Chief Innovation Officer at UC Irvine and UN Advisor on AI, Neil Sahota, joins a lively discussion with host Adam Pierno on how AI is improving. Improving means getting smarter, but also carving out niches for applications. This wide ranging conversation touches on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and thinking beyond automation. Neil shares examples of eye opening work being done by AI, like a film trailer cut from the full feature with no human editor… See it here.
Find Neil on his website, LinkedIn and on Twitter.
The Strategy Inside Everything is the podcast for people who think for a living. If you have an idea, a question or you want to push back on something you hear in this episode, go to https://thatsnotaninsight.com and leave a message or a voicemail for me. The best and most interesting messages will be added to future episodes. And I can’t wait to hear from you. Music for The Strategy Inside Everything is by Sawsquarenoise. Host Adam Pierno is an author, speaker and strategy consultant. Learn more at adampierno.com.
Transcript:
Adam Pierno 0:03
This is a strategy inside everything. I’m Adam here now.
All right, welcome back to another episode of the strategy inside everything. This is going to be a wild one. I have with me, the UN AI advisor and Chief Innovation Officer at U Cal Irvine. He’s also a speaker. And we’re already off to a roaring start. Welcome, Neil. Sahota how’re you doing?
Neil Sahota 0:31
I’m good, man. How about yourself?
Adam Pierno 0:33
I’m doing really well. Thank you so much for making time. I think I saw you talking to Mike Tyson. And I was like, oh, I want to I want to dig into this. I want to talk more. I hope I’m less. I mean, I know my physical stature is more imposing. I hope I can I can generate as good of a conversation as you had with Mike.
Neil Sahota 0:53
I’m sure you will probably the audience who probably doesn’t realize that Mike is actually a pretty sharp and philosophical guy. Yes. Yes.
Adam Pierno 1:00
Yeah. And it was a great conversation. So I wanted to have you on to talk a little bit about your expertise in AI, obviously, but how it applies to thought work. And obviously, you have been thinking about this and pondering this and kind of mapping what what’s possible. So wanted to get your brain on this interesting topic for this audience. Before we do that, Neil, would you give people a sense of who you are and where you’ve been? Before you got to your current role?
Neil Sahota 1:29
Probably the best way of putting this, my whole career has been an accident, in large part, because I’ve always followed the path of most resistance. I’m sure most people like what what is this guy doing? Just the way I grew up, this is still very strong sense of, like community and give back as well as problem solving. And so I’ve always had a penchant to learn and never, it was just like, well, something is impossible to do. And so, you know, that took me down this path of when I started my career. Surprise, surprise, being a management consultant, working with pretty big companies and solving big problems. And because I’m always willing to think outside the box, and, you know, I’m doing things like learning astrobiology on the side, I’m able to connect a lot of dots together that people never actually think about linking together.
Adam Pierno 2:32
How important is that ongoing learning to your success? Do you think
Neil Sahota 2:37
that’s it? Honestly, it’s for the critical atom? I mean, a lot of people say, like, how did you ever figure out some of these things, and it’s like, it’s just, I’ve just learned so many different things, a deep enough level that I can see some of the connections or that, you know, the transferable knowledge and skills from one industry to another. That, you know, people will be like, Whoa, that’s like, that’s, like, totally out of left field. But that would totally work. And it’s like, well, you know, these guys over here and the chemical engineering industry have been doing this for 30 years. It’s not really new or that disruptive. And they’re like, why are we never heard of that?
Adam Pierno 3:16
Because they’re, they’re locked in their vertical? Yeah. So you came to the from the world of management, consulting and, and planted in through, I’m sure, networking and working and helping people across verticals into your role at with, you know, advising the UN and with you cal,
Neil Sahota 3:35
sort of, you know, being the problem solver, you know, I know, I’m being myself, fear for your audience, but around 2004 2005 Business Intelligence is becoming a thing. So, you know, looking at Dena, historical data, particularly crane smash reports that he’s done to make decisions. And I had guys like, you know, Michael Eisner and Warren Buffett and Howard Schultz going like, man, Neil, it’s amazing what computers are telling us. And I’m like, not really telling us anything. We got great tools to like, collect info and slice and dice it. But I thought that was a cool machine. Like think about data draw insights that took me down this path of artificial intelligence.
