FridAI - Surrounded by Agents.

Business Brain, Episode 669 for Casual Friday AI July 25, International Red Shoe Day. Make sure you're wearing your red shoes. 2025 Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a few ideas, we dissect them, we analyze them, we use them to tune our business brains so that we can each keep living our own definitions of what it means to live a charmed life. Speaking of charmed lives, if you go to openphone.com businessbrain, our sponsor, you get 20% off your first six months of the number one business phone service system and service. We will talk more about how and why that works in a few minutes. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. Glad to be here.

Hey, man. Yeah, it's Friday.

It's Friday. I. Yeah. And we had a lot went on over. I guess it was maybe, I don't know if it was Friday that ChatGPT announced their new agent abilities and I'd love to talk about it.

Yeah, this is an interesting thing. I completely missed it until you, you know, you had it obviously in the, in the list of topics for today. This seems pretty fascinating.

Yeah, it's a big deal and it's.

You want to explain what it is you want me to explain? Okay, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's. I, I just asked ChatGPT, you know what, tell us about your new agent agent abilities. And it says great. Yeah, they go beyond just chatting. I can now take actions on behalf supported apps or tools much like a virtual assistant. While some of these features are still rolling out or in limited preview. Here's what this means in practical terms, what agent abilities can do and then it puts in parentheses or soon will be able to do so. Bringing up all the time. Act on emails and messages. Read and summarize emails. Draft and send replies. Sort or label emails by topic or urgency. Sounds great. Manage calendars, schedule, reschedule or cancel meetings. Coordinate times with multiple people. Add reminders or recurring tasks. I like it. Taking action online. Make restaurant or travel reservations. Order products or refill subscriptions. Cancel unwanted subscriptions. Pretty interesting. Pulling data from different tools like Google sheets notion Slack, I love that. Fill out forms or applications. Prepare reports or documents. It can also work in messaging apps. Answer DMs or customer service questions in Slack and Discord. This is going to be a big deal right here for me. Help moderate communities. Another huge deal for me if that works with my community or flag important messages you decide when I act as an agent, you'll get a confirmation prompt for anything sensitive, which tools, apps I can access and what data I can see. So it says here before I could only suggest what to do now with agent abilities, I can actually do it for you, right? No switching tabs, no copying, pasting. It's pretty wild. So you can. And then it just of course asked me, would you like me to do something for you?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, I asked the same thing and it's wild. It came up with a couple of examples, but, you know, and then it was like, want to try it out with a task now? So, yeah, they say that this is coming to what appears to be all of the paid plans for ChatGPT. So pro plus and team users. The pro is the 200amonth, plus is the $20 a month and team I think is 25amonth. It's basically plus with some team features. And they say that plus and team. So the lower priced of the three will not see this feature for a few days, but probably by the time this episode comes out, we should all have it. This is really interesting. You can ask it. I'm looking, I'm looking at their page on it and it says to use the Chat GPT agent, just select the agent mode from the Tools menu or type slash agent in the composer and once enabled, just describe the task you'd like completed and the agent will begin executing it. It will pause to request clarification or confirmation whenever needed. You can also interrupt the model at any time to provide additional instructions. It will. Most tasks will take between five and 30 minutes, depending on their complexity. And after a task completes, there will be a little clock icon at the bottom of the conversation to set a recurring schedule, daily, weekly or monthly. And you can manage your schedules@chat GPT.com schedules it is and it is not available on the free plan. And I think this will probably be one of those things where using the Desktop app for ChatGPT on your Mac or your Windows machine will be helpful because otherwise the web interface can't interact with other apps on your computer. But the Mac app, certainly on the Mac can interact with other apps. So I think that's probably going to be part of this. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's very interesting.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing.

I don't think I see it in mine yet, but. Yeah, but we're recording this on, on Monday the 21st, so, you know, I'm hopeful. Well, I Mean, I'm not hopeful. I know it's coming because they say it's coming. I will believe them.

Yeah. It says, can I activate agents now? It says most agent actions like managing your email and calendar are still in testing with trusted users. You can't manually turn them on just yet unless OpenAI has granted early access. However, I can simulate the steps, help you set up integrations when they go live, help you build workflows. And tools like Zapier make Notion Slack to mimic agent like automation. So, yeah, I'd love to talk a little bit more about examples of how we might use this in our business.

Yeah, I need to.

Let's do that.

Yeah, I don't. I don't have any ideas right now, do you?

