EP 62: Using AI For Growth: How it's done

This is the Everyday AI show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business and everyday life. How can you actually grow with AI? We talk about it all the time. We see all these new tools and softwares and techniques just flooding, like flooding our our news feed and everything else. But how can you actually grow with them? We're going to tackle that today. Very excited for the guests that we have. So before we have that conversation, let's talk about what's going on in the world of AI because that's what we do here at Everyday AI. We're a daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter helping people understand and actually use and leverage AI. So as a reminder, if you're joining us live on the stream, make sure to drop a comment like Dr. Harvey Castro, great to be here. Great to have you. If you are listening on the podcast, check your show notes. We'll drop a link so you can start joining us live if you want to so you can learn from experts. So we like to have the two way conversation. So let's talk about what's going on in the world of AI because there's actually some big news and it starts with one of the biggest companies in the world, Apple. So Apple has not actually released, but it's been reported what they're working on. They are working on Apple GPT. So they are trying to get into the AI chatbot race. We'll see as more details come out what this is actually going to mean. But here's my hot take, y'.

All.

You have to pay attention to this because Apple has an advantage that hardly no one else in the world has 2 billion devices, right? So to instantly be able to bring whatever GPT product to 2 billion devices is powerful. All right, so let's talk about surveillance. So US Senator Bob Casey has rolled out a first draft of legislation for the US to protect workers from AI surveillance. So, you know, kind of a Big brother bill. This isn't an overarching AI governance bill that I don't think is going to come anytime soon, but definitely worth keeping an eye on that piece. This is one of the bigger first drafts for AI kind of regulation. So more on the newsletter in that last but not least, Google. All right, so everyone else has been making news recently. Google's kind of been quiet, but they made a little news here in the last couple of hours when they kind of leaked out their genesis AI tool. So this is essentially a new AI tool that could be a game changer or a replacer for journalists. So essentially this new Google Genesis AI model is going to be able to accurately, according to Google, write news. But they say don't worry journalists, this isn't here to replace you. I'm not sure if I, I, if I believe that. So yeah, if, let me know what you guys think if you believe that or not. But that's not what today's episode is about. Today's episode is about how we can actually grow with AI. Like you just heard, there's so much going on so let's, let's bring in someone who can actually start to give us some of those answers. So we have Corey Lapish Warfield, he is the co founder of Uplift. And Corey, AI. So many other things and projects you have going on. Corey, thank you so much for joining us.

Jordan, thank you so much for having me. And interestingly, I just posted about how to grow using AI on LinkedIn an hour ago. I also mentioned the Apple GPT codename ajax, which is a peak in Colorado that I've climbed before. And there's just like new AI news every day. But anyway, I digress. Thanks for having me.

No, it's exciting and if that tells you anything, if you are listening or watching, Corey has a wealth of information and background in AI. So real quick, Corey, for those that don't follow you on LinkedIn or see it because you have, you're everywhere on social media so you've probably seen, even if you don't know it, you've probably seen or read Corey stuff. But just give everyone just real quick a little bit about your background specifically as it relates to, you know, AI and technology.

