EP 56: How To Govern and Properly Use AI

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How do we even govern AI? Can we. Is it just the Wild west and we're all just living in this current reality? So that's one of the things that we're going to talk about today on Everyday AI. This is your live Daily. It's a daily live stream where we bring on expert guests, you can ask them questions, going to podcasts on Apple, Spotify, everywhere else, and a free daily newsletter. So make sure you check, check that out at your everyday AI dot com. So before we talk about how can we even govern what's going on in the world of AI, let's talk about what's going on in the world of AI because there's a lot. So let's start at the top because this actually has to do with governance a little. So US Senators had their first ever classified Senate briefing on AI yesterday. So they kind of hinted at there may be legislation in months, but this was a pretty, a pretty big meeting. So the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Defense and others coming together with US Senators to hold some first official discussion on the governance of AI. My hot take, y'. All, it's not going to, it's whatever the US Senate comes up with. I don't think it's going to work. You know, if you've seen the some members of Congress ask questions of tech leaders, it's not good. So we'll see, you know, hope for the best, but we'll see what actually happens. The next piece, an Indian CEO is facing huge criticism after he kind of went viral on Twitter talking about how he laid off 90% of his support staff in favor of an AI support bot. Okay, what's the big deal? Well, turns out he was also selling that support bot, so took a bunch of heat on that one. So another news story worth talking about is it's not just Hollywood writers fearing AI. A new story that we're going to be sharing about the newsletter is talking about how Great Britain's Writers Guild as well also fear being replaced. AI is a worry for them as well. And last but not least, this is, I don't, I wouldn't say this is fun. This is actually kind of scary. But the VC billionaire Mark Andreesson laid out two scenarios for AI. So this is, you know, Anderson is a, you know, kind of a very well known person in the tech space, but he says AI would do One of two things, either eliminate the need for labor in a best case scenario or lead to Chinese world domination. So I hope there's an option C. You know, I don't, I don't know if I or people, at least here in the US like any of those two options. But let's talk a little bit more about it because we do need to figure out what to do with AI. How can we control it, how can we govern it? Should we. And for that, don't worry, you're not just going to hear me rambling on. I have a guest today that is going to help answer some of those questions. So let's, let's bring our guest on today. So we have joining us live, very excited about this, John Chapatta is the principal and CEO of HG Technical Consulting. John, thank you so much for joining us.

Jordan, thank you for having me. Looking forward to.

All right, so this is, let's, let's first, before we dive into the specifics, John, give, give everyone a little bit of your background, you know, because it's not just in the consulting space, but you're also out teaching AI as well. So tell everyone a little bit about what you're doing in the space.

Yep. Currently I'm working at Harper College in Palatine as an adjunct instructor and working with the students there and teach them about an introductory level of AI. Along with other teachers there, we've put together a curriculum I think that's going to be probably the best in the northwest suburbs. To be honest, I haven't heard it from any of the schools. And they're really wanting to get this type of education out there accordingly. So the students that I've taught already are, they get excited after the class. They want to have more. Their hunger just started to get built up and then it's almost like a letdown when the class is over. I'm like, no, no, we got more classes. So, but yeah, I'm doing that. And in fact, we're having a meeting in a couple of weeks to go over and to kind of firm up what our fall semester is going to look like. So Harper's doing a lot and I'm glad I'm part of it.

Yeah, that's exciting. But also, you know, in, in your background, so you've worked with, you know, just, just so we can set the context a little bit. You've worked with big companies, right?

So my first 10 years I was with the Quick Roads company, then with Craft for the next five years after that. Then I went off on My own consulting. But in that consulting, I went away from the food business and got into companies like Allstate, Ameritech at the time, another company called Wheels, Blue Cross Blue Shield is another one that I worked with. Also Medline, hi. At hotels. Yeah. And so. And then the American Medical Board of Specialties, which kind of governs the doctors that have specialties like pediatric cardiologists, things like that. And all of that was basically helping them get along with their technology. Whatever challenges they had, we tried to resolve and go from there. It's been a lot of fun. Learned a lot. Yeah.

