Taking the fear out of AI with Joshua Wohle

Foreign. And thank you for joining us for another episode of Certified Certiports Educator Podcast. I'm your host, Hannah Kropot. Join us as we dive into the world of education, certification and technology. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Certiport's Certified Educator Podcast. We're so happy to be here talking about all things AI. It's been a bit of a theme for us lately. So we're happy to be diving back into the world of artificial intelligence. And we have a new guest here with us. Josh, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Thank you very much for having me.

Well, we are so excited to tell you a little bit about our educators and to talk to you a little bit about the world of artificial intelligence. Before we dive in though, for our listeners who don't know you, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Yes, very happy to. So I'm Joshua. I'm the co founder and CEO at Mindstone. I am a computer scientist, engineer by background. Built a few companies over my career. Last company I built was a company called super awesome that became one of the biggest kids technology companies in the world. It was acquired by Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite. And then since then I've been focusing everything I do on learning. So started Mindstone, always loved learning, heated education, which was the entire point and thought we could provide a better learning experience. And then two years ago, ChatGPT happened, everything changed, both on what we could build, but also in terms of the skills that are actually relevant in the future. And so as a company we decided to go all in on, on helping non technical people understand how they can leverage this technology to both do more and better work in less time. And we work with some of the biggest organizations in the world to try and achieve exactly that.

Amazing. And we've partnered with you and I wanted to dive a little bit more into this, the relationship between Mindstone and Certaport and how that came about. Yes.

So. Well, first of all, Pearson Ventures is an investor in Mindstone. And then we partnered on a certificate, Generative AI foundation certificate, to help give people the skills they need to leverage this technology and at the same time be able to signal that they have acquired the skills they need to to leverage this technology. So we bring a lot of the practical application expertise and the community that we've built. So we run the biggest practical AI community in the world. And obviously Pearson bringing all of the certification and signaling expertise that comes with it, Certaport going Through and through.

Well, we're so excited about this partnership and the opportunity that we have to learn from and work with you and your team at Mindstone. We've talked about this a little bit before. A lot of our educators work in a CTE type classroom, focusing on career skills and preparing students for their future jobs. And a lot of them work primarily on teaching IT skills. Right. So preparing students for technological opportunities. And one of the things that, of course, this has been a huge disruption for is this concept that AI technology can do a lot of the things that humans previously have done. And so we've thought a lot about, you know, how can we get students and educators comfortable with AI technology? And I know that Mindstone has a lot of work behind that. So I wanted to get your thoughts. What do educators need to do and why should they get comfortable with AI technology in the classroom?

So those are two questions indeed, starting with the why all the skills that are going to be relevant in the future are dramatically impacted by what is currently happening from an AI perspective? And if, if our educators do not either take the time or are not equipped to understand themselves how to use these tools, then we run the risk of educating everyone in a way that is no longer particularly relevant. And so from a why perspective, if we are serious about helping people build their future, then we need to be able to equip them with the skills they need to do that effectively. And AI is by far the biggest change and the biggest leverage point that we would have today. So starting with actually equipping educators with the skills they need to understand what is happening is, I think, an extremely important leverage point so that they can then build the best possible experiences and understand how it changes what they teach and how at the same time. And your second question.

Yes, and I, before we go into that second question, actually, I wanted to bring up one of your points. You said this is the biggest disruptor for careers in the technological space to date. How do you think the advent of generative AI is different than the advent of, say, the Internet, something that also was a huge disruptor in the technological space?

Yes. So the speed at which things are moving is very different today to what it was at the time. In terms of the actual impact, I think it might, it might be similar. We'll figure out where it ends up. But the, in terms of the speed at the time when the Internet came out, we're talking about a five to ten year window from the first people using their browsers starting to consume content online to the point where you ended up being able to properly research different topics and really use it both in the workforce when you're trying to be productive, but also from a learning perspective as an information source. And it took quite a while for all of that to go through. Here you are looking at a similar scale type change, but the speed at which it is going. We're already looking at hundreds of millions of users using ChatGPT on a basically daily basis. And ChatGPT is just one of these generative AI tools. And what was the latest stat? More than 65% of people in the workforce today are already using it for work related tasks. And we're two years in to this technology having been launched. So the speed at which everything is moving is dramatically faster than it was at the time. Which also means that from an educator perspective, we have to be moving much faster. Because anyone that is going through an education experience today that doesn't know how to leverage these tools at the end of it, is likely going to have a problem once they start hitting the workforce and they're expected to be able to use it. If that makes sense.

