EP 7: AI is reading our thoughts now? W/ Derek Sobieraj

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AI is actually reading minds Wild. So that's one of the things that we're going to talk about today on Everyday AI, your daily stream podcast and newsletter that helps everyday people like you and me understand, leverage, and actually use AI to help you grow your career and even your personal life. So we have a lot of things to get to today in today's show, but first, just wanted to introduce Derek, the founder of Team Sobico. Yeah, Derek, how's it going?

Hey, Jordan. It is going well. I'm glad to be joined here this morning. I'm excited to get into this, especially because AI is reading minds. And as a former magician, AI is coming from magic, too. Oh, man.

Didn't even think about that. All right, so let's quickly go over some of the top AI news and then we'll get a little bit more into Derek's story and how he's using AI for his company. So let's talk about that first one. This is, I, I swear science fiction from, from, you know, 80s movies, but it's getting closer to reality. So this is. A recent University of Texas study showed that a decoder essentially was able to transcribe content of silent videos while in a scanner. So it's essentially, in theory, able to translate someone's brain activity into plain, readable language. Derek, like, this is like fresh news. What are your, what are your thoughts on what this means?

Well, it. I think it's going to be a rather interesting thing one, because I, it sounds like this is being done in kind of like a medical setting. So I like, think of all the people who might have issues with communicating because they might be in a coma, et cetera, like being able to help decipher kind of what's going on without physical communication. Insane, right? I'm sure that maybe there is some way that this is going to help just break down communication barriers between different languages. What about communication barriers between different species? Well, we know what dolphins are saying. Who knows? Man, this, that's like, imagine talking to your dog.

A great, a great conversation for another day. But again, we're going to have more information on this on the newsletter, so make sure to sign up for that. Your everyday AI. Check that out. Kind of our second piece of news here is Mid Journey has some big updates. So maybe not all of you are Mid Journey users. Let me just kind of tell you what it is real quick and what these updates mean. So you've probably all heard of Chat GPT. The parent company of Chat GPT is OpenAI. They have their own imaging model that allows you to type in text and get some amazing images called Dall E. So Dall E is probably biggest competitor and it's probably more popular is called Mid Journey. It's, it's a private company so they do the same thing. You can type in, you can type in any text prompt and get some amazing images. So their new updates today, it's called Mid Journey 5.1. It's designed to let beginners like you and I. I've used Mid Journey for months, but I don't use it often. But it allows you to get better results with simpler prompts. Also there's a new moderation system. You know, everything on AI is moderated because if not things could go wild. But instead of just blocking words, it uses context. So maybe you do have a correct use case for this technology and instead of just blocking it, it's just going to use the context to see if it should be blocked. Derek, I know you've said you've kind of played around with this, but what are your thoughts?

Well, generally when I've used the image AIs, it's been on the marketing standpoint. So like for example, generating thumbnails. And my experience is that the images generated pretty much suck and we all know how important thumbnails are in attracting attention. So if we're able to be given tools that we're able to generate custom, engaging marketing materials visually, it's going to continue evolving this entire landscape.

Exactly. Actually, right before we jumped on. Let's see if I can share it quick. So if you're listening on the podcast, make sure to check this out on our website. Your everydayai.com we just did a quick one here. So again, if you're watching this on a stream, you can probably see my screen right now. Derek just gave me a simple prompt. We put it in there and we got some pretty cool looking stuff here. So yeah, make sure if you haven't already, check out Midjourney and follow along. We'll also be talking about this as we go along on the show. Last but not least because I really want to get into a little bit more of what you're doing, Derek. The last big thing is ChatGPT with some new updates, a lot actually and in the chat GPT world. But essentially there's some new, new news. Italy has reversed its ban. Originally they banned GPT now they are not banning it. Samsung and JP Morgan and other big companies are now restricting its use due to, you know, compliance and privacy concerns. In a great segue into your world now, Derek, some new ChatGPT plugins are being released. A couple highlights are Zillow and Redfin. And again, if you don't know ChatGPT plugins, it's probably because most of us do not have access. Probably 0.01% of users are actually getting access to these. So actually it's a great transition, Derek, to your company. So just give us a brief overview of kind of who you are and what you do. Because it's in real estate.

