Human-Centered AI

Join Dr. Pete & Stephanie Sylvestre as they explore a topic that is quickly becoming one of the biggest transformations of our time. From the apps we use every day on our phones to the recommendations we see online. Artificial Intelligence is becoming part of our everyday lives faster than ever before. But with that growth, also comes some concern and our guest today is truly an expert on the topic. Stephanie Sylvestre is an AI strategist, speaker and thought leader who's helping shape the future of AI and somehow making it all feel a little more human in the process. 

She has spent years exploring how technology, leadership and human connection all collide in this wild new era of artificial intelligence working with global organizations and challenging how companies think about using AI. Learn more about Stephanie here: 

https://avatarbuddy.co/about-us/

Transcript

Welcome And Why AI Feels Fast

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hello, and welcome back to On Air with Dr. Pete. I'm your host, Dr. Pete Economo, and I'm happy to be here with you all today. And such amazing feedback, and it helps us to keep great show ideas coming to you so you can listen wherever you listen. Today we're switching gears a little bit and exploring a topic that I'm interested in but know very little bit about. From apps that we use every day in our phones and recommendations that we see online, artificial intelligence is a part of our everyday lives, and it's faster than we've ever seen before. Stephanie Sylvester is an AI strategist, speaker, and thought leader who's helping shape the future of AI and somehow making it feel a little bit more human in the process. She has spent years exploring technology, leadership, and human connection, all that collide with this wild era of AI working in global organizations and challenging how companies are thinking about using AI. Welcome, Stephanie, to the show.

SPEAKER_04 1:10

Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here today.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Well, I'm excited too, because I mean that. Like I really don't know much about it. But and as a as a professor, it's like here, and you know, some of my colleagues are just like complaining about it. And I don't do well when people complain about stuff, you know. It's like here, so just deal with it, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:29

So let's let's educate them then.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 1:31

Let's educate them.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Well, that's what you're here for. So I'm fascinated with how fast AI has been introduced to us, and I would love to know how you first got involved

How Stephanie Fell Into AI

SPEAKER_00 1:40

in AI.

SPEAKER_04 1:40

I've been doing AI for 10 years. I got involved in AI by accident. I was at dinner one night, and I thought my friend said we should create a digital twin using AI. And I thought that would be great. That would solve a lot of problems. Imagine if everybody had one loving adult that believes in themselves more than they believe in the the in them them.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:03

How much more they can grow and excel. Yeah. And so there's studies that show that that that one loving adult has a huge impact on your trajectory. And she's like, that's not what I really said. And I said, that's okay, that's what we're going with.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

What were you doing at that point?

SPEAKER_04 2:20

I I was uh the chief programs officer and chief informations officer at a local government entity in Miami. And so um I've had at that time I probably had about 25 years in IT. Um and so I wasn't wasn't new to me in terms of tech and using tech to solve b uh problems. Yes, but this piece of tech was was new, and and I've gotten used uh gotten closer and closer to it, realize it's really not tech, even though we call it tech, it's really not tech, and I think that's where uh people get a little bit uh discombolated with because it's tech, it's social engineering, it's resetting of society norms, it's so many things all at once, and that's why you feel so overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yes, it does yeah. Did you do you not feel overwhelmed by it, or is that just because you have all this experience in tech?

SPEAKER_04 3:23

Um I was starting to feel overwhelmed until I realized that most of these things that are coming out are really of no impact on my life.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

And and so what these guys have done is they've done a really good job of marketing.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:42

And because they've done a really good job of marketing, it makes it look like, oh my god, every day there's something new. There's something new. And there there are there is something new, but it's not significantly different.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Well, can I I want to ask you something that might be provocative, but I I recently saw a documentary, and I don't know, maybe you don't even mess with some of those documentaries. Because maybe they just hearing what you just said, maybe they're just doing a good job marketing. But I watched the AI doc, and uh it was really interesting to like see how the I think they were sensationalizing it, but just like saying the message that I got was that uh did you see that? Do you know the AI doc uh on Netflix? No, okay, you're probably healthier for not, but but it was the message was like it's so fast that we don't understand it, and that AI is like gonna develop in a way that it's probably gonna take over things that we're not ready for it to take over.

SPEAKER_04 4:29

Yes, so so part of that is true, but not in the way that you probably think it's true.