Wow. So just, just wanted to set the stage because we do have, you know, people tuning in from all across the US but also all over the world. But what I wanted to say is John knows his stuff. Right. He's, he's working, he's working. Not only has a background working with, with large and medium sized organizations, but also he is teaching AI as well. So with that, with that setup, now John, we have the, the ball on the tee. So now you can smash this one out of the park. So when it comes to AI, it is, it seems like the Wild west, right? There's, there's no, at least here in the US there's no official laws, rules or regulations. So how should companies start to govern AI internally? Should they.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, to me, the thing that the companies today want to do the most is they want to mitigate risk. They want to ensure that there's policies and procedures in place and to ensure that their, their private information, their intellectual property doesn't get distributed and copied. Okay. And so with that, you've got this governance approach that we should be taking. It actually came up with one of the classes because students brought up like, well, AI is doing good for here and, but AI can also do bad things too. How do we balance that with the right proper governance and policies in place? Jordan, it can happen. And there's, there's characteristics of that governance as well too. You know, need to be transparent. That's number one. I mean, right now you need to explain what your systems are doing. When you're working with the AI, you don't want to be like, you know, sorry, can't, can't see that you need to cover up. You need to understand and, and release that. So be transparent is number one. You need to be held accountable. And that to me is like clear lines of understanding and identifying responsibility with what you're doing. And this last one, it's, there's more but ethical frameworks need to be put in place. And what, what does that mean? It really prioritizes the rights, the fairness and the, and the social well being of what this AI product is doing. Focus on those top three. You're on your way to forming your own governance.

Yeah, you made it, you made it sound so easy, John. You know, hey, it's as easy as this, right? So I want to, I want to unpack that there. But before, before we do, just as a reminder, if you are tuning in live, please drop, drop any questions that you have about governance in AI for John. So we do have a couple of people joining us so I just, just wanted to give them a shout out. So Scott, I'll definitely send you over the, the PPP information. Rastafa, thank you for, for joining us. So if you do have any questions, please toss them up. That's what we're here for. So John, we, we went over a lot of things there in, in that first response talking about mitigating risk, intellectual property, balancing the good and bad ethical frameworks. Right. So much to unpack there. But maybe let's, let's start, let's start at the top because I think one thing that is causing a lot of headlines maybe is when people aren't, or companies aren't mitigating risk or they don't have any safeguards in place. And then you see, oh, you know, this person uploaded sensitive documents or sensitive information into chat GPT or you know, this person submitted false, you know, hallucinations to the court. So, so how do you even start that process? Because mitigating risk is huge. Because as as much good as there is, there can be just as much bad. So how do companies start that?

I mean the first and foremost thing is education. I think, Jordan, I think the companies really need to understand what's going on if they want to pivot in terms of what they're doing with the, with their company and understand what's coming at them. AI is not only going to come at them, they're going to have to deal with it as well. So does my dog. But the idea is that one of the things that's happening is the education. Understand, understanding is the best thing that can be done.

Yeah, so, so speaking, speaking of understanding, let's, let's pivot. But I do want to come back. But let's talk about kind of what you're doing right now at Harper College. So you know, there's, there, there's not a lot of, I don't think anyways, maybe you know, drop Drop a comment if I'm wrong, but there's not, you know, colleges and universities that are fully embracing AI. So let's, let's talk about that quick and then we will come back to the business side. So, you know, what does that look like right now? You know, just kind of teaching the AI class at Harper.

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It's exciting. It really is. I mean, Harper is, is a really putting in the time. They're gaining the funding to get these classes in place. They're educating the educators as well about this whole subject and they're taking pride in making sure that it's communicated out to the corporate space as well too. Students are actually filling up these classes. I've been teaching in HERPA for about a good 10 years now, and I think this is something that everyone is interested in. So classes fill up really quick and they're excited when they get in because they want to know what's going on. What, what are some examples, what are some things that AI is doing? And in the class we, we show them examples live. We actually get them to be interactive with some of the things that are presented. So it's like learning how, what is machine learning like? Can we do that? Can we create a, a process that we can train a model? So it's, it's kind of cool when they see, wow, this is really, you know, and they did it on their own. It's not like I told them what to do. They, they just follow the instructions and they could see it on their own. So like training the model I think is one of the biggest things because you use a certain tool and you show them a pen or a pencil and once you train the model, if you show the model the, the pen or pencil, it'll tell you which one it is. So they get a kick out of that and then they start unleashing like ideas on their own. So it's really kind of cool.

