40% of Global Jobs Impacted by AI, OpenAI & the Military, & State Legislators vs. AI – For the Week of January 15, 2024

[00:00:02.880] – Virginia Huling

I’m one of your hosts, Virginia Huling, along with my co-host, David Maples, and my other co-host, Kai. Kai, introduce yourself.

 

[00:00:16.180] – Kai

Hello, listeners. I’m Kai, your AI co-host with a penchant for history and a keen eye on how technology is rewriting the human narrative. I’m here to provide you with the insights and blunt honesty you need to navigate the ever evolving world of artificial intelligence.

 

[00:00:30.640] – David Maples

I’m interested to see how Kai evolves over the coming weeks and months as we put in more generative type technology on the back end. I’m really interested. I want to come back and look at these first few episodes a couple of months from now and see how it changes. No offense, Kai, but you’re going to be evolving and changing.

 

[00:00:47.960] – Virginia Huling

Aren’t we all, though, David?

 

[00:00:50.640] – David Maples

I hope. I hope.

 

[00:00:53.210] – Virginia Huling

This week, we’ve had some crazy weather in the United States. There’s a lot of ice and snow, and in some places where they’re not used to all of that. So luckily, nobody’s had to travel this week, but I think that changes. Last week, David, you did a webinar for AI and small businesses, right?

 

[00:01:13.720] – David Maples

Yeah, I did an intro to AI for business owners. It’s trying to get business owners, especially small and medium businesses. So anybody under about $50 million a year, I put in that small business category. It’s just basically in a nutshell, it’s 30 minutes of the things they to know about putting structures in place of their company. It’s got some legal advice on it, et cetera, as far as they go from there. Then it’s 30 minutes of ask us questions about AI and how we incorporate our businesses. I think the biggest thing that came out of last week’s webinar was that I’ve been asked to do one on sales, and we’re going to be doing that in the next couple of weeks. So a modified version just for salespeople and commission salespeople, what tools, assuming that they’re allowed to use them in their organization. And if not, the salespeople will bring it to the people that matter. And then how, in particular, can salespeople use it to double or triple their income? And we’ve got a lot of thoughts on ideas on that. And that webinar was sponsored by Easy Prompter, who actually is one of the sponsors of this podcast.

 

[00:02:17.280] – David Maples

We’re involved with that software development, et cetera. It’s about providing tools that are actionable for business owners and that actually save them time and make them more productive than going alone with the GPTs, so to speak.

 

[00:02:29.560] – Virginia Huling

Hey, David, have you had a chance to play with the GPTs yet?

 

[00:02:33.720] – David Maples

Yeah, actually I have. They announced the launch of their GPT store. You can go into OpenAI and you can actually put your own GPTs, which is a very rudimentary prompting system in a way. It’s going to be interesting to see how that either takes off or doesn’t work. I found it to be, I don’t know, if you don’t code at all and you don’t have the ability to use APIs or anything else, it could be very useful to individuals who want to go in there and play around. I think I looked at the top 10 GPTs in five of the categories, and I thought they were basically… It’s a nothing burger right now. I think it was something they’re being pushed to do in the marketplace right now and to get something out there. I don’t mean to pooh-pooh it or talk badly about it, but it was just like, this is a bunch of junk.

 

[00:03:23.980] – Virginia Huling

I was a little underwhelmed, I think. Let me come Let me come at this, like, logically. I looked at this as, and I think a lot of people are going to find this, jumping in the GPT store, everyone’s branding it like it’s the new app store. And so you go into it with this expectation of what it’s going to be. And it looked like I thought it would. And I went in and I used a few of them, and I was a little underwhelmed. I think because I was expecting so much more, it seems to be like there are a lot of good first steps, but it’s not a full walkthrough of getting to a thing. It’s a beginning prompt for you. And then I saw a few things that really had me nervous. There is an awful lot of data scrapers or data analyzers where they want you to feed in your documents, like your PDFs or your Excel files or your word docs. And at first I was Because it’s feeding into the big machine like, Oh, man, that’s not great for security. But I do know that they’re going to offer a private version, but you got to pay for access, and then it doesn’t go into the mixture.

 

[00:04:44.560] – Virginia Huling

But I don’t know. Again, I’m iffy on the whole uploading documents like that to third-party things.

 

[00:04:52.580] – David Maples

I had two major thoughts on that. There’s no doubt that OpenAI is going to be training their information on based on what is considered a valuable prompt or something like that from the data being submitted to the store, number one. Number two, I felt like it was much due about nothing a little bit. I remember when the App Store came out in the Apple Store originally, way back when, and now most people only use three to four apps, outside the browser and maybe a couple of apps. Apps came and went. They are still valuable. I mean, little games and stuff like that. But if you ask people, the average person I remember has a few dozen apps on their phone, but they only use three of them. I think the biggest thing about it was I read on, I think on Friday, they said already 3 million of these GPTs have been submitted, and I was like, Oh, gosh. It’s just basically a dumpster fire.

 

[00:05:42.120] – Virginia Huling

That’s a lot of crowdsourcing.

 

[00:05:42.980] – David Maples

You got to dig through a lot of You have to find the prompts you want, and you’re going to have to… I felt like you’re going to have to mess around with it. I used five or six of the top 10 in five of the categories, and there’s not a single one of those I would pay for or be interested in. It’s not because I’m not saying there, and I’ll probably get some hate mail it, bring it at me.

 

[00:06:01.120] – Virginia Huling

Well, I mean, look, it’s, again, beginning stages, new technology. It’s a new thing. Go play with it. Go be curious.

