Episode 10: AI Impact: What Every Business and Human Should Know

In this thought-provoking episode, Sandy Kibling sits down with Joe Toscano, a renowned expert in AI and human ethics, to explore how rapidly AI is changing the way we work, live, and make decisions. 

Joe shares important insights on AI’s impact on society, automation, jobs, data security, and the ethical responsibilities that come with this powerful technology.

This conversation goes beyond the hype to examine both the opportunities and risks of AI. From human-centered innovation to the need for practical guardrails and thoughtful regulation, Joe offers a grounded perspective on how individuals and businesses can use AI responsibly while keeping humanity at the center. 

Key Topics:

• AI's rapid advancement and societal impact
• Ethical considerations and guardrails in AI development
• The future of jobs and skills in an AI-driven world

Sound Bites

• "AI is moving fast, really fast."
• "AI is like the steam engine for our brains."
• "Relying solely on AI is reckless."

Chapters

01:24
Joe Toscano's Background and Expertise in AI and Humanity

02:13
Journey from Nebraska to Silicon Valley and AI Insights

04:37
Concerns About Data Use and Lack of Guardrails in Silicon Valley

05:40
Fears of Job Loss and Economic Disruption Due to AI

07:34
Proposed Data Taxation System to Fund Social Safety Nets

08:30
Legal and Ethical Challenges in Data Taxation

09:29
Opportunities in Trades and Human Skills in the AI Era

11:05
The Reality of AI's Impact on Jobs and Society

13:36
Data as Fuel for AI and Its Complexities

16:02
AI as a Tool for Creativity, Not Replacement

17:25
Limitations of AI and Non-Determinism

18:17
Upcoming Projects and Service Stories Overview

23:07
Automating Humanity Book and Final Thoughts

24:23
The Social Dilemma Film and Visual Storytelling

25:19
Getting Started with AI: Practical Tips and Resources

Resources

ServiceStories.com

Automating Humanity

PlaybookAIPartners

#Podmatch

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We had largely a labor force that was in the physical body at that time in world history. Productivity was about how much could you carry, how much could you move, how fast could you, you know, put the nuts and bolts together. Today we live in an information age, and I think AI is going to do for our brains the same as the steam engine did for our physical body. And so I think it's about how you use it, and again, like how you adapt to it. Um if anybody is listening and you're not trying AI, I think you're way behind. And and that is a personal choice. Um you don't have to, but just know that like that is your choice. Um I also believe anybody who is solely reliant on AI is reckless. I think there's this period in between at which AI Partners Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

This show that turns AI from overwhelming into actionable.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Your host, Andy Kibling, is the chief playmaker, helping business owners and teams stop tasting shiny tools and start using AI in a way that actually moves the numbers, saving time, reducing busy work, and driving growth.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Each episode features industry experts and real-world tactics providing clear to the snack plays, simple AI workflows, and practical guardrails. So you can use AI safely, execute with confidence, and get results. Let's run the play.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