Yes, that absolutely makes sense. And I think the speed to your point is something that historically has been a struggle for education in particular, that it's a large ship to navigate and therefore to move. And so being able to adapt and teach these rapidly changing technologies, I think can be quite a challenge. So going back to the question I posed earlier, thinking about what can educators do to get ahead of the curve and use AI in the classroom, I wanted to get your thoughts about educators just getting their feet wet with generative AI or AI in any form in their classrooms.

Yeah. So I was asked this question actually last night by someone in the university space here, very specifically, and they were asking, what would you recommend to try and change? And one of the things that we ended up talking about is shifting the perception of generative AI, where lots of people, initially their reaction was to ban it. Right. Instead of banning it, doing exactly the opposite, making it mandatory for people to actually use it, and from an educator perspective, making sure you set some time aside yourself to experiment with it, understand what is possible, what is not. I mean, there are different training providers you can look at. We're obviously one of them. You can go through the certificate with certiport and try and get those foundations. But really the important part is that you set some time aside to experiment. And then as you're rethinking what you're teaching to begin with, if you can make it mandatory for people to Actually start using it and then rethink your own assessments, rethink your own teachings in a way where you're assuming people are going to be using generative AI in the process of. Of their. Both the learning and the deliverables that come out of it. That would be a really good starting point. Does that make sense?

Yes, absolutely. And I know that's one of the things that we talked about is creating the assumption, right, that students and your learners are using these tools and therefore elevating their learning experience so that they're doing the human component that AI at this point is not able to do. So tell me a little bit about what you think that that would look like for an educator in the classroom. What type of assignment or project would you encourage teachers to use that type of approach?

So, for example, I mean, if you're looking at the kind of. The stereotypical one would be essay writing, right, where everyone has banned, or many people have banned the use of ChatGPT for essay writing. Now, instead of making the assignment the essay itself, the. The piece of content that comes out, why not make it about the process of writing an essay to begin with, where the end result is not just the essay that gets submitted, but it is the series of steps that an individual has gone through with generative AI pointing out where generative AI was helpful in the process of writing the essay, pointing out where it was not helpful, how they went from version one to version two to version three, and where they wish they could have spent more time, or where they think they're doing they are doing well, and where they think that they are not doing so well. And so you're making it about the process of writing the essay rather than the end result, which then means that you don't have to just judge the end result either, which means that you're no longer looking at plagiarism in the same way you're no longer looking at the possibility of just creating a chatgpt created essay. Does that make sense?

Yes, that absolutely makes sense. And all that's going through my mind right now is thinking back to those years in math class where my teacher just kept telling me to show my work because it's all about the process, right? And that's where I think we can see as educators, where students need some adjustments where they can leverage their tools or their process more effectively. And I think that that applies with educators as well. If we work with students to show the process of learning, then then we're kind of on this journey together. And so I know for a lot of educators part of that process is finding the right resources for learning and also implementing Gen AI type projects in their classroom. So for you and the Mindstone team, where do you recommend educators start for finding those resources for learning more about Gen AI?

So there are two people that I would follow or that are really knowledgeable on this topic. Ethan Mollick. He puts out a lot of content on this stuff and I think he's really practical. And he was one of the first professors to mandate the use of ChatGPT in his classroom. He also wrote a book called CO Intelligence, which is really good. Now Ethan Moloch is more focused on people in the workforce. Stephen Koslan, on the other end, he is. He spent his life working on active learning science and he wrote a book, I think it's called Active Learning with AI. And it is very specifically written for teachers on how to use generative AI in the classroom, what type of exercises you can use, how you write a prompt that works, how you evaluate, how you use generative AI to evaluate others. So many different things and extremely detailed workings on how you can use this effectively. So both of those, I would say are very good starting places. Yeah, that would be the two.