Yeah. So speaking of that, you know you talked about the, the outputs of what's coming out of, you know, this, this course in AI at Harper and maybe students are quicker to pick up and learn and to make adjustments than businesses. Right. Because a lot of times, especially small like or sorry, medium and large businesses, it can take them a while to self govern. Right. They can't just be like a student, learn something new and put it into practice because it's not that easy. So even going back into what we started talking about, ethical frameworks in businesses, how if someone out there listening, maybe they're a small to medium sized business owner, maybe they're a director at a larger business, what can they do to address that ethical piece in using AI in their business?

Yeah, I mean one of the things that they need to be aware is that AI also brings a certain level of bias. Okay. And that's something that they need to be aware of. And how do you handle that bias within that tool? Okay. And we talk about that in the class at Harper that we teach. The other thing is also the marginalized communities, you know, how are we impacting those areas for the better, not for the worse? Because that awareness level is key. Making sure that companies are putting some forward, thinking towards that and investing in making sure that they can have a framework set up that's going to not only protect their assets, but also protect whatever products they're going to be producing in the future. And security is huge with AI. The ability that you can actually tell AI to go do something and it'll figure it out in like nanoseconds is just driving all the security chiefs, I think in companies they crazy.

Absolutely nuts.

Yeah.

A great, speaking of that, a great question about security from Brownwyn. So Brownwyn asking would it be a good time to learn cybersecurity? So like not just that, but you know, how should companies be looking at cybersecurity as well in this new age of AI deep fakes? All of this talk, talk a little bit about that.

I think that's a, a key point because one of the things that we need to do in the governance side of things is do risk assessments. And without cyber security, we really won't be able to assess what type of threats we have. Okay. Learning from the, the history that we've collected. AI is great at collecting data, big, large amounts of data that we can then take a look at and see that the information that we're gathering is going to be new, it'll be identified quickly and the, the ability then to affect a threat or to remediate a threat can be done in that instance as well too. We're not going to have that many. Well, we're going to have again, that balance the good and bad that are going to be out there and we need to be able to be on top of that. And part of the attribute of a governance program would be risk assessment with cyber security as their major link supporting that. And I think Brown is right in terms of learning cybersecurity, not a bad idea at all.

Yeah, I think, I think there's plenty of other, you know, industries that are far worse to get in. I think cybersecurity is, there's going to be a lot of security and growth in that field. So, you know, John, we did open the show talking a little bit about, you know, at least here in the U.S. you know, what legislators are trying to do. Do you think, you know, I, I think a lot of companies are, are, are kind of playing the wait and see game to say, okay, is the US Government going to do something? Is my state or local? You know, are, you know, are there going to be any other laws, rules and regulations? You know, do you think business owners or, you know, directors, managers? I mean, should we be waiting on, you know, some sort of authority to say, hey, here's how to use it and here's not. Or should we at least be developing best practices in our own businesses?

I think the latter, Jordan, honestly, because the way that speed and technology moves together, if you wait, you're going to be left in the dust, in my opinion. Be proactive. Okay, let's understand what's happening. Get a type of assessment workshop put together that you can put together and get that going. Don't. If you wait, you're not going to learn as much as if you are actively involved.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's a great point. Yeah, because, and I agree with you, John, because I think so many companies are just waiting and you know, I think it doesn't take long to at least get a baseline. So kind of like what Yadi is, is, you know, saying right Here in this comment saying she feels it's good to start with the AI principles and then even if they're not fully baked, you can build, you can work on those. So another actually question from, from YETI here. So we're doing, doing a little bit of a turn here, John, so asking in the education space, why are educators polarized on AI detection in general? So, you know, I don't, I don't know if that's something that, that you, you know, deal with a lot, John, but, you know, there's obviously students are using ChatGPT to write papers. You know, might, might not be as problematic in the class that you take, but have you seen this at all in education? You know, kind of professors, teachers, you know, really pushing off AI and even with this, this content sectors?

