the time on AOL and some messenger. Um, anyways, he he created this amazing thing. I could build a robot and have it beat up another robot. I was a little nerdy kid. I couldn't beat anyone up by myself, but I still like martial arts, right? So I figured out a way to get my and my teacher to say, okay, you can build this. You just have to make sure you get through our curriculum first. So I did a year's worth of curriculum in a month. This is a good sweet deal for him because his administration still required that. And I started building my robot successfully, by the way, Psychotron, great robot. Now imagine you're a principal and you just hear Megadeth blasting in the hallway, followed very, very shortly closely by a robot with spikes coming out of it and the head of Bill Clinton with a beanie spinning, right? Like I got suspended. Quite literally, I got kicked out of school for doing that, right? In my mind, that was the thing that led me to my career. Yeah. Right. What that educator said, no, this is not a place for that, was the thing that led me to the place that school was supposed to lead me to, where my inevitable career is, right? They could not, and it's not unreasonable that they could not see that this would be a future that would exist and that I would have a head start in over everyone else if I was just allowed to follow that. Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So you're right now, if change is exponential, the the teachers of a craze school kid, right? Look at this podcast. People, if you said, hey, I'm gonna go on the internet and talk to strangers and that's how I'm gonna make my living in the 90s, right, they would have laughed you off the street, right? Um it is impossible for you to understand what the world that your child, that your your children in your in your school or at home will look like, what the jobs will look like, right? What'll be in FAD when they graduate, right? So like have an open mind, right? AI is currently being utilized in almost every single field, right? I got a friend whose refrigerator has Chat GPT in it.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00Right? You it's just where it's going to be, right? And you could be that traditionalist that says we have to use pen and paper to do absolutely everything, and you have to write it individually by yourself, right? But as a business owner, I care about time to market. Yeah, right. So there will be a place for the people that want to sit there and practice their handwritten calligraphy. Yeah. Right. There is a million-dollar business out there doing wedding napkins, right? But if you're not the person that's willing to go and push and make that your thing, you want an actual stable job, right? Then the businesses need to focus on making money. So what is what as a school are you preparing your student for, right?
SPEAKER_01You know, kind of my my thoughts on this were we had sponsored a national conference for EOS, if anybody listening is familiar with that. And we were excited to release this kind of this new executive curriculum for for teaching AI. And I followed what MIT was doing and what the business schools were doing, and it was a multi-week uh kind of cohort, right? You learn this on week one, you do some exercises, you come back on week two. And when we would talk to executives and we'd say, Yeah, it's a 10-week program, they'd kind of go, ah, right? Like we're in an age of instant gratification expectations. It costs money, that's 10 weeks. Yeah, and there's obviously the the the investment of that. And the response that we kept getting was uh can we do it in a day? Can we do it in two days? And I said, you know, let me think about that. And and kind of what I came to was that the old paradigm of learning required immersion in the subject for an extended period of time and practice and and experience and you know the apprentice level, and then you you elevate and all that so that in the situations where my subject matter expertise was required, I was able to instantly recall on demand.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01That's the old paradigm based on the way that we look at things now. The new paradigm is that I don't even need to know the information, I just need to know how to get the information. And recall is not part of that equation when you're using generative AI if you know how to communicate with it. So, you know, the result of that was we ended up creating a two-day curriculum. And people said, Well, wait a minute. I signed up for a 10-week program. Are you gonna make me an AI expert in uh in two days? My answer was no. And I don't know that I could make you an AI expert in six months. But what I can do is make you an expert level user of AI, right? And that for me personally was a huge paradigm shift because it it really it there was a line between the old way of of becoming an expert and what the definition of an expert today looks like. And it looks like that that that thesis is tracking with kind of how you're talking about this today. And it's refreshing to see. Now I know that there are parents out there um and they're asking, like, well, what is my school's plan? Um, I'm an I'm a user. What are they gonna say about my children using it? Yeah, like how do I address this if my school is has got a policy where it's like AI is not for the classroom or something like that?