I love that. Some really tangible follow up items for our listeners and we'll make sure to link those in the show notes as well. I wanted to get your final thoughts just in thinking about taking the fear out of AI, what advice would you share with our listeners about generative AI and approaching this new technology? Even if there are some who are a little bit more hesitant about doing that.

So I've recently kind of not changed my thinking about this, but I guess evolved a little bit, is that this technology can be scary for sure, but it is also extremely exciting and it can be really fun. And so one of the things that we started doing at Mindstone is including more elements of fun when we train people on this technology. A good starting point, a fun starting point is actually an app. Recently it's an app called Suno. It creates music on the fly for you. And it has gotten to a point now where it does the melody, the lyrics, the vocals, everything from start to scratch, from scratch to finish. And it really does it in a way that brings to life what is possible with this technology. And it's just fun to use and easy to use. And often what we see is that once people use it for fun, they then start to experiment a little bit later with how they can use it in their job. And so don't forget the fun bit is what I would say to get you past the fear.

I'm just taking some notes as we're going through as well. And one thing I remember from our previous conversations that we talked about for taking the fear out of AI is you said to think about artificial intelligence as a person as opposed to a technology. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about that and what you mean by that.

Yeah, so that is mostly about how you apply it, where you apply it, and the way to think about it. So all of previous technology that we built for years and years was mostly deterministic. Basically, you get, you put something in and you know what you're getting out. This technology, generative AI is not deterministic. Basically, you can put the same thing in a hundred times and you might get a hundred different answers coming out. And all of the areas where previously technology was very useful, is very useful, are actually often areas where this technology might not quite be useful. But where this technology shines is in all the areas we never thought about applying technology before, all the areas where ambiguity is part of operations all the time. So when people talk to each other, when you have most jobs in the world, do not live in a black and white world where answers are clear, but ambiguity is just all over the place and there. This technology is really useful. And so to that point, from a thought framework perspective, rather than thinking about this technology as technology that you have used in the past, if you think about it as a conversation that you have with another person, it helps you understand where the technology might be useful. So think about all the tasks that you could work on that if you had the best expert in the world helping you with that task, how would you go about making the best use of that help? If I am writing a strategy document on a particular go to market for Mindstone, say we want to go to, we want to expand our presence in Canada and I have the best expert on the in the market standing right next to me. What would I ask them? Where would I ask their help? How much context would I give that person so that they could be helpful to me? Most of the time people treat this like Google, okay, hey, I want to expand to Canada. How do I do this? Obviously these chat models, they do not have any of the context. If I had the best possible expert standing right next to me, and the only thing I would tell them is, I would like to take Mindstone into Canada. Where do I start? They would refuse to answer. They would ask me 50,000 questions about the business before they could credibly give me any advice that could actually be useful. And the same thing is true with these chatbots. We need to give them the context to be able to be helpful, and we need to use them in the places that they can actually help enhance our job. And that is where thinking about them as people, more than thinking about them as traditional technology, helps figure out both where they're useful and then once you've figured that part out, helps figure out how they can be useful.

Well, I think that that points as well to the concept of the integration between the human touch and the technology as well, because prompt engineering is such an important skill set to build to be able to leverage especially generative AI effectively. Because I think thinking about it as a human conversation, you give background before you go and ask someone a question or ask someone for advice. And so being able to have students and educators approach this technology that same way, I think that's a wonderful way of framing it, that it's not just a Google source to search for information. We need to be able to provide more details, more context, and master kind of our prompt engineering skills to be able to leverage that technology most effectively.

Correct. I would even go one step further, which is that for anyone that's listening, if you are currently using generative AI like ChatGPT as a replacement for your Google search, that probably means in most cases that there is a whole world of things to explore still. Because actually ChatGPT is not a great Google replacement. It is a just like a person is not a great Google replacement. So there is a whole other world of applications to think.

Agreed. Agreed. Well, Joshua, thank you so much for taking the time to spend with us. Any final thoughts that you wanted to share about artificial intelligence or about the work that Mindstone is.

I mean, we're doing this.