I might.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think. I think we could bounce around a few different things and see how it. How it might help us. All right.

Yeah. Well, then, then we will do that. The next thing that I want to do is talk about our sponsor for this episode, because you know that moment when your phone rings and it's either a new client or your cousin Carl calling to ask if you still have his ladder from 2017. Yeah. That is why I love our sponsor, OpenPhone. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system built for folks like us. The entrepreneurs grinding it out, creating opportunities, and, yes, trying to live that charmed life. With OpenPhone, you don't need to carry two phones or a dusty old landline. Just fire up the app on your computer or your phone and you're all set. You and your team can share one number and handle calls and texts like it's a group chat with superpowers. Someone starts a convo, somebody else finishes it. Your customers get seamless service. You get more time to build your empire or alphabetize your snack drawer, your call, whatever you like. And after hours, their AI answers calls, fields, questions, and even captures leads while you sleep or while you binge reality shows. Again, no judgment. See why over 60,000 businesses trust Open Phone. And OpenPhone is offering our listeners 20% off your first six months@openphone.com businessbrain that's O P E N P-H-O-N-E.com businessbrain. And if you have existing numbers with another service, Open Phone will port them over at no extra charge. Open Phone. No missed calls, no missed customers. And Our thanks to OpenPhone for sponsoring this episode. Shannon. Before we start talking about examples of how we're going to use agents, there was one thing I wanted to share and it's related to the recent medical things I've had, but it really zoomed out one layer from that. I've been using ChatGPT as a consultant. I know it's not always accurate, that's important. But just bouncing ideas off of as I've been having weird symptoms and we've been trying to figure out what this thing is. And there's. There's been some other, like, interesting factors. Like one of my bandmates has exactly the same symptoms starting on the same day.

That's right.

And that's Lyme disease is not something like that you transmit from human to human. And so, like, it's been really interesting. And I've been using ChatGPT, just kind of feeding it all the data and letting it be my consultant. And whether you're doing this for a medical reason, for something personal, for your business, what I've found to be really interesting, and I have used it as a consultant for various other things I think we kind of all do, is that it is not influenced by its biases because of training or experience. You know, my doctor sees certain things in their practice and therefore, like, we all do, makes they have to, like, that's literally what we pay them for, is their expertise based on, of course, their experience. But that also leads them, like, if they say, well, you know, eight times out of ten that I've seen these symptoms, it's X, doesn't mean that it's X this time. But we're going to lean that way because that's what my experience says it could be. But, you know, one outlying symptom might say, no, maybe it's this other thing, but they don't see that. And that's just because of how we humans, that's how our brains work. So it's really interesting using ChatGPT as a consultant because now it might not be accurate, but it's also not biased. Right. So you have to filter whatever it's telling you and not follow it blindly. But it's like the data that's coming in is, like I said, it's completely objective in that sense. Near as I can tell.

Yes. And I would say I was going to mention too, is there is a. If you want to talk about health with ChatGPT, which I do the same thing, it's super great. I have a project underneath that says health that I do all, you know, questions about stuff to keep track of it. But there also is a way to turn off that memory feature.

Yes.

If you don't want it to Remember stuff and you just ask a question because I, I use it. I mean it's just so much more effective than a, than a search engine. And oh yeah, two things that you, you know, turn off. You could just click the temporary chat button, which is up on. If you're using the mat, the desktop app. Yeah, it's just up under the chat GPT menu.

And you can, you can do that in the, you can do a temporary chat up at the top. Same kind of thing for on the, on the web model.

On the web, that's right. And the other thing I always ask it to do is site resources. You know, where are you finding this information? And so that if I want to dig deeper, it'll make sure to put a link there so I can go and say, oh, okay, that's interesting. And is this relevant to, to what I'm talking about? And yeah, I find it very effective. And I find it just, it's. Sometimes you use it like a search engine, but there's so much more depth to it and if the more you use it, the more you'll find that, oh, it's not, I shouldn't ask questions like I do on Google. Yes. Well, you phrase these things and the information you share with it and you.

Get to follow up. Even in a temporary chat. Right. The chat itself knows what it is. It's just not saving that in your profile. So you know, you search Google for something and you get a list of links and it's over. You can search, you can come, you can choose to refine your search and do it again. But I mean, I know Google remembers what we do from, from thing to thing, but it's very different than asking the AI. You know, I, what you're talking about here is the T in chat GPT. That's the transformative part. You get to transform its answers by iterating with it and it remembers what you've done at least in that session, again, depending on whether you're doing temporary or not. But yeah, that's, it's, it's really, it's. Yeah, I know it's crazy.

