Inspire AI: Transforming RVA Through Technology and Automation
Our mission is to cultivate AI literacy in the Greater Richmond Region through awareness, community engagement, education, and advocacy. In this podcast, we spotlight companies and individuals in the region who are pioneering the development and use of AI.
Inspire AI: Transforming RVA Through Technology and Automation
Ep 2 - AI's Impact on Work and Life: A Conversation with Jack O'Gorman
The episode shines a light on how AI is transforming daily tasks and professional dynamics. Our guest shares personal insights on effective use cases for AI like ChatGPT, emphasizing the importance of context and best practices for maximizing productivity.
• Jack O'Gorman's background in finance and interest in AI
• Practical applications of AI tools in everyday life
• Importance of providing context for optimal AI outputs
• Unexpected uses of AI for homeowners and personal tasks
• Strategies to navigate challenges when using AI tools
• Encouragement for beginners to start small with AI projects
• Insights on the potential influence of AI on society
• Recommendations on resources to stay informed about AI trends
Welcome RVA to Inspire AI, where we spotlight companies and individuals in the region who are pioneering the development and use of artificial intelligence. I'm Jason McGinty from AI Ready RVA. At AI Ready RVA, our mission is to cultivate AI literacy in the greater Richmond region through awareness, community engagement, education and advocacy. Today's episode is made possible by Modern Ancients driving innovation with purpose. Modern Ancients uses AI and strategic insight to help businesses create lasting, positive change with their unique journey consulting practice. Find out more about how your business can grow at modernagentscom. Today we have a special guest, jack Ogerman, who joins us from a retirement and workplace benefits financial services company. Thank you for joining us today, jack. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your interest in AI and how it relates to what you do Sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, jason. Pleasure to be here with you and to be speaking to the broader Richmond community about AI. I'm in the data science organization at my company and we certainly are interested in this technology at this point. It's received a lot of hype over the last couple of years. We are actively assessing how we might use it. But I'd like to note today I'll just be speaking about my own personal views and opinions on the matter. Nothing that I'll state today reflect my company's perspectives or any of the policies that we have in place, but nevertheless, there's still a ton to talk about here and there's a ton to learn.
Speaker 2:So, excited to jump in, just a little bit about myself. I've spent quite a few years in the finance and technology space, kind of bridging investment management in the early portion of my career and then moving into retirement services my career and then moving into retirement services. As you can imagine, all of this revolves around data and manipulating data for our users and customers. So AI has quite a few applications as it pertains to the finance world. So I'm blending finance experience with technology experience and hoping to get into some of my personal use of the technology.
Speaker 1:Outstanding. All right, Tell me what types of AI technologies or tools do you enjoy working with and what personal projects or problems have you helped? Have they helped you solve?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I I really enjoyed getting to getting to know the, the chat versions of the large language models that we are using today kind of more broadly as a society. I think that's the primary use case that I've been focusing on in my personal use of the technology. These chatbots can be useful to us as we step through our daily lives, both personally and at work. I use ChatGPT mostly as a personal productivity tool at this point. It's a great way to organize your thoughts, get early insight into something you're trying to learn. We're really using it as an initial search generator or initial search tool. I found it really helps leapfrog some of the clicking that you have to do otherwise on Google you can ask a general question and get a pretty good first draft of an answer from the chatbot itself. So I found just search is really one of the greatest tools that is available to us today from the chatbot perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally agree. When using AI tools, what strategies do you use to monitor their outputs and make sure they align with your goals?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this technology is a little bit challenging to deal with at first. We're used to using deterministic software where we're pointing and clicking through screens with predefined dropdown menus. In this case, with ChatGPT and other chat-based AI models, we are using a non-deterministic tool. So what that means is you can put in a certain amount of input and receive varied output. You won't always get the same result if you put in the same input, so you have to be very aware of what you're putting into the machine and you have to work iteratively with the system to refine your output such that it provides more value to you in your particular use case. And what that means is you have to spend a little bit more time on narrowing down the kind of the scope of what the tool will be looking for. So you have to spend quite a bit of time as you prompt and reprompt, honing in on exactly what you're interested in. And I know that's a little bit vague, but what I'm trying to say is you have to be very intentional about your use of the tool in order to get real value, and you have to decide for yourself exactly what you're looking for before you go to use the technology. That is really my experience so far.
Speaker 2:I think it's very powerful when you steer it in the right direction and you know provide the right guardrails. Some you know general kind of guidance I would give. You know you can give chatbots kind of guardrails. Or you know erect, you know certain boundaries, tell it not to go this direction. You know only use this type of language, avoid this phrase. For example, answer in the first person, answer in the second person, answer in the third person. You can really steer this technology in a lot of directions and really provide an output that gets you closer to what you're looking for, just by prompting. So I encourage people who have not really done deeper prompts and gone layers into the prompting to check it out and see what you can produce.
Speaker 1:Excellent. It's good advice for all levels of experience, for sure. So tell me what's an unexpected way you've used AI that others might find interesting or helpful.
Speaker 2:I mentioned this just a minute ago, but the initial search of topics really is a great use case for the technology.