Yeah, well, I'm really an anomaly. Like I'm, I'm still surprised that I serve on some of the boards and an executive at some of the companies I am, because I spent most of my adulthood just kind of, you know, being a big kid. I was a waiter and bartender for almost 20 years. Didn't have any business experience at all, you know, didn't know much about technology, although I've always been an early adopter. So I had the G1 phone, the first Google phone that slid open with the keyboard inside of it. And you know, like, I've always been that guy. I had the first iPhone, I've always got the newest, you know, iPhone and all of that. But I really didn't get into technology until about seven years ago, almost eight years ago. And I just got sick of never knowing when I was working in the restaurant. So I was like, the data exists. They know if there's going to be foot traffic on a Thursday, they know if it's going to rain, they know if the patio is going to be open. They know if, you know this girl with three kids is going to want to leave at 8pm like why, why is the schedule so weird and crazy? And why are we always on call? Right. Can't forecast when you're working or how much you make. And so I started a software company using data to help restaurants schedule more predictably and you know, again, no clue what I was doing. I watched some Tim draper videos on YouTube. This is again about eight years ago, read the Lean Startup and Traction and was crazy enough to start a company and ultimately we raised quite a bit of money and we scaled to a lot of users. We had some national concepts using our software and we got lucky because legislation started rolling out specifically to restaurant industries and their scheduling practices. So, you know, this was AIs been out since the 1950s and you know, a lot of people don't realize that when you use Amazon or Alexa or Siri, you're already been using AI for years. So I don't want to say I wasn't out then because that would be inaccurate. But AI wasn't pervasive. There really wasn't AI for the restaurant industry per se, but we were using machine learning and deep machine learning and algorithms that in today's landscape, if we'd done things just a bit cooler, would probably have been considered generative AI as well. But so I learned how to raise money and start companies and make key hires. And I learned as much what not to do as I learned what to do. Ultimately went on to join Founder Institute as a mentor, then managing director, now entrepreneur in residence, helping hundreds of startups go from ideation to market. So that's kind of my frame of reference. And at this point I co founded a web3 launchpad. We have almost 20 portfolio companies building sustainably on chain with carbon neutral technology. I've done that for a while. My current project, Uplift that you mentioned is a universal Basic income project using both generative AI and the blockchain to help bring UBI to the world. Because my thesis is technology will take all of our jobs and that's okay because it doesn't need our paychecks, right? So you know, like I'm literally trying to 100x my own self as a professional using technology. And then interestingly we talk about today how AI can help us grow and I've got a bunch of cool little free, you know, softwares that I love that I'm happy to point people toward. I just mentioned one on LinkedIn this morning called Human Circles. AI. But AI can also actually help us grow. Right? We're looking at now like AI powered nanobots inside of ourselves. We're looking at exoskeletons that can actually make us taller, stronger, things of that nature. I'm seeing paraplegics able to walk now with like very, very sleek exoskeletons and generative AI and, you know, some weird stuff like brain implants. But it's an interesting time to be alive. Did you see the MIT student that's using a headset to read his thoughts?

That one's crazy, right? Talk about being able to grow and actually use and leverage AI. So, Corey, just right there, I'm taking notes, and I don't even think we're going to be able to get to half of what I'd really like to talk to you about. But two things I wanted to mention there. So kind of what we're talking about today is growing with AI. And you do say, hey, AI will help us grow. But then also something you said is AI will be taking our job. So there's some dichotomy there. So for the average person out there, explain what do you mean by that? That AI can help us grow, but yes, it will take our jobs.

Well, I think AI can not only act as almost an Akashic record, so we can not only access any information in the world like we've been able to do forever with Google. Not forever, but since Google became, you know, accessible globally. But at this point, AI can help anyone not only do their job better and faster, but learn how to do any other job that they want. And as we see, you know, AI powered robots in the kitchens cooking and in the, in the dining room serving and making drinks. And when we see it on the construction sites, building buildings and. Right, 3D printers powered by AI able to build anything, you know, but especially buildings and things like that. And I'm bullish on taking a lot of the plastics in our landfills and our oceans and using that as the crude material for 3D printing. But we're seeing AI powered surgeons and doctors and telehealth. We're seeing, you know, AI is the best marketer salesperson you'll ever have. Hands down, AI is replacing hr. AI is replacing, you know, virtually any position. Already there's a CEO that replaced himself with AI and the company almost 100x their profitability within like 30 days. So it's, it's not a stretch to say AI can and will take almost all of our jobs. And the good news is it doesn't need paychecks, it doesn't need vacations, it doesn't have bills. Right. It doesn't need to feed itself or it's, you know, other AI models or, you know, so it's, it's an interesting time to be alive because we will witness a pure paradigm shift. It is a dichotomy, but I don't think it needs to be feared. You know, we are the people ultimately that had the vision for the AIs that coded it and programmed it. And even though it can now kind of do things on its own and program itself and prompt itself and all of those kind of things, we can always stay ahead of the curve. So I think what I, what I preach is really twofold. Everyone should learn how to prompt AI. There's no excuse at this point to not use it. It's free, it's easy, you don't need to be able to program, you barely need to be able to use a computer. There's a lot of text to everything now, but there's also voice to anything. So, you know, people just saying that they're, they're not using AI, I think is a very flimsy excuse. It doesn't hold much water. I mean, it's, you know, other than, than fear or stubbornness, I don't think that that's, you know, really something to hide behind for much longer. But the other one is blockchain. I think everything needs to be minted on the blockchain with smart contracts that's generated by AI. So we know where it came from, who prompted it, what engine created and generated it, and things of that nature. And if we're able to figure those out, get the world able to actually just interact with AI and have everything kind of have a digital paper trail. It's going to be a really exciting next couple years for humanity.