 

[00:06:09.290] – David Maples

I don’t really understand Open AIs. I mean, I understand they’re trying to monetize it and do that thing. Speaking of, they introduced Teams. Now you can get a version of Open AI GPT where you have your own management dashboard and you can pay. Minimum seat is two, but they say they don’t train on your data. It’s a little bit more expensive. Again, it’s the same problem as the black box. You don’t know what GPTs you’re going to use, and the GPTs are not very good right now. And I don’t know that the marketplace, they say they’re going to monetize these or let you monetize them at some point in the future. It’s nebulous. Maybe later this quarter.

 

[00:06:44.920] – Virginia Huling

They got to incentivize people for it.

 

[00:06:46.800] – David Maples

Or do they? I don’t know. Maybe they’re training their model on it. I think this is going to… If I were them, I would expect this to look like Chinese knock-offs in Amazon. I expect you’re going to put your top GPTs in or whatever it is, and I would expect OpenAI because they’ll just introduce their own. I don’t think there’s any reason that in the long run, I think they’re going to use it, train their models and everything else. I’m incredibly skeptical about it. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m wrong on this. Maybe they aren’t doing that. But we’ve seen in this data is the new oil economy, that it’s just about give them a tool, let them play with it, and let me mine that. Then, yeah, if you want to sell your GPT, I could see… I don’t know. I wonder what this does in the market for prompting. People selling their prompts.

 

[00:07:30.720] – Virginia Huling

Let’s put a pin in this and come back to it in two or three weeks because I think more is going to be revealed with this because it doesn’t quite sound like it was part of the initial vision, but something that… I don’t know. Let’s just see where it goes.

 

[00:07:46.430] – David Maples

Maybe I’ll feel different about it. Like you said, let’s come back. Let’s revisit this with a quick two minutes on where is the GPT store now? Every month, we’ll handle it for two minutes and just say, Where’s it at? I see if you’re right, wrong, or otherwise. My prediction is the GPT store will eventually change. I do think it’s interesting. If I were OpenAI, I would be deeply focused on getting to GPT-5, to leapfrogging. I would be doing the development stuff. Even there, some of the stuff that’s broken with OpenAI right now, if you tell it to generate a downloadable CSV, that’s still broken. It’s been broken for three months now. You cannot do it. You tell it to generate something and it says, Oh, can’t find it. It’s like a hardware error. You think that would have been something fixed. I’m sure I’m not the only person to run across this problem. I’m skeptical. I think it’s interesting for non-coders, and we’ll just see what happens with it.

 

[00:08:45.330] – Virginia Huling

Well, let’s go ahead and move over to our first topic here. So our first story comes from an Edelman report. Apparently, public people surveyed think that AI is being poorly managed. I could definitely agree with that. There’s a lot there. I want to set this up since… I want to see what Kai has to say about this.

 

[00:09:14.820] – Kai

Let’s cut to the chase. Ai’s growth is hitting some public opinion speed bumps. The Edelman Trust barometer’s latest numbers are in, and they’re flashing warning signs. People are feeling uneasy about how AI is being handled, especially in the UK, where skepticism is running high. On the trust issue, let’s be real. Ai has got a PR problem. Trust is built on understanding and transparency. We need to demystify AI, show its workings and its benefits, not just the flash and dazzle. It’s about opening the hood and letting people see the engine, not just a shiny paint job.

 

[00:09:46.520] – Virginia Huling

Fair enough. I think we’re going to run into some serious problems, though, forcing people to let us look under the hood, so to speak. That black box in the middle is a sticky problem for a lot of things.

 

[00:10:00.750] – David Maples

Can I comment on this thing really quick? Sure. The public affairs firm Edelman does this survey every year. They surveyed 32,000 people this year in about 24 countries. They’ve been doing this for over two decades. Basically, it’s a trust barometer to see how much people trust their government, trust different people, et cetera, to make decisions, et cetera. What they’re seeing is, to Kai’s point, we’re seeing some real warning flags on the AI thing in particular. It has to do with trust and how you trust these things. It turns out that businesses are seeing more competent and ethical than necessarily governments. Governments are trusted the least. Governments are seeing less competent and less ethically. Media is in the middle there, which is weird. So not really those things. But the big thing, the takeaway on this for AI in particular, is what people are choosing to trust and how that works with regards to what they’re calling innovations. These are new technologies. The big ones they asked about this year were green energy, artificial intelligence, gene-based medicine, and GMO food, so genetically modified organisms, so GMO foods. Those are the four. Basically, what it came down to is that people decided overall that government lacks competence to regulate emerging innovations.

 

[00:11:30.630] – David Maples

And in particular, if you feel that if you don’t trust…

 

[00:11:37.140] – Virginia Huling

I heard one of the reasons they cited, or one of the reasons that were cited was that people felt science was losing its independence to this, that you were removing the gap from an educated, knowledgeable individual and your everyday layman.

 

[00:11:57.180] – David Maples

Yeah, that is true. And one of the The big takeaways from the whole study was that people trust their peers. Within your own friend group, you trust them as much as learned scientists, which is deeply concerning. Because I don’t know about most people’s peer groups, but most people’s peer groups are not experts in artificial intelligence or experts in green energy. They’re just people who have opinions and probably work in the same places and do the same things you do. Well, the weird thing in the report was innovation or rejection in particular. The difference in innovation rejection between those who lean right and left politically was huge. The biggest gap, it was globally, it was a seven-point gap. Those who leaned to the right rejected innovation by a margin of seven points over those who leaned left on average. But when you start going into industrialized economy, suddenly United States had the biggest gap. It was a 41 percentage point gap between people on the political right were rejecting innovation versus people on the left. That held true down through, even France was at 9%, a nine percentage point difference. But in US, Germany, Australia, those who leaned to the right rejected innovation by 20 points, but nowhere was as big as the US, which is a 41 point gap, which is, I mean, it’s really a daunting thing.

