Solo Episode: What I’d Do Differently If I Was Learning AI for the First Time

In this episode of How I AI, I’m sharing key updates, must-know AI news, and a personal reflection on what I would do differently if I were starting my AI journey today.

You’ll hear about a powerful research paper on the future of work with AI agents, why the U.S. government just invested hundreds of millions into AI companies, and the viral YouTube interview that breaks down which jobs are at the highest risk of automation.

This solo episode is for anyone who feels behind, overwhelmed, or unsure how to begin using AI in a way that actually fits your business, energy, and creative goals.

🔍 Episode Highlights

• Why the Department of Defense awarded $800 million to OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI
 • The Stanford, MIT, and Georgia Tech study on which tasks humans want AI to take over.. and which ones we don’t
 • Jobs most at risk of AI replacement based on Geoffrey Hinton’s latest interview
 • A simple strategy to define your first step with AI (instead of chasing tutorials)
 • What I’ve learned helping creatives, founders, and small business owners use AI with intention
 • Announcements about the podcast expanding to YouTube, an upcoming Miami event, and a new listener format

🧰 Resources Mentioned

📺 Watch: Geoffrey Hinton on The Diary of a CEO
📄 Read: Future of Work with AI Agents Study
📢 News: Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI granted up to $200 million for AI work from Defense Department
📅 Local Miami in-person event on August 7.  

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LinkedIn: Brooke Gramer

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"How I AI" is a concept and podcast series created and produced by Brooke Gramer of EmpowerFlow Strategies LLC. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Brooke: 0:03

Welcome to How I AI the podcast featuring real people, real stories, and real AI in action. I'm Brooke Gramer your host and guide on this journey into the real world impact of artificial intelligence. For over 15 years, I've worked in creative marketing, events, and business strategy wearing all the hats. I know the struggle of trying to scale and manage all things without burning out, but here's the game changer, AI. This isn't just a podcast, How I AI is a community. A space where curious minds like you can come together, share ideas, and I'll also be bringing you exclusive discounts, free trials and insider resources so you can test drive the latest tools and tech yourself. Because AI isn't just a trend, it's a shift. The sooner we embrace it, the more freedom, creativity, and opportunities we'll unlock.

0:58

How I AI is brought to you in partnership with The Collective designed to accelerate your learning and AI adoption. I joined the collective and it's completely catapulted my learning, expanded my network, and show me what's possible with ai. Whether you're just starting out or looking to refine your AI strategy, The Collective gives you the resources to grow.

Brooke: 1:20

Stay tuned to learn more at the end of this episode, or check the show notes for my exclusive invite link..

