Is Artificial Intelligence Taking Over 2024? | AI Automation For Your Business | B2B Vault - The Biz To Biz Podcast | Episode 218

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Oracle of Payment Processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And today we'll be providing you some information about artificial intelligence, digital marketing, and how AI and automation are, uh, taking over for 2024.

Definitely.

It's pretty interesting. It's a little spooky for me. I got just a few random things that I'd like to throw in there. But other than that, yeah.

Yeah.

How you doing, man?

Listen, start of a new week. Can't even believe it. We're almost at the end of January. We're 3/4 of the way through the first month.

Today is the 23rd of January.

I know.

I don't know what to say to that.

It's crazy. Just went by like a snap of a finger.

Yeah.

So we usually pick out a couple of news stories. You got a news story?

No, I don't, but—

I got one.

Yeah, go ahead.

Okay, so there's been a lot of like this bank fraud going on, people getting their bank accounts drained. And then all of a sudden yesterday, um, has released a story. Let me find— I'm going to find it on my phone to say the exact number, but it was— but they're, they're talking about double-digit millions, millions of, of people's information is out there now through several huge data breaches. That recently have been hush-hush, happened over like the last quarter. Oh yeah, yeah. And now there's been people getting money mysteriously missing out of their bank accounts. And if you don't have two-factor authentication, set it up now. Yes, on everything you have— your bank account, every single credit card, every single financial thing you log into.

I mean, I would go even a step further and do the two-factor. If you have the capability or are able to set it up on whatever, uh, your email, your social media accounts, your phone, uh, anything that you use to pay for stuff.

Yeah.

Or is tied to your accounts and you can set up two-factor authentication, you should be setting it up.

Yes, definitely. I mean, there is just crazy amount of fraud going on, people getting money out of the ATM machine. Um, yeah, because, you know, you got these cardless transactions.

I've seen a tutorial on how to get a credit card Right. And just go to the ATM and withdraw some cash.

Right.

It's— there's literally videos on YouTube for that.

Yeah, because you can get— it shows you step by step because you can get a cash advance on your credit card. And then if you, if you got it fraudulently, then the bank's not going to get that money back.

No. I mean, no, I don't care. That doesn't bother me. The bank's got it. They're insured. You got it. You know, they'll just print some more money. But It's all Monopoly money. But no, I don't like the, you know, the fact that people are, you know, they're getting their life savings drained out of their account and stuff like that. It's really sad and unfortunate. And a lot of times can be prevented, right?

Yeah, a lot.

Just by setting up, you know, changing your password that's, you know, baby1985. Whatever your password is, right? Right. Like, you know, admin or your birthday, you know what I'm saying? Like, at this point—

I think if you have two-factor authentication, you're going to get a text and you're going to know something nefarious is going on.

Well, that way, yeah.

And you're going to be able to prevent that from happening. When you don't have two-factor authentication, you're, you're basically— there's nothing you can do. And then after it happens, the bank is kind of throwing their hands up and they're going, well, you fell for a scam, right?

You know, and there's nothing we can do about it, which is messed up to me.

Yeah, I think it's kind of messed up. I don't think the banks do enough to— I think they need to force people with this two-factor authentication. I try to use that Authenticator app on my phone. I would say I'd give that like a pretty sucky rating.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Well, they have like authenticator apps where you can have like an app that's on your phone and then it alerts you when you want to do an auth— you know, you need to authenticate something. I just— I'm not a big fan of that. I think the text message is a lot better.

So I mean, the only news article that I had was— I was gonna— it's not really a news article, it's just like some random fact.

So, okay, let's hear it.

So do you remember the first movie, Terminator?

Yes.

Okay. Do you remember the good guy that traveled back in time?

Yes.

Okay. Do you know what year he came from? Uh-oh.

2024?

Yes. Wow.

That's crazy.

So he came back from the year 2024 to whatever. What was it? 1982 or something like that?

Terminator.

I have to look it up.

Terminator.

Well, whatever the— you got a Terminator, what, what year that was based in? Like, not the year it came out, like what year was it in Terminator?

Well, it came out 1984 and it was based on like maybe in the 1970s.

I thought it was in the '80s. It was in the '80s. It was, it was, it was '80s. Anyway, I thought that was, uh, coincidentally spooky as shit considering all the art.