AI is moving fast, really fast. And while many of us are excited about how it can help enhance our businesses, there's also a lot of questions, uncertainty, and yes, overwhelm. Because as AI races ahead, we have to wonder what happens to humanity, to jobs, to ethics, to data security, and to the guardrails we need to keep all of this grounded. Have those important conversations gotten lost somewhere in the AI stratosphere? Well, to help us get into this topic, I have Joe Toscano on the show. You might have read his book, Automating Humanity, or Forbes articles. You might have seen him on Netflix's The Social Dilemma, or maybe you've seen him on stage or on various media appearances from podcast to national news broadcast. Joe Toscano is CEO, co-founder with over 13 years of UX and software development, including Time at Google, where he worked with AdWords plus AdWords Express merger. Joe knows SEO and AI better than most. He also spent nearly a decade as COO for Gateway Auto, his family's auto shop, helping it grow from 3 million to 11 million through digital transformation. Joe is a serial entrepreneur, published author, and international keynote speaker on the topic of technology and humanity. Welcome to the show, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Yeah, thank you for having me. You got the whole intro there.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Yeah, I do. I try to do I know you've been on a conference just just busy, busy, busy. So I appreciate you taking time out with us today. So perhaps you can start out by just really telling us a little bit about your journey and how it's led you beyond what I talked about, but certainly where it's led you on the journey today as it relates to AI.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Sure. Yeah. Well, and I think everybody has their own unique journey, but mine I think is is often kind of jarring to some people from Nebraska to Silicon Valley. They're like, how the hell did that happen? And and it's it's a real question, you know. Back when I was a kid, um, I always was playing with computers and video games and all that kind of stuff. And probably 20, 21, I'm now 36, I was like, I want to build computers and and you know, program and things like that. And in Nebraska at that time, it was just like, are you sure? Are you like spending too much time looking at satellites or what's wrong with you? You know, so after college, I left immediately. I went to Colorado to kind of pursue that technology career. And not too long afterwards, I had built a name for being able to both design and code. And that was at the time like kind of a rare trait, right? Like you could either code and you, you know, really good at talking to computers, or you could do design and you're a little more artistic or something. Not too many people were were doing both. And actually made my name because I figured out how to, you know, componentize and productize things. And then that got me a a a role consultant for Google. So I wasn't actually at Google very long as a consultant, but I lived out in San Francisco. I I'd take the bus every day. I was a badged employee, you know, have to go through all the confidentiality and security and everything. So I got the full experience. Everything you've heard about Google is probably real in regards to, yes, there's there's bikes everywhere, it's free food and all everything. It's pretty wild. 35,000 people on campus every day. But what I also saw, not just at Google, but at large in Silicon Valley and the way data was used concerned me a lot. You know, when I was in university, I was actually doing graduate level research as a sophomore. And and again, I had to be trained. What are the rules? How do I go through what what's called an IRB review board, credentialed and be given the opportunity to do the research because we structure it in a way that's safe for humans, you know? And Silicon Valley didn't have that. And that was my big concern when I was out there, is not that not that they didn't have regulations, because I guess I don't think regulation is the full answer, but also they had people being pushed into this role of user experience researcher or something along those lines at the time, where they were forced to do research, but they were not properly trained on ethics and how to use data and what kind of impact it could have if you didn't. And so why I left the Valley and the work I did afterwards is because I felt that Silicon Valley had and still has created and runs the largest social psychology experiment in the history of the world, and there's no guardrails.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