Yeah, I agree, because in one thing you mentioned, kind of to open the show, Corey, is, yeah, AI has been around since the 50s and the average business, large enterprise companies have been using AI in different ways, machine learning, deep learning, for decades. But it is this new quote unquote, this kind of new wave of generative AI that's just, it's easier for the everyday person to go in there because it is more user friendly to go into something like ChatGPT or Bard or Cloud2 and to be able to use an LLM to grow. Right. What would your advice be for someone that's kind of new to using generative AI? So whether it's chat, GPT or, or an easier program like Midjourney, but what's your advice for people to maybe not have that fear of AI? How would you say here's how to use it, here's how to grow with it for anyone? 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 everyday AI.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.

So I think the one that has the lowest barrier to entry for me is from Inflection AI, which is co founded by LinkedIn's co founder Reid Hoffman. Their product is called PI PI and it's a conversational AI that's meant to be emotionally intelligent and if someone were literally to go on there and just converse with it like it was a person, they will be working with and learning AI very quickly. So in other words, someone can go to PI and say, hey, I've never used AI before. And inflection AIs PI will say, oh, you know that that sounds like it might be stressful. Is there a reason that you haven't used it before? Well, yeah, because I don't know how to use it. And PI will say, well here you're using it right now, why don't you ask me a question about my capabilities or tell me something about yourself and I'll ask you some questions. Right, so all of a sudden like wait, I'm using AI, right? It's not judging me, it's not, it's not doing anything challenging or you know, the, the, the big, big elephant in the room is chat GPT. Like it's free to use at least the 3.5 version which is kind of the, the go to market version that's very powerful. And if someone goes to chat OpenAI, they're going to be able to log in with their Google or whatever and even just going there and saying hey, what can you do? And it'll say I'm an AI, you know, that's only been trained up to 2021 and I can't do anything. And it's fun to just get it to do things it can't do. It'll be, you can ask it to do your financial projections for your company. It'll say I'm an AI, I can't do that. Right. And then you're like, oh yeah, you're an AI, you can't do that, but you're really smart. What would three things be that could change that into I can do that for you. And it'll be like, well if you asked me this or this and I totally could have done it for you. Yeah, that was easy. Absolutely.

So real quick, we do have a lot of comments and questions. I just wanted to see if we could get to one or two. Rasifa, Val, thank you for joining us. Trevor, Brian, Nancy, thank you all for joining us. But a quick question for you here. Corey from May Brit Shout out. May Brit been listening since day one but curious. She's saying what are your thoughts on AI powered Google plugins or extensions? So these Chrome extensions, she sees a lot of talk on this, you know, are these Google Chrome extensions, are they worth, especially AI powered ones. Right. So you know things like, you know, Monica is one, there's, there's all these different Chrome extensions that you can use anywhere on the Internet and you don't just have to use, you know, log into a site, you know, like PI or like Chat GPT. Corey, what's your take on these kind of, you know, Chrome extensions that bring AI everywhere on the Internet?

