EP 18: What Happens When AI and Supply Chains Collide?

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Are humanoid robots coming for us but to do our work? That's one of the things that we're going to be talking about today on Everyday AI, the live stream, podcast and daily newsletter where we help everyday people like you and me not just understand what's going on in the world of AI, but how to actually use it. Today, very special guest we have Jim Saw Jim Shaw, the president and co founder of Zion Solutions Group. Jim, thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me Jordan. Appreciate it. Looking forward to it.

Absolutely. I can't wait to talk about humanoid robots. Are they coming for us? But first we wanted to run down just some of the biggest news that's happening today in AI. As a reminder, you can go to your everyday AI AI.com sign up for the newsletter. We're going to have all the things we're talking about with Jim in there as well as a ton of other news that we don't have time to get to. But first, Meta AI kind of announced that they're going fully open source with, with some of their AI technology. So here's what that means. You know a lot of companies, Google, Microsoft, they keep their AI closed and in house because they say it can be dangerous if you open it up to everyone. So Meta is opening it up to everyone. You know Jim, what do you think? Is this, is this going to have an impact or is it not really going to, you know, kind of affect our day to day lives, do you think?

You know, I think it's too early to tell and I'm certainly not a coder so I probably share that with other people. But I think back to when Microsoft, you can go in and develop and yet you think Apple has always been closed source in how they handle their operating their OS software. And so I, maybe, maybe Mark thinks it's going to give him an advantage because he's late to the game. I don't know but I'm not educated enough to give anything more than it's interesting and I would say there's some business going on behind it for it.

Always, always there's, there's, you know, especially when you say oh, we're going open. It sounds like, oh, it's for the people. But it's like you're right Jim, there's, there's money there somewhere. There always is.

Right.

So the second one, I think there's a lot of applications for this. But a new study showed that AI is able to better predict and sooner predict, um, signs of pancreatic cancer. So a new study analyzed medical records of 9 million people. And what it showed was this kind of AI technology was able to identify risks up to three years before diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Jim, what are your, what are your thoughts on this?

I, I mean, I think this is one of the beauties of how do you harness the power of AI and what can it do good for humans in the human race? And just this is, this is a little near and dear, I was telling you, my grandmother passed away several years ago and she had pancreatic cancer. Could it have helped? But as a human race like this is one of the great benefits that we can harness and use. And how do you put AI to good use? Yeah. So I think that's absolutely amazing because we've got a lot of disease and cancer is one that's just. It's astounding to me that we still have not figured it out. You wonder why that is? Is it because we can't? Or is it back to another business question. But if it saves one human, then hey, AI is worth it, right? Sure, I, I think that's awesome.

Sure. I think, yeah. So much of the attention with AI is, you know, over optimizing our business and you know, getting. Squeezing even more dollars out of the bottom line. But, you know, there is so much hope in this technology for applications in medical and education and so many other things. So it's always exciting to see when that's happening. So one other thing, speaking of keeping up with what's happening, a new fully AI PR firm is now officially launched. It's called Easy News Wire. So we'll see how that goes. So it's a PR tech company that they're just using AI to write price releases. So I'm guessing it's going to be putting out kind of press, you know, PR news out in bulk. But they're trying to make it simpler and just cheaper with kind of breakthrough technology. Jim, do you think this is a good thing, a bad thing, or, you know, something that is not really going to, you know, affect most of us?

I don't know, I'm, I'm kind of surprised that it. They're the first one or they just the first one to say to give a press release? Not to play on the pun, but are they the first press release to say that they're doing that and the others are already doing it in Some capacity, but I would think that's a natural fit as we get into later. One of the, one of the things I think marketing and AI there's been. When it first hit back last year, that was what all the work everybody got worried about. Okay, is this, is this going to eliminate marketing? Is this going to reduce people's jobs? Is it, is it seems like a natural fit to take and digest large amounts of data and volume and information and then use it that way? So, yeah, I'm not surprised that it makes, it seems like to be a natural fit. I'm surprised it's the first one that said they're actually fully AI.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we've talked about this on the show a couple of times. You know, kind of started with buzzfeed laying off their entire news staff. You know, we talked about cnet, you know, wanting to unionize because of AI. So I do think, yeah, a lot of, you know, whether you're talking about journalism, news, you know, media, I do think that we're going to continue to see a lot of this, just, you know, more AI and, you know, maybe fewer humans, but we'll see. Speaking of AI and humans, humanoids, robots coming to everywhere near us. Jim, this, this gets into your background. So very interested to hear your thoughts on this. So there's a couple of different companies that are working on some of these kind of humanoid robots to kind of assist in the workplace, whatever that. The newest one that was kind of unveiled kind of in the last 24 hours here, so a Vancouver based robotics company called Sanctuary AI unveiled their Phoenix robot. We will link the video in the newsletter today. It is. If you haven't seen any of these robots like, like the Tesla robot, there's plenty of others. It is wild. You know, Boston Dynamics is another one. It's wild to watch them. But, you know, they're hoping to usher in what they call labor as a service. Jim, what's your thought on, you know, not just this, this Phoenix robot unveiling, but just this kind of, you know, robotics as a service kind of wave that may or may not be coming?