SPEAKER_00Like I, as a parent that is super into business and super into tech, right, didn't focus on getting a school that had a huge amount of business or tech courses because I had the resources to be able to fulfill that. So therefore, I looked for a school that could scaffold in um in a way that we couldn't, right? Um, so so a lot more of the social emotional stuff because we're busy, so we try, but like there's only so much time, right? So um so I'd say worst case scenario, if you can't get anyone in the administration. Administration, if you're into it, you're like that is bonding ties. Yeah. Right. Um, like that's that's a great chance to have your kid be interested in the thing that you're interested in. And uh that's really hard to do, especially as they get older, right? Um so so that's one. Uh PTOs are your best way to go, um, also. So parent teacher um organizations tend to have a bit of sway with what goes, and they tend to be the loudest uh in the room. So they can, if nothing else, offer extracurricular type stuff that will be able to help as well. Um this is I take having been, it's it's weird. My wife loved school and college. For her, it was the exact we have basically the same outcome in our careers and our lives, right? Um, our first, I think there was our third date, we founded a nonprofit together. Like that's how in sync we are on all of these things, right? In education, right? But we both got there different ways, right? So I would say that I look at school primarily as a way to augment in the things that I as a parent cannot teach them or cannot give them myself. Right. Okay. And like because of because of that, it allows me to say, all right, school is really good for a thing, right? And everyone, every parent worries that their school is giving them stuff that they don't want them to give. Right. So have those conversations with the child. Oh, my teacher says that I can't use ChatGPT because it's cheating and it's writing my essay for me, even though I am like inputting all of this stuff and all of my ideas and all it's doing is just making me sound better, right? Because you say it's important to sound better, right? So having those conversations so that the kid can inevitably make their own decision, kind of see all the sides of it. That's indispensable for your kid to be able to go out and into the world and make smart decisions based off of the data that they have when they're on their own.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. Um you can yell at, you can yell at schools all you want, but they are like the administration that's making the decisions are not at ground level. So they don't understand the ground truth. Uh the teachers are so ridiculously overworked that they don't have time to learn the new technologies and play with it, right? They're working. They teachers have summers off, but they work all summer. It's like interesting, right? Yeah. Um I'll say I've never been more tired in my life than when I was a full-time teacher.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I hope you're enjoying the episode. Did you know that while you're listening to this, competitors are already boosting EBITDA with generative AI? If you're still stuck in pilot mode, margin and market share are leaking every quarter. CheapAIOfficer.com guides executive teams to the three moves they need to be doing. Identifying the top AI plays that will lift revenue or slash costs within 90 days, de-risk adoption with team training, airtight governance, and change management best practice. And then building and deploying production grade AI-powered tools. No extra headcount, full ROI tracking. The results? Operators at Scale Generative AI cut process costs 22% last year. Let's talk. Claim your free, private, 15-minute executive briefing by going to chiefaiofficer.com and walk away with a board ready roadmap. Slots feel fast, so lock yours in. Now, enjoy the rest of the episode. You know, it's it's such a uh an interesting situation because do I want my kids to be able to have an offline conversation with somebody and be able to contribute their perspectives based on the things that they've learned? Sure. However, um for commercial contribution, their inability to be true like expert level users of what is no doubt, in my opinion, going to be the predominant technology that is everywhere. Like the balance of those two things is a little tricky. Yes. And I I I get it that teachers um you know they're not technologists. Um and they're also not in industry.
SPEAKER_00Right? The majority of teachers are have been teachers for the majority of their life. Yeah. Right. So they they technically have no idea what industry looks like. Like by by default, right? Yeah, that makes sense. So, so like uh that's different when it comes to college, but even then not necessarily so, right? Because they have uh generally speaking, are there because they're doing research, and that research is grant paid. Yeah. Right. So they've probably never tried starting a company, right? For one, they probably haven't been under the, oh, I might get fired, not because I don't have tenure, but because like I gotta make payroll, right? Yeah. I gotta get, I have this deadline for this product that has to go out, or the company goes out of business, right? And that is a particularly difficult place to be in as a as an employee, a high-level employee at a job, right? Um so like I I would argue teachers, teachers at the moment are are in a position where they're better at teaching the social emotional skills, the teamwork skills, the how to be you skills than they are ever going to be at teaching the real world industrial skills. There is a small caveat around that, around trade school. Um, the best teachers I've ever had was at my technical trade school, which was my high school, right? Because they all did the work. And they were like, don't listen to that guy. Trust me, this is what happens in real life.
SPEAKER_01I want to ask, do you think that that that what the school experience in five years, 10 years is going to be isn't going to be as much about educating you on topics outside of EQ and socialization and things? Do you think that everybody will just assume that, oh, if you want to learn something, you go use AI. If you want to learn something fact-based, I guess.