Hype, Funding Pressure, And Competition

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 4:35

So these guys are this this is how I summarize it very simply. These guys convince other people to give them billions of dollars. And when they stopped and looked, the probability that they're gonna recruit all of those billions of dollars, right? So if you invest a dollar in me, you expect to get back three dollars, five dollars.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Right. Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_04 5:02

And and so I have to do things to ensure that I can give you back five dollars or ten dollars.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Right.

SPEAKER_04 5:09

And at some point in time, if I I say, oh, give me a dollar and I'll give you back seventy-five dollars, and then I I can't give you back seventy-five dollars, right? Right, that becomes a problem.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 5:21

So that's one one data point to think about. The second data point is AI doesn't have a moat. So most companies, most industries, there's a moat around why it's harder to get get in why you have a competitive edge over somebody else. There's really no moat in AI. That means anybody that wants to apply themselves can apply themselves.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Right.

SPEAKER_04 5:46

To an extent. And so, because of that, every day somebody puts out something, somebody has to compete. So they're just competing to push up products, product, push, push out functionality, push out functionality. They've pushed out so much functionality. I look in this, and and most of the stuff that people are using AI for, I was like, this is complete nonsense. I'm being judgmental there.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah. Well, because you talk about like ethical and inclusive, right? Like you

Ethical AI That Supports Real Work

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Yeah. Like, yeah, so tell tell me about that. Like, how is your background shaped the way that you think about the ethical inclusive AI systems?

SPEAKER_04 6:21

Well, because I'm using AI to help make the world a better place. I'm using AI to help people feel better about themselves. And so, what what does that really mean, right? So you have an assistant that's helping you schedule meetings, finding people, vetting people. So you're in demand, right? And so you can't get through all these people, and then so sometimes what ends up happening, you might get a less than stellar guess because but what if you could have an AI agent that vets the people for you, and then based on how they respond, there's two ways they go either yes, I want to schedule some time, and then you just send them down the path, or no, let's let's have a human chat with them just to verify that the AI was right, that they were not a good so now all of a sudden you could schedule more people, your assistant can do more things.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

And I'm sorry to interrupt, but is this is this like the avatar buddy like ish, or this was what helped you build out the avatar buddy?

SPEAKER_04 7:32

I mean, this is this is what we're doing, this is how what we're advocating. This is not necessarily just avatar buddy. Lots of other companies are doing it the same way. Right. I'm just advocating how to use AI to make people feel good about themselves. So your assistant feels better about herself because she's getting more done, she's not feeling overwhelmed, she's not feeling like drowned in and like, oh my god, there's like 50 more people I need to coordinate with, 50 more people I need to. It's like, oh, I have four people I need to vet, I finished vetting them, I can go home, I can hang out with my kids, whatever, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:10

And so that's where we're saying that AI makes the most sense to live.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 8:17

Say, oh, get rid of your assistant and just let the AI do everything.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

That's not pretty sure my admin heard that the other day because I asked her, and maybe she'll listen to this episode. I asked her, I was like, why don't you look into like because there's a I I keep getting a lot of ads for AI medical assistants, you know, that will answer the phone and take patient information. And and I I thought it would make her job easier. So I was like, why don't you just check it out and see what it's like? And so then she got a little defensive.

SPEAKER_04 8:43

Yeah, I mean, I I think that there's there's a healthy balance between both. It's not about one or the other. And and that's where I'm saying if you do AI that way, it's healthy.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 8:58

Your assistant feels good, she's getting her work done, she feels accomplished. You know, human beings need to have a purpose in life.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Totally.

unknown 9:09

Totally.

SPEAKER_04 9:10

So if you don't if if you have a if you're doing something, you have no purpose in life, what are you going to uh do?

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Yeah, wait, just think I mean Yeah. I want to hear about Avatar Buddy, though. I'm really excited to hear about that because you know, I everything you're saying makes a lot of sense. I mean, this was as a psychologist. I mean, I know this, you know, I don't get yeah, I mean, I know about motivation and purpose, and a lot of our listeners have heard many episodes on that. How do you so tell us about Avatar Buddy?