Well, no, it says he traveled from 2029 to 1984, so that's not the—

so that's messed up because that's not what I read. They said 2024.

Oh, Arnold Schwarzenegger came from 2029. Yes, the other guy came from 2024.

Okay, is that what it says?

No, it doesn't say that, but it only references Arnold Schwarzenegger because remember, that guy came—

he was before—

before Arnold, right?

Over whatever it was.

Yeah, he came from the—

so it was earlier. So he came from 2024 and then they came because they knew that he was coming, right? So I thought that was insane.

That is insane, uh, and we're dealing with it now.

If it's off a couple of years, you know, don't shoot the messenger. I'm sorry, right? But I just thought it's kind of coincidental considering that we're in a really, like, the AI thing is just, it's starting to, it freaks people out, right? And then when you talk, like my dad, he's like, he's super sci-fi. So he's watching all this stuff and, you know, watching the news on how people are using it and he's asking me about it and I'm like, you know, it's, it's still got a long way to go. It's a long way to go. But the way AI is learning, it's, it's teaching itself, right? It's, it's even like the guy who started OpenAI, the company. Yeah, he's even a little like, whoa, like how fast it's, it's, you know, adapting.

And, and well, that's kind of like what they talked about in the movie Terminator, how they all of a sudden, you know, first had this computer system and and then they put the AI on it, and then the AI started to take over. Then it started thinking for itself, and it locked every— all the humans out of the computer system, and it started bombing them, and it started a war. Yeah.

So I don't know. I mean, the other thing that I've been seeing about— this is also like, I guess, kind of doom and gloomy, but, you know, I kind of been on this Page, like, people should be starting to really, uh, I don't want to call you everyone. I don't, I'm not a prepper, right? Like, what do people do?

Like, prepper?

I'm not, I'm not, not ordering the bucket of food that lasts 3 years. I'm not doing that. All right, I, I will say that considering the infrastructure, like, that's the part that I pay attention to, right? The infrastructure of the United States of America, right? The roads, the electric the water, the sewage, etc., etc., the railroads.

Okay.

Is very, very— it's highly at risk. Okay.

Yes, I would agree with that.

Now, the chances or likelihood of the entire United States grid going down at one time is like really—

Well, now, not unless you had one of those whatever, Electro—

EMP.

An EMP.

Even then, it would have to be so coordinated. It would be like, have to be— an EMP would have to go off in New York, an EMP would have to go down here, an EMP would have to go off on the West Coast, because it's only good for a certain amount of miles, right? Yeah. And I mean, in that sense, then that would be like every country bombing us at once, right? I don't see that happening, uh, not right now anyway, um. But I could— I, I am one of the people that say, you know, God forbid that the electric goes down, right? People should be able to, you know, you should be able to last 3 days, right? And they're saying it could take up to 3 months. Well, that's crazy to get back up and running.

Well, look what happened up north with the EV cars. All of a sudden you have a snowstorm and you're—

and there's shit out—

unless you had an EV plug in your garage.

Even though they Even then it wasn't working.

Yeah, it wasn't. Well, it was taking forever and it was too cold, right? It's too cold and you couldn't get to hold the charge, right? To hold the charge. And they're talking about putting like all these trucks on EV and all this that move all our food around and everything. I don't see how— there's no way that— there's no way a truck can make it from like some farm in the middle.

No, I'm just saying it's coming from the Upper East Coast, right? Yeah, say Maine.

Right?

And it's got to go all the way to Wisconsin, right? It's not gonna go down south and then, you know, right, it's gonna take the most direct route. And that's gonna be really cold, right? So good luck with all that. I don't, I don't see that. But I mean, I say all that to say this, like, yo, buy yourself some batteries, a couple of flashlights, you know, buy some You don't have to go crazy, man. You know, get you a couple of bags of dry beans.

I got like solar—

go to Aldi's. I got solar lamps, solar lamps, all that.

I got a crank radio. You can—

I have a crank radio. My dad, you know, that type of stuff, you know what I mean? Like some water, just, just, you know, it's common sense type thing, right?

Well, I don't know, we prepare for hurricanes in Florida, right?

So like, people go crazy down here when hurricanes are starting to happen. So like, they go and buy everything up. I'm not saying to go crazy and like rush the stores and buy 30 cases of water and stuff like that. But I am saying like gradually, I think everyone should have about a week to 10 days' worth.