SPEAKER_00So what we found is it's difficult to a kid doesn't have the the the frontal part of their brain cooked well enough to be able to really drive themselves, right? But before we said, hey, this is the Dewey Decimal system. Yeah. Look up the card that has the information that you want and go look in the book that's 10 years old to find the information you want.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. And that worked really well in the 80s and 90s because the change of, or sorry, just the change of change, right? Was slow enough that it could handle that pace. Right. The modern book is AI, right? The the modern lesson. I remember in the 90s, we had this thing called Windows on Science. They were on laser discs, right? And that was the new thing. Everyone got the grant to get them. They were record player player, like record-size CDs that you'd put in, and they'd have videos where you could actually see the condors flying versus looking at a black and white hand-drawn picture in a book from the 80s, right? So, like it was another level of immersion, it was a which allowed for more in-depth understanding, right? AI in education can be the same thing for I am curious to go in more depth about this. Why do I need to know the Pythagorean theorem? Right. What's its use cases, right? What, you know, the not even just as an information gathering uh technique, right? But a a computer system can understand what the actual attention span and the actual understanding and comprehension levels are for each individual student, right? If I my teachers speaking in front of 30 kids, I can only speak at one skill level. Yeah. Right. I and like I try not to do that, but I'm running around like mad, which is absolutely terrible for the shy kid that doesn't raise their hand or I don't know about, right? That's struggling in something. It requires only the loud kid to get all the attention because they're the loudest and I notice them, right? Yeah. So so it tends to equalize the playing field when you have something that truly understands what you're doing. And that's like all the AI tutors and stuff like that. Um, I think AI tutors are nice, but I think they are a side conversation to how AI should be used in education, right? Um I I wonder the prospect, I wonder the sanity in having every single person learn the exact same thing.
SPEAKER_01Agreed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Right? Like sure, competency is like knowing, you know, addition is really good, right? Knowing basics from uh all over the place is good. But a lot of times you can learn those basics in different ways. I can learn the Pythagorean theorem in a uh map building course, I can learn it in an architectural course, I can learn it in Woodshop by trying to make an angle bracket for my shelf. Like there's I um I can learn it in computer game programming for figuring out 3D vectors uh for my for my character's movements, right? There's unlimited ways of using that information.
SPEAKER_01So we might be finding a situation where the concept is learned by the individual through different modalities or experiences based on what engages them the most.
SPEAKER_00Correct. And now imagine that you have a system that can cross-reference every place that that skill or that competency or that tool is being used, right? Now you're able to say, oh, two things. One, I need to learn this because I need to learn it, right? What is the shortest path for me to learn this using concepts I already understand? So it can relate like a amazing teacher would, right? Hey, little Timmy, you love robots, right? You think about the the ball being thrown by the robot. Like, how do you learn to throw that thing? Write out a recipe for that. Now we can look and apply that to baking a cake.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Right. Um so many questions here, man. Like, yeah. So so I know in the learning process, we can get into the biology of education, new neural pathways and connections are created in the brain through that inquisition on the topic. Yes. If if that inquisition isn't um, I'm not saying that the ex existing school model is is, you know, the the best or anything like that. But how is that going to impact, I guess, neural development? I mean, I don't even know if that's a topic you want to talk about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, that's fine. So so the brain learns when it's being referenced um a couple of different ways. When it brain it needs to reference something that already exists in order for it to take hold. Um, right. It's extremely hard to learn extremely new novel concepts. It's even harder if those concepts are purely ethereal, right? So like it, like um, it's extremely hard to understand quantum mechanics because it we can't, we have no ability of imagining what that looks like, right? So we come up with like Schrodinger's cat and all these other things as models to be able to help solidify that that stuff, right? We know what a cat is, we know what a box is, we kind of know what undead looks like, right? So so that's first part. So having a system that can understand what you kind of already know and reference new concepts to those will make your knowledge acquisition substantially faster. Um, a great way to see this is ask ask a newbie that's never danced before to learn something, and then ask someone that's been dancing for 30 years to learn the same dance. The 30-year-old doesn't matter if they've never seen it before, they'll get it faster, right? Yeah. Um the the hard part with younger kids is they don't have a lot of direction and they also have their direction tends to change very, very rapidly, right? Um, so having something that keeps them going and guiding them so that they can build up that um that time on task, as well as the resiliency when something doesn't quite go right, right? And make that part of the game, right? If you play a video game and you lost your level, you usually don't. I mean, sometimes you throw the Xbox out the window, but usually you don't. Usually I say, ah, and you start trying harder, right? So being able to model it kind of more off of that so it builds resilience and you get it's hard for a teacher to do this because they have to have all the right answers, right? But if you individualize and you have it so that everyone can kind of work on the right place, that means they're allowed to fail and not fail behind fall behind.
