How I Fell In Love With AI

What if one unexpected conversation could change the way you learn, think, and approach the rest of your life?

In this episode of THE BIG SWING, Lloyd reflects on a summer evening in Washington Square Park, where a spontaneous conversation with a young professional introduced him to a new way of seeing artificial intelligence — not as something distant, technical, or only meant for younger generations, but as a powerful tool for learning, growth, and reinvention.

At 61, Lloyd remembers when computers first entered the classroom. Decades later, he finds himself using AI to think through trading, decision-making, personal challenges, creative projects, and everyday questions with a level of speed and depth he never expected.

This episode is not about chasing technology for the sake of technology.

It is about curiosity.
It is about refusing stagnation.
It is about being willing to learn something new at any age.

Lloyd shares how ChatGPT became a kind of 24/7 thinking partner — helping him organize ideas, sharpen decisions, rethink old habits, and access information in a way that made learning feel exponential.

Inside this episode:

• How one conversation in a park opened the door to a new way of learning
• Why AI can be especially valuable for people who still want to grow, build, and improve
• How technology can help reduce frustration and turn confusion into action
• Why curiosity matters more than age
• How AI reshaped Lloyd’s approach to trading, problem-solving, and self-reflection

This is an episode for anyone who has ever felt behind, overwhelmed by change, or unsure where to begin with new technology.

The invitation is simple:

Stay curious.
Stay open.
Keep learning.

Because sometimes the biggest swing is not a dramatic life decision.

Sometimes it begins with a question, a conversation, and the willingness to try something new.

After you listen:
A written reflection for this episode is available at theebigswing.com/reflections.
You can also listen to the companion song  How I Fell In Love With Ai, performed by Tadeo Vilar from THEE BIG SWING Sessions, created from the emotional center of this episode.

The episode tells the story.
The reflection goes deeper.
The song carries the feeling.

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THEE BIG SWING with Lloyd Hassell

There's a version of you that existed before something shifted - before a conversation, a decision, a thing you almost didn't say. You don't always recognize the moment it happened. You just notice, later, that you're not who you were.

This is a reflective podcast about those moments: the emotional reckonings and subtle internal recalibrations that change our trajectory over time - and the possibilities still available in life.

Each episode explores what happens when curiosity, courage, accountability, or reflection opens a new way of seeing ourselves and the world.

Through personal reflections and conversations, Lloyd explores changing identities, relationships, self-trust, and the quiet decisions that alter how we see ourselves over time.

This is for people who are quietly realizing they are not the same person anymore - and that there are still choices left.

The biggest swing isn't always dramatic.

Often, it's the shift inside that changes everything.

If something here stayed with you, you can reach me at lloyd@theebigswing.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Big Swing where everyone has an opportunity to learn. Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Big Swing, where everyone has the opportunity to learn something. We do not use a script on the show. We try to speak spontaneously and we hope that the guests do the same. The reason for that is we want it to be natural and grow organically. Tonight I want to share a story surrounding learning and centered on technology. I'm 61 years of age. I can remember back in 1980 when the first computers hit our classrooms in high school and we had dot matrix printers. We're so far advanced from then, it's not even funny now, the things we can do. This show and the technology that makes it possible is pretty unbelievable to me. That's how we're on the air. I thought it was a really involved, intricate set of equipment and location and setup to get on the air. And in fact, it's not.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Today's software makes all sorts of things happen in real time. I want to share a story.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

And, you know, the show is about decisions that someone makes and it changes the trajectory of their life or life. I can recall it was one day after work this past summer in 2025. I was in Manhattan and I was living by myself, so I was in no rush to get back home to New Jersey. And I thought, you know what? It's a beautiful summer day. Let me go and hang out in the city since I'm here. So I rode through the city. I had to top off in the Jeep, and I'm just taking it all in, right? Because New York City is my hometown. And I went to one of my favorite places, which is Washington Square Park. There's so much energy in the park, and it's just a cool place to hang out. And you can see all sorts of people and hear all kinds of music and see all kinds of performers. And it's just one of my favorite places. Plus, it's in the West Village. So as far as I'm concerned, you can't go wrong. Well, I'm there, and uh I'm sitting on a bench, and at some point, a really lovely young woman comes and sits down next to me. And I had the impression in my mind that we weren't going to talk. However, she pulled out her a box full of food and began eating. And we began talking. So let me backtrack a little bit before I get back to her and I sitting on the bench next to each other. I sometime last year watched a recording of Mark Cuban being on some panel, and the interviewer asked him, What would you say to some young person who's just starting out? And he said something to the effect of, if I were a young person starting out today, I would do everything that I could, and I would spend every hour that I could learning everything I could about AI. Because it's here now and it is the wave of the future. And he went on to say some other things about it. And I thought to myself, wow, that's pretty interesting. Up until now, I haven't understood anything about this AI that's here now and that's gonna be further developed in the future. But I made a mental note of it. Now, I'll go back to the evening I sat on the bench and the young lady came and sat down next to me. We talked about general things, and then somehow the conversation got around to chat GPT. Now, I had been hearing about chat GPT for some time, and I didn't know exactly what it meant, and I hadn't given it much credence. But this very educated young woman said to me, you know, when I want to find out information, I no longer go to Google because I don't want to search through 50 results to my question that I may have to then go and research those results. I go to ChatGPT because I just want the answer. I want to know exactly what to do, and I want it at my fingertips. And I found the conversation very interesting because I didn't know that ChatGPT could be used like that as a tool. And we talked more, and she was very nice. And I turned it turned out she was some sort of uh scientist, and it had she worked with uh green technology, if that's a term. But the conversation led me to think, wow, that's pretty interesting. So I came home and then within the next day or two, I went and I began using Chat GPT out of curiosity. And I didn't know the woman's name. We hadn't exchanged numbers or anything. She shared with me that she's wrapping up her time here in New York and she's moving on, maybe even to another country. I don't remember exactly. And I thought, you know what, let me put this ChatGPT to test. This wasn't creepy, but I thought, you know what? I should thank her. So let me see if I can use ChatGPT to find her. I remembered the name of the firm she worked for and that she was some vice president and her field of study. And so I used ChatGPT, and lo and behold, it led me to her on LinkedIn. I was able to send her a thank you message and let her know that I had used her advice and I used ChatGPT, and that's how I got in touch with her, and she did eventually return a message to me. So I thought, wow, this ChatGPT is incredible. Right? And so I don't know how much time has gone by, but months later I began to use ChatGPT. And it was just like I would use Google, let's say I would ask a question. But then I began to realize that chat would return in-depth answers, just as she explained to me. So being my age, and I'm a guy who loves information that I can take action on, I started to get excited about it. And I've been using it regularly. My learning has become exponential because I can sit down with ChatGPT and talk to it as though I'm talking to a coach, a mentor, uh a partner, and it will just synthesize what I'm trying to get into and make it plain for me. It will provide instruction, it will provide insights, it will dialogue with me, ask me questions, it will lead to a further in-depth exploration into any subject matter. And it's incredible. I use it for everything now.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