Yeah. So at a very bare minimum level, I'm a broker. I'm a managing broker as well as a licensed appraiser team. Sobico is a licensed real estate brokerage and that's part of a larger real estate organization under the name of Sobico. And basically what I do is I help people navigate and evaluate real estate, whether that's your first rental that you're looking for or whether you're looking to expand operations for a retail operation or looking to buy a warehouse. We are a full service brokerage and generally what we try to do is provide a risk mitigate, risk mitigating and practical approach. That might sound very basic, but you'd be surprised how many people don't even think about just general good principles when making investment and risk decisions, especially in real estate. Everybody thinks like they watch HGTV and it's easy peasy. That's not the reality. And right now with all these AI tools coming in and with some regulation changes that happened over the last couple years, it has literally empowered individuals like myself to go out into the world and start a company, which usually you needed a entire team of people to do. And now as a single person, and hopefully soon expanding a little bit more than that. But right now as a single person, you're able to basically do the job of like 20 people.

Yeah, that's, that's amazing. And tell me, tell me a little bit about what that was like because the, the company is a little newer, right? It's less than a year.

Correct. The company is less than a year. But I've been a practicing broker since 2016.

Yeah. So even, let's talk about that. Starting your own business. This was right, kind of during the boom, I guess, of people getting on board with ChatGPT. How did you use AI? Just kind of in the early days of starting your company.

Yeah. Well, here's the thing that I would say, so the motivation to start that company was always there. But when you're looking at a challenge like that, you're thinking to yourself, how am I going to do this? So one of the things that came out of this entire process is that the AI tools that exist were almost out of necessity needed in order to help a single individual be productive enough in order to take on this challenge as an individual. And to me, I'm looking at it as a way not only to put out the material that I need to put out, but also to generally maintain a lifestyle that I want to maintain while keeping. I would say, like, I'm not exactly sure what that is, but there's something there where an individual is able to take on the responsibilities required of running entire company. Not just from a front end standpoint, but there are a lot of things that go into it, even on the back end, compliance, et cetera. Like, there's a lot that people don't know about entrepreneurship in terms of what happens in the background, health insurance, et cetera. Putting together workflows that help you stay efficient and get these tasks done as quickly as possible not only allows you to accomplish more, but at the end of the day, I don't need to keep working past, call it 6, 7, 8 or whenever my cutoff time is. I can take some time at the end of the day, still enjoy the day and get back right into it tomorrow.

Yeah, I love that. And going back to one of our three news pieces that we segued into your introduction. So even with ChatGPT now integrating with some big partners like Redfin and Zillow, and obviously we don't know a whole lot about what this means, but one thing we do mean, or sorry, one thing we do know is this will allow people to kind of chat, you know, with, with different chat agents, you know, specifically chat GPT and access, you know, real time information about real estate. So, you know, again, we don't know a lot of details, but, but Derek, you know, what does this kind of mean for the industry in general? And then how can, you know, people like, like yourself kind of use this information to, to your advantage? Yeah.

So that this is actually really, really interesting. So without knowing exactly how these tools are going to be integrated, the way that I hope that, or the way that I would. My initial reaction to I hope these tools are integrated would be, for example, an agent is able to take all the specifics of a property, kind of preload that into a chatbot, so that as People are exploring real estate, you know, online, searching for it, etc. They can kind of start a chat with a chatbot and ask these specific questions of that property and get a real time answer where normally they would be kind of trying to call the agent to get those answers. So it might help in the, in the search process, etc. But there are a lot other, a lot more complex issues to kind of consider because like once you're under contract, you still need to go through inspection, et cetera, advisory things, not only from your agent, but from inspectors, from lawyers, from lenders, where the AI might not be fully comprehensive to do that, but from a top level it should be able to help you discover property a little bit faster and maybe identify your priorities a little bit faster so that you're not wasting your time chasing poor deals, you're chasing deals that you're actually interested in that you have a higher degree of confidence in.

Yeah, I love that. So it's, it's almost, you know, helping, almost having an assistant to help, you know, qualify leads or get more information out of them before they're finally talking to, you know, the real estate agent, more or less. Right.

Potentially, like it could be helpful for, basically for both. It could help the agent scale their communication so that they're communicating with more prospects about a property and answering more questions, inquiries about that property. At the same time, it might help consumers decipher the landscape a little bit better and be able to dive into certain properties and identify issues or benefits of a property a little bit faster.

That's a, that's a great question or, sorry, a great response because I, you bring up a great point that there is, there is dual benefit, right. It can benefit someone on your side and it can also benefit the, the consumer who's, who's looking. And then so maybe once the introduction does happen, you know, in real life. Right. Because you're always going to have to be working with. Well, I think you're always going to have to be working with a human to finish transactions. But it sounds like a great use case for AI is just making sure when that in person introduction happens, everyone's that much closer to making a transaction happen.