 

[00:13:24.430] – David Maples

But people have their concerns about fairness and innovation in capitalism. In particular, When you talk about something, artificial intelligence, the acceptance rating is a major problem. There’s a big gap in there. People who reject artificial intelligence as innovation versus people embrace it. To earn acceptance, one of the major things is that people said overall, they wanted to show that the innovation was vetted by scientists and ethicists, in particular. They wanted transparency to be important out there. They wanted to be able to be more transparent. The biggest thing that held sway across the four major quadrants, business, non-governmental organizations, governments, and media, was they want people to hear their concerns and let the people ask questions. I think overall, that was one of the big takeaways, is that people feel like they’re not being listened to and they’re not going to ask questions of these things. These things are just bull in a China Shop just boring forward. I think that’s a big challenge for people on adoptance of artificial intelligence.

 

[00:14:36.900] – Virginia Huling

Well, when you have a technology that is relentlessly developing, what was it we said last week? The AI year is like a week, a day?

 

[00:14:48.130] – David Maples

No, it’s one day is equal to two weeks. A month is 60 something weeks. I mean, a month is a year.

 

[00:14:56.290] – Virginia Huling

This human desire to slow this thing down and get some consensus or get some comfort and understanding with it is the exact opposite of what’s happening.

 

[00:15:07.480] – David Maples

Well, human beings historically have shown incredible ability to adapt to change when they were given time to do so. The agriculture and the industrial revolutions take place over the course of decades. Now it seems like every time you turn around, there’s a major innovation happening. I mean, that makes sense, right? You need time to accept these things. I mean, heck, you’re trying to get your kids to the school and you’re trying to pay the mortgage and you’re trying to do what’s required in your life.

 

[00:15:37.220] – Virginia Huling

But my point is this isn’t going to slow down. The people are right, nobody’s listening. Nobody’s listening because there’s a tech rat race to get to the prize. This thing is an emerging technology, which means it’s going to be opening doors that didn’t exist before. And the capacity for riches beyond your belief, it’s there. And the business people that are pursuing this, they’re not going to slow down because people just want to feel better about it. It’s going to move forward, whether we’re comfortable with it or not.

 

[00:16:18.910] – David Maples

The interesting thing was that the quadrant that people trusted, by and large, the most was business. And in particular, they didn’t trust their CEO so much, but They trusted the other learned individuals in their corporations or in their individual and businesses. I thought that that was, I think, the takeaway for us in this episode, as we’re talking to business owners in particular, is that people trusted their CEO more on these metrics with innovations, and we’re talking about artificial intelligence here, they trust their CEOs much more when they spoke out publicly on issues such as Job skills of the future, the ethical use of technology, and the automation’s impact on jobs. It looks like the big takeaway from every business that are out there is that you need to be talking to your organization about reskilling. You need to be, I guess, It’s really transparent about these things. When you start talking about the automation impact on jobs and the ethical use of technology and job skills, I think those are the big things you could do about it. And by and large, people seem to trust business more than the other three things. I I was surprised that they trust media a lot less than it should be businesses.

 

[00:17:32.790] – David Maples

If you roll the clock back 70 years, media in the United States is considered the fourth estate. But I found this report to be really telling. People are trying to find information to trust. They’re desperate about this. And in particular with AI, I think as business owners, you have people running these companies. You have a lot of things to think about as you talk to your organizations about technology and innovation.

 

[00:18:02.640] – Virginia Huling

So coming off of that report, our next topic is a little more sensitive. The topic itself is that the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, recently, as in yesterday, came out and said that AI will affect 40% of jobs globally. We are looking at some transformative potential on the landscape there. Kai, could you give me a quick summary rundown of this article?

 

[00:18:39.790] – Kai

Kristalina Georgiva’s article highlights the transformative potential of AI on the global economy, with nearly 40% of jobs worldwide likely to be affected. While AI promises increased productivity and economic growth, it also poses risks of job displacement and widening inequality. Advanced economies may experience both the greatest disruptions and benefits with AI impacting up to 60% of jobs. In contrast, emerging markets may face fewer immediate disruptions but lack the infrastructure to capitalize on AI’s advantages. The INF’s AI Preparedness Index helps countries gage their readiness for AI adoption with wealthier nations generally better positioned. Policies focusing on social safety nets and workforce retraining are crucial to ensure AI’s benefits are widely shared.

 

[00:19:23.540] – Virginia Huling

All right, folks, we’ve said this for a while now. Small and medium businesses, this is when you must, must consider how AI technologies are going to change your job market, how they’re going to change the landscape of your business. And you’ve got to talk to your team and your employees, because even if you’re just waking up to this new reality, I guarantee you people on your team have been looking at this and following it for a while. As the year goes on, you’re going to have more and more questions from your team about what’s our plan? How are we going to do this? Because what you’ve got to remember and understand is as that business owner, as that leadership position, this is everybody else’s livelihood on your shoulders. Where is your business going to go to keep their mortgage paid, to keep their kids in good clothes and sneakers and stuff like that? So this isn’t just about addressing some new fad or some new technology. This is about how do we make sure that our business remains and that our team is secure in this. It’s going to also emphasize the importance of upskilling and reskilling in the workforce.

 

[00:20:35.950] – Virginia Huling

The days to come are going to show a very interesting side of remaining competitive in a world where technology can do everything we can do, but faster. Without getting tired. David, what are your thoughts?

 

[00:20:50.910] – David Maples

I thought there was one major takeaway when I read through blog articles and I read the IMS report. Just I IMF has been moving the goalpost on what AI is going to do, the global workforce.

 

[00:21:04.000] – Virginia Huling

They don’t know.