Wow. Well, what a journey you've been on and uh and all this stuff, the experience that you've had. So talk to us more about that because I think this is such a fear I think people have with AI. I kind of tell myself, and people are either still sitting on the sidelines of AI, people are either embracing it or I love to call I think the dabblers are really probably the biggest population of, okay, let me launch ChPT, let me do that. But people are so excited and it's moving so fast. But you know, I think there are fears about job losing jobs and and security and safety and and really how it will transform uh people's lives in general. And so are you saying that that's as this is all being created, that that's lost, like in Silicon Valley, or how how do we navigate? I mean, that's kind of a little scary statement to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Aaron Powell Great question. So I believe, you know, everybody's fear of AI is reasonable. You know, I think there's a lot of, especially the billionaires, like, don't worry, new jobs will be created. Well, like they're in a good position to be telling us that, right? Versus the people who are actually losing jobs and who have seen the instability it can create. That was also part of my concerns. You know, I have actually it's probably not super public, but about five, six years ago, I helped draft the first data taxation system in U.S. history because that was one of my concerns. You know, what happens if we do have mass joblessness? What happens then to income tax? What happens to sales tax? All the things that like actually those are some of the biggest revenue generators for our economy as a government, right? If you then have robots who are untaxable labor and robots who we effectively trained, right, because we provided the data at some point. So, yeah, I've I've thought about all those kind of things, and the tax was designed to extract some of that capital from the companies who would own that and then put it back into things like job retraining, right? Like try to take somebody who is anywhere from 40 to 65 years old and say, it's time to go back to college, right? Like we'll have riots on the street. So, you know, how do we have some kind of support system to help people who want to get into this? And so that taxation would fund some of that. It would fund a social security net if you know people did fall into joblessness for a period, six months or whatever it was in a transition. And it would fund getting technology and the appropriate assets into schools to make sure kids are prepared. So that was like the bill that we proposed. And uh it was largely DOA, dead on arrival. But then a couple years later, I had got called back in, and this time I had Paul Romer sitting next to me, who was the chief economist at the World Bank, talking about why we need something like this, and still didn't get pushed through radical, radical arguments from the lobbyists on the other side, which was that if we tax data, we would effectively be taxing freedom of speech, First Amendment. And um, and not only were we taxing like you and I's freedom of speech, right? Like we post on Facebook or Google or wherever, and that kind of makes sense, that argument. Kinda you could get there. But the argument was that they would be taxing the freedom of speech of the companies, which is really wild. So, long story short, without getting deep into the technical weeds there, there are things that are being spoken about, and there are new concepts coming into law. What I learned ultimately though is like I don't believe that that law is going to be the thing that changes this. I think it's gonna be a lot of movement from people on the ground. Um, and ultimately, I do believe that there will be new jobs created, right? Like the same as when we went from horse and buggy to cars. We didn't have mechanics before cars, right? We will have new jobs. It's just we don't know what it is. But that is scary. That's scary today, right? Like if you're the people who feel like you may be automated, very scary. On the flip side, coming from Nebraska, I also think it's important people realize like there are a lot of jobs that may never get automated, at least not in our lifetimes. You know, a lot of people are going now back into the trades. I mean, there's like really good careers that can be built. There's huge gaps in in the marketplace. You know, you have technicians, for example, in automotive. My parents, I think you mentioned my parents uh auto shop there. After I left Google, they finally considered me qualified enough to help put their business. And so I started to get more involved. But what you what you realize is like in the automotive market, in in in welding, you know, in electricians, there's a huge gap of like guys and women, don't get me wrong, but like largely men 40 and above who have built careers in these spaces. And then there's this age gap like down to 25, 25 to 40, where there's like not too many employees, not as many, because, you know, and I and I can speak to that because, you know, I'm I'm 36. My parents and I think a whole generation said go to college, get a white-collar job, you know, don't get a blue-collar job. And so we are facing a crisis in that there are a lack of skilled technicians in these fields. And that's also a new opportunity that now that AI is coming on, I think we're gonna see a lot of people go that way. Long story short, I think life has always been about finding where the stability is. And some people are blessed to have already like seen that and like stayed in trades and stuff like that. But I think that's what the next stage will be is like if AI does automate a lot of white-collar work, where where is the next wave of labor? And and is that largely in the trades? I'm sure it's gonna be stable. But there's also a lot of like interpersonal skills and jobs that are not gonna go away. And like, what are those roles for you and how can you fill those? You know, I I don't think AI is gonna wipe out all the work in the world. So I hope that kind of calms people's fears. It's just a matter of like, what is the thing that's gonna survive is really the question.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

That is, you know, it's fascinating your work on the tax stuff. And I'm sorry that the bill was dead on arrival, but I'm fascinated by that because that is work that needs to be done. Because I I think of the movie The Purge, and people have seen that. You know, you start changing society and you start taking things away from people, then you know, things happen. People, we saw it with COVID, right? It's gonna happen. But do you know what just briefly about that? What do you sort of add on question? But why was it not as well received? You know, was it just too early? Because it sounds fascinating. We need to do that. Why wasn't it received? Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