Adam Pierno 4:21
So it’s just your curiosity kind of brought you there, because there was not at that point, the field of AI existed, but probably not mature as it relates to bi or other applications that for for marketers or for business?
Neil Sahota 4:36
No, not not at all. And that, you know, I want to go doing some work and some patterns that got me a call from IBM. And that’s I want to fund the original IBM Watson team. Then my work there to go after the Jeopardy challenge to push on this concept of ecosystem, helping people use the technologies and let’s just build the software engineers, the scientists with the business people you have on tool set. Well, that work again, like, you know, 10,000 plus organizations on board got the attention of the United Nations, who then reached out to me and said, Hey, we are trying to do things around the Sustainable Development Goals. Can we talk to you?
Adam Pierno 5:15
Yeah, this is stable development goals are important for the UN, but also across higher ed, as you know, I know that something we’re all striving for is how do we elevate these goals? And how do we support them in all of our individual communities?
Neil Sahota 5:28
Well, yeah, that’s, that’s the big thing. And so that led me down the UN path. And that work attracted the attention of UC Irvine. So it’s like, like I said, everything kind of happened by accident. It was not planned. I wasn’t sitting around in college, or as a 25 year olds were like, hey, one day I hope to be advisor. It just, it just happened. But that’s, I think, again, that I’ve always been open to opportunity, the path of least resistance, yeah,
Adam Pierno 5:57
but you wouldn’t have even been able to imagine it, to
Neil Sahota 6:03
manifest it. No, I, you know, I challenge the audience out there is anyone say like, they’re in their youth that, hey, you know, one day, I would like to be an advisor to the United Nations.
Adam Pierno 6:17
Tell me about how you’ve already seen AI, mature, maybe in some ways beyond expectations, or into realms that maybe you hadn’t even thought you would would be achieved as quickly as they are.
Neil Sahota 6:34
There’s a lot of that actually going on. You know, the the biggest challenge is that when this first started out, a lot of people thought automation, because that’s what we’re used to machines being faster, cheaper, less errors. But AI is a completely different model of computing, we call it the third generation of computing, that’s turning the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is not triggering society by pointelle. So lots of numbers here. But at the end of the day, what we found is the real value from Ai lies beyond automation, there’s obviously things you can do it with AI, you have this whole new toolset that’s unlocking doors. And one great example is there’s a whole field of AI called artificial empathy. So even though the machines don’t feel the emotions, they’re actually really good at detecting it and human beings, and changing dynamically how they interact with. So if you start getting angry, they try to soothe you feel sad or cheer you up. It’s crazy, it’s like, very interesting dynamic in terms of, well, marketers are tapping into these capabilities now to connect better with their customers. You got like therapists using this now to, you know, give people with outlets that they have an episode of 2am and can’t get ahold someone right away, you know, a temporary substitute. You got law enforcement using some of these things now to better understand people like know, from like, are they lying? Are they telling the truth? They seem anxious about something. And so I think for a lot of people, they were shocked by how good AI was actually a doing this. And as a result, I think it’s opened up people’s minds to realize we shouldn’t be using some of these tools beyond our, you know, artificial empathy across the board. And so we’ve moved on from this concept of like, Hey, we’re automating and robbing like the taxi driver, or the factory worker, it’s the fact that now we’re helping out and giving powerful tools and taking over some of the work of a lawyer or even a doctor. So they’re actually freed up to do more complex work.
Adam Pierno 8:52
And is that is that empathy deployed in the field? Or is it still in the test world? Saying it’s really being employed?
Neil Sahota 9:02
It’s already been employed. If anyone has the Citibank app, there will be a concierge on there. It’s actually using the artificial empathy.