I'm bullish on them. I'm a techy and so I know how much easier it is to get to market with one of these than needing like your DUNS number and applying to get onto the Apple Store. You know, these are things that can be built. Oftentimes they're actually built with AI as well. You know, there's a number of ways that AI can program itself, build cool stuff, but I just make sure it's a trusted source and that it can actually do something that you want it to do. In other words, our biggest resource is time. So spending time on the AIs that can actually bring you value and satisfaction. So there's generative music AIs that can make your own mashups. There's art that can make, you know, even now there's text to movie. You can make your own movie using generative AI. But if you don't love music, don't waste time on the music stuff from Meta. If you're not going to write a book using writesonic's Chat Sonic, then don't go and try that. Just find something that you would have wanted to do. I do find one of the fun ones is teaching people how to write books using an AI. Because you can go on, have it ask you for a number of ideas for a title to a book. Tell it as much as you want. You know, I always say, the more input, the better the output. But tell it, hey, I want to write a book on all these things. Here's some context. Give me 10 suggestions of a title. It'll give you 10. And if you don't like any, say, I don't like any of these because they're too cheesy and corny or whatever, and then try again. It'll give you more. But once it comes up with the title that you love, you say, okay, I think I love the title number seven. Please write a sample of chapters for this book. It'll spit them out. And you either say, like, those are trying too hard to be funny. Those are confusing, or I love them, or I love, you know, 1, 7 and 10. Can you make the other ones more like that? But so in other words, you keep pushing the limits. Don't take no for an answer and don't take, you know, mediocre results. But all of a sudden you get it to give you a title for a book with a chapter list that you like, and then you say, okay, please, you know, either emulate this tone and you upload one of your own, you know, articles or something, or you say, I want this in the style of Dave Barry, American Humorist or whatever, right? Please write a sample first chapter. Make it, you know, 10,000 words, 10 pages long. You know, just go until your capacity and then continue in a second message. And then all of a sudden, it's starting to write a book for you. It's about what you wanted in your tone with your frame of reference, right? And within 10 minutes, someone can start to have a first draft of a book that AI helped Write with them kind of as the oversight steering code, you know, like the publisher at large. And just doing that exercise, whether or not you want the book or whether or not you do anything with it, starts to just show the potential. Or another great one is like taking a quarterly report, a 50 page quarterly report report from your company, uploading it into a GPT code interpreter or something and saying, please distill this to 10 bullet points and tell me any of the things that I would absolutely need to know if my boss grills me about this tomorrow. Yeah, do it instantly. So I think just playing with it and having fun, whatever it is, that could add value, you know, to you and your professional life or even personal.

Yeah, that's, that's a great point. Yes. You can use all of these tools both personally and professionally. And I think, if you're listening, yes, like, you know, we have a comment from George here. You know, can you share the names of all these platforms? Absolutely. Because Corey is kind of like a Rolodex or an encyclopedia of all the different, you know, AI tools and techniques. So, so another question that I have for, for you, Corey, is, you know, when people start using these generative AI tools, kind of like you said, all of a sudden they know, yeah, I could use, you know, cloud for writing, but then I could use, you know, this other product to make music, I could write this to write a book, all of these other things. Right. It's opening up so many new possibilities. But what do you see? Right, because you've been in tech and in AI for a long time and I think sometimes these, especially in the age of the Internet, quote unquote, you know, it takes sometimes years for certain technology to, you know, to catch on in the, in the 90s, the 2000s. But personally, I don't think generative AI is going to be like that. I think it's going to be a little faster. So what would you advise to someone, whether they're a, a business owner or maybe they're a, you know, director in a, at a large company, what would you tell them about kind of quote unquote catching or riding the generative AI wave? Like, can companies continue to ignore it and not implement it and just ban it?

No, no, I think companies that try to ignore it and, or deflect it like a ban are probably going to be out of business in the months. I don't think there's any company in any industry that can't fully embrace AI right now because otherwise competitors will either pop up or competitors that are legacy to them, will embrace AI and will absolutely, you know, they'll be able to run at 90% less, you know, overhead. They'll be able to be, you know, thousand times more productive. So I don't, I don't think there's any, any industry, even if it's, you know, plumbing. The plumbing industry will absolutely be disrupted by AI. Right. I mean there's, there's not an industry I can think of, culinary, you know, graphic design that, that I don't believe will be 100% impacted by AI. So what people need to do is first of all understand there's nothing that AI can't do already. So if you have a business, anything that you would need AI to do is possible. There's a website and I actually am joining the team of a competitor. So I'll say I have no problem with this website, but I think they leave a lot to be desired. But right now there's a website called there's an AI for that dot com. They went to 10 million users of their website. I think in the first 14 days. They're already valued at like $50 million and all they have. And it is, when you search for something, there's a hand that does this on the screen, which is pretty cool. I think that's like the best imposed screensaver I've ever seen. But it just aggregates 6,000 AI. So you go on there and you say Movie Creator or PDF Summarizer or YouTube Video Summarizer, data analyst or anything and it'll give you a list. Now ideally it would, I don't want to give away too much of what we're doing to kind of take their basic premise to the next level. But you know, it would be nice if it showed you how to use stuff and right. If it could actually stack rank knowing what your use cases were and things like that. But there's, there's nothing that an executive or a visionary entrepreneur or something couldn't use AI for right now. Websites done go to Gamma or Tommy, you can have a beautiful website in five minutes for free with AI, Right. Like, I mean there's just, there's nothing. Use Bloomberg GPT if you want to, you know, work with your finances or I mean, right. The list goes on and on. So I think just embracing it rather than being the person said, well, it's never going to take my job or it can't do this. Like those are the people that are going to be really glad that people like me are working on UBI soon because they'll be out of a job and a career.