1:26

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of How I AI. I'm Brooke Gramer, your host. Today we have a solo episode. It's been a while since I've done one of these. And for today I'm gonna share some quick announcements, what I've been reading and watching lately. I'm going to share a powerful research paper. It's on the future of work with AI agents. And some recent AI news that I feel like is too important not to talk about. Today, I'm also gonna dive into a personal reflection on what I would've done differently if I was learning AI for the very first time today. This is gonna be based on everything I've seen over the past two years, navigating this space, working with founders, creatives, and small businesses. So whether you're brand new to AI or just trying to find your way through the noise, I hope today's episode can give you some clarity, words of encouragement, and a sense of where to begin. Alright, let's dive in. I am so grateful for everyone who's been tuning in and listening to the show. A lot of you have been interested in being featured on the podcast. I have a current wait list growing, which is so great to hear and I'm considering doing some Power Session episodes where I can feature three people at a time. Make it a little bit more short and sweet per interview. This way we can amplify each other's stories and learn from each other in a quick power session manner. So if this sounds like something you wanna be a part of, dm me or hit the link in my show notes and we will be in touch regarding sharing your story on the show. If you're a Miami local, I'm hosting an event this summer, August 7th. It's a panel in the evening, and it's all about conscious co-creation and leadership with AI. This is for founders, creators and change makers using AI to scale with impact. We're gonna talk all things. Ethics, purpose and if this sounds like a conversation you've been wanting to have around AI we would love for you to join us. The podcast has hit over 5,000 downloads, which is so exciting, and I've been receiving such great reception. I've decided to finally launch on YouTube. I'll be expanding, and this is something I've been building up towards. You'll be able to see both interviews and solo episodes up there soon. So if you prefer a video or wanna put a face to the voice, I got you. YouTube coming soon. Alright, let's go into some news i've been reading, just the other day. I saw that the US Department of Defense, awarded contracts up to 200 million to Open AI, Google, Anthropic, and Xai. This is to accelerate the US' military's integration of AI that's around$800 million, all aimed at building what they call a agentic ai. These are tools that can think ahead, take action, and drive strategic decisions. So why does this matter? Because it really shows the trajectory of what we're all on AI isn't just hype, it's national security imperative now. The US military is moving fast with AI. It's time we take it seriously in our own lives and businesses too. I also came across a new study called The Future of Work with AI Agents. It's a study by researchers from Stanford University, MIT, and Georgia Tech, and it goes into what tasks workers want to actually automate with AI and what they don't, they introduce a concept called Human Agency Scale or HAS, this is, essentially describing how much human involvement people want to have AI across specific tasks, which they break up into four different AI zones. It really gets into the nitty gritty of where we're okay with letting AI take over. This is gonna be really important for you to read on. If you wanna understand how to best align your skills and future proof your, value when it comes to what we're automating to AI. Another thing I wanted to share today. A friend recently sent me a YouTube video by the diary of a CEO. He has over 11 million subscribers on YouTube, and the title of this episode is called Godfather of AI. I tried to warn them, but we've already lost control: Geoffrey Hinton and this viral interview is speaking about how Geoffrey Hilton left Google to speak freely and he's saying there's a 20% chance AI could lead to human distinction. He also talks about job displacement and everything from deep fakes and what's going on and threats to our government. So I wanna cover what's actually on the chopping block when it comes to AI and automation. According to this video, based on his own comments in the interview and what we're already seeing in the field, here is a short list of jobs that are most likely to shrink or disappear in the next two years. And these aren't just speculative, they are roles where AI already outperforms human labor in speed, cost and scale. So jobs that are going or going fast are going to be roles such as call center agents, customer service reps, paralegals in legal assistance, admins and EAs, also known as executive assistants, complaint response agents, entry-level devs, basic copywriters, junior graphic designers, entry-level financial analysts, market researchers, recruiters for sourcing and screening. Transcriptionists. So those are gonna be roles where tasks are repeatable, predictable, and data heavy. Exactly what AI thrives on. Next he goes into a bit of a gray zone. These are roles at high risk of consolidation, but not full elimination. Roles such as middle managers and project coordinators, teachers delivering standardized curriculum, entry level financial advisors, medical coders, and claim processors. So in these roles, AI is making it possible to do the same work with fewer humans. One person may oversee a larger team, or AI might be co-piloting the task around 80%. So why am I sharing this? The wave is coming if you're in one of these jobs, now is the time to skill stack. Be asking yourself, what part of your job requires human nuance or creativity? Where could you become the person who prompts, guides, or oversees the ai instead of it being completely replaced by it? That is gonna be the edge right now, being the human in the loop. I'll link that article below as well. All right. Now let's get into the episode today and it's, if I were learning AI for the first time and starting over today, how would I do it? This topic was inspired for this solo podcast based on a conversation I recently had with a friend. A lot of people have been reaching out to me because I've been speaking about AI for quite some time, and a lot of people have finally started to come around and be like, okay, I'm listening. How do I get started? What do I need to know? And I found as I was speaking to my friend recently on the phone, I was speaking to her as if I was speaking to myself two years ago. So I, I feel like this is gonna be really helpful for anyone feeling overwhelmed. And I feel like a lot of people hesitate with AI because it's so different than traditional school learning. You know, we're taught go to school, pass the test, climb the ladder, and you're set. And that formula is outdated. That's not how people are finding success today. And that can be kind of scary for a lot of people. So if I was going back and starting my AI journey again, I would realize. First and foremost, it's not about going back to school and enrolling in AI boot camps and memorizing the right steps and, being taught things in a curriculum that might be irrelevant in the next year or two. It really boils down to getting clarity on what success looks like for you uniquely. What do you need