Well, I think since the pandemic. So this is near and dear to, to what I do every single day. We build systems and I know we'll probably get to this, but we build systems, material handling systems for companies and customers. And today that system is conveyor. Sometimes it's racking, sometimes it's storage platforms. And that's really where the industry was for several, let's call it decades. There's been advancements, there's been speed. But with the pandemic you saw this transition to robotics and technologies. And so it's robotics as a service. And I absolutely think humanoids are going to be part of our warehouses in the future. As a matter of fact we. One of our, one of the things that we do is I partner with other companies and I distribute their products. And so we put together solutions, creative solutions for customers. And so I use other people's products to do that. I don't manufacture anything. So I get the best of class and everything. I can go out and be partnered within reason with several different partners overusing partners there. But we actually are already investigating. I've been in the room with two of these companies, they're calling them general purpose robots. Were trying to solve what problems do they solve. And there's a hardware piece to them that's an extremely complex problem. But they're so these companies have some of the brightest people that you can imagine from some of the companies that if I won't name drop. But when I heard one of the companies I was in the room with out in Silicon Valley not too long ago and the team that they've assembled, it's like the who's who of tech. And it was. They've got some really intelligent people solving the mechanical problem that ultimately will solve software and how much AI is in this robot, in this general purpose robot. But they're going to be in the warehouse. There's already we have our major trade show for most people probably don't know but for material handling industry, one of the major trade shows is a show called Promat. It's in Chicago, it alternates with Modex, which is in Atlanta. But they had their largest crowd ever this year and a company was there that is a humanoid. And I'm going to not drop names because I got a couple partners here and but they did have a, they had a humanoid that was working, that was live, that had in their booth, it was moving totes off of a storage device onto a material handling piece of conveyor. And so it's coming and it's not an easy problem to hear these people talk and ask what are you doing? How are you going to solve this? So it's complex but they're coming now how far, how close they are, I think everybody's trying to get first in saying watch my robot walk, watch my video, watch my render. And I think that's what Sanctuary had. It was a really neat video if you watch it. But I'm going to get super excited when I see it in the warehouse, Jordan, and I see it actually doing something outside of a sterile test case to where it's. Everything's in a controlled environment, I guess is a better way to put it.

Yeah, sure, yeah. And you talk. Yeah, you talked about promat. I actually have a good friend who was at that conference. I saw the video. You know, we'll link it in the newsletter as well. But you know, how, how long do you think it is until, you know, kind of what you said. Yeah, we've seen these videos. It's, you know, a lot of like, you know, promotion and marketing, but like how long until we go from that to your everyday, you know, whether it's, you know, logistics, supply chain, you know, how long until it's, it's commonplace? I mean, are we talking months, years?

I think it's hard, I think it's hard to say. I think you will see them in the warehouses in the next. Let's call it. There's aspirations to be in the warehouses in 2024. There's some that are already in warehousing due, doing proof of concepts. I think by the 30s there is an aspiration to be in these on a larger mass scale. And I was talking with one of, one of the guys at one of these companies actually earlier this week and the conversation was. It's interesting if you ever look up when, once look at, look at the history when the steamship was invented and look at the time it took for it to replace all the traditional sailing vessels. And there's, there's a whole lot of dynamics that have to go in place. It's similar to Tesla and the, the electric vehicles. Right now there's a whole infrastructure that has to be built. There's whole software. I think you're going to start small and I think we'll see that over the, the balance of this decade. But I think in the 30s you're going to see if we can solve the problem and if we can work together and if it's handled ethically and morally and responsibly. I think you'll see these in places that humans just. It's a lot of, a lot of chatter, Jordan. I know I'm talking a lot about this, but passionate about this one is a lot of chatters like these robots are coming to take human jobs. And that's certainly not the case of the partners that I'm working with. These robots are there to fill voids. They're there to, to complement jobs that are, that as One, one guy in the industry. His name's Aaron Prather. He's kind of a voice of AI and robotics and technology. They're to do jobs that are dull, dangerous and dirty. So there's jobs that humans are really good at. And I've got a little blurb on this. I could, I had wrote down pre show to think on my thoughts so I could talk intelligently about it. But you want people where people are making decisions, you want people where they're using our best asset. We can learn and adapt so quick. Robots don't do that well. And as AI comes on, that capacity is going to speed up, but it's not there yet. And you want humans doing jobs that they have to think strategically and they have to learn and just you want more of the general purpose robots doing jobs that just aren't fun. Unloading a truck. Who wants to sit in a truck in July in the south, which is where I'm from, because you can tell my accent at 100 degrees outside, 90% humidity, and unload a thousand boxes. And then your reward for doing that, you got four of those trucks a day you got to unload. So if you can solve that problem and put a human in a better environment, that's doing more strategic thinking using our best asset, which is learning and adapting, that's where it's at.