Speaker 2:I'm a relatively new homeowner and there's plenty I don't know about the effects of the home right, For example, plumbing or electrical work or how to maintain grass. I found that this technology is extremely good at giving you kind of that 30 second expert view of any topic. Right, and what that has done for me, in the case of lawn work, for example, is it's provided me the background, knowledge and context that I need to ask the right questions to professionals. Right, this technology doesn't replace your landscaper, but it might put you in a better position to ask good questions about the maintenance of your lawn, for example, given seasons, given the location, given temperatures, given recent weather patterns. You know this technology can help set you up for success in that way. I also use it a ton for meal planning. I know this is a little bit of a sillier use case, but you may be able to look at a few things in your fridge, type them into ChatGVT and prompt it to create a recipe you know, or fill out what I need to create.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or you know, say you're having someone over for dinner who has food allergies and you're not familiar with what they can eat versus what they can't eat. It's great to ask ChatGBT, Although I will caveat that with if you're going to do that, definitely verify before you serve something to someone with strong food allergies. We don't want to be injuring anyone unnecessarily, so double check the output that you're getting from ChatGBT. But it's a great idea generator.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's absolutely true. Great advice. Can you share any challenges?
Speaker 2:you face when using AI tools on a personal level and how you handle them. I think that it often falls down when you don't provide sufficient context. When you're doing a complex task, when you're asking it to provide information or think through context. Otherwise, you can have situations where you get far enough along in a prompting session where you're kind of thinking that the output is suboptimal. So do the work early when you're prompting to set it up so that you have good output. I would also note that you know I would avoid using personal data in the tools. I think you know keep it general. Don't be putting a ton of sensitive information into these systems. We are not 100% certain how that information's being collected, so be cautious about that. But you know, explore and get excited about, you know, using some of that kind of more complex prompting and context setting to get to better outcomes. Great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Good advice For someone just getting started with AI tools in a personal capacity. What are some of the best practices you'd recommend?
Speaker 2:what are some of the best practices you'd recommend? I think start with specific use cases and start small and work yourself up to working on bigger tasks. I think that will familiarize you with prompting getting good outputs that you think could be useful. Developing a repeatable and scalable process will help build your confidence as you start to look at tackling larger projects. There's plenty of free resources and tutorials online.
Speaker 2:We're all kind of figuring out how to use this technology together, so the internet is great for information sharing. So there's definitely some helpful resources out there. And I think you know, if you're a forward-thinking person and you want to bring this technology to your organization, definitely champion it and get out there and get in front of people, leaders in your organization and talk about some of the youth cases that you're experiencing or stepping through and how they're helping you. You know, sharing your wins, your successes, as well as your challenges will help kind of orient your leaders and provide data points for them to start building a case in their minds about how the technology could be used. So sharing information about your experience is always good and being a champion for the technology is definitely a good idea at this juncture.
Speaker 1:Outstanding. Do you think AI has the potential to influence how we live day to day, and what are some examples you're excited about?
Speaker 2:I think it definitely does. I think it already has in some respects. I mean the hype cycle we've seen the investment cycle kind of now the evaluation of the value that it's bringing to these organizations and kind of you know, taking a more sobered, measured look. That's all kind of been in the public sphere and been the driver for growth really. And when we talk about growth as a tech-oriented country, these things are already having effects on leadership teams across this country and others.
Speaker 2:You know, when I think about what it'll do for us going forward, I think some of the low-hanging fruit opportunities for the technology are those personal productivity items that I mentioned. You know sorting through your groceries, figuring out a recipe, drafting an email for yourself. You know for communications that you're sending out. You know updating your calendar. Some of these are low-hanging fruit opportunities that companies are certainly working on today. More broadly, I think this will be integrated in a lot of aspects of our lives going forward. I think the technology is just so powerful in what it can do today and we haven't even really been on the scratch the surface of what it can do going forward. I think the technology is just so powerful in what it can do today and we haven't even really been able to scratch the surface of what it can do going forward. So I'm looking forward to future updates and I'm thinking that it's going to be pervasive throughout the tech space and broadly. So exciting Yep.
Speaker 1:And how do you stay informed about new tools or trends, and what resources would you find most helpful?
Speaker 2:I'm a podcast person so I love catching up on news through podcasts. I often listen to the AI Daily Brief that's a great one or the Everyday AI podcast. Those two are kind of my go-to daily podcasts for AI information. There's a ton going on in space. The industry seems to move very quickly so it's hard to keep up, but those anchor me. The industry seems to move very quickly so it's hard to keep up, but those anchor me.
Speaker 2:I also like longer form podcasts, like Lex Friedman's podcast. He typically has guests who are practitioners or researchers so it's great to get into the weeds on the technical aspects of what they're seeing. Ai Ready RVA is a great resource If you're looking to meet some folks in the Richmond area who are interested in the space. Getting to learn more about what they do has helped kind of shape my opinions about where we're headed and it's really broadened my network and exposed me to a lot of different use cases and ways the technology is being used. So I encourage you know folks to come out and meet some of the great people at AI.
Speaker 1:Ready.
Speaker 2:RVA and you know, learn about how we're using the technology.
Speaker 1:Ah, yes, thank you for that, jack. All right, and finally, I just wanted to ask a fun question If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
Speaker 2:what would it be and why? Yeah, this is a. It's a fun one. You know, I think my preference would be to have the superpower where you can teleport anywhere at any time with no notice. But I will add to it that I want the ability to do it with friends or family. So, you know, if there was some way to do it in a group, I think that would make it even more fun. But going anywhere at any time would be my preferred superpower.
Speaker 1:I think the ultimate family vacation yes, that's right. I think that would be awesome, all right, well, thank you very much for your time today, jack. For those listening in today, I want to thank AI Ready RBA and Jack Ogorman for joining us today and all of his deep insight about the AI landscape and his experience and how it relates to his personal life and professional life. Look forward to working with him and AI Ready RVA going forward. Thank you, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in today. If you or your company would like to be featured in the Inspire AI Richman episode, please drop us a message. Don't forget to like, share or follow our content and stay up to date on the latest events for AI Ready RVA. Thank you again and see you next time.