I mean, I think like most of my work, it's been pretty early. That's definitely part of it. You have a lot of legislators who are in their 60s and beyond. And so most of this stuff just sounds like magic to them. You know? The other side of it is like, how do you tax data? Right? Like data technically is all the content in your spreadsheets, which may or may not actually be productively valuable to you. Right? Like there are states who have tried to tax data in the sense of like an advertising. So if you use data to target ads, like we're gonna target the money you make off advertising. Those have been hit or miss. Some of those got repealed, some of those are kind of hanging by a thread, but those got pushed through. But then you have a very specific, what's the word they use? It's not bias. Well, you you have a very specific push on on those because it's like, well, then you're only taxing data used for ads, and it's discriminating, you know, other uses of data, basically. It's saying those are free to use, but this one's taxed. And and I feel that way, actually. I believe that because advertising is just what the general public often can understand. It's what the media can understand. Data is used in a prolific way across so many other parts of business operations. Data is used to train AI that will write code like we're seeing now with Claude and ChatGPT. Data is used to train the robots at Amazon's warehouse that pick up boxes and carry them across and do the logistics. Those weren't, those aren't just like programmed with code and they just sit there. It's always learning and it's always getting better, and it's data that's required. And so how do you think about data like a fuel? And what are the touch points and and how do you tax like productive data versus non-productive data? What even is that? You know, so there there's just a lot of complexity to it. And we did run into that, and and I understand that very much. But when they yeah, when they came back and said, Oh, it's our freedom of speech that you're taxing, I just thought that was radical. You know, it's like they're claiming that our data is their asset, number one, and that it's not only their asset, but it is freedom of speech, you know. Which is pretty wild.

SPEAKER_03 14:02

Yeah. Oh my goodness, there's so much to think about. Well, let's talk about one of the things I love the most that you've done a lot of work on is the social dilemma and the years of advocacy work and really how to develop AI systems. I mean, if people are into that, they're building their app, they're building their website, they're enhancing their business, they're doing automations, you know, how can they do that and to enhance rather than exploit human potential? Now that's a big question.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Well, it's I I think it's also a very difficult question, right? Because I don't think AI is by default built to exploit. I think humans exploit. Right. AI is a tool. And I think AI I look at it like the steam engine, right? The steam engine allowed us to move farther distances, to move faster, to lift things that were not humanly possible. Or maybe not the steam engine, but the mechanics of it, right? Eventually we could have machines because of steam, right? Electricity, all those next phases. We had largely a labor force that was in the physical body at that time in world history. Productivity was about how much could you carry, how much could you move, how fast could you know put the nuts and bolts together. Today we live in an information age, and I think AI is gonna do for our brains the same as the steam engine did for our physical body. And so I think it's about how you use it, and again, like how you adapt to it. If anybody is listening and you're not trying AI, I think you're way behind. And and that is a personal choice. You don't have to, but just know that like that is your choice. I also believe anybody who is solely reliant on AI is reckless. I think there's this this period in between at which, like I said, you're using it as utility. You are using it to improve your processes um and and you're speeding things up and you're thinking differently and all those things. I don't think AI is good at like how to say execution, I guess, at large. Like it's good at production. Execution requires a lot of details and nuance. It requires quality testing, it requires, you know, for example, I'll uh I'll make it simple, uh blog writing, right? Like if you have AI generate a blog, you know that that AI generated blog if you read it, and there's parts where you're like, I read those words and I understood the words, but conceptually that made no sense, right? Or like the order of the blog, the paragraphs and the way they're laid out, the story is not really there. There's just something about it because AI is not good at all those kind of things yet. Can it get better? Sure. But ultimately, AI in a technical term is is non-deterministic. That means you don't get the same output every time. If you if you give it one plus one, it should give you two, right? But like that's kind of traditional software. It was always one plus one. Now with AI, you could give it one and then it might output something general different you know different. Like it could, it could say three, it could say five. And I'm giving you like numbers and you're probably not going to get those kind of answers, but conceptually that's what we're saying here is like you put in a thing and the output is not the exact same thing every single time. And that's what's called non-deterministic. And so I don't know that AI will ever be there because how could it be, right? Like with software, you had logic, and that's what got you the exact same output every time. It's like here's a think of it like a maze. There's just there are paths, and you have to go that path. With AI, those paths are now gone effectively. And so I don't know that it will ever get good at those things. I just don't think logically it's it can get better. But will it be the thing where you just put it on autopilot and let it fly? I don't know that we'll get there. And I don't agree that we will reach this artificial general intelligence that everybody's going for. I think that's just marketing for fundraising purposes.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