Adam Pierno 9:14
I was just an another conversation about the conversation was about bots in the metaverse, so it’s a different, different construct. But the idea was that AI could create help create these bots that are in the metaverse, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between an AI character in the metaverse versus a real person. And one of the ethical considerations I was pushing on was about identifying when you’re talking to a real person versus a bot because you would treat them differently and you would expect different if it’s a bot, it has a purpose. So I think there’s an ethical obligation on the part of the programmer or whoever is deploying the bot to tell you I am the person or the company that has deployed this bot and the purpose of it is to help you or to sell you something or to When I work with that Citibank bot, is it telling me it’s a robot? I mean, we use some across different brands that I work with. And they usually say, you know, chatbot, or they identify themselves somehow, but it’s not. I think the line is getting blurred. Am I wrong? No,
Neil Sahota 10:18
it’s getting blurrier the city back does it tell you straight up? Straight up, you’re talking to like an AI system. But that’s not true everywhere. Just to show you how far along we’ve come, I believe was back in 20 2016, or 2017, there was a professor with one of the Ivy League schools that was an online class as well before the pandemic. But he actually created an AI chatbot to be the TA. And so the entire semester, you know, people are emailing and interacting, not knowing is not a real human being. And at the end of the semester, the professor was a little surprised that no one figured it out. And so he made the announcement and shipped it public. And I think a lot of people we want there’s no way you’re making that up. Ah, no, it was totally, it was totally informs AI. Wow. And there’s just like, and that was five, six years ago.
Adam Pierno 11:19
And that’s a great. Oh, man. That’s a great segue into the question of, as you said, we think of computing we think of automation. So when I think of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, I think the media narrative, the big fear for truck drivers and for like assembly line workers is computing will create robots that can automate tasks, complex like driving, that will start eating jobs or changing the nature of work. And depending on who’s writing it, it’s for better or for worse. But that example, a TA is a thought worker, a TA is someone who’s applying critical thinking to guide a student not in some cases, it’s hey, here’s your here’s your assignment. Or here’s the you can find that information you’re looking for at this link. But in some cases, it’s actually giving critical feedback. And as I say, it’s suggesting they read this to better understand that giving them context. How have you seen so in that case, for example, if you know more about that story? What was the response on the part of TAs?
Neil Sahota 12:26
There wasn’t actually much said about it. I know most TAs are our grad students, and they’re probably just thinking about like, well, who really cares? I’m moving on to start my career as a PhD and doing research or teaching or whatever it might be. So I don’t think they saw it as much as a threat. But I will flip the script a bit and say, one of the big things is even in the white collar jobs, that is a real concern. But there is a big however, on that, Adam, yeah, tell me. So one of the there’s a company called legal nation, that it was started by three lawyers start over actually lunch we had several years ago, a few years ago. And they essentially built an AI associate lawyer. So if you have a complaint filed against you, the lawyer, the lawyer will actually read the complaint. file, the course will draft and file the corresponding court documents, start generating the deposition questions and start formulating case strategy. And there was a case So Walmart is one of their customers, they absolutely adore reclamation, because their AI social lawyer can does what a three year experience learn to do in about 1012 hours, the AI doesn’t two minutes. And Walmart had a case where it was a guy ironically, a dentist bought a whole chicken bed into the gizzard chipped his tooth.
Adam Pierno 14:04
So he says Walmart sues Walmart right?
Neil Sahota 14:08
Now normally Walmart would probably just settle I don’t know what they would pay like 10 20,000 Right, I’m not making the number up, just to be done with it. But now that they’re using legal nations, you know, AI lawyer here. It went through to the work and part of the key strategy actually came back and said, Well, it’s a material fact that when chickens eat, they eat stones, that gets stored in the gizzard. So by by buying a whole chicken or trying to get the gizzard the person should have been aware of that risk. That argument one Walmart the case they’d have to pay anything. And we were looking at this going like there’s nothing about chickens are stones that were was ever trained to the AI know about connecting all these dots, students research, I went to some of the managing partners with these big law firms and said hey, what you got So figure this out. They’re like, Nah, mostly we’re chicken farmers. Right. And it was like, it was shocking. And that is the case
Adam Pierno 15:07
would have to get elevated to a level high enough that warranted them going and doing research into chicken farms.
Neil Sahota 15:13
Yeah. And that that’s this lesson is we’re three lawyers that did this whole thing. That’s a great example of some of the work that can can be done now. And this was the billable
Adam Pierno 15:27
rate of legalization now that you know, is it competitive to the three year law associate or
Neil Sahota 15:33
is it it’s, it’s a flat usage fee? Right. The reason, you know, they went, they recently went down the path of they built this tool to help their boutique law firm, right? And then they realized that something so much bigger and powerful to try to convince the other law firms to use it. And I actually remember telling him like, I don’t think that’s going to be successful. It turned out not to be because every law firm was like, Well, if you do it in two minutes, what happens to my billable hours are like 10 billable hours. Right. And so they were like in a conundrum. I said, like, you need to take this to the ultimate customer and take it to the businesses. And that’s how they were started going to Walmart and started going to target a Nationwide Insurance. And that’s when they realize Rosemarie because Walmart’s like, we’re telling all our outside counsel to use this.