Yeah. Oh, gosh. I mean, not even, not even to get into that. But I've talked about this before. You know, there's, there's a reason that Sam Altman, the, you know, the head guy now at OpenAI, is a huge advocate for UBI.

Right.

All right. So Corey, we talked about so much in today's episode. Like, we're going to have a lot of work putting out this newsletter today where we recap everything that Corey's talked about. So if your head is spinning and if you're currently have 20 tabs open trying to look up all these things that Corey just dropped, don't worry, we're going to have that in our, in our free daily newsletter. But Corey, if there's one thing now, right, because people I, I think are going to be, oh, okay, I can do this, this and this and this. What's the one thing, the one piece of advice that you would have for someone now who's a little more excited than they were 23 minutes ago? What's that one piece of advice for them to actually use AI.

So that's an easy one and it's a, it's the right question to ask. Just learn how to prompt and it's this easy. If you were to hire a new employee or an assistant, right? If you were to hire an executive assistant, you would train them first, right? You wouldn't start telling them what to do without training them and giving them some context. Do that for your AI. You would know the Persona of that person. But AI is so smart that it needs to be given a Persona. So, so if you have trained your AI and right now you want to do it in the same channel because it doesn't inherently. Remember you OpenAI is working on a profiles for ChatGPT that'll drop soon. That fixes that. But for now, every time, just train it on what you need it to know, give it some context, then give it a Persona. In other words, if you say, act as a social media manager, go through my last thousand posts and find trends that help my post get over 100,000 views, it'll do it, right? But it needs that Persona because otherwise if you just give it a file and say, find some trends, it'll say, well, it looks like every time you use the word X, you know, you're, you're talking about Y and it just won't. We'll miss the mark. But if you, if you train your AI, if you treat it kindly, right, please and thank yous go a long way with, with people and AI but give it a Persona and then as much context as you can and continue to kick the can down the road. Don't take the first thing that it spits out as being like, oh, that's all it can do. Say, okay, that's great, make it a little funnier, make it a little longer. That's actually not what I was looking for. If it gives you something and you say that's not exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted it to be a bit more this. It'll literally say oh, I'm sorry and try again. Right, but learning how to prompt is key and training your AI and you know, being patient with it, understanding that it's learning with you, I think is the way to really figure out how to take AI and help it do anything or help it help you do anything that you wanted it to.

Yeah, man, absolutely. Corey, it's so perfect that you mentioned that analogy of like you, you talk to a GPT like you're talking to an employee. That's the exact example we use. We have a free prompting course where that's the exact example we use. So I love that you said that. And throw if you are listening or watching, just, you know, drop a PPP in the comment and I'll sen you information on that free course. So my gosh, Corey, we covered so much. I wish we could talk for three hours but I want to be respectful of your time. But thank you so, so much for coming in and sharing your insights, background and experience with the Everyday AI crew. Thank you.

Thanks Jordan and thanks everyone for tuning in and listening. I truly appreciate your time.

All right, and just as a reminder. Yes, Corey rattled off so much information. Don't worry, you don't have to take notes. You don't have to download this video and use an AI to summarize it. We'll have that in our D. It usually goes out around 11:00am Central Standard Time so there's a link in the comments to sign up for that. Also, we are giving away six months of chat GPT plus and six free one on one lessons. And actually chat GPT just extended the the plus from 25 messages to 50 messages every three hours, just FYI.

So.

All right, so thank you so much everyone for joining us and we hope to see you back tomorrow and every day with Everyday AI.

Thank you.

And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going for a little more AI magic. Visit your everydayai.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.