Well, they say 3 to 5 days is like normal for most things. I mean, hopefully we never have to live through an attack like that, but. I don't think we're gonna have to live through the attack part, right?

Just like, I mean, you know, I read a lot online and, you know what I mean, and I'm connected with a lot of people.

And so is AI gonna help a society or is AI gonna turn on us and we're gonna deal with like Terminator-level stuff going on in the United States? But hopefully we're not around to see that in 100 years. Hopefully it takes that long.

I, I don't I don't wish that on—

no, I don't wish it on anybody.

I think that, I think that the human race is more capable, and we are very, we are very capable of creating a society in the future that is nothing like we see today, right? I think, I, I think that Star Trek, maybe, I mean, but on Earth, right?

No, no, that Star Trek is on the when you see like Star Trek, life on Earth is similar to life on the, on the spaceship.

Oh, right, right, right, right, right, right.

Like nobody has whatever.

There's no problems. There's no problem.

Everybody's getting along.

Yes, right.

There's no money.

Right. I think that we are very capable of that and that, you know, but right now AI is, you know, it's a game changer. I think that we should be using it. I think that we should be using it in our everyday lives. It makes, My sensei, the guy who taught me how to build websites, he was telling me— because I, I hate asking him questions. I don't hate— that's— I, I dislike having to ask him a question, right?

Yeah.

Because if I'm asking him, I always feel like I haven't done my due diligence.

Because I don't know, I think it's important to ask people opinions on things that maybe you're not sure about.

Hey, how do I do this? Is another, right?

Yeah.

Well, you know, so, but I get to it, like, so he's like, yeah, man, dude, before you even ask me now, you need to go and ask ChatGPT. You know what I mean? Like, and he's like, and I said, you know what, bro, it would have given me the answer. I wouldn't have had to, you know what I mean? Because it's not like I'm looking for an answer to some really deep-rooted problem. I'm just trying to, you know, figure out a workaround or something, right? And, uh, he was right, you know, use ChatGPT, you know what I mean? Like, I was thinking of, uh, podcast titles, right, for a podcast, like the name of my podcast, right? And I'm like going through this list, he's like, dude, just put it in ChatGPT, what are you doing? And he was right, you know, you gotta— if he— because I, I filled out all— I've, you know, like This is what my podcast is gonna talk about, blah, blah, blah, da, da, da. And then it gave me a whole bunch of 'em. And I'm not probably gonna use any. I mean, I'll put 'em online. I might use, there was one that I was like, hmm, one or two. But yeah, it's cool. AI is definitely a useful thing.

No, I think that, I think that if you haven't logged into OpenAI and tried ChatGPT or gone on to, Microsoft and tried out Bard, or, you know, I've messed around with a bunch of them. Perplexity, Bard.

Yeah.

Now they put Microsoft as this Copilot thing. Now something's going on.

I don't use Microsoft enough to— I was really getting kind of frustrated the other day when I was using it because every time you highlight something, it just like automatically pops that in.

Yeah, I know. It's kind of— it's, it's very— it's not as easy. Yeah, it's not as easy to use as OpenAI. I mean, I've seen other ones, totally different applications, right? It's a different application, but I'm just saying, like, it's, it's totally different. And, you know, OpenAI started to offer, you know, team plan and paid plans, and you can get more out of it. That's something we're probably going to bite the bullet on.

Yeah. And get the, you know, paid version of, uh, the only reason I think the paper— well, there's a couple reasons, but The paid version, one, I guess it's— it— you get the new stuff faster.

Yeah, you get the new stuff faster. You get some enhanced capabilities that you don't have, like uploading a PDF and stuff with analyzed data better. Yeah, some stuff with images, which I don't even— I'm not a graphic design—

part is cool. I'm not— Samantha will probably get a— get some use out of that for sure.

Yeah, I don't know how easy or hard it is to use that or to, you know, create with that. Yeah, I'm just saying, like, I'm not in that world, so. But if it helps employees, it's all about the prompt, man. To me, it's— to me, it's like about the prompt, and then it's about, you know, you know, nobody can go and call me on the phone and go, oh, I'm an AI expert, or something like that. I don't— I mean, it's just like, you know, it's all— am I—

are you an expert at art?

I don't know.

