EP 392: AI-First Workplaces - What You Need to Know

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The workplace has changed so much, right? I remember when I first started working in the early days of the Internet, things seemed very slow or even back when, you know, I was on a word processor. But things have changed so much recently with technology, obviously with, with the web and cloud and mobile phones. But generative AI, I think, is maybe bigger than all of them in terms of how we work, how we think, how we become productive in the workplace, right? And I think so much of how we work is dependent on what we work on, right? Are you, are you using Google? Are you using, you know, Microsoft? Are you using maybe Zoom? Right. So that's why I'm excited today to have an industry veteran and a leader at Zoom to really talk about AI first workplaces. Like, what does that even mean and what you actually need to know to still be productive and to really get the most out of your day. All right, so I'm excited for today's conversation if that sounded like you. Right. If you're wondering, how can I be more productive with all of these AI tools and what does work even look like in the future, well, you're in the right place. My name is Jordan Wilson and welcome to Everyday AI. This is a daily live stream, podcast and free daily newsletter helping us all keep up with what's going on in the world of AI because it is a ton, but how we can actually learn from it, understand it and use it to get ahead to grow our companies and our careers. So thank you. If you are listening on the podcast, please go to your everydayai.com Sign up for the free daily newsletter. Every single day, we give you everything you need to know as well as recapping all of the important insights. So if you miss anything from our guest today, don't worry, it's going to be in our free daily newsletter as well as the news. Yeah, normally we do this all live, but you know, we got people joining us from all over the world. So technically pre recorded, but debuting live. So enough chit chat. I, I am super excited to bring on our guest for today, so everyone out there, please help me in welcoming. There we go. We have XD Wong, the Chief Product Officer at Zoom xd. Thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI Show.

Jordan, thank you for giving me the opportunity.

All right, I'm, I'm excited. So let's, let's do this. Let's start at the very end, maybe xd and then we'll, you know, rewind our way back. But let's just start with the big question right now. What do people actually need to know about, you know, being an AI first workplace?

Well, I think the best way to share that story is to review the three eras we all went through. When I was, you know, Student More than 30 years ago, I was using typewriter to write paper. And I remember if I have spending error, I got to use the liquid paper to correct that. Microsoft really helped to change that with desktop computing. And I wrote a book using Microsoft word up to 800 pages published by Prince hall that was amazing. That was really, really a huge productivity lift because the whole paper, the whole book, 800 pages formatted in exactly the same style we wanted. With the Internet emerging, Google brought us Google Docs and collaboration improvement that really just give a lot of people the benefit to have multiple people working on the same document and collaborated better. So the Internet era created another productivity suite that prominent as well, just like Microsoft Office that did lead desktop computing with generally AI. This is absolutely exciting new era in the generative AI. Zoom is transforming the company from a meeting company to a productivity company to the AI native productivity suite. I'll give you an example how I already benefited from AI company. Zoom introduced AI company last year. So really I cannot live without AI company myself. Whenever I have a meeting, this is one of the most important business function. I do not need to bring my chief of staff to the meeting like I used to do at Microsoft where I was Azure AI cto. So AI Companion will transcribe and summarize everything we talked about in the meeting. The most important thing is AI Companion will identify next steps action items I need to follow. Once I got that set of action items that will flow into Zoom Docs. If the follow up task is for me to write a blog, Zoom AI Companion will write the dog draft on my behalf. I have the block, I just need to touch it. I'm done. Can you imagine the journey from you have to worry about every single letter with typewriter to worry about the whole style formatting chapter with heading and the italic style using Microsoft Word which is you collaborate with a number of people on the same document using Google Docs. Now is AI Companion to write on your behalf. From meeting to docs to chat. That whole life cycle is already there for you to save more time to be more productive. And if you want to actually have some brainstorming idea, AI campaigning as we Launch in October. We bring not only work information, but also web information seamlessly together. It's so seamless that you can ask AI company the question. AI company will bring the right information at your fingertips. You can incorporate that into Zoom Docs.

