The Human Code
The Human Code" podcast unravels the intricate blend of technology, leadership, and personal growth, featuring insights from visionary leaders and innovators shaping the future. Host Don Finley dives deep into the human stories behind technological advancements, inspiring listeners at the crossroads of humanity and tech.
The Human Code
Generative AI: Empowerment and Ethical Considerations with Jesse Manning
Welcome to The Human Code, the podcast where technology meets humanity, and the future is shaped by the leaders and innovators of today. I'm your host, Don Finley, inviting you on a journey through the fascinating world of tech, leadership, and personal growth. Here, we delve into the stories of visionary minds, Who are not only driving technological advancement, but also embodying the personal journeys and insights that inspire us all. Each episode, we explore the intersections where human ingenuity meets the cutting edge of technology, unpacking the experiences, challenges, and triumphs that define our era. So, whether you are a tech enthusiast, an inspiring entrepreneur, or simply curious about the human narratives behind the digital revolution, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Human Code.
In this episode, we're thrilled to have Jesse Manning owner of discovery, business support services, and a seasoned expert in sales and marketing strategy with a focus on integrating AI for business efficiency. Jesse has a wealth of experience across various industries and is passionate about guiding small and medium-sized businesses to leverage generative AI for innovation and competitive edge. Today, Jesse, and I will discuss how generative AI is transforming business efficiency and drastically reducing project timelines. The common barriers to AI adoption and how executives can overcome hesitations to fully embrace these technologies. The ethical considerations. And workforce impacts of AI emphasizing the needs for upscaling and using AI to enhance human potential. Join us as we delve into these highlights. With Jesse Manning. This episode is packed with practical insights that will inspire you to rethink how you approach AI integration in your business. You won't want to miss it.
Don Finley:I'm here with Jesse Manning and Jesse, I got to say, thank you for coming. I know you've got a lot of work that you're doing with Discovery Business Support Services. really appreciate you being here. What is it that gets you excited about that intersection between humanity and technology? And how did you get to this point today?
Jesse Manning:When people ask me how I got to this point today, I always say accidentally. I've accidentally, gotten into multiple different paths in my career, which has resulted in some really exciting things, really exciting directions and the opportunity to work with great companies and great technologies. but truly when I graduated from. College 20 years ago, had a degree in history and a major in political science as well. And, there's not a lot of jobs just waiting for you. So I had to find my own way into first sales and marketing, working with technology. And as that has evolved, We've had this really exciting opportunity over the last 18 months, to experience this massive change that's coming with generative AI. Discovery Business Support Services was something I started six years ago to really work with, small to medium sized businesses and their leadership teams specifically with regard to sales, but also on, technology implementation generative AI. Really coming onto the scene 18 months ago, I immersed myself in it, but I also found that Many of my colleagues working in different industries, whether it be healthcare or manufacturing or engineering, they weren't experienced in that same immersion. So what gets me out of bed in the morning is the opportunity to talk about my experiences and my strengths that I bring to the table working with these different companies, but also the chance to introduce them to this new technology. And, and see that lightbulb moment for them when they really light up and say, I can do something with this. This is going to help me. that's the reward every day.
Don Finley:What was that light bulb moment for you? Like when you first sat down with generative AI and saw this could have an impact
Jesse Manning:So there's two different stories around this. My first experience at all with generative AI and chat GPT is the go to. that's the first experience I had. And it was really wondering, what can I do with this? You it exists, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And I had read that it could create original content. And, I gave it to some parameters. I said, create a comic book character that nobody's ever heard of. in a few seconds, it comes up with something and a whole backstory. And I keep asking it questions. It comes up with an arch nemesis. It comes up with an alter ego. It comes up with a headquarters for this superhero. And I thought that's great. But. I don't see how that can help me. That was fun, but it's a one time exercise. A couple of months later, I was working with one of my clients and they were ready to get into some new industries. They needed some research done and were really developing entire go to market plans for this experience, getting ready to roll into new industries. They looked to me to create these plans. Those are pretty in depth, 10, 15, 20 page documents that you prepare for each industry. I experienced using generative AI to help me both do the research and do the writing. I did all of the work in a fraction of the time. That was my lightbulb moment. When I went, this is going to be big, this is going to change the way people work
Don Finley:I went through a similar sort of like pacing. Yeah, it was the first time chat GPT was released. I pulled it up. We were redesigning parts of the website. And we used to have copywriters. We used to have web designers. We had graphic designers, right? everybody had their say and had it, had some stake in there. And it took us days to weeks, not an effort, but just in duration. to get these things done. And me and the web designer made updates, significant updates to the website in the matter of like hours, just because of that instantaneous feedback that we were getting with ChatGPT. What are some of the cliffs that you're seeing with either a wider adoption or misuse of the tool and just not getting as much out of it as you would think?