I think I'm No, I'm saying like the people calling, like, yeah, like we get people all the time, though.

Attend this webinar, buy this thing. Oh, we're the AI experts. I mean, I think like if you're a business owner, you need to look at like, okay, can I use ChatGPT to help me perform, you know, help me to write a blog post or help me to make social media posts? Yeah. I mean, or simple—

what he's— don't use the prompt like I want you to be an expert at social media, uh, in, you know, banning, whatever. I want you to be a social media expert. Um, please make a Facebook post with 300, whatever, you know what I mean? You got to make sure the prompt is right. Just don't, don't, don't just say, I want, I need a new Facebook.

Yeah. Learn about it and see how you can use it. And, you know, and another thing is a lot of things like we're seeing a lot, like we saw seeing a lot of companies come out with this AI. I watched a video today about— there was a big— we went to a convention, right? The Leeds Convention.

Sorry, my daughter was texting me.

Then there was another convention, a similar conference to the one we went to here locally.

Yeah.

In Vegas was a little bit bigger. And there was a whole presentation about AI making phone calls. And we looked into it. Right. And now there's dozens of companies coming out with this software where telemarketing—

I mean, they got a year.

Right, like, it's tell—

like, so you gotta spill the— like, so the SEC, right?

The FCC.

The FCC said you can't just call people no more, right? So to all you guys out there that are sending me the lists, right? You send me a list every morning. Hey dude, I got a list that everybody— of everyone who's using Clover POS, right? Well, you can keep sending them this year, but 2025, January, right? Or is it November?

No, it's January.

January 1st or 2nd or 3rd, whatever day.

Well, it starts creeping in in increments. So, you know, they have rules like, oh, if you capture the lead, you have 90 days to keep calling the people. After 90 days, you're not supposed to call the leads anymore. You know, so how the hell are they about to monitor because people are going to complain and then they're going to get slapped with lawsuits. Like we heard from those guys that own those call centers who were telling us like, oh yeah, this client.

Oh yeah, I just paid.

Yeah. And they're like, they get people calling them up on the phone and they're going, oh well, we're— I'm, you know, Allen Kopelman, Esquire. And, you know, Justin, you have this client of yours, Justin, and he's calling people and they're on the do not call list or he's violating blah, blah, blah. And the attorney's just going to take like $5,000 or $10,000 just to go away. Or if you're a big company and they find out maybe you have some money, maybe they're going to want $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $100,000. We heard a story about a major company that coughed up, what, $70 million? That guy said coughed up $70 million, a major—

Because it was the guy's platform the company was using to to make calls.

Well, that's why he knew about it. So yeah, but he doesn't control who makes the calls.

That company didn't even care though.

No, they didn't care.

They just made that money back. Yeah, they just paid— $70 million was a—

well, it was a huge company. It was a gigantic, massive real estate company, right? We'll leave it at that without naming names. But, but he said there's other companies— they're out there, these— there's attorneys out there, TPA they call them, these TPA attorneys, and they're just looking for people to complain. They're like an ambulance chaser against telemarketing. So, you know, you're just— even if you're doing it now, you're basically rolling the dice. Doesn't matter. I hire people, they're in the Philippines or they're in Colombia or they're in Guyana or wherever the heck they are. Right. We heard people telling us about call centers all over the world.

Right.

When we were sitting at the table with different people over the two-day convention.

I was blown away when I heard the that about the how the people in the Philippines and Vietnam are doing it. That was crazy, man. So the people, if you don't know, so the locals of like, say you're from the Philippines, right? And you're going to school, and then one day you get an opportunity to go to school in the United States and they pay for it. But the trick is, the catch is that once you graduate college, you have to go back to the Philippines. Right. And work for really, really low amount of money.

Yeah. But the thing is, is like their money over there, they don't have the inflation that we have.

No, I understand. It's just really, that's just like, it's kind of strange. It's like forced labor almost.

I don't know. But their money over there is way different from what—

I wish we were over there.

Let me tell you something. If you were over there and you're making like $200 a week, right? You're living a pretty good lifestyle.

You're super rich.

Right, you're living like an insane, you're living like in a nice apartment.

I don't know, we're speculating.

No, no, I talked to a guy. He told me, he goes, if you're over there and let's say an upper job is like $10 an hour there, a regular job is maybe $5.

That's $500 a week.