Tell us more about, you know, you've just come off a conference spree. So again, thanks for squeezing us in today. But tell us more about kind of what's on the horizon for you in this, the in the upcoming uh with any endeavors you have, and certainly tell us more about Service Stories.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Sure. Yeah. So right now I run a company called Service Stories. It was built for my my family's autoshop at the time. And what I think AI is really good at is creativity. I don't think it should be used. Well, I don't think it should be used without oversight in, you know, financial services or medical services or very highly sensitive areas of our world. But like creativity, like, yeah, you can have it generate an image, and here comes my cat. You can have it generate an image and it's like, it's just fun. It's not gonna hurt anybody, you know, it's just like creativity. I think AI is good for that. And so Service Stories hits that. We we do SEO content, social media content, all that. Um, but we do it in a unique way, which is we plug into a service business's like ticketing system, and we pull the tickets and we turn those into like effectively case studies. So imagine someone comes into my auto shop, my service writers, my estimators, they go out, they speak with you, they ask you what's wrong, what are you smelling, what are you hearing, take all those notes. They then make a list of what work needs to get done and what parts and all that, and that sits in our system to manage the job. Well, what we started with was I'm just gonna pull that data and tell the story of the work that was done, right? Instead of AI guessing or like if anybody's listening and you and you do SEO, right? Like all we do is we look at like keyword planners and we try to match and we try to guess what people would want based on traffic amounts and stuff. The insight I had was I don't have to guess anymore. Like my customers are coming in the door every single day. We take the notes of what they say. There's gonna be a hundred other people to have probably the same or very similar problem. And so why don't I just take that and make that the content? And so that's what we do, and it's been really successful. You know, we've seen my family shop grew their web traffic 403% in five months. We had another company in LA that plugged in, and I'm talking LA's big market, right? Plugged in and within three months they they grew their web traffic 157%. You're talking double, triple, five times, you know, volumes on some of these. And why that's happening is because we're helping companies achieve and target like keywords and phrases that just haven't been accessible before. You know, when when we had Google search, you would say, you know, autore repair near me or hamburger near me or whatever. It's keyword-based. Today they're picking up their phones and they're speaking full sentences or paragraphs to AI, and those are different. And so, how do you reflect the customer's actual language in the content? And that's what we do. It's called service stories. We just literally tell the work that you do every single day and it's based on real data. So it's been really great. And I think like for us, what I said there is creativity, right? Like we actually have built a very structured system. So when you use our tool, you get a consistent output. But ultimately, like I'm not I'm not creating content for a medical doctor who's gonna advise you on your health. I'm creating SEO content and you should QA it still, right? But it's it's more of a creative sport. I think that's where AI thrives, you know, and that's kind of where I went down that line of thinking with it, which is like this is a good solid product, it helps people a lot, it speeds up what would take two or three hours can maybe down to 10 minutes, you know, but it's not destroying a job. It's it's just altering it like any tool does. And that's kind of where I see it going. So yeah, I got into it, like I said, because I was originally helping them do their marketing right after I left Google. And I always wanted to do this. I helped build chatbots in Silicon Valley, and and I, you know, I was at the days when we were teaching chatbots the difference between HI like hello and HI like Hawaii, right? That's why I don't believe these things are like general intelligence, you know, sentient beings, right? They are just computers and they're more advanced than they've ever been before. And and I do think it's inevitable that these technologies come through, but but they're just computers. And if you unplug them, it doesn't work, right?