Yeah, I've, I've got a lot of friends that are in the academia space. Some are tenured professors in local colleges here as well. And what they're really looking at is how do we get the students to learn, period. If a student goes into chat GPT says, hey, write me a paper on this. Great. They've done it, they've submitted it. The chances are the professor should know the student to see whether or not that's in that language that they're used to seeing. But all of a sudden, you know, you got structured sentences, other things that they may not have used in past papers. Okay. And on top of that, we have a chat GPT that can go check to see if that was, you know, the percentage is chat GBT generated or not. So the instructors, as. And the professors, the educators, okay, are looking to see are the students learning that's their biggest reward. And if the, if they're fostering the dependency on a tool, you know, I could see where they're going back and forth, but make sure they know that. Okay, you want to use Jeff, we can find out if you did and did you really want to take that chance?

Yeah, and I think, you know, I, I have hot takes on this, but I'll, I'll save that because we actually, if you are listening to this and you want to know more, we actually had a full episode on this actually yesterday with, with, with Kelsey Baringer, the CEO of Packback. So make sure, if you want to know more about that, make sure to check that out. So, so, John, I have another question for you, and it looks like we might have one or two more from the, from the audience here as, as we wrap. But there's, there's so much. Right. So I Started the show saying is working with AI right now kind of the wild west. And it can, you know, it can take a while to, to get those best practices, to get steam, to get momentum. But where do companies start? Where would you recommend? Like, what is that first? Right. Even when we talk about, like, oh, okay, get guidelines. Okay, where, like how, how would you recommend that when it comes to governance, what is that first step that most companies need to take?

I, I think first of all, define who your audience is, who your customers are, number one. Number two, go in and say, what product do we want to introduce AI to? All right, so put together kind of like a, a road map of what you want to be able to do. But then the biggest point of this is do your research. Okay. Make sure that, you know, with AI, there's always something out there to take a look at. Get a right level of group that, from the senior level all the way down to, I would consider the, the soldiers or the boots on the ground type of employee that can be involved. Diversity between those levels are going to give you the best answer on how a company should approach AI. How a company should use AI to foster, well, better revenue, better margins, and potentially take a look at their resources that they have as well, too. And I think what's not being talked about, Jordan, is how do we readjust the resource gain by which we have this AI A lot. There's a lot of fear out there that AI is going to replace. If you look at it that way, it'll happen. But if you look at the way, how do we readjust our responsibilities as an employee of the company is a key factor in how they approach it too. So how do you get started? Do your research, get a team together, focus on one aspect of your company that AI can help with and see what, and see what goes from there.

Yeah. What about even companies that haven't even thought about AI? Right. So I think that, you know, even here on the show, we, we, we always talk and we assume that most companies are using some sort of AI, even if we're not. You know, going down the route that you're going through with your students, you know, training models, machine learning, deep learning, all that. But, you know, we assume all companies are using some sort of generative AI, but that's not always the case. Right. Like some, some companies don't even fully understand it or know it for those companies, John, like what, what would you recommend? Is it better to talk about governance before you even dip your toe into the usage? Or do companies first need to see those applications like what you said, identify the product ident. Kind of like do companies need to go through those steps first or just put, put some sort of baseline governance in place?

I mean, to me, I say go take a class, have a workshop at your company. Okay. Honestly. Because to me, the more they can see, visualize what it can do, will spark the ideas in their employees, in their management, hopefully and making sure that they can say, well, do we want to pursue this or not? Are we ready to pursue this? Okay. Because it's, it's going to take that type of organization to realize what's at stake. Okay, now you take in the workshop, you got some, some ideas under Belgia, trying to understand it. Then when you want to formulate that plan to go forward and make that roadmap happen for real, then let's talk about governance. So governance isn't going to drive whether a company does it not. Governance is going to protect a company that's made a decision that they want to go forward with.

AI yeah, it's such, such great advice. You know, talking about the roadmaps, the roadmap and the governance I think are two just fundamentally important steps for any company to make. So, so John, we went all over the place today. We talked about risk, risk mitigation to students learning machine learning to ethical frameworks. We talked about a little of everything. Can't thank you enough for joining the show and for just letting all of our listeners know some of the basics. So thank you for joining us and imparting your wisdom and thanks for having me, Jordan.

Looking forward to a lot more. Thank you so much.

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