Right. I mean, one of the things that we talked a little bit briefly prior to jumping on here, but AI currently in various fields, whether that is lending, whether that's attorneys, whether that's real state, it can't hold a license. Like an AI can't go out there and it can't get a broker license, it can't actually do that stuff. Right. So there are regulation things happening or regulation and rules that are preventing AI from basically representing you. But at the same time, I'm not sure if I would necessarily want a robot to be my representative. Right. Like I can rely on a robot to scour through a lot of data very efficiently, but I don't know if I'm going to trust its judgment just yet. For example, in a lot of the use cases that I do, and writing reports, et cetera, marketing materials are reliant on real time data of what's happening in the economy, et cetera. And whenever I try to prompt a ChatGPT type program in order to write a report, let's say I give it a prompt of give me the real estate in Chicago of 2023. Right. Like, what does that landscape look like? It's only as good as the data that it's pulling from. And I haven't seen an industry with more crap data than real estate. Basically, it's garbage in, garbage out. And if you have good agents putting in good data, you're going to get better responses. And if you have terrible inputs, you're going to get terrible responses. And many times when I get a response out of these programs, it's just not accurate to what the current landscape is. Sometimes it's a year or two behind. Like for example right now I was trying to write a report on, hey, what's coming down the pipeline because there are a lot of things happening in the background of real estate, in terms of lending, in terms of commercial loans coming due. And there's a lot of, with all these bank failures, like all of these things are interconnected. And when I tried to write a report on that just this week, it was giving me a response as if it was everything's fine and dandy and that's not the case. There are a lot of things that might cause like, problems and none of those data points seem to be reflective in the actual output. So whenever I'm using these tools, because I'm a licensed broker who has to communicate accurately, I take this information in, usually as a first draft, but then I'm going back in to try to add in the context, add in the relevant data and modify it to actually be valuable to today's actual consumer. Because you're trying to make decisions, usually financial decisions, off of this kind of information. And if you're running off of data that's incorrect, you're going to make poor, actually wrong decisions.

Yeah, yeah, Derek, you bring up a great point. You know That a lot of these models, you know, chatgpt as an example. Yeah, their, their data is old. It's not, you know, 100 up to date. I believe the last date we saw for, you know, at least for chat GPT is September 2021. So it's something important to keep in mind that yes, like, like Derek brings up very up to date information. At least, you know, something like Chat GPT is maybe not your best bet. We'll talk about that more in, in future shows. But there are, you know, other options. But yeah, Derek, that's a great point. And real quick as we are winding down on time, I would love just one quick, one quick question here for you, Derek. You know, you are someone that has, you know, experience in your field and you did use AI to help you go from, you know, kind of in employee, you know, employed with another company to starting your own business. So just real quick, you know, if you were to give, you know, listeners and viewers, you know, one or two quick pieces of advice on how you can use AI to help start a business, you know, through any successes or failures that, that, that you've had doing it, you know, what would your, what would your response be?

That's a great question. If I'm, if I'm to be, if I'm to, to give a earnest, honest answer on this, I would say any business that you're going to start, whether it's real estate or otherwise, it's centered around the idea that you're performing repeated operations that provide value to your customers. So if you're able to dissect what that process is and be able to identify moments where you can automate or flat out hand it off to AI, you're able to then build processes that are automatic, that provide results, that provide value and allow you as an individual to focus on other business priorities. So for example, I'm using it in terms of marketing, in terms of automation, scheduling and in terms of anything that I need to get away from in order to advance my business. I'm trying to think, is there a way that I can integrate an AI tool to help me accomplish this faster? Not it's not going to replace everything, but if I'm able to, for example, take my marketing and what used to be a 20 hour a week kind of thing and drop it down to five, all of a sudden I have 15 extra hours that I can dedicate towards another more priority task.

That's, that's an amazing point. Derek. Thank you again for joining us. And thank you to everyone watching, listening, reading the newsletter. Please check out your everyday AI.com let us know what you think of the show. Let us know you know what can help you better understand and better use AI. And please do sign up for the daily newsletter. Quick Plug. We are giving away two premium year long licenses to Chat GPT Premium. There is a free version the premium versions much better again so go ahead sign up for the newsletter. Derek thank you again for joining us and everyone out there listening, watching, reading. We'll see you tomorrow and every day. Thank you.

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