SPEAKER_03 21:35

Yeah. I haven't even thought about it. We've been so drilled about SEO and AdWords and all that kind of stuff, and now we have to shift our thinking because you're exactly right. People are sitting there with their phone at a red light, you know, s you know, telling about what kind of hamburger they want with mushrooms and truffles sauce or whatever. Yeah. It really has expanded quite a quite a bit. Well, as we draw to a close, I was hoping to one touch on your book, Automating Humanity. And also maybe season that with any uh final thoughts that you would like to give listeners who were saying, Okay, I'm ready to get AI enabled. I'm here to get started. What would you say?

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Yeah, I mean the book is on Amazon if you want to look it up. Um the book was written f honestly for my friends and family back in Nebraska. Right? It was like I was in the valley, I saw all these technical books and I knew a lot, but it was like, if I brought those home, this 400-page dense technical book is just gonna become a doorstop, right? And so automating humanity was written because I believe we are trying to automate everything that is human. I'm not against it, but I believe there's also a way to make it humane. Right. So we're gonna put that in. Um and yeah, I wrote it to be a coffee table book. It is 230 pages or thereabout, and uh about a hundred and twenty of those pages is either infographics or artwork. Um I took really abstract concepts and made them something you could wrap your head around. And that is what then led into the social dilemma. I worked with that team, they interviewed me. I'm only in the film a few minutes, but my biggest impact was I handed them my book and I said, I'm from Nebraska. If you want this to reach the average person, you need to make it visual, you need to tell a story, and you need to speak to people's hearts, not their brains. And I think that's why that movie took off. Like they're great directors, don't get me wrong. They interviewed very talented people, great cast, but um I think if you look at the film and the success of it, it's because they figured out how to tell a story, not just facts. So yeah, anybody who wants to learn, definitely go watch that film. Understand it, that's probably the simplest way. And if you do want to pick up my book, I would you know, happy to connect about that too. But also just pick up uh AI tool. Go use Claude or ChatGPT. I use Claude, I prefer it, I think it's better. And just ask it questions. That's just start there. You know, you don't have to do anything fancy, you don't have to be a a genius to go do any of that stuff. Um just go pick it up and see and then ask it how it might apply to your work, you know, like take something you're doing at work. Don't send sensitive data into it, but ask it first. Like I'm trying to do this thing at work. What should I do? And see what it tells you, you know? And you'll see when it gives you a bad response. You'll know you're professional, but then you'll also see when it gives you a good response. You're like, wow, that was that was fast. That was something I never thought of. You know, like those will come out of it too. So just start that way, you know? It doesn't have to be intense, doesn't have to be intimidating.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

Now in the film, you're talking about the social dilemma, just so everybody's on the same page.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Yes, the social dilemma on Netflix. Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Oh, yeah, no worries. Making sure everybody is listening. I can see them at a red light. What film?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:33

Make sure to call that out. Well, I want to say thank you. This is really one of the most fascinating conversations I've had. I appreciate gosh, you're 36 years old, and all the stuff that you've done and continue to do is just mind-blowing. But thank you for squee as I said, taking some time out to be with us today and share your knowledge. I am incredibly grateful and I appreciate you. So keep doing what you're doing, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Thank you, and thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

I enjoyed having Joe on the show. Such a fascinating discussion, and I appreciate all the work he is doing. Make sure and check out the show notes for more on service stories and his book, Automating Humanity, and check out the social dilemma on Netflix. In our next episode, I have Laurent Cohen on the show. Laurent is the founder and CTO of GetOblick, a voice-first AI platform, helping local businesses never miss a customer call. With over 20 years of entrepreneurial and technical leadership across Europe and the US, he now builds AI tools that handle real phone conversations, book appointments, and capture leads automatically. Laurent helps business owners understand and how to use practical AI to save time, recover missed revenue, and simplify daily operations. Until next time, take action, execute, and let's run the playoffs, and you can't get a lot of money.