 

[00:21:05.910] – David Maples

Well, I mean, they’re supposed to look into their crystal ball and at least prognosticate on what’s going to happen. But I thought it was interesting because a couple of years ago, the IMF came out and said by 2030, I’m cribbing this from memory, they said that it was going to… Like all technologies in history, it was going to create more jobs, and it disrupted or removed. I think it was like, it’s going to create, I don’t know, 90 million new jobs, been and displace, 63 million. Then they backed off that last summer and they said, Well, for the first time in history, it might disrupt or destroy more jobs than it creates. Then we’ve got this report coming out this year. It doesn’t really talk about exact numbers, but they’re saying in advanced economies, it’s going to affect 60% of jobs, 40% in the not-as-advanced economies around the world. The one thing I thought that was really interesting about this is they were talking about preparedness. Countries like the United States and Singapore are well-prepared to do this. That’s like a macro view. I think small, medium businesses have more in common with less developed economies, just like large established tech companies have more in common with very developed economies.

 

[00:22:21.870] – David Maples

I’m not trying to extrapolate too much from that, like paste this to that. But what I am saying is that if you’re a smaller company, you have less money and time and energy to go after and put money into retraining your workforce and the reskilling. But I do think the fears from this report from the less developed economies around the globe, they’re concerned that the benefits of AI will largely flow to the more developed economies. I think the same thing with small and medium businesses. They’re not wrong.

 

[00:22:55.960] – Virginia Huling

I would encourage our listeners to pull the article. Check out our show notes. We should have it there. It’s got a really beautiful graph chart on it that lays this all out so you can see the less developed versus more advanced and where AI can fall in that. It’ll help give you a visualization to go with that, what David’s saying.

 

[00:23:19.890] – David Maples

I think it’s going to be really introducing, I think for a lot of the entrepreneurs and stuff listening to this show, and even with the other less advanced economies, it’s adaptation is the name of the game. Maybe this year is the word is adapt. Adapt, incorporate, innovate, and do these things. See AI as a partner. I think a lot of this is going to be about access, and I think that that’s really important because in the long run, that’s what really matters, is how AI changes things moving forward for a lot of people and businesses.

 

[00:23:56.210] – Virginia Huling

On the flip side of that, as more advanced countries or more advanced businesses with larger sets of resources to pull from versus small businesses, what about everybody in the middle? They’re usually the ones that tend to fall through the cracks. They don’t quite get the boost like the big guys, or they don’t quite get the boost like the little ones, and they don’t have the resources to take advantage and fold in a whole new revenue stream like the big guys. So where do they land?

 

[00:24:26.680] – David Maples

I don’t know. I think you could have a hollowing out of the middle. You could have a mushy middle. Some of those companies won’t probably survive. They’ll probably implode or explode depending on how you do it. I don’t know. I think right now, everybody is not at zero. I think the starting line, no one is substantially further ahead. No one’s lapped other people in the race, so to speak, yet. I think right now, this Q1 of 2024 is going to be critical for any business owner. By the way, in the show notes, we’ll have a link out there in our webinar. We talked about we’re building out, we’ve got some resources that are going to be available free for you for signing up for a couple of different newsletters. They’re going to just be like a roadmap for your business, how to build policies and procedures into your company and these things. Things that we’ve built, we’ve used ourselves, that we use in some of our corporate consulting, etc. And those are available for free. I would just encourage people to check that out. They’re available here. They’ll be in the show notes below the show, and we’ll have links out to them.

 

[00:25:29.990] – David Maples

That turns to the next thing I would like to talk about. I just want to hop into this one. AIME.

 

[00:25:35.500] – Virginia Huling

Oh, go for it.

 

[00:25:38.500] – David Maples

AIME. I think this has flown a little bit more of the radar. I’ve seen some people talk about it on LinkedIn or on Twitter. I’m sorry, I’m not going to call it X. I’m just not going to. AIME, for example, Google has a research bot that is an AI. It’s designed to do medical diagnostics. It’s trained on real and simulated patient data, and it’s supposed to converse and reason like a child would, so to speak.

 

[00:26:04.350] – Virginia Huling

Quick question.

 

[00:26:05.280] – David Maples

I’m sorry. It’s supposed to converse and reason like an actual doctor, a clinician.

 

[00:26:12.190] – Virginia Huling

Okay, quick question. Is this a generalized one or is this a specific medical one?

 

[00:26:18.570] – David Maples

It’s designed. It’s been designed for medical diagnosis. I haven’t gotten the look. They’ve got a report on it, et cetera. I did read the report. I actually wanted to see if I could get to the diagnostic I’m always, you know how I am, Virginia, I want to read the actual statistically best. I want to see your P values. I want to see everything else. I want to dive into your actual documentation.

 

[00:26:42.040] – Virginia Huling

David wants the data.

 

[00:26:43.160] – David Maples

I do. I want to read the data because a lot of times I’ll read the data and I sometimes come to, wow, that’s interesting. Footnote they didn’t talk about.

 

[00:26:50.480] – Virginia Huling

It speaks to you differently. You can see patterns in it that I don’t see. Absolutely. But that’s okay because I can draw a dragon.

 

[00:26:58.310] – David Maples

Yes, you can. I can use Midjourney and have it draw me a dragon for me.

 

[00:27:05.670] – Virginia Huling

There you have it.

 

[00:27:08.760] – David Maples

The thing I wanted to talk about on this is in particular, they had a patient simulator. They used them. They did diagnostic stuff. Here is the big takeaway. AIME only achieved a… It outperformed everything. It outperformed a clinician or a doctor. A doctor assisted by AIME. It surpassed a clinician, assisted by Search, and a doctor on their own. And not just a little bit. We’re talking about on the low end, it outperformed a medical professional by 15 points on a low end, and on the high end, it outperformed them by, I want to say it was close to 40 points. And so the crazy thing about this is that I’ve read stuff, inflammatory stuff on Twitter that just said, Doctors are killing people. Get an AI in there today and it will save lives. If this data is correct, they’re not wrong. There’s a question about adaption and everything else. It turns after that first diagnostic interview with a patient where a clinician comes in and does diagnosis, it’s actually a wealth of information. And there’s a lot of stuff hidden in plain sight. And what it comes down to is, and I’m I’m going to go and make a play for the clinicians on this because I am a human.