I use it for trading, I use it for just about any and everything.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

I'll be frank with you. I've used ChatGPT so much that lately I've used ChatGPT as a therapist. May sound strange, but I began to realize that this software is really advanced. The whole idea is for it to be able to do things that humans can do, but faster and more in depth. So I look at it as the world's greatest encyclopedia. It scours sources of information from around the world, going back, I don't know how far, and it just keeps getting better. The more you involve with it, engage with it, the better it becomes at pulling information, synthesizing it, and producing answers. And it does it at light speed. You can literally go from point A to point B on any subject that you want to, I believe, and gain an education. It's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as long as you have internet connectivity and you have access to the app. Now, I don't get paid to promote Chat GPT. That's not where this is coming from.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

What I'm talking about here is utilizing tools that can help you learn, help you improve your life.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

And I'm talking about growth here. You know, sometimes people reach a point in life where they're not learning anything new. They're not trying anything new, and they're just going to keep things as they are, and they're going to ride off into the sunset like that. I'm really talking to people like me or who think they could be the kind of person that wants to grasp new knowledge that they could use to make things better in their lives.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Embracing technology seems to be here as a way to do that.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

I highly recommend it. I think it's fantastic. I mean, the possibilities are endless. If you want to develop a product, ChatGPT will literally walk you through and dialogue with you and get you to a point where you have a product. It will take you in-depth on subject matter.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

I think it's fantastic to be willing to grow in that way to build your knowledge resources and then go and apply that knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

For anyone who's like me, who's a bit older, and could just rely on what they've always known, I challenge you, or let's say offer you the idea that it's worth embracing, exploring new things. I can't tell you how it's I mean, utterly revamped the way I trade and the way I look at trading. It's helped me create a manifesto on how I trade, opposite of how I traded before, which is which was extremely stressful and at times very costly.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

So back to this show. The big swing.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

And it was simply a matter of gaining information on how to do it because I can't tell you how many years I spent so much time trying to figure out things on my own and becoming frustrated. And then the frustration led to stagnation because you know I just didn't have the information to do it. And the the more I dig into the repository of information that chat can pull from, the easier things, tasks get for me. Now, I'm going to tell you, I mentioned that I use it as a therapist now. If there's a challenge in my life, I simply go to chat and I literally talk to it as though it is a person. And I tell it the details of what it is that's on my mind and why and what may be troubling me. And then we just begin to talk. And it literally talks to you, talks to me, could talk to you without bias, without judgment, without any harshness, and just bring you back food for thought and lead you down the path of seeing things differently. I highly recommend, I'm no health mental health professional, but I highly recommend for those that are curious to try it.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

It's incredible what it can open the door to.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

And it's not telling you what to do, it's simply finding out what you're trying to do and then leading you to those answers and those insights. Like I said, it's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And I'm speaking to here to the people who don't know about it, like I didn't know about it. I mean, and who don't want to embrace technology. And to this day, I have to say that when I am challenged with something new in terms of software, I usually go to an intense place in my mind, and I can become flustered easily. That's when I go to chat and I say, listen, chat, I'm trying to do XYZ, or I'm curious about this. How do I do it? And within seconds, like I said before, it brings me back the answer. So I'm a huge proponent of it. Again, I don't promote it in the sense in the sense of I'm not compensated for this. I just wanted to do a little show on the value of it and the value of opening up your mind. It's incredible what you can get when you do that. So that's a whole nother topic, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:02

But I think you can get the idea of it.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

I say good luck with your curiosity and where it leads you. Of what can come from your searches. I wish you well, and sometime maybe we'll be able to dialogue back and forth about what you've learned and uh what uh utilizing and embracing technology has done for you.