So actually, like, that, that. That was such a great, like, you know, almost history lesson for all of us, right? And, yeah, thank you for, you know, sharing your background. You know, working for, you know, 30 years at Microsoft, you know, just goes to show you that you've been through, right? And. And you've been helping lead, you know, this slow but steady kind of transition into the future of work. You brought up one thing, right, that you no longer need to bring your chief of staff, right, to meetings. Because, hey, you're using, you know, Zoom's AI Companion, right? Like, even for me, that's personally something I love, right? Having, you know, we've been paying paid Zoom customers for four years and, you know, being able to talk to the Zoom AI companion for me in the middle of a meeting, right? Because let's be honest, everyone out there, you get distracted when you're in meetings, right? Especially when they're virtual. You get an important notification comes up, you know, you're writing notes about something else. And I love going in there and saying, like, hey, what? Like, tell me everything that has been said so far and what I still need to, you know, worry about. So do you think that this kind of AI first workplace that we're living in now and in the future, does it kind of give everyone a chief of staff, Right? Like, is that kind of what it's like to be, you know, an AI first workplace?

Absolutely. I really feel that this AI companies get to know me every day and not just meeting. We can democratize to help get the action item identified. If you need to write up something, you can brainstorm with AI Companion, AI Companion can really write a better draft. If you're not happy, you can be rude, say, go and work harder. Make that, you know, change. AI Companion will just do that on your behalf. So it's really becoming a daily assistant that whether it's writing or reading, those are the two most important functions, right? And for anyone, if you want to be productive, you have to consume information. AI company will help you to consume information with the context you are doing. In Zoom Workplace, if you want to write up something, Air Company got the whole context will also write on your behalf. A lot of people in the past, they go to ChatGPT to do things. I want to share the story. This is almost Analogous to British invented steam engine that started the first industrial revolution. If you run American business here on this side, you wanted to use that steam engine. You have to travel across Atlantic, get the power of the steam engine, then come back, we change that. AI Companion will actually be part of your experience. You can really get the context into AI Companion seamlessly. Whether it's from the work or web, it's seamless. You do not need to talk between web or work or travel across Atlantic to do something there, then come back. So we worked with Perplexity. We have a seamless integration to bring their capability on web search into the Zoom workplace context. So this is really a game changer.

Are you still running in circles trying to figure out how to actually grow your business with AI? Maybe your company has been tinkering with large language models for a year or more, but can't really get traction to find ROI on Genai. Hey, this is Jordan Wilson, host of this very podcast. Companies like Adobe, Microsoft and Nvidia have partnered with us because they trust our expertise in educating the masses around generative AI to get ahead. And some of the most innovative companies in the country hire us to help with their AI strategy and to train hundreds of their employees on how to use Gen AI. So whether you're looking for ChatGPT training for thousands or just need help building your front end AI strategy, you can partner with us too. Just like some of the biggest companies in the world do. Go to your everydayai.com partner to get in contact with our team or you can just click on the partner section of our website. We'll help you stop running in those AI circles and help get your team ahead and build a straight path to ROI on Gen. You know, you, you kind of hit this, this big area of how we all work, right? So many of us traditionally have spent times in so much time in meetings, right? And then generally what we do is we read, right? And then we, we write, right? These are, and there's obviously thinking and connecting of the dots, you know, but like along that line, right? But I feel that those are three areas that we spend as, as, you know, knowledge, working professionals, we, those three areas. So you know, now with things like, you know, AI companion and we have, you know, large language models built into everything, you know, perplexity for web search and, and all of these things. So I'm wondering even for you, for you personally, right, when you look at those, you know, meetings, reading and writing, how has, you know, AI even changed how you work and how you spend your time in those three areas and maybe, I mean, I'm guessing you've become more productive in those areas and if so, where are you then spending that additional time? You know that maybe you used to spend more in those three areas.