SPEAKER_01Such a crazy paradigm. Because, you know, instantly my mind goes to, well, give the teacher AI so that they can but then you're you're still missing the whole fact that that reality, how we interact with each other, how we collect and use information, that paradigm is shifting significantly. So would it help a teacher teach in a traditional way? Yes. Yes. Student would lose, like they wouldn't be getting the rest. They wouldn't be getting the 10,000 hours and using the tool that is going to be the dominant device.
SPEAKER_00And not even just that, the teacher's got to use it differently. Um, Sam Altman came out and said this was an interesting thing that he was noticing is that people that are my age, like in their 40s, right, use it kind of like a replacement for Google, right? Yeah. People there in their 20s to 30s, right, they're using it as a as a as an interactive agentic thing that is helping them do their tasks. That's more closely with how I use it, right? Yeah. Um, kids that are like 12 and 15 are using it as an operating system for their life. Yes. Yes. Right. So like I am old. I my ways are dead. Like it or not, I no longer the way I do things no longer matters and will no longer serve the kids, right? Yeah. So as a teacher, and again, I'm a little bit further on the adoption side than probably most are. I would be fascinated to see how my kid, if I said, hey, this thing can do anything you want, right? How would you use it? And then let them play with it by introducing it thing by thing, right? Um, the other hard part is how do you explain this can do anything? Well, that's a lot, right? Um the way I like to think of it, I'm gonna use an anime reference, um, but AI is a lot like magic in anime, right? So if you've seen like there's a lot of uh Is a K anime is out there at the moment where you like you get hit by a bus and you come into a new world as a fantasy character that has magic, and they usually have leveling systems, right? Yeah. In in order for you to use the magic in these, in these worlds, you have to understand precisely what it is you're trying to use it for, right? So if I can, the people that came from another world had an advantage because they were in a world that had bullets. They're in a world that had, you know, sushi that had cars, right? So they're now in this, you know, fictitious medieval world that has never seen those things, they can use the exact same magic to be able to make all these truly incredible things that no one ever thought or saw before simply because they know how to envision whatever they want to have. And the clearer your vision is, the clearer the thing that you can create is, the better that thing will be, right? Yeah. So so when you're using AI, right, anyone can go into Chat GPT and say, make me a funny Yeti video. Yeah. Right. But it will not come out anything like those viral things that are coming out because the vision that that guy had when he made it was so ridiculously clear. The prompt was like, it's like 12 paragraphs long or something like that, where he engaged everything, right? Like, so like if you go up to the kid and you'll be like, this is this is truly magic. It's truly a great tool you can you can use, but everyone has the same level to it, right? Whatever, the clearer you have, it will make whatever you want to the clarity of your vision. So spend some time thinking about how pr how you want to make that thing, right? And that's that's how we taught computer science always, right? There's the old um my favorite exercise in middle school was I'm a robot. Get me from my desk to the door, out the door into the exit, right? So they'd say I was like, oh, get up, walk five steps, right? And I would walk different size steps for every single kid, right? Oh, turn left. I would start spinning around like a ballerina, right? Yeah. Um, sometimes the program would crash because I'd be walking over tables and eventually I'd get to the railing and I didn't want to go over the railing, right? So like they learned through practice that, oh no, I'm doing very specifically exactly what you tell me to do, right? AI is the same thing, it's just more open-ended, right? And you don't have to sit there hammering out code the whole time to get to do it. It's conversational.
SPEAKER_01Man, my brain is going in so many directions. This is a topic that, again, we we uh I I run a business. I don't think too much about AI and education. Yeah, but I want to shift gears a little bit. I don't know that you have all the context for the questions I'm gonna ask, but I'm very intrigued about and I think the school is in Austin, but it's an an AI-driven school.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, four hours or two hours of edge uh of learning a day, I think they say, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but it's still a full school day. They're only spending two of those hours, though, on the learning. What is the rest of that time being spent on?