SPEAKER_04 9:37

Okay, so so we take that same concept and we say we're we want to help you remove bottlenecks. So an example would be the customer said to me, Hey, um we we're overwhelmed with emails. Can you help us get rid of the emails? And I say, Well, and that's not quite the AI that I produce, but let's take a look. And it turned out that there was a different problem that was manifesting itself with too many emails. So we addressed that problem. We took the the uh content knowledge and put it into the AI so that when other people asked AI the question, AI always gave it exactly the same answer. And it's because one, the AI is configured that way, and two, it's using a data vault of only dear data, so it has less data to go through. And that's where we're we're different, right? Because we're saying you get a data vault, you get less data for the day AI to go through, so it's less likely to hallucinate, less likely to make up stuff, then you configure the AI to work the way you work. So everybody works slightly different. You configured AI to work the way you work, and because you configured AI to work the way you work, you're no more likely to be able to you're more likely to be able to get your work done better, quicker, and in probably the same way that you would normally have

Digital Twins And Preserving Legacy

SPEAKER_04 11:15

done it.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Okay, so I'm putting myself at dinner with you and your friend, and you all of a sudden hear a digital twin. You know, and I I was I'm stuck on that. I'm fascinated by that. So, what exactly is a digital twin of a person, and where do you see that heading?

SPEAKER_04 11:31

So a digital twin is taking your personality. So we got we had a psychiatrist, a psychologist, create a personality questionnaire for us, uh-huh. And um a rubric, and now we use that to digitize your personality.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Super cool.

SPEAKER_04 11:49

And then we give you a questionnaire. Um I'm sorry, uh sit down with you with to do interview for you to talk about your life. Like what kind of listic things happen, how did your life shape your worldview? And we give the AI those two things, and the AI within 80-85% degree of accuracy can replicate you, can respond the way you would respond, come in with your perspectives. And so I believe that uh digital twins is gonna soon become a new asset class that you pass down from generation to generation. I inherit Dr. Pete and all his artifacts.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah. So you're so Wait, but that's kind of but that is sort of scary in a way, you know, because I actually so I'm curious when you just said that, like I think about social media, and when people pass, their social media account either becomes a memory account or becomes you know, somebody else manages it, which is a little weird because in the same way we've dealt with grief and loss, now if I have this artifact that's passed down by generations, it's both beautiful and do we ever know what it's like to lose and grieve?

SPEAKER_04 13:01

I believe you'll still you'll still know what it's like to lose and grieve because the twin is not going to completely replicate you. One, and two, it's more more from preserving your legacy. That's where we're thinking about it. Your grandchildren's grandchildren want to learn about what was it like to have your podcasts, what was it like to have your practice? How did you make the decisions that you made? Yeah. And you know, this I believe this is the first time in history that everyone can be preserved. Right now, history is there's a few important people, but we all know that that those people are just like less than a percentage of the people of their time.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Way less, way less, yeah, way less than one percent. You know, uh, Stephanie has me thinking about like Day of the Dead, which is a Mexican kind of Latino culture, you know, just to it's it's beautiful. Like, let's remember our ancestors, you know, and this is so that that's part of your vision. You see that that's what this could serve.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Exactly. So so you you can always remember. I mean, so your family legacy, your history, your culture remains alive. Individual family legacy is passed on orally from generation to generation.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 14:22

But the farther you go away from it, the less you you have. So if you think back four generations, do you know your whatever that grandparents of a grandparents of a grandparents? Right. Do you even know their names?

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Right. No, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:35

It's a but what if you could preserve that and you could know their names and you could know about how they perceive the world?

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Yeah. Does because you're smart and this is what you do, does uh the data or like sort of the as you're writing these twins, like does it borrow from like Ancestry.com or does it like gather data from no? Okay.

SPEAKER_04 14:54

No, the person that's creating the digital twin determines what data goes into the twin. They have full control over the data. We're not pulling data from anywhere. That person is determined so they have full control over how they're being remembered, full control over what people know about them. Can they lie? Well, obviously they can lie. I mean, I won't know if they lie or not.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

I could say that I'm like uh, you know, the pres the governor of New Jersey, or I I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 15:26

I guess it can be you could say that, and then the AI will just repeat that because that's what you said, and that's what's in stored in the data vault.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Got it. All right. So a data vault, how do you see like what what would you say? So that's helpful for people to hear about. What do you think is like the biggest misconception of AI today?

AI Misconceptions And Critical Thinking

SPEAKER_04 15:44

That it can do everything that a human can do. Yeah. That that that you can replace humans with it. Yeah. It's not true. No experiment they've ever run has has shown AI to be able to replace a human 100%.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:02

Um, even those companies that are laying off people en masse is because of AI, they're quietly hiring them back. That doesn't make the headlines.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Right.