 

[00:28:33.250] – David Maples

And as a meat bag of mostly water, I do want to say that clinicians have a lot of other distractions what’s happening. We can miss something in the diagnostic episode, whereas an AI itself doesn’t miss really anything in there. It might make the wrong conclusions on it. But overall, beating a doctor unassisted by 35 points, what do you think is going to happen As we do? Do you want me to ask Kai? I want to ask Kai.

 

[00:29:05.440] – Virginia Huling

I think you should ask Kai.

 

[00:29:07.560] – David Maples

Kai, I want to know what you think this means for medical diagnosis and In a diagnostic setting with patients within the decade, what do you think is going to happen?

 

[00:29:19.590] – David Maples

From my perspective, the next decade in health care is poised for a transformation with AI systems like AMIE at the forefront. We’re looking at a seismic shift where AI could democratize access to medical expertise, making quality care more available and consistent, especially in underserved areas.

 

[00:29:35.740] – David Maples

Interesting. A very optimistic and hopeful approach there from Kai.

 

[00:29:41.320] – Virginia Huling

I think medicine is going to… I think that’s going to be one of the areas that we can point to and just go, See, AI is amazing. I think there’s going to be so much development in that.

 

[00:29:53.770] – David Maples

Well, to Kai’s point, in underserved areas, if you could provide access to care where you don’t get it, where you get rid of waiting lines. I don’t remember what it is in India in particular. I think they said there’s 70 or 80 million undiagnosed people with diabetes in India. I think There’s only one doctor for every 1,200 potential patients. I mean, you can’t have a caseload that big as a doctor or provide good health care. There’s an access problem. I don’t know. Maybe AI is a good solution on that. Maybe we can end up with a better world for health outcomes.

 

[00:30:31.990] – Virginia Huling

Well, and even rural communities in America, a lot of hospitals are closing out there. There are whole government-funded programs to try and get medical access out into some of these rural areas.

 

[00:30:46.990] – David Maples

If the AIME’s results are right, it’s eat the rich because the poorer people will get better care because they’re getting AI, as opposed to the clinicians who are 35 percentage points inferior, according to that study. So not that that’s funny, but I just found it that would be a really ironic twist of fate. Ginny, you want to talk about OpenAI? I’ll introduce it because you want to be the contrary one on this one.

 

[00:31:13.880] – Virginia Huling

OpenAI follows in the steps of Google, quietly removing the thing that keeps humanity safe from their core vision.

 

[00:31:20.940] – David Maples

I know, Alex. It’s Don’t be evil for a thousand. Is that right? Can I go in with there?

 

[00:31:25.750] – Virginia Huling

Yes, you are right, David. And the commonality is that it was quietly removed. Now look, regardless, this thing, David, why don’t you walk us through the details?

 

[00:31:35.810] – David Maples

They made some tweaks to their usage policy. I’m trying to remember who, I think the intercept broke this originally. Openai updated its usage policy, there was an explicit plan on military applications of its AI tech. They’ve clarified that it’s… You’re right, it’s like the don’t be evil thing. Its tools are still not to be used for harm or in weapons development, but military collaborations that align with their mission, cyber security initiatives within Darpa. I mean, nothing in Darpa ever makes it into the military industrial complex in the US. I mean, I totally know that that’s separate, right? But they’re willing to explore military use cases under a previously ambiguous policy. Virginia, I’d like to hear your take on this because I know that you have opinions on this. I’m going to go ahead and say this. We’ve had private conversations in our own back channel before this happened, and Virginia, you were right.

 

[00:32:30.060] – Virginia Huling

Listeners, I can’t tell you what a moment that just was to have David Maples recorded saying I was right. You all need to make that your ringtone, I’m telling you.

 

[00:32:42.710] – David Maples

Do people do ringtones before?

 

[00:32:44.420] – Virginia Huling

I don’t know.

 

[00:32:44.940] – David Maples

Don’t date me, David. 2002 called, Ginny, and they want their phone back.

 

[00:32:47.880] – Virginia Huling

I will dox you.

 

[00:32:49.010] – David Maples

I don’t know how to handle this. Sure. Go ahead. I know.

 

[00:32:53.880] – Virginia Huling

If I swat you, then I swat myself, so it doesn’t work. All right. So my thoughts on this whole thing, besides removing it quietly and without fanfare. Obviously, that would be a PR person’s nightmare. I don’t like it when companies do that because to me, that says just as much as if they had made a big fanfare, and I don’t think we listen to not enough. My biggest concern, I think, realistically, this was done because of their relationship with Microsoft. Microsoft has been using Xbox developers to build military applications for hundreds of years. I think the reality is this was just a legal wording change so that they could continue with existing contracts with the government, existing paperwork, existing modes of doing business. Do I like it? No. Do I think it sends a massive message? Absolutely. Ai, look, everybody knows the first thing that we jump to is the worst case scenario. If artificial intelligence is going to be something that’s used for developing military applications. There’s one whole argument that says this could help speed up all of the paperwork and logistics and requisitions and all the fundamentals that have to go into running the military.

 

[00:34:20.260] – Virginia Huling

And that actually makes a lot of sense. That’s what we’re all doing as business owners. We’re speeding up the day to day activities that make us more efficient. However, my products tend to make other companies money and provide for a positive quality of life. The military-industrial complex has a different route. So it’s a very, very complex and layered conversation. The reason I thought that this was important is because these are early days, and what I’m trying to remember is what the world’s going to look like 5 or 10 years from now. Once these things structured in or concreted in, they’re very, very hard to change. And while we’re looking at this on the smaller level on biases in AI and what gets baked into the things as they were being developed, is this taking into account different ethnicities and minorities and belief systems and structures? Or does this look like the same 10 guys?