So the one more things I want to add in addition to reading writing is to connect with people. Zoom is extremely good. We do bring people together. With Zoom Workplace and AI Companion, we help you to get information in the right place and the right time without traveling across Atlantic. With the example analogous example I shared because of that capability to have information flow naturally, I want to emphasize into every corner of a Zoom Workplace. Zoom Workplace got meeting, chat, email, calendaring and docs. The action item extracted from the meeting or from Zoom docs or from your email is monitored, harvested, updated by AI company just like your chief of staff. If you want to really get more productive, you have to focus on what is you have to do. What are the action items? What are the tasks you have to track. Zoom AI Company is like a super AI agent is following and tracking the life cycle of the action item and help you to get work done faster, better. This is how we can dramatically improve productivity. Not just focus on formatting the document, make this slide more beautiful or enable two people editing one page. Those are all good capabilities. We love all of them. You know Google Microsoft really created this amazing productivity suite that helped all of us. But now with Zoom AI Companion, Zoom Workplace we're moving the bar much much higher. We help you to focus on getting work done. Focus on Action Item is a system of action with a task oriented tracking and all the drafting, creating, document creating, blog or write a piece of email can be helped with AI Companion. With all the contacts information incorporated from your history, what do you do? We create this unique user interface. I want to highlight graphics user interface has been dominant for so long, right is the representative whether it's Mac or Windows or Office. Graphic user Interface is iconic. ChatGPT changed a lot. OpenAI conversational interface as defined by ChatGPT really open the imagination for everyone. Zoom Workplace is trying to bring those two together. What I call AI LED user interface OAUI that will seamlessly combine graphic user interface and the conversational user interface seamlessly with information flowing from both. With Zoom Workplace, if you can chat with AI Companion, you can get the work done. But Zoom Workplace also can bring up traditional graphics interface together. For example, if you want to schedule meeting, the calendar application will be part of that experience. You can stay in contact with the graphic user interface. But you are right Conversational user interface understands what is you are doing. We are bringing those capabilities together. That's the second slide I want to share. The most important one is we are taking this 5AI approach. That means we are bringing the best model from everywhere. Unlike many companies, they only use one model. We are using Google, Gemini, Metalama, anthropic model and OpenAI GPT4 all together. Massage them in a way that will create the most relevant, most productive action oriented information flow. That is the iconic differentiation of the swoon workplace. This is why we think we will be the new kid on the block for productivity lift. We respect Internet era, Google Docs, Desktop era, Microsoft Office. They will be there. They are very, very important tooling. But this generated AI capability as represented by AI company from Zoom is going to be unmatched.

This is why I love having super smart people on the everyday AI show. I didn't even know that. So you have almost like a mixture of experts set up with all the big model makers love that using. I think it's so smart to be able to apply the right AI solution at the right time in the right place. When you talk about productivity, you don't want to be using model A if it's not really good at task B. So I think that's great. So one thing though that, that I want to ask you is, you know, you are the chief product officer of a product.

I'm sorry, I'm the Chief of Technology officer.

Oh, sorry. Thank you, thank you for, you know, correcting me on that. So the chief Technology officer for a product that hundreds of millions of people use every single day, how do you, you know, how can you chart out the future, right? Because I think generally, you know, when you're, you know, trying to understand, hey, what comes next And I'm sure, you know, maybe your, your time at Microsoft is maybe a little different than your time at Zoom because things move so fast, right? Even those models that you just talked about, those four, you know, kind of, you know, large language model makers, they've all had huge updates in the last week. How can you keep up and kind of chart ahead, you know, how hundreds and millions of people are working.

They are really simple. The only three things as I talked about, let me just summarize, number one, as we trying to create the AI backend, we not only use the best model out there, but we do federate them together. In addition to that, we're also creating our efficient small language model that will bring the context, everything to work together with the larger language models. In the cloud. So that is really a major differentiation set us apart from Microsoft and Google. Microsoft copilot most use OpenAI GPT4 it's a great model and Google most use Gemini it's great model but we are using Anthropic it's great model in addition to OpenAI and Gemini and the Meta. So we build on the success of this powerful set of models in addition to Zoom's own small language model working as one system like agent to deliver value. This is why we offer unmatched experience to track the next steps from your meeting to curate and harvest that action oriented information flow that is the backend. The second thing is really we are trying to bring GUI graph user interface, traditional GUI and the chat interface, conversational interface seamlessly together in Zoom Workplace will bring that information flow from both to enhance productivity. Number three, because of the UI innovation and the backend AI innovation, we are going to focus on action or render the task information flow. This means the whole life cycle of what you need to worry would be helped by Zoom AI Companion the whole life cycle. I really want to emphasize that it's like your agent focus on tracking the task you have to accomplish for the whole life cycle of that task. Those three things combined will make Zoom AI Companion and Zoom Workplace the new kid on the block.