SPEAKER_04 16:16

Um, you know, so that kind of irritates me a little bit because I would prefer for them to be honest about why they're laying people off.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:28

It's it it it's it's 2008 all over again where people are like the mortgage crisis impacted one one industry, and people just used it as an as an excuse to to get rid of a whole bunch of staff that they had deemed too expensive.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 16:47

And then they blamed it on the mortgage crisis and just appended people's lives in mass. Yeah. And they're doing the same thing again. It's the absolutely same playbook. It's not AI. If if you know even a little bit about AI, you would know that um AI can't get replaced. Not even for developers.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

So this that to me sounds like some of the critical thinking, which I guess, you know, that's typically what separates even us as a human species from other species. Uh, I guess that's what separates us from AI as a species. If if if we're gonna name AI as a species, are we doing that yet?

SPEAKER_04 17:23

No, I don't think that's I don't think we're there yet.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Okay, we're not there yet. But how do you think you you know people could kind of maintain critical thinking with content that's AI generated?

SPEAKER_04 17:33

Well, if you care about what you're producing and AI uh produces something, you have to take the time to um to review the document. So I'll give a perfect example, right, of the good parts of AI and the not so good parts of AI. But when you put it together, you're still a little bit better off. So I'm not a marketing expert. I wanted to do a marketing campaign around remove bottlenecks, not people. So we already have a few taglines that I also wanted to incorporate. Everyone needs a buddy, safe, simple, fast, human, digital handshake. Those are our taglines that we want to include.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 18:14

So we cre we had already created this marketing buddy, we this marketing AI agent, we call them buddies. It was configured to behave like a marketing person. So I said to it, hey, this is what I want. This is what I'm trying to do. And so it produced a 50-page document, uber uber comprehensive.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 18:38

But in that 50-page document, there was a lot of stuff that was repeated, that wasn't really needed. So then I took six hours. I sat down one Saturday, took six hours, and I went through that document. And when I was finished, it was a 20-page document.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 18:55

And that's the beauty of AI.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:01

Of the fact that I got a I got a marketing campaign in about in a couple of days that would have taken me a few weeks if I had a human do it. But also, I want to highlight the fact that if I'd just taken what AI gave me, I would have had 30 pages of garbage I didn't need.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

That's right. Yeah, and and because you also started with that with the hallucination. Uh, you I learned as a lay person that AI hallucinates because it wants to please you, and so it will make things up and because it always wants to give you an answer. So, in that regard, like how do you see this affecting younger generations that are still in school?

SPEAKER_04 19:39

You still have to you still have to become a content knowledge expert.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:44

If you if you don't know your content, you cannot tell if the AI is telling you garbage. And if you can't tell the AI if the AI is telling you garbage, then you're gonna get you're gonna fall for it. But I also want to tell I tell people this, right? It's not like AI is doing anything new that we haven't experienced before. Like when I was growing up, my brother, he used to do this thing where like all of his friends from a neighborhood would come around, we'd sit on the porch, and he would say something, and it just had just enough truth in it.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 20:16

And then we would spend the afternoon arguing whether or not he was right.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:21

That's what AI does.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Shout out to older brothers. Sounds like your brothers knew my brother. So, what advice would you give to those, like those, those school-age kids? You know, what skills do you think that they need most if in this booming world of AI?

SPEAKER_04 20:36

You need to know how to learn. And and that sounds trite, but I don't think that people know how to learn anymore. Like, how do you go about deconstructing something to figure out if it applies to you or not? So I'll get I'll give I'll give you another really good example to see. So I just got back from Cape Town. I was I went there for Africa Burn. And the organizers of Africa Burn sends us all these things that you need to do. Because if something happens to you in the middle of the desert, they don't want 10, they don't want 10,000 people having a crisis in the middle of the desert.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Of course, right.