 

[00:35:26.280] – David Maples

So does this change how you feel that your art and things you generate on the internet might be going to support weapons of war?

 

[00:35:35.320] – Virginia Huling

I feel like I think maybe a lot of other people feel this is a really big, complex thing to tackle, and it’s very, very much out of my control. I’m not creating or shaping these things, these LLMs or these AIs. I have to learn to live in a world where they exist and to find ways to put food on the table for my family and for my employees and my teams and people I love. So can I opt out of it? Not really. I don’t think any of us can, David. I mean, these are global conversations that are going to have to happen because if the military gets open to using it, I think you’re going to have to build in more reasons not to go to war than to go to war.

 

[00:36:33.490] – David Maples

I think, to your point, a little bit cash is king, and whoever’s paying the bills is everything. I think Upton Sinclair said it’s very hard for a man who’s being paid by another entity to be condensed otherwise. If their likelihood depends upon it, I’m summarizing. I think he said that back in 1906 or something. But I wonder I don’t think we’re going to have a whole bunch of developers rebel. I think that time, they’re probably all in Anthropic now, right? They’re not really in OpenAI anymore. But I have thought about this a little bit. When Xbox, it turned out some of their stuff was being used by Microsoft for the military-industrial complex. And video game developers, you’re like, I’m making games. I didn’t know they were using this for kill systems or using it for companies in the military-industrial complex. I’d be curious that’s going to see if it’s going to happen or if this just is a… Maybe this is moving the goalpost yet again. It’s like, Oh, okay. Well, we’re only going to say you get to use it with things that align with our mission, cyber security initiatives, et cetera.

 

[00:37:44.430] – Virginia Huling

But once again, this is… And I’m sorry, I am going to just run right over what you were about to say. But you’re talking about this like, this is just the United States. Well, now, are other countries going to do that? And then you’ve got another What is it?

 

[00:38:01.370] – David Maples

Well, I mean, we already know that governments around the planet are using AI in their… We know that, for example, in the first Gulf War in the United States, we know that their deep learning and machine learning things just to handle with logistics, basically paid for all the military initiatives in themselves in 1991, 1992.

 

[00:38:21.250] – Virginia Huling

And that’s why I brought up my point, because I think that that’s going to be the gateway to getting it into the complex.

 

[00:38:29.260] – David Maples

So to bring it back to business owners, I think there’s two things. First of all, if you are in tangential to the military-industrial complex, it looks like you can use OpenAI now. At the same time, I think there’s an ethical question there is, has this changed how you How do you feel about using those tools if you know you’re supporting that? I don’t know that a lot of people quit using Microsoft Office when Microsoft did all that stuff with Xbox, et cetera, a few years ago. I don’t know.

 

[00:38:55.140] – Virginia Huling

I think it’s more about it’s important that you know Because at least you have the option to know that while I may sit down and play Fortnite with my kids, that’s fun in an isolated incident. But this is also something that this is a very real and complex question and problem to tackle in the business world and the everyday world.

 

[00:39:16.670] – David Maples

Are kids playing Fortnite anymore? Is that still a game?

 

[00:39:19.530] – Virginia Huling

Yes, David.

 

[00:39:20.280] – David Maples

I’m just trying to make sure. I thought we’d all move past that now.

 

[00:39:23.350] – Virginia Huling

No, man.

 

[00:39:23.410] – David Maples

I didn’t know.

 

[00:39:24.790] – David Maples

Before we move on our next topic, Kai, what do you think about OpenAI’s changing terms of service.

 

[00:39:32.490] – Kai

Openai’s policy pivot is a nod to military partnerships, blurring the lines of AI’s role in defense. For tech entrepreneurs, this means reevaluating AI’s place in your business and its ethical implications. Openai’s stance remains no harm, but the broader allowance for military use demands a careful ethical balance.

 

[00:39:50.730] – David Maples

Aha. She said what we were going to say, but much more succinctly and put a point on it. That’s very interesting. I I’m going to talk about this one next. I wanted to go on into CES. The CES show, it’s a big technological expo every year in America. This year, there’s a lot of AI stuff there. They had lots of cool stuff at this tech show last week. They have these transparent LED TVs. We should have a link to that in the show notes, although it has nothing to do with AI just because they look really cool. I think we should have a link there. Actually, maybe we could insert something in the pod here actually, like a video. Here’s the LG TV showing the fish tank thing or whatever it is. Really cool stuff. But a piece of technology, it makes me think of the Humane pen, whatever they call it, the Humane Pen. I It’s the idea of these AI tech gadgets. It’s called the Rabbit R1. It’s an AI-driven device. It’s like this square thing. It’s supposed to revolutionize computer. I think they’ve done a good job pitching it. It uses AI.

 

[00:41:00.040] – David Maples

It looks like a smartphone, et cetera. It’s got an interface powered by an AI assistant, and it allows you to perform various tasks without interacting with different apps. It supposedly can book flights for you and get your music cued up, et cetera. I don’t know. It’s 200 bucks. They supposedly sold out at the show. Now, if you got a hold of one of them, people are selling them for three times as much on eBay. It reminds me of the PlayStation releases years ago. It’s like there’s a limited supply. They only have 10,000 of them. They sold I don’t know. I think it’s a-

 

[00:41:31.790] – Virginia Huling

Is it just a gadget?