Adam Pierno 16:21
Yeah, yeah. Now it becomes assigned, but but to the point of the law firms who want to build more, that’s one problem. I don’t feel so bad for law firms. I do feel bad for junior associates who probably are graduating law school with a lot of debt. And now they’re competing with this AI for you know, it’s, it’s probably not that challenging to get a junior associate position. It is probably hard to stand out as a junior associate. But now you’re competing against this other tool that your client is throwing at you that does the work in two minutes. And it doesn’t sound like it’s just handling traffic tickets. I mean, that sounds like a pretty complex set of not even case law when outside of the discipline altogether to find some new model.
Neil Sahota 17:08
It did. But this is a great example about the future of work. This legal nation AI is not going to put a bunch of associate lawyers out of work. It’s changing the nature of work. And so, you know, everyone’s always asking me like, What are the jobs which are going to be and
Adam Pierno 17:27
when I want to? Well, I’m not so interested in the jobs that tomorrow, I think I’m in this more thinking about the jobs of this evening, and how they’re, how they’re getting augmented or threatened or improved.
Neil Sahota 17:39
Well, that’s, that’s my point is like, he doesn’t actually matter what the actual jobs will be. Right? They’re good incubated today, we know the skill sets that will be required in the future work is really hybrid intelligence, which is complementing human abilities with machine capabilities. So going going back to LA for a second, this is how I got my get involved with the UC Irvine. So you know, as legalization got more success, the de la school actually reached out to me because we had some mutual friends, which is like you induce me to those guys. And sure, they’re selling a one hour meeting that apparently turned into like a four plus hour meeting. And she came back to me and she’s like, Neil, I have this totally wrong. These are like tools to be used or things we’re gonna figure out how to regulate legislate, or what’s gonna happen. She’s like, the nature of the work is changing. What law students will the graduate will be expected to do and what social lawyers will be expected to do will be different, which is like, what I’m teaching my students today is gonna be obsolete in six years. I need to revamp my curriculum to get where the jobs tomorrow will be. You know, the social workers are not going to be filing court documents, they’re not going to be doing research. They’re going to be expected to spend more time with the client to tackle more complex cases much earlier in their career to be ready to appear for a judge in court or Opposition Council. Go out and do business development be rainmakers are things that we we think that okay, well, we’ll see what people can do and 1015 years down the road, like no, this is what they need to be doing now. So because they’re gonna have powerful tools that’s gonna do so this helped him do some of this work. We got to get the brief to the more complex higher value work earlier in their careers.
Adam Pierno 19:37
I have a question for you. That you just sparked here, which is because I use like a software that helps me remember passwords. I have outsourced that. I have no idea what any password to anything is. Whatever device I’m on generates a password. It saves to the database within that device. Sometimes it shares it onto another device if I’m lucky, otherwise, I’m just resetting passwords all the time. And then if I get to a space where I need to log in, I absolutely have no clue. Could the same thing happened to lawyers? Who, like if the curriculum changes? And what they’re learning is how to use the technology for law? Are they out? So are we as a society potentially outsourcing the knowledge of law, case law, and risking the kind of collective amnesia, so that the machines know the rules and people are like, I know how to push these two buttons.
Neil Sahota 20:40
Well, it’s not it’s not so straightforward like that. I liken it to the remembering people’s phone numbers. Yeah. How many phone numbers? Do you remember? Like, I don’t remember any numbers? I got a phone. Right? Yeah, I wrote the remember numbers when I was when I was a kid. Yes. So it’s the same thing. It’s not like people are going to no longer to remember a case law, or the rules that those are two intrinsic. And the only way these AI tools work is when people are teaching this stuff to them and constantly updating, you know, every time the law changes, updating, reteaching the machine some of these things, I think what’s going to happen is that, you know, it’s like, you look for a book, you don’t need to know the Dewey Decimal system anymore, we’ll do the same thing like legal research, right? I don’t have to worry about remembering all the journal names and numbers for things. There’s a tool that’s gonna help me do that. So I think where the focus in terms of the thought knowledge is going to be different is that we’re just going to forget everything.