Sure. So when you think of even what Amazon has done in terms of AI and optimizing kind of their logistics and warehousing supply chain, when you combine that with kind of what we're talking about here, these humanoid robots doing the, the dull, dirty and dangerous, you know, when we look, you know, five, 10 years into the future. Again, I never asked guests to look into their crystal ball, but I mean, what does this, what does this mean, do you think, for, for your industry and related industries in general, are there going to be fewer jobs there or they're just going to be more jobs, kind of more on the tech side, you know, to supplement and complement, you know, kind of where the industry may be going.

Yeah. So I'm a person that looks at the positive and the optimistic side of life. So my, my viewpoint, the lens that I look at it from, is that this is just going to supplement labor. And we know there's, I think there's a stat, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but there's like 10 million, there's a, there's a job shortfall expected and forecast like 10 million people. And some of these companies, you can't get the people in to do the jobs. That's why this technology has taken so long to get to us. But I don't feel like I think you're going to see them in hospitality. I think you're going to see them in health care and senior, senior services. I know you're going to see them in the warehouses. It's just a matter of how advanced do they get beyond general. And I don't know that answer sitting here today, I have chosen one of the things I've asked Jordan, I think I told you this is want to. So I go and talk to high school students and one of the things I try to explain what we do to the everyday person. Like your show is like, what do you do? And I said, well, I build stuff. I'm like a general contractor of a warehouse. We, we, we get a set of Legos. All of us had the same set of Legos, but I build cooler LEGO designs and some other companies and that's what we do. It's creativity, how we put the Legos together. But we all had the same components, so that's what we do. And I've asked these, these students, when I tell them about humanoids and where that robots and technology are going, I'm like, does it freak you out a little bit? Because it freaks me out a little bit. But I choose to be part of solving the problem instead of sitting back and watching other people solve the problem. So I'm optimistic that it's going to be good. I'm optimistic that it's going to help us.

That's good. I think we need a balance, right? We need the people who are pushing it and not necessarily being pessimistic, but we need people who are pushing the innovation. But then we also need a healthy dose of optimism. So thanks for that. So, real quick, Jim, as we kind of wrap up on the show, you know, we kind of talked about, you know, humanoids and robots, you know, in kind of the industry, you know, supply chain logistics, warehousing, but outside of kind of the humanoid warehousing, you know, real quick, where do you see or how do you see AI impacting your industry?

Yeah, I think we're going to see it in, in marketing. I think you're going to see it in how we're looking at competitor analysis, business development, certainly large language models. I think that's right, if I got that right. LLMs are going to help with data. We had huge amounts of data that we have to distill and analyze and ultimately turn into solutions and designs and Then there's predictive ability outside of it. So predictive analysis, you think? We do simulations, we do CAD drawings, we do a bunch of contract work and terms and conditions and functional design documents for software implementation schedules. We do testing on everything once we built it, user acceptance testing. So all those areas are places that I think as AI advances, that we're going to be able to use it. And yeah, I had somebody say this the other day. I'll end with this. On how we're looking at it, Jordan, is we're certainly. We're moving towards AI. We're looking at it because we're kind of a future. We are always looking ahead. That's part of what Zion does, is we're looking ahead. What's. What's 3, 5, 10 years down the road look like? How do we best serve our customers? But I think a lot in our industry are moving towards AI and exploring it, researching it. But it's not a stampede. We're not rushing into it. We're cautiously walking into it and saying, well, where can it help? And let's try it out. So I'm excited about it. It's a little overwhelming. I'm sure other people, like, every day you see something like, here's the 100 greatest AI plugins, and last night I saw ChatGPT did a bunch of plugins and they're gonna change our life. And I'm like, it's just too much. It's overload sometimes. So.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's, I mean, that's really why this kind of show even exists, right? Because like what you said, Jim, every day there's so many new breakthroughs that can actually change how you do business. But you do have to take it slowly, cautiously and optimistically. So, Jim, thank you again for bringing that optimism and, you know, looking into the future and helping us. I personally just been wanting to talk to someone who can tell me more about these humanoid robots. So thank you for doing that and thank you so much for joining the show today.

Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for having me.

All right, perfect. So thank you for tuning in. Whether you watch live, listening to the podcast, or signed up for the newsletter, please check out your everydayai.com we're going to have a lot more from the conversation that we talked with Jim about in the newsletter. So we hope to see you tomorrow and everyday at Everyday AI.

Thanks.

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