SPEAKER_00See, okay, so so me and my wife, um again, she's an educator as well, uh, more traditionally educated one than I am, uh, go back and forth about this particular school quite a bit. Um, when I first heard about it, I was like, oh, that's fascinating. They were able to condense the amount of learning required to get through their standardized test into two hours instead of eight hours, which means that the kids are learning more individually at their own pace and they're and and it's working. They're able to get that that process going. I nerded out about that at first. I saw that, I thought, oh, great, it's great, right? And then, because I'm developing systems to to try and do that as well, right? Um and then I was like, but they're still teaching for that test, aren't they? Right? So, so are all they doing is trying to do the same thing everyone else is doing, but faster, right? That seems like a terrible waste, right? Like, I personally think that a four-year college, right, is a terrible, terrible waste of time if you had something else you could do. But if you need four years specifically to do it, is a great use of that time, right? If you could have done it shorter, do it shorter because you have other crap you could be doing, right? If I half the cost, half the time, I can be out in industry actually learning how to apply my knowledge much quicker, right? So if they're just taking off the time, right, and they're not allowing them to explore and do anything more, right? And they're not changing the paradigm of what they're actually learning, then you you've like stopped short, right? You have this amazing technology, this amazing skill, you have this amazing uh uh capability within your kids, and you're in, you're still telling them only do what we tell you to do. Right.
SPEAKER_01But here's the here's the kind of the the curveball there. Yeah. These kids are scoring like almost within the first year of of the school, like those kids were in the top nationally, like the top percentile or so when it came to performance compared to individuals who were learning traditional ways.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. That that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Whether but what are they doing with it? Right. So if they were if they were advertising to me, our kids get through, you know, instead of shortening it for the pro for the purpose of shortening it and getting better, all right, we're doing that for the purpose to allow them to either get through it faster, right? So that they can do something with that knowledge, or we're scaffolding all of the baseline books that they have to get through so that they can then apply that knowledge to uh to an industry to to create their own things, right? We um at the school I used to teach at, they had a STEM fair where they do a shark tank every single year. And kids, yeah, some of the kids actually built products that they went off and prototyped for uh um and had an industry, right? If they were going out and making collaborations, if they're spending their time going off and teaching other kids, right? Like if there were pathways for them to then go off and use that knowledge or to start the next year earlier, right? And yeah, it's I f I feel like it's just like it it it solved the it solved a problem without necessarily knowing why they were solving the problem.
SPEAKER_01You know, this is interesting because uh our chief AI officer, his name is Adam Lyons, he's homeschooled his kids. His 15-year-old has already graduated from high school because he was able to consume the content at a pace that made sense for him. Yeah, they live out on a ranch, there's no distractions, that sort of thing, right? Now, in a in a school, though, if I'm advancing like that, what am I gonna be the 13 year old senior in high school? Like, what is my social media? Like yes. Intellectually and mentally, uh I I could be capable of it. Emotionally and socially, um, I'm not ready for what the peers who did it the traditional way are doing. This is correct.