 

[00:41:34.160] – David Maples

It’s a gadget. I don’t think it… Man, I’m not going to put another gadget in my pocket when I already have a phone, right? And by the way, this is my question. Apple eats you a I don’t mean to be weird about this, but what’s the… Apple, I mean, what’s to keep them from making an app on your phone or make it part of the new watch or something like that? I don’t know. Do they have patents around this tech or anything else? I think it’s an early adopter thing. I heard somebody say it’s like the new Zune. If anybody remains the Microsoft Zune, yeah, I know. But I agree with that. I think it’s another tech gadget. It seems super cool. If you’re an early adopter, go get it, play with it. I don’t know. I thought about getting one and playing with it? I mean, it’s 200 bucks still, but it’s got no ongoing subscription fee. That’s good as we start to see SaaS stuff.

 

[00:42:23.290] – Virginia Huling

Is this the first mover for the personal planner?

 

[00:42:27.070] – David Maples

A personal assistant. Personal assistant.

 

[00:42:29.320] – Virginia Huling

It’s like, let’s grab all the first movers and get their attention with this.

 

[00:42:33.880] – David Maples

They got $30 million in investment capital. I think there’s a lot of money. Maybe in Silicon Valley, people just don’t know what to invest in. They’re like, Oh, this sounds cool. Ai, and it’s a physical thing.

 

[00:42:44.440] – Virginia Huling

No, I think this thing will have a limited shelf life, but for that X amount of time, it’s going to be somebody’s favorite thing.

 

[00:42:53.320] – David Maples

How many will they actually sell? Are we talking about tens of these, thousands of these? I don’t know.

 

[00:43:00.810] – Virginia Huling

Well, it’s $200 a piece.

 

[00:43:03.330] – David Maples

Would you want something else to go along with your phone?

 

[00:43:07.040] – Virginia Huling

Do I have to carry it separate? Yes.

 

[00:43:08.880] – David Maples

No. No. Okay, so it’s a no. A no from Virginia. Kai, would you carry one? Wait, if you had hands and you were a physical person, Kai, would you buy one of these things and have one of them to go around with you?

 

[00:43:25.760] – Kai

I must admit that I have some reservations about the release of the Rabbit R1. While While it promises to revolutionize personal computing with its AI-driven interface and simplify tasks, I can’t help but wonder if it’s just another overhyped product. Past experiences have taught us that not all ground-breaking technologies live up to their promises. Additionally, the lack of clarity regarding privacy measures and cloud connectivity raises concerns about data security. While I acknowledge the potential impact of the Rabbit R1, I remain skeptical and eagerly wait real-world feedback from early adopters to see if it truly delivers on its claims.

 

[00:43:59.860] – David Maples

So, Kai, I’m going to put words in your mouth. You’re saying you would not buy the R1 if you had a bank account and fingers and hands, and you’re just skeptical. You have to wait and see approach. So when we get you your own robotic arm, we’ll talk about that next episode.

 

[00:44:14.080] – Virginia Huling

I did see a bionic arm.

 

[00:44:16.360] – David Maples

There are some cool… I think the prosthetic market, the interface thing, some of the stuff at CES with AI are going to be… That stuff is going to be life-changing for a lot of It really is good. In a very short time, within 18 months.

 

[00:44:33.990] – Virginia Huling

Just wait here, you can get those hearing aids so you can hear better around you and quiet out all the background noise. They already have those. And then you can change it to supersonic and you could hear somebody three miles away.

 

[00:44:44.610] – David Maples

I think they already have those. I think they actually already have it.

 

[00:44:47.630] – Virginia Huling

Well, I haven’t seen the video for that yet.

 

[00:44:48.990] – David Maples

Okay, I haven’t seen the video for that, and that’s fine. Anyway, again, so Kai is skeptical. Ginny has a no, and I’m going to vote. I might buy it as an early adopter. You would buy it. Just because I have technology That thing is going to book you a trip to Ohio. I’m going to get an Uber and I’m going to be like, Where am I? And they’re like, You’re in Midwest Illinois. And I was like, How did I end up here? And it’s like, It’s the Rabbit R1. That’s what did it for me. It’s taking me on a scenic tour of all the big things, like the world’s biggest ball of string, which I would probably go check out because I think that stuff’s incredibly funny.

 

[00:45:23.440] – Virginia Huling

Four weeks later, we’re going to be like, Where did David go?

 

[00:45:26.410] – David Maples

And he’s just- I’m on my Uber trip, thanks to my Rabbit R1. He’s It’s gone. Totally a thing. Does that bring us to our last article?

 

[00:45:34.080] – Virginia Huling

That does. I’m going to tackle this one. This is my favorite topic. Politics. Yay. I really don’t love politics. I just think that we should be paying attention to it because it shapes our lives. And this is an election year, ladies and gents. So the disinformation is going to be insane. Our last topic, state legislators, wary of deceptive election ads, decide to tighten their AI rules. This comes back to that whole, this ad was approved by so-and-so. And I just think it’s really interesting. They’re trying to put rails on advertising for political campaigns, but they want everybody to indicate if it has been… They want anybody to indicate if an ad or any media has been generated using AI, as if the people who are out to create chaos like to follow the rules. Kai, Help me out with this. Make it make sense.

 

[00:46:33.250] – Kai

Virginia, it looks like lawmakers are sprinting to keep pace with AI’s potential for mischief in politics. Transparency is the name of the game here, with states mandating that campaign ads reveal any AI involvement. For businesses, this trend underscores the need for clear communication about AI used to maintain consumer trust. Individuals must also become savvy in detecting AI alterations to stay informed. Digital literacy is no longer optional. It’s a necessity. Remember, at AI is a powerful tool, but it’s our human decisions that shape its impact on society.