Adam Pierno 21:49
Yeah, the Dewey Dewey Decimal System cracks me up, because it was such an important tool. But we don’t really need it anymore. I have librarians who are listening, I apologize. But that’s an interesting way to look at it. It’s like that was a good tool for them. But it’s not going to get us going any further. The same thing, even even interacting with kids. They’re like, why do I need 10 digit phone number? Can i Why can’t I just tap on their face and call them? Like? I’m not really sure. I don’t know how to answer that question. I guess because of history, you know, because we used to have these phone dials. But I apply that same question to I guess the question I’m asking about lawyers, I could apply the same way to thought workers in any industry, you know, MBAs, there’s a, there are a group of people that are learning how to lean on technology and how to use technology. And that’s fantastic. That’s great. You wonder, as you see, in marketing, you see specialists who come into the industry and really master one set of tools or one vertical. But they don’t really know, they haven’t been trained. It’s not to any detriment of their own, always in the core principles of marketing that’s underlying it. They kind of know how to, like, tweak the tools to get the result they want. And so almost in that case, the machine is training them. Like we’re all trained in social media, I would like likes, therefore, I say something outrageous, that won’t get attention, right? What’s how do you how do you work within that cycle to maximize human potential.
Neil Sahota 23:29
So this, this is where hybrid intelligence comes into play, because we have these new tools, we have to learn how to not just take advantage of them, but realize that some of the way we do things is going to change. Because it’s either not efficient, or it’s actually not tapping into the right space anymore. So you brought up marketers, so we’re used to like putting people into segments or micro segments, doing like, you’ll look like personas and all that? Well. There’s actually quite a few marketing firms today that are using AI capabilities and graphic profiling, as well as their linguistics. To say there really isn’t a segment each person can be targeted individually. Like your best friend, the AI has the ability to using public information. understand things like what you value, how to speak to you what channels you’re gonna use, and where the you know, the people can actually know kind of craft with AIS help that specific individual message for you, that specific value proposition. So market better to you sell more often to you, but create a deeper level of engagement with you. So the I can’t do on its own, it needs to help, obviously humans and as humans, we don’t have the ability to keep track of, you know, 100 customers, let alone 1000s or millions. And so, it’s a great example of hybrid intelligence coming in and changing how we actually more Market?
Adam Pierno 25:00
Yeah, it becomes a force multiplier. Yeah. Because I, as you were explaining that example, I’m thinking through the database you have to create of all the possible variables, and then all the possible outputs all the possible inputs that could come at any point in a conversation or journey. And thinking about how many people I have to employ to do that, but the AI can do a lot of that work.
Neil Sahota 25:23
That’s right. That’s what I said, some of the smart marketing firms are doing some of the brands are starting to do I know that I’m actually working on a project with the movie studios to do that to actually help promote movies better. Because we there’s all movies, we look and probably say, Hey, that looks pretty good. Or I’ll probably watch that. But their movies like, I’ve experienced this where I have no idea what it is. I don’t think I would like it, but my wife wants to go see it. And they go, Wow, this is a great movie. Because I like movies with great plots and characters. And that happens to have this.
Adam Pierno 25:56
Yeah, we’ve seen We’ve seen streamers start to do this with Netflix, where they have they don’t know how deep it goes, maybe you know, but they’ll have different posters for movies, depending on your watch history. So if you’d like horror movies like I do, they’ll show you kind of a more scary image. And if you like rom coms, like my wife does, I’ll show you a more kind of romantic image. Is that Is it go deeper than that? Is it like custom trailers?
Neil Sahota 26:21
It goes deeper than that, like, Netflix was really good, right? So you’re talking about thematic, the poster cards and Netflix also highlight the actor from the movie that you think will connect with you better. So if you’re watching pulp recommending Pulp Fiction, Adam, you may see a picture of you know, John Travolta, or your wife might see a picture with Herman or Samuel Jackson or something
Adam Pierno 26:46
like that, right? Because I’m Italian, Neil,
Neil Sahota 26:49
I was the first thing that popped into my head, I would probably see Samuel Jackson work.