Jesse Manning:as far as not getting enough out of it. in my experience, working with some of my clients and being a part of some networking groups here in the Denver area, talking to different executives, the real barrier, to, to use is just. Entry and initial understanding. so many people that are leading companies, whether they're, in the C suite or they're directors or they're frontline managers, they have their day to day jobs. Now in the tech industry, we get immersed in this technology. And we make it our mission of sorts to, to learn everything we can about generative AI and the tools that are available and what can it do for me? What can it do for others? And as I'm having these conversations in the networking groups, I learned nobody else is doing that. I've got colleagues in, in the healthcare industry that were fascinated by the potential. But really had a difficult time carving out parts of their day to do appropriate research, appropriate experimentation. So I had been gently nudging them, make some time for this, and then the next month I'd see them and Ask them, did you get into chat GPT? Did you experiment with it? no, I didn't have time. So I took, that as an opportunity to build, a workshop series. And to actually offer these workshops for executives and executive teams to learn. Baseline knowledge about generative AI. And even now, 18 months into it being released, when I share basic information, what I think is basic information, look what you can do with chat GPT, you can upload a document and it will summarize it for you. There are light bulb moments in there. People's eyes light up because they start to see the potential. But that biggest barrier is just making the time to, to research it and to make it a priority in the first place.
Don Finley:absolutely love that because it's learning a new tool, And you've got to understand how do you use a screwdriver versus how do you use a hammer? And then how do you use chat GPT? I sat down with a few of my business partners to go over what chat GPT was, how to use it. And after our first workshop, we were meeting for our second workshop and I asked, how has the last week been for you? And one of the guys goes, it's great. I've replaced chat. I've replaced Google with chat GPT. And I was like, wait, that's how you're using it. And it was one of those kinds of like spots of wow, man, that's awesome. And at the same time, you got to recognize the limitation of the tool. And so what are some of the results that you've seen that you've been either surprised by or a static that hey, now this is possible?
Jesse Manning:getting people introduced to generative AI, and it's interesting you mention that, but somebody was using it as Google, they found their niche for gen AI. recognizing what's going to get someone over that, Cautiousness that they have about using that or the fear that they have about using gen AI tools That's been a fun part of this journey Everybody's a little bit different. So in the executive workshops that I'm doing shown some of the basics and we start with chat GPT, but we also do co pilot perplexity Claude Gemini, we look at all the major tools that are available and do different exercises in them. And again, I'm doing some simple things like translation, but because generative AI tools, large language models, they understand context. The translation is really strong. So people start to see how that can work in, in, in their environment, how it can work for them personally or professionally. summarization I mentioned, being a fascinating, angle, but there's still a hesitation with some folks. And, this is not on the professional sense, but my mother is a great example of someone who's very cautious, very hesitant. about anything AI related. And we had a conversation a couple of weeks ago, and I was trying to find what's going to be the thing that gets her over the hump, that gets her to recognize it's not only a really interesting, powerful tool, but it can do great stuff for me. And it ended up being Suno, which generates songs. you can put a short 200 character prompt into suno. Tell it what kind of, what kind of music you want, and it will write the lyrics to a song and it will write the music, and then it will sing it for you. That was her fascination moment with, wow, this is more than just something that's going to be evil and terrible and something to be afraid of. It's actually cool and I can do it with my grandkids. I can have fun with
Don Finley:that's awesome. what are some of the things that you would recommend your clients watching out for when it comes to using generative AI? And I guess the example that I can give from my side was, my partner that was using it. for Google. I was like, look, it may not give you factual results. there's the possibility of hallucinating. And so you have to be careful as far as what it's actually spitting back to you and make sure that you're double checking. Is there anything else that you're advising people to be watching out for
Jesse Manning:it. Yeah, in the workshops, we do talk about hallucinations and I do a comparison between old AI and generative AI because the terminology has been out there for forever. the artificial intelligence realm goes back to the forties and fifties. when we really started as a discipline, Ethan Mollick, who's a professor at, at Wharton is well known, in the, AI community. And he said something that I think is really important to remember about using Gen AI tools. Gen AI. is good people, but it's bad software. that took a little bit of processing time to think, what is he trying to say with that? Good people, but bad software. It behaves like a person. So when you're dealing with ChatGPT or Gemini as a, as an ally in the professional workspace. It's like an, an omniscient over eager intern. It wants to give you great answers. it wants to help you in any way that it can. You can manipulate it. If it doesn't do something the first time you can say, Hey, you're costing me time and money here. Help me out. It apologizes and it does the task for you, but you can tell it, the same thing 10 times over. You can ask it the same question 10 times over. You will get 10 different variations on an answer. Nine of those may be absolutely correct, but they're just variations of an answer. One of them may be a complete hallucination. And we need to understand that when we're using these tools, that it's not like Excel. When you're using Excel and you put in equals one plus one, you will always get two. And with generative AI, you're dealing with something that is ultimately operating more like a person.