SPEAKER_00And they're that that's why they're they're at such an advantage. They have their own school. They can do whatever the hell they want. Right? We had at um I'm got a message. So the school I taught was uh taught at that particular one was for gifted kids. Um I've taught at every school of every type, but um, but that one that that I keep referencing was for gifted kids. We had a third grader that could do calculus, right? Yeah. All of our kids, we had um a graduate of mine that by sixth grade had all of my industry certifications and by uh sophomore year in high school had won a quarter million dollars for solving an interesting problem in AI. He won a like a collegiate competition, right? Yeah. So like they're doing stuff, right? They're they're going out into their community and they're finding a way to apply what they learned, right? Okay. This is so I have a I have an ed tech that I'm that I'm developing that is trying really hard to be the cross-section between traditional education and industry, right? Because those two is very, very disjointed at the moment. Um, right. So the problem with with with traditional school is they're learning stuff, but they don't have any context to why they're learning that stuff. Yes. Right. And then the industry is like, well, these are the kids we're getting. So I guess we'll take them. And then we're going to, on average, spend a year to two years upskilling them so that they're actually useful. Right. And it's the kids that went off and did the projects and the stuff like that on their own, and they started their own GitHub, right? With kind of cool stuff. Or they went off into a robotics thing and started competing or whatever. Those are the kids that tend to get the jobs now, not the ones with the senior degrees and anything, right? So, like they have their own school. You can scaffold the the social emotional part however you want. Yeah. Right. Um, and to be honest, there is not a single enterprise that I've ever worked for where everyone was at the same level and that everyone was the same age. Yeah. Right. So again, if you go back to what are you teaching these kids to do, part of it is to get through the early childhood social emotional stuff that is hormone-based and brain development based and all that other stuff, right? Which is damn hard. Right. Like you're you're you're biologically dumb to some things on purpose. Yes. Right. So like that that does need to happen. And teachers, there's no one better than teachers at doing that part, right? But I don't think it's necessarily wrong for for a three-year-old to feel comfortable, not three-year-old, a third grader to feel comfortable having a conversation with a college student at their level. Right. I think it's awkward for that college student at the moment. Absolutely, it is, right? But if I go into industry, right, there's two problems that's gonna happen. I am the 20-something year old kid that knows everything technically that's the latest, greatest thing, but have no experience. You're the 70-year-old, one step out the door, that has enough experience that I could never, it'll take me decades to get that, right? If we can talk as peers about the exact same thing, that company grows, right? Immediately, right? That that conversation grows. But generally speaking, we we sit the the uh junior level guy in a room over there, we throw some random crap at them to see if they break and and want to quit. And then we don't engage them in those conversations. So it takes two years for them to get into a place where they're actually contributing, because where is seniors afraid to talk to them? There is juniors scared to talk to us. Yeah. Right. Um my my wife has last bit on that, uh, but my wife has uh schools are called global children's school, right? So at all times there's English, Spanish, Russian, uh being taught uh spoken to these uh kids from three months on, um, from native speakers. And they come in, and we had the idea with this is these kids are going to be in a global world no matter what, right? I during COVID, all of my people that were working with me were in different countries. One of them was in a different country every week, right? So, like I have to be used to having these conversations culturally with these guys and still get work done, right? So we formed a school based around multicultural immersion to be able to help that, right? And then and I take care of the tech immersion side of things, right? Um like these kids, like I see it in my kid. My my six-year-old has Wu Shu. She is happy learning and figuring out Chinese and talking with these kids and immersing themselves in that culture. We go over here to uh Russian ballet, she does the exact same thing and she feels confident in there, right? It's like all of the all of the advantages of being an army brat with just being comfortable in any any culture without all of the trauma of being ripped out of your house and changing locations every three years, right? Um, so like allow that immersion to happen. It's it's where they're going to be eventually, anyways, right?
SPEAKER_01I'll tell you, you know, Dave, I I I came into this um at first. I I feel like we've only scratched the surface. And I'll tell you why. I came into this uh interview today thinking that it was pretty cut and dry. Like they need to introduce AI into the school. But this conversation has uh I don't know, certainly opened my perspective on what is this, what is this the what's what's the answer to this AI and education situation? The old system, I think most people, if you you know, really uh let them look under the hood, they would say, hey, this this existing education system is broken. It's preparing people for something like a world that doesn't exist anymore. But it's not as easy as just throwing AI into a classroom or giving it to the teacher, and I don't know, there's there's a lot to unpack.