It's, it's a game changer. So yeah, and what we'll do is I will, I'll work on some agent examples because I have, I have some things that I want to see if I can implement and I think it could be a game changer. And much of it is like, I'll just tease this. As we, as we wrap up here, we have six, roughly 600 hours of discussions about our business, maybe not 600. Let's say 500 hours.

Yeah, sure.

Four or five hours. It's a lot. It's a lot. 11 years of discussion about our businesses, our lives, the Charmed life concept. I mean, all these things that we've done, and up until now, I have not had a way to mine that data and keep it. And one of the things that draws me forward towards the future is I want my future generations of genes to be able to talk to me when I'm gone.

Sure.

And I want the, all the stuff we've talked about and the things that I've written about and my, all the content you've created. My content. Essentially digitizing your, your brain, your ideas.

I mean, I think Apple is like working on that with Vision Pro too. Right? Like, is, like, that's part, It's a, it's a weird thing, but that, you know, that avatar that you can have a conversation with. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it, you know, future generations, I want them to. And I know that's, you know, we talk about ego a lot, but it's another positive thing. It's like, it's not like I, you know, everything you say is so important and the right thing. No, but I, I would like to have had it for my, you know, previous generations, my great grandparents or whoever it would, you know, to be able to talk to them about their experiences.

I, I, So I'm with you. However, I also, it's gonna get like, I'm gonna apologize because this is gonna get super weird, but I'm gonna, I'm here. I've tugged on the thread. I'm not gonna just drop it. I also, like, I love this idea. From my perspective, just like, from your perspective, I want to leave a legacy that other people can, can, can learn from. Can mine, whatever. Right, Whatever. And that's all great.

However.

I don't know. I think there is a negative to someone who has passed being overly influential in the lives of people living in the then present. And I've always thought, you know, one of the best parts about humanity. It's gonna sound really weird. One of the best features of humanity.

Yes.

Is that we don't live forever.

The reset. The reset.

We get a reset. Yes. Somebody's got, if somebody's got, you know, bias. Talking about biases, we all, throughout our lives, develop more and more biases. And they're not all great. Right. Of course, history is full of a lot of really bad biases.

Yeah.

And, and it's like the, the fact that we die that means that our biases. The system.

Yes.

It, like it's sad when, when people.

Every hundred years. Yeah. Basically every hundred years you've got a whole new. I agree.

Yes, yes. Let's not flush the system because it's constantly, it's not like it, it's not like a hard reset, but it is an, a gradual reset. And the things that, that the ideas, I mean we, we, we humans, this idea of, of creating, you know, a, a lasting legacy of your information is something that you and I are the first ones to talk about. Of course, that's why we started writing things down on cave walls. Right. It was like, this needs to outlive me. This is important information. And always it's, it should be followed by. To me, I think this is important for future people to know.

Yes.

But it's up to future people to decide how important our important lessons are. Well, for them, how relevant they are.

You pick and choose because I would say, yeah. In my life, biographies of great business success people have impacted me more than business books about business and how you should run your business and what you should do. But when I read a biography of somebody like, you know, Steve Jobs, Rockefeller, well, those are very flawed human beings, which are massive biases. But you can pick. I would, you know, pick and choose. Oh, that's very effective.

Or even seeing someone's bias and saying.

Oh, I'm not gonna do that.

Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

So that, that I think and that, that continuity because, you know, when you, when you have future generations and you have like, you know, whatever grandkids or great grandkids, they only know you as an old person.

Right. That's true.

And that's, that's different. And it would be interesting to see, you know, I think there's a huge positive impact on being able to see how people lived and yeah. Learning both ways from their mistakes and from the things that they know. So, yeah, so we'll, we'll chat more about agents and how.

Agents and your legacy. Yeah.

Yes. Legacy. And how to use them in your business.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maybe take, take those B level priorities off. But if you're using this, we would love to hear from as well. Feedbackusinessbrain show and also if you want a MacBook for your business, BusinessBrain show reviews. Leave us a review. Tell us what you like about the show, what we can do better, and we'll get you entered to win.

Amazing. Thanks for listening, folks. We'll see you next time. Have a great weekend.

See.

Yeah.