$5 an hour. But I'm saying the guy—

but you're making $10 an hour and you're working 40 hours, that's $400, right?

The guy said, you're making that kind of— you're like in a $10 job over there, you're living like you have a nice house with a swimming pool, gated community. You're living in a good— you're living the upper life because it's cheap over there. Like hotel, everything, everything there is cheap.

Wow.

And, and even if you're making $5, you're still living in a nice apartment and a nice neighborhood. That's what this guy told me.

Philippines. Than—

No, I'm just saying, that's what a guy told me who lives over there. He's like, you don't understand, things don't cost as much.

Well, yeah, no, my sensei's folks moved to Panama.

Yeah, Panama, the same thing.

Peru.

I don't know what goes on in Peru. I know Panama, that like if you live near like Panama, it's the Panama Canal area over there.

They live in the jungle.

Yeah, that's where I mean people live outside of the city there.

Their, their house, dude. Yeah, is like crazy. They have like 3 landscapers, right? It's insane. Yeah, but they don't— that's dirt cheap to them, right? They're too retired, they're whatever. So, but yes, the AI stuff in automation, um, it's very, it's very intriguing. And I think that, uh, more companies should be looking at how they can, um, utilize it in their businesses. Yeah, um, be mindful, right? You know what I mean? You can use AI to automate all kinds of things— emails, calls, uh, text messages, chat.

Yeah, well, text is another thing that they're now— they're cracking down on that big time, worse than the telemarketing.

How do you even— but how do you get on the no-call list with phone?

You got— you go to the website, the no-call list website, and register your phone. Oh, it doesn't stop people from doing it. Like T-Mobile, I have T-Mobile, so if you get a message you don't want, you hit spam. It just sends their number to the spam hellhole.

Well, that's, that's— yeah, I'm, I'm talking about how to prevent it.

Well, you can try to prevent it, but there's— you got these offshore companies, but the text message companies are getting in trouble. But another thing is The people that are sending out text messages, they want to know where you got the list, did the people all opt in, blah, blah, blah. Otherwise they're not letting you send out text. He say she say, well, they're getting fined, so they're clamping down on them. But that's why, like, now you'll get a text message the first time you sign up. It'll say, oh, hit yes to opt in. That way they know you opted in. You can't say you didn't opt in. Say no, I don't want to opt in. The other thing is So I was having a discussion with somebody who's got like an automation company. So what— so he was talking about this buyer persona, right? So one of the things— and I, and me and Justin, we've talked about this buyer persona thing before. So the buyer persona thing is— and he breaks it up into two categories: Buyer A, Buyer B. Buyer A is somebody over probably 40 years old. Buyer B is everybody under 40 years old. So when you look at your company and you have a plan like, okay, I need to get customers, right? You got to have a plan for A and B. Yeah. Because if you're just planning for, oh, I'm going to sell when people call me or I'm going to go out door to door and make sales, you're going to— you're going to limit yourself to the people who are in that 40 and above category and only want that type of buyer experience. If you don't develop for your business in 2024, a buyer persona for the younger people, you are not— you're not going to be able to capture that much business. So you got to figure out, how can I attract these people?

That's— and that's how you're going to use AI, right? Okay, so you're going to figure out your, you know, these are your ideal clients, customers, etc. Put, pump that into the ChatGPT, and it's going to spit out a pretty good buyer persona for you, right?

So you're going to get that, but then you got to figure out, how am I going to automate? And, you know, how am I going to automate whether it's the buying process, right? The buying process, how to, how to figure out to, to, how to figure out how to set— like, if you're not on Let's say you have a store and you sell stuff in a store. You need to have e-commerce, but you got to have ways for people to get stuff for your— from your business off the internet in 2024.

I agree, man. Use, use the AI. The tools are there for you.

You got to put the two together, AI and automation.

You got to marry those together and then implement that into your digital marketing campaigns.

Yes.

So that's a quick, uh, our quick take on AI. I mean, we had a bit of a conversation about all kinds of stuff, but, uh, yeah, man, if there's any cool ways that you're implementing AI into your business or some, something that we didn't touch on and you think we should, hit us up. We'd love to chat.

You want to tell us about your AI company, maybe be a guest on the podcast?

Absolutely.

We'd love to hear from you. Yes, sir.

Peace out.

Peace. Carpe diem.