SPEAKER_00Plato is so like Plato was a great example, right? He just sat there and thought a whole lot, and they had like Socratic debates and whatnot all day long about these things, right? Like they call it stoicism because you're just sitting on the porch, right? Um, I think having a meaningful conversation and taking the time to really not just say, oh God, there's a new tool, let's throw it in as quickly as possible, right? But having is like, what are we actually preparing these kids for? Right. And how much of that do we can we not understand even exist? Like, we can't even imagine yet, right? So, like my teaching methodology more recently revolves around how do I give them the scaffolding so that no matter what it looks like, right, they can figure it out as they go, right? It's not a skill or competency education anymore, right? Because they can get that from anywhere in a moment's notice better than any person that we can see, right? It's a a human skills, because I can't build a rocket ship by myself very easily, right? And I might have to talk to someone else to bake me a cake one day or raise me a seed fund, right? Seed round, right? So like I need the human things, and that's really you can learn that from humans better than anyone because you have to practice, right? But it's also like a looking at the landscape, predicting the near future, and then having the resilience to say, oh God, not again. Right. Um, there's a new tool. I gotta dive in. My job is to learn as fast as it is to produce because the more quicker I learn, the faster I produce. Right. Um, I I got everything, man. I've got my meetings are on Firefly AI. So I they take the meetings for me and they give them to my people so I don't have to talk to them and try to fuddle what I remember through the meeting. I'm writing a book and I'm using this little guy here as um as a little AI recorder. It records me, says exactly what I want. I feed it into an LLM that organizes it because I have the worst ADDA and known demand. So when I talk, it doesn't make any sense to anybody, including me, right? And then I do a summary of it that's using my own prompt that then sends it off to my editor and my wife, who that then says, Does this fit within the context of the book? Or or should I just scrap this? And then I'll put it there and I'll start writing, right? Based off of those notes, right? See, I the only way I can get this stuff done, right, is to have like I tried writing a book before. It took me two years, and I barely, you know, barely graced two paragraphs, right? This thing, I'm on nine chapters in a month, right? And obviously I then have to go and then personalize and make it so that it's me, right? And there's still the ownership of that, but just the process of getting it going has been exponentially accelerated, right? So, like, but that's only existed for this thing's been out for less than a year. Right. Um, so like being okay with jumping in and teaching your kids to be okay, saying, Oh, here's this new new thing. Is it actually useful to me before I start playing with it? Right. And if it is useful to me, I'll play with it, figure it out, and then at least I'll have those reps to know what I like and don't like, right?
SPEAKER_01Like I said, man, this like I came in here thinking, oh, this is gonna be an easy topic. But over the course of this conversation, um, I've got more questions than I do answers now. And I appreciate you sh sharing this perspective. I mean, because it's I I would imagine that any parent today that's listening to this podcast, especially, is wondering how this is gonna impact their kids. Yeah. And I I don't know that that we have the answer today. So I don't think we'll ever have the answer. You know, as we wrap up, are there any uh I guess advice or or or final thoughts about this? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00To parents, it to parents, I would say play, right? Your kids are still your kids, so play. Don't be scared of it. Don't be yelling out they took our jobs. Like, don't don't worry about that at the moment. It's it's for your kid, not for you. So do the scary thing. If you expect them to do the scary thing, you owe it to them to also do the scary thing, right? Um, and and that'll be tricky, right? So just recognize that it's tough and it's kind of supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01Um parents that that have some interest in diving a little bit deeper into this, what would be some resources or where can they find out more about what you guys are doing? Because it sounds like you are maybe you haven't figured it out, but you're in the process for sure.
SPEAKER_00We're trying. We're definitely trying. Um, so you can find me at guild g-u-i-l-d hall-h A L L learning.com. That's uh our school. And also you'll see our products um coming out on there. So we have a new one called Dojo, which is um an AI-assisted learning platform that doesn't it makes all the lessons for you ad hoc and also tracks your pathways to match it with different skills, just like we were talking earlier. But we also have studios and the kids can come in and learn to make anything they want. Um, we have full machine shops, uh, wood shops, VR equipment, uh, art and design, jewelry rooms, everything. Um, so we're here to help them learn to use the tools to help them successfully make their futures.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm glad you're doing this. That it sounds like it's even more needed than I thought. And uh such a fascinating topic that isn't gonna be easily put in a box. And I appreciate you taking the time with us today and um kind of blowing my mind a little bit. I'll be appreciating a lot as I this will be my shower thoughts for the next few weeks, I think. Thanks again, Dave, for taking the time out for uh joining us today. And um, I again I really appreciate the perspective that you shared from such uh, you know, like you're doing the thing, and that's awesome to see. So thank you so much. I appreciate it. Okay, everybody, thank you for uh joining us for this episode. Uh again, like I said, I I thought think we could have probably gone on for another hour here, um, but this is where we're at. So uh go noodle on that, and we'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to using AI at work. Don't forget to subscribe for more conversations about how to use AI at work. And a special thank you to our sponsor, Chief AI Officer, for empowering businesses with AI education and training. Visit their website for free AI readiness assessment and AI strategy guide to help you get started using AI at work. That's www.chiefaiofficer.com. Well, thanks to our producer, Evan DeSalnier, for making this episode possible. Follow us on Twitter at the handle usingAI at work and visit www.usingai at work.com for free resources to help you harness AI in your role.