So speaking of the whole life cycle, XD one thing literally I've trained thousands of people on using large language models and know one thing I'm always talking about, you know, especially when it comes to, you know, AI first workplaces is being able to unlearn things, right? To unlearn good habits. As an example, I'm someone that generally during meetings, because I used to be a journalist, I would type a ton of notes, right? And now when I'm on Zoom calls, right, I don't. So I, I've had to go through this process of, of unlearning good habits and knowing like, okay, you know, I have, you know, large language models now that are doing certain tasks for me. What's your best piece of advice for people, you know, maybe who are mid career and they've been, you know, successful, you know, in the workplace for maybe a decade or two. What best advice would you have to them on how to really lean into, you know, this AI first Workplace that now we're all living in?

I think the best advice I have is make sure we all have that critical thinking, independent, critical eyes. Because AI Companion or any other large language model, they do hallucinate. So just like you're working with someone, the person may not be 100% accurate all the time. So that independent critical thinking is super important. Always keep that in mind when you work with AI companion, which is a new species, just like you're working with a new person, you have to maintain that critical thinking and the judgment. But for the drafting together, you know, 90% of the work done is amazing. That 10% hallucination is going to be there for all of us to be aware and manage. You know.

I just, I just thought of something that I, I generally don't think about. You know, when you say, hey, you know, AI models are always going to hallucinate. And I think, you know, people have kind of gotten used to that. But, you know, I'm curious, what maybe new skills, right? Because you're someone that's been, you know, working at some of the largest companies for the majority of your career, what new skills are you looking to develop, right? Is, is maybe a new skill, you know, being able to spot hallucinations in AI models? Or maybe are you even personally creating new creative skills that maybe you didn't have the time for previously? But, you know, I'm wondering, as we become more productive with tools like, you know, Zoom's AI Companion and, you know, your whole suite of products, what new skills are you even trying to develop right now?

Is the ability to ask the right question that's related to critical thinking? Large language model. The output of large language model and generative AI really depends on what kind of questions you ask. Raising the right question will help you to reach the right outcome. It's interesting.

That makes, I mean, that makes sense, right? Like, yeah, like I, I, I personally spend so much time, you know, speaking to large language models, right? And I think sometimes I just try to, personally, I just trying to double down on, on productivity, right? It's like, oh, you know, I have all this time, I, I should be more productive. But I think what you said there is important, right? You have to maybe use some of that extra time or headspace to think more creatively and ask the right questions. I think that's paramount. So actually, we've, we've covered a lot in today's conversation, right? You brought us through a history of the workplace. You gave us a glimpse into the future of, you know, these AI first work workplaces, and you kind of shared, you know, how Zoom is, you know, fitting into that equation. But, you know, as we wrap up, maybe what is the one most important piece of advice that you have for people on how to still succeed and business leaders to grow their business In AI First Workplaces.

I think the incumbents is going to struggle and if you look at the history, it's always the challenger that can take a full advantage of this. New forces generally AI really created new forces at the level the playing field. So I'm excited that we are absolutely on the right time to take advantage of Gen AI. Create a productivity that will really help everyone on this planet to perform much better, to gain more time and with better connection to almost everything. Not just to people. Better connection to almost everything.

Gosh. Is anyone else pumped up? Is that just me? Like X XD just gave me some, some, some hope for humanity. Right? And I love that, you know, the, the challengers can take advantage of that because I think so many, so many of us out there, you know, we are in that challenger position. So xd, you just gave us, I think some great advice on how we can really take advantage of the best of what generative AI has to offer. So thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to help us understand kind of the future of AI First Workplaces. We appreciate your time and insights.

My pleasure. Thank you, Jordan.

All right. And hey everyone, as a reminder, we went over a lot as we always do. If you didn't catch every single thing in there because that one was jam packed of great information. Yeah, maybe you didn't have your Zoom AI assistant dropping in, taking notes. Don't worry, we'll have that all in our newsletter. So make sure you go to your everydayai.com, sign up for the free daily newsletter and we'll see you back tomorrow and every day for more Everyday AI. Thanks, y'.

All.

Thank you.

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