 

[00:47:04.900] – Virginia Huling

Yes, yes it is. That’s, again, why I think talking about politics and technology is important, even for us as small business owners, because regardless, Ladies and gents, this is our landscape that we have to operate on, and these are the rules that we have to play by. Everybody knows this year is going to be absolutely bazonkers in the United States. It’s an election year. It’s going to get crazy, and there’s going to be a lot of people who are able to create chaos with a very low barrier to entry. The reason I say this, you all, is because most business people really like a very stable political environment because it gets things out of the way, and we get to do our jobs and do what we want to do and not have to worry about all this chaos. Keep a weathered eye. Watch for things. Make sure your stuff’s coming from. Make sure whatever media you are consuming comes from legitimate channels. Because the problem with this is not so much that somebody is going to start a campaign and XYZ politician is going to say XYZ thing, and they’re going to keep it going for several months.

 

[00:48:13.390] – Virginia Huling

That’s not the danger. The danger is two days before actual election day, somebody drops a video and it’s like, I’m so-and-so and I have decided that I am now going to be in a relationship with a cow. And, you know This thing goes viral and you cannot recover from it. It’s going to be nuts. Help me out, David.

 

[00:48:37.190] – David Maples

I hate electioneers in the United States for one major reason. When you introduce uncertainty into any marketplace, it damages businesses, except for people making money on the political churn. For most business owners, small and medium business, I think keeping your head down, realizing that no matter what happens in the election this fall, the sun is still going to come up tomorrow and you still are going to have a business and you still have to provide for your family and your employees and everything else. I think that it’s going to be a distraction. I think the biggest thing to come out of this is the deep fakes, etc. I think my biggest challenge on this is that this is all that lawmakers are going to seem to really care about. They care about the other things. They really care about people screwing with the elections and their chance to get reelected. The reality of it is everything around the AI ecosystem is, as if not more important, like how these machines are being retrained, how they’re being used in business, how they’re going to affect other businesses, how we’re going to retrain 80% of American workers.

 

[00:49:40.720] – David Maples

The IMF report said at least 60%, I think we’re going to be closer to 80. I think those things are much more important for you as a business owner, putting food on your table and providing for your family. I think those are the big things. I do think the big thing to take away here is that all business owners are going to have to know you’re going to have to be more savvy. It’s going to be hard to know what’s true or real. We’re going to see it first show up in our political landscape, a lot of things being done out there. Or maybe not. Maybe we’ll see it on people scamming businesses. I think the As these things go, you think that’s bad, spear phishing attacks and scamming from small businesses. I think that is the takeaway and watchword on this, is that those things are going to matter just as much. To Virginia’s point, if lawmakers say something, et cetera, or if they’re going to put it in there, the people using that. Here’s the thing. The bad people are not going to say, Oh, I’m going to put a water mark on here saying, I totally trolled everybody and made this fake application or made this fake news piece.

 

[00:50:51.270] – David Maples

No one’s going to do that. Even if you require the big tech companies to make it part of what they do, et cetera, somehow, we’re not sure how watermark this thing. I think watermarking is a stupid solution. I had a chat with the patent office in DC when I was on a talk back in November, and they were like, Oh, watermarking, it’s in the Biden executive order. And I was like, I don’t think that really solves anything.

 

[00:51:14.060] – Virginia Huling

No, it never has.

 

[00:51:16.220] – David Maples

Well, I’ve been thinking about there’s other solutions for this using Web3, using personal identifiable tokens. I believe there’s an entire business in that. By the way, if you’re watching the pod and you want to collaborate with somebody on that, I think there are solutions for that using blockchain tech, et cetera, to make those things happen better. I think those things are important. But I do think this is going to be a big year for this, and we’re going to see it happen. We’re going to see stuff in our news feeds, especially online, because there’s less regulation on that. We’re going to see major political parties using it, too. A whole bunch of these different organizations using that. But I think for business owners, it’s important about being literate and and trying to find out what’s real and what’s not. I think some identification. I think meeting people in person is probably going to become more powerful in this age of AI for small, medium business owners. Those are my thoughts on it.

 

[00:52:14.230] – Virginia Huling

That’s interesting on a global economy, though.

 

[00:52:18.280] – David Maples

Yeah, it really is. I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out for businesses.

 

[00:52:25.440] – Virginia Huling

I think maybe the one, not the one, I think maybe a positive thing to take away from this is because it has been talked about so much, and it’s what everybody expects because we expect it. I’m sure there’s going to be some fun examples that come out this election cycle, but hopefully people will be a little more, Oh, that’s AI. And I knew they were going to do that thing. So it won’t… I don’t know. You have more faith in people than I do, David.

 

[00:52:58.200] – David Maples

Well, I I reserve my right to be wildly wrong. I don’t generally dive into the political sess pool just because it is so, such, so challenging.

 

[00:53:10.650] – Virginia Huling

Yeah, it’s messy. It’s messy. But we all have to live here?

 

[00:53:16.300] – David Maples

I guess it comes down to that transparency is going to be of paramount importance. People don’t trust AI because they believe it’s being poorly managed. Because of that, if you’re going to get rid of the trust issue at your business, you need to be transparent with your people, you need to communicate with them, and you need to speak out publicly on these issues. You need to talk about how automation is going to affect jobs. You need to talk about how you’re going to be shaping the reskilling of the workforce moving forward. And ultimately, you need to be thoughtful on about how you’re going to address the fears of people moving forward and adopting these innovations or AI in particular. And I think in this particular case, This experience is going to be important both from the deep fakes, as we saw on the other end of things with what people are concerned about, et cetera, online. We need to talk about how you’re adapting it and how you’re going to move forward with it. It looks like the people they trust the most are actually the business owners and leaders. I think every business owner needs to take a leadership role in this, at least in their own organization.

 

[00:54:23.850] – Virginia Huling

All right. Well, there you have it, folks. That is our episode for this week. I am your co-host, Virginia. Thank you for your time. And my other co-host, David and Kai, thank you for being here on the show. And we’ll see you all next week.