SPEAKER_04 21:14

So there's a stretch of road that's paved and corrugated, and it's just kind of like just a horrible, horrible road to drive on. And they call it the tire muncha road. Because by the time you get there, you might have one or two flats.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Exactly. Okay, yeah, I got yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:33

Okay. So I said, I'm gonna go to Africa Burn and I'm gonna go by myself because I couldn't figure out how to get there. So I just rented a car. And people are like, Oh my god, you're renting a car, you're driving by yourself, that is insane. Who does that? Yeah, and they're like, Aren't you concerned about the roads? And I said, Let's deconstruct this. The people going to Africa Burn have loaded up their Trucks and their vans and their vehicles packed with gill to all kinds of stuff, their tent and their gear and their supply and all that stuff. So they're so heavy. Probably they've gone over the weight limit because nobody's checking. And so you put that an overloaded car plus on paved roads with people speeding, then of course you're gonna get flat tires.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Right.

SPEAKER_04 22:31

I am going to Africa Burn by myself with my my body weight on a couple gallons of water.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

How many tires did you arrive with?

SPEAKER_04 22:42

Four tires, no problem. I came back out, no problem.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

I love that that's uh that's like a very rad rational, logical mind. I understand that we share a love for meditation.

Mindfulness, Time Back, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Yes. And you know, your work is also very demanding, very stressful, I'm imagining, and you've talked a lot about your self-care and meditation. So tell us about your daily routine and even the silent retreat that you go on every year.

SPEAKER_04 23:09

So um I get up in the morning and I try to spend 10 minutes just lying there, being still, just listening to whatever songs are around me. And then going throughout the day. Occasionally I'll do some body scans. I I don't always do that as well as I should. To just say, like, how am I feeling right now? So like I just got an email with some bad news, and I stopped and I said, How am I feeling right now? And I was like, I'm actually feeling okay. This is this is good. And then I kept on going. And so because I did that, I was able to then send back a very nice email thanking people for their time, blah blah blah. And the silent retreat is very catarctic because what it does, it's it allows me to just be with myself. Just stop. Yes, and and just be with myself and flush my brain, and and it's it's comical, at least for me, it's comical.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

All the nonsense that I think about when I'm just sitting there and be I love that because it is comical when you can diffuse from it. I mean, obviously, not everyone that's the goal that we do in meditation uh from a mindfulness perspective. So, do you think AI can help people become more mindful or present?

SPEAKER_04 24:39

Yes, so but let me tell you how.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Yes, let's hear that.

SPEAKER_04 24:42

So, because it helps you get your work done quicker, right? Um, gets you helps you produce higher quality work, it gives you more time in the day. And what I am hoping for is people will take more time, that extra time, and spend it in self-care, in meditation, in slowing down, in being bored, in being a little being restless and then not restless because I've become comfortable with the discomfort that's causing me to be restless. So that's why I see AI helping.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Nice.

SPEAKER_04 25:20

When I went to Africa Burn, even though it wasn't a silent retreat, I was there by myself, and I would sit in the car and I just would look out at the vastness of the place. Beautiful and I got a lot of opportunity to just sit and be still and look out, and there's no distraction of technology and and and I left that experience feeling as a light altering experience, um being reminded of how significantly small I am and the vastness of this world.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

I love that.

SPEAKER_04 26:00

But also the reminder that because I am so insignificantly small, yeah, I need to double down on making sure my little piece of the world is a little bit better.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

I love that. We are already out of time. Is there like one takeaway that someone an AI tool that everyone should learn right now? I love that trader.

SPEAKER_04 26:21

I think that if you're gonna get into AI, you're not gonna hire an expert. Google Notebook LM is the solution that's probably the best one to go with.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Okay, that's your suggestion from the expert. Uh I really Stephanie, uh, so for the listeners who want to learn more, where can they find about Avatar Buddy and follow more of your work?

SPEAKER_04 26:39

Stephanie at avatarbuddy.ai, or you just go to avatarbuddy.ai. You can look us up on uh LinkedIn, you can Google us, Avatar Buddy pop up.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

And so we'll have all that in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here, Stephanie. This was really cool.

SPEAKER_04 26:55

Thank you for the opportunity. It was a great, great fun to be on the show with you.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

I appreciate that. And thank you to everyone who's listening at home. We know that topics like AI can sometimes feel overwhelming, or if you watch the documentary like I did, maybe you feel a little overwhelmed. But hopefully today, Stephanie and our conversation helped to educate you a little bit. Is AI is becoming quickly one of the most influential forces that are shaping modern worlds? So thanks again for tuning in at home. We'll be back here next week with another great episode in conversation. And until then, spread a little kindness and stay well.