Adam Pierno 27:02
Do they go to the are we working on cotton, not quite bespoke, but but somatic trailers, then that would do a similar thing where they call out highlight to the film and, and even, you know, texts or voiceover that caters that individuals or two segments, probably more likely, yeah, that’s
Neil Sahota 27:19
actually the next wave that’s being worked on right now is I want to use the word personalized, but individualized trailers, right. It’s not just saying like, Hey, I don’t watch this movie, as we call it personal, it’s actually tailored. So it’s looking at the scenes from the movie that would connect with you the most to make you want to watch the movie. So you get one version, I would get a different version, or wise to get their own versions. Right? That’s love. Well, of course, people, you know, like that. That’s crazy. And other students like, well, we want to create millions of trailers, it’s like, you don’t have to, it’s actually smart enough already to be able to do that. Well,
Adam Pierno 27:58
that touches on you know, editing, which is a human art form, the ability to know when to cut and what what leads to a better impact. And what is pulls you what draws the viewer in and what holds attention and what you know, what’s wrong, you know, an editor can tell you know, that’s, that’s wrong, you know, you’re messing with pace here that AI can do that. You’ve seen examples of AI doing that. And then what are the implications for people who are editors today? Or who are studying or working to go into that field even like tick tock creators who are experts at at that kind of pacing?
Neil Sahota 28:34
AI can do that. I will tell you in 2016 when I was still with IBM Fox Studios came to us they said, we have this AI horror thriller movie called Morgan Can we do something with you in Watson? And of course, like, we will, I don’t know if we want to do something with it, or, but we we talked to them about it. And we said, Okay, well, what if we had Watson, watch the movie trailer or watch the movie and created a movie trailer for you? Legally, we could create a movie trailer like, yes, let’s let’s talk about what audience you want to try and connect with the most. And will Bill Watson that it’ll create a trailer specifically for that target audience. And so Watson came in we said, this is the demographic you know, it did its work and watch the movie. And it selected the scenes based on like emotional tenor, and things that would resonate with that specific group. And so it gave the cuts of the scenes and the sequence. And the people come in, like add the music and those other things. And then they published the trailer. Let’s actually put it out the trailer. I think it’s still available on YouTube. So if you’re curious about it,
Adam Pierno 29:43
but and the movie is called Morgan.
Neil Sahota 29:45
Yeah, the movie I can’t tell you is that great. Sorry, Fox. Yeah, that’s what they overperformed by a factor of three with that demographic we were targeting. Oh, that’s
Adam Pierno 29:57
awesome. And so that’s, that’s a good example of hybrid. telogen so Watson can watch the movie. And basically, I’m guessing it’s judging by the color on the screen, the amount of darkness, you know, it’s judging on kind of elements that it can pull from pixels, pixel data movement speed. And then a human comes in and says, Okay, now we’re going to add music here, we’re going to put a string here, here’s a place where we’re gonna kind of graphic in and helps Watson get over the finish line. Is that, is that right?
Neil Sahota 30:23
It does. But it’s looking at more than like the color and the pixels. It’s actually also it’s also read by languishes, who’s actually listening to the dialogue and growing context from the dialogue? So it was looking, it was Washington, much like a human being would except that it’s looking at 2000 variables for every frame. Right. So it’s getting because full robust picture from it.
Adam Pierno 30:47
Wow. When you think about our, our hybrid future of work, are you You seem pretty optimistic?
Neil Sahota 30:58
I pretty much an optimist.
Adam Pierno 31:01
But in general, like, are you encouraged and heartened for potential for knowledge workers and for the workforce in general? Or is it? Do you see the kind of scary underbelly of it?
Neil Sahota 31:11
I look, I look at this whole thing that you know, what’s happening with hybrid intelligence and AI and emerging technology? The other day, it’s just a tool, right? It’s like a hammer. And it’s on us as human beings to choose how we wield the tool. Right? I can use a hammer to build a house or destroy house. And it’s much the same thing here is how do we choose to use this technology? So I’m optimistic because I feel like there’s a lot of a lot of power or things going up as actually advanced as people thought leadership knowledge capabilities. No, we’ve been able to do things like restore mobility, someone’s lost the lamb. You know, we’re, we’re finding the chickens eat stones, and some of the concerns if you’re a lawyer, right? There’s all these things. Now, there’s the flip side, where, you know, some companies, they are using this to automate people jobs, right, there’s probably not really going to be taxi drivers, or even truck drivers in the future. The fast food chains are already starting to use AI to take your order at the drive thru. Right, so that that might be one less person at the fast food restaurant. So that’s, I think the real thing is helping people like is there a balance here? And it’s like, there always is throughout human history with doing these things. But the key thing we don’t really talk enough about is, how do we get people ready for this new future? So we have an opportunity to start changing our curriculum and get the obviously the students ready. The What about people that need to be retrained? Because that runway is, is shrinking, and there’s not really a whole lot of investment that they see going on?