the most help on in your personal or professional life? What is your unique problem and goal that you're trying to solve? If you were to hire five people tomorrow to support your business. Or your personal life. Obviously we can't go into physical labor unless you can afford humanoid robots already, but if it were to come down to tasks that you felt comfortable, if you were to hire five interns tomorrow and be able to designate the time to sit down and train them with examples, data and resources. What would that look like to you individually? And this is a really good roadmap on how to start with AI, just really defining what it is that you need help on the most. Do you need to lower your costs? Are you building a business from square one? Are you wanting to automate the things you hate doing or are you just trying to keep up with all of your tasks, roles and responsibilities in general? And this is gonna help guide you in the right direction of what type of technology stack you need to invest in. And think about this investing in your future self. It's way more affordable to invest in a handful of tools. Or even just one that is gonna help move the needle and push your efficiency and your outcome and your ROI forward versus if you were to have to go back to school and relearn everything. This is such a unique time where we can get from point A to point B faster than ever before. We can build exactly what we want in a unique way, solely to us. At this point in your journey when you're trying to figure out what it is that you need support on and what you spend a lot of time on and what you want to automate and delegate so that you can spend more time doing the things in your business that are generating the most revenue and keeping you in your zone of genius, those are the things that you want to use AI for. This is where your own play comes in. This is when it's up to you to go out there and explore what works for you. What tools do you gravitate towards? What is in your budget? This is the part where a lot of people get a bit tripped up because there's so many things out there. A good place to start is to ask your peers in your industry or in your community who are facing the same problems and have the same goals in mind, and ask them what it is that they're using and how they're using it. Okay. This is the goal of my podcast is to highlight different use cases every week so that you are inspired and expanded on how to jumpstart your own journey. And it'll ignite you to start to look into how they're tackling their problems. I do want you to keep in mind that I love this example. If I were at a dinner table with all of my friends and we decided to put our iPhones on the table, you would imagine that we all have very different applications on our phones. There's gonna be apps that a lot of people use. Gmail might be one of them, for instance. But when it goes into what our unique problems are and our unique habits are, we're all gonna have different apps, right? We might commute to work differently. We might be tracking calories, we might be tracking meeting notes, depending on what it is that we need help with. Think of your own personal phone and what apps you have on there. Why do you have those apps? Because they fit a solution and a need that you uniquely have. This is the best way to start to approach your AI journey. Start to think about what it is that you need help with and start exploring out there what it is that can help you with that problem. The next step in tandem would be to go over your systems and processes. Highlight every step from top to bottom of what it is that you're doing throughout your day. I used to do this with clients when I was coaching. When they would say things like, I have no time in my day to do the things I need to do. We would go by and really break down in 15 minute increments, what they did all day that day. And lo and behold, when we broke it out, we would find that there was a lot of stuff that they were doing. That weren't connected to their goals, that weren't really a priority and a lot of room for them to improve. So for you to sit down and go through step by step, what it is that you're doing every day, this is going to show all the things that can be delegated to AI. It's also gonna help you set up the systems in place of how to automate the order of which things are to be done. And when it comes to that time in your AI journey, when you're ready to build AI agents or want to enter the AI agent marketplace, or maybe partner with developers or hire developers and start to build and develop and get into things like vibe coding and app creation, once you get into that place, you're gonna have all the experience under your belt of knowing what your unique problems and goals are, how exactly you are needing to solve them. You are going to have all of your systems and steps in place and have everything you need to take your AI automation and journey to the next level of investing more into technology in your teams and your businesses. This is just a little taste of my personal journey and I've learned so much along the way. If you're really feeling inspired by this conversation, but still aren't sure where to start, maybe you're just overwhelmed by everything or really unclear of what's gonna be worth your time. I wanna offer a private 30 minute session for anyone who's ready to kickstart their AI journey with intention. And in that half hour we'll get you aligned with the right tools, the right focus, and your very next step. I am gonna limit this coaching call to just a few spots per week. I'll link in the show notes, but I'm here to support you and I personally feel like one-on-one is the best way to get started with AI it is very difficult to try to have your personal needs met when you're in a huge room of people learning from the same one person from different teams and backgrounds, or when you're buying a preloaded course that's not individual to what it is that your unique questions are in your AI adoption journey. Well, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I ask you to please rate, review, share this episode with a friend who's curious, it really helps listeners find the show and get this into the hands of more people who are struggling and overwhelmed when it comes to AI. I really wanna empower AI adoption and I find myself to be such an advocate for this time of rapid evolution in our world. I can't thank you enough for tuning in. I'll catch you on the next episode of How I AI.

Brooke: 18:51

Wow I hope today's episode opened your mind to what's possible with AI. Do you have a cool use case on how you're using AI and wanna share it? DM me. I'd love to hear more and feature you on my next podcast. Until next time, here's to working smarter, not harder. See you on the next episode of How I AI. This episode was made possible in partnership with the Collective AI, a community designed to help entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows. One of the biggest game changers in my own AI journey was joining this space. It's where I learned, connected and truly enhanced my understanding of what's possible with ai. And the best part, they offer multiple membership levels to meet you where you are. Whether you want to DIY, your AI learning or work with a personalized AI consultant for your business, The Collective has you covered. Learn more and sign up using my exclusive link in the show notes.