Adam Pierno 32:58
Yeah, that front. Yeah. And then from a policy standpoint, getting government to align market incentives to do just that, to train people, but to also create incentives for big businesses that if you outsource your legal counsel to an AI that does things in two minutes versus three hours, there has to be some give back, or some other place that you chip in to help based on an incentive based on a tax credit, or based on how you hire humans for other roles that are meaningful roles. I wish I had the answer to that. Maybe that’s my next conversation. Maybe someone at the UN that, you know, could point me, you could point me to come on and talk about that. Well, we’ll
Neil Sahota 33:38
fly we’ll find someone good for you to talk to you with that. That’s exactly it. I mean, just going back to lawyers for a second, why don’t we talk a lot about them. Like if you’re suffering from domestic violence and trying to get a temporary restraining order. That form is incredibly complex. It’s unfair. Yeah. And it’s like the most people that gets rejected, I think at a rate of like, 80 or 85%, the first time around, because something’s just not filled out correctly. And a lot of people say like, Well, why don’t people just get a lawyer to help them do that? So it’s like, those lawyers cost at a minimum $500 an hour, and they’re always super busy. Right? It’s like, it’s not it’s not affordable, if you had like an AI assistant, to help you fill out that form. So your odds of getting, you know, through the first time? That’s a huge value, right? Yeah,
Adam Pierno 34:32
absolutely. I do know a lawyer who started a business filling out a very specific kind of form, not like a work permit type form for construction. And then very quickly, he trained his own AI, he started, he didn’t call it AI because he’s not a programmer. He just figured out these things are always the same in the form. In fact, they probably don’t even need to be on the form as a field. The because they’re always so similar. So what he created was like, five templates that were prefilled, except for three areas that, you know, were bespoke, the address and a couple other areas. And those things get pulled in dynamically from the, from what his customer would tell them. And you say, oh, yeah, like, this could be 20 times simpler. And then that would improve the speed of progress until the city has to read the forms. And like you’re saying, with domestic violence forms, like there is someone whose job it is to reject that form. What if their job was to constructively help get the form reviewed to solve the situation versus just the paperwork side of it so that an AI can review it and kick it back to the person or two AIS work out the form itself, so that the police officer or the counselor or whoever it needs to be sent, can go help the situation and give that person the help they need or those people to help they need?
Neil Sahota 35:58
100% That’s again, how we choose to use the tool. Right?
Adam Pierno 36:03
That’s a that’s a great example, man. Neil, thank you so much for making time for me. This was really this is the conversation I was hoping we would have so thank you, and I’m really appreciative where can people find you?
Neil Sahota 36:17
Oh, my my life is pretty an open book. If you’re curious as to what I’m up to. The best places to go to my website was just my name, Miele sauna.com. Or follow me on social media, you know, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram all been posted quite frequently about what’s what’s going on and some of the work that I’m doing or some work we’re doing with United Nations. So feel free to check it out. And you have an idea who would have done something off, you know, my website as a contact form. Happy to talk to anyone in the audience about things they’re thinking about.
Adam Pierno 36:50
Awesome. Really, again, really appreciate it. And thank you for gently blowing my mind this morning.
Neil Sahota 36:55
Hey, my pleasure, Adam. Thanks for having me. Well, that was last week conversation.
Adam Pierno 36:59
Cool, man. Thanks. Strategy inside everything is produced by me, Adam pure. If you liked what you heard, please leave a review wherever you listen to your podcast really helps. For more information about me Adam, pure note, you can go to Adam pure no.com There’s information about my books, my speaking and my strategy work. Have an idea for a guest send it my way. Just go to Adam periodo.com and you’ll find a forum there that will help you connect. Thanks for listening
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