Don Finley:a really good description. I was just, getting off a call with somebody. And we were talking about how, we've, we build systems in a deterministic way, Like when I click this button, I expect this behavior to happen. Whereas with L with LLMs and AI, they're probabilistic machines. And especially, you can code them in a way so that it would always give you the same answer, but typically they're set up in a way that gives you some slight variation. There's a bit of randomness, in the system. And that is, something to be on the lookout for.
Jesse Manning:Absolutely. And there are still big limitations in what you can do with these tools. It's not a panacea yet. It may be someday, but it's not there yet. I just had an experience, just last night. I needed to get a list of every county manager. Of every county in the state of Colorado. And I wanted their email addresses, their phone numbers, their names, of course, and then I said, give me the population of the county and how many employees work for the county. And at first we fought a little bit because it said, I can't do that, but you need to go to each website. no, you need to do the work. So I got it to the point where it prepared this beautiful table for me. And it had all these names in there. I recognized. Some of the counties and I said that those aren't the county managers. You need to search the web for this You need to do your research and so it did another table and it got some of them, right? But it only had about a 33% Uh, success rate. I went through and checked everything afterwards. There are times where you experiment with using gen AI tools, generative AI tools and you end up spending more time fighting with them than you would doing the task manually. So there are opportunities where we have to recognize it's not quite there yet. But then again, when it comes to things like, coding, um, I've been able to do entire Salesforce implementations for clients, whereas I used to subcontract that work out, I can do it myself now because it can do the apex coding. It can tell me how to set up all the flows. I did a very rapid Salesforce migration using chat GPT as my behind the scenes ally, and it resulted in a very successful implementation.
Don Finley:That is fantastic. I do love hearing the stories about how it's empowering us to do things that, we may not have the knowledge right at our fingertips and need that additional help. I'm thinking about this from the standpoint of there's the impact that you just described, right? Like where you used to subcontract out some of your work, but now you can do more of it. I brought up the idea that like, we had all the, all these people involved in our website and we also trimmed down who we were working with in that regard. How do you see this? Gen AI impacting the future workforce.
Jesse Manning:That is something we're not talking about enough. we talk about ethics with regard to AI, I do see a lot of organizations that are talking about privacy and security, making sure they understand how the LLMs work, and looking for bias in their answers. And those are all good things in terms of ethics, but the big missing piece, and I think it should be both business and government talking about this, it is The coming change with regard to implementing all these tools. Now, me not subcontracting out Salesforce work. that's probably of super minimal impact or no impact altogether, and maybe the same with your website, but then you see companies like Klarna and last year Klarna laid off, 700 customer service employees and replace them with AI software. They've cut 10 million in marketing spend. Now, those agencies are either going to go have to find new work elsewhere or they're going to cut jobs. That's just the reality of what's going to happen as these tools are implemented more and more as replacements rather than supplements. So there's a couple of things that I recommend to my clients and in our workshops and just the casual discussions that we have. One of those is look for the opportunities to supplement. your employees. Look for the opportunities to equip them with tools that make them better, more efficient, more powerful employees and contributors to your organization. There are so many opportunities to do that, to enhance rather than replace. But then the other thing that I recommend is if we do get to the point where larger organizations are completely replacing, Or they have the opportunity to completely replace teams. That is a, such a, a big disruption that we need to think about the people who are cut out in that process and invest in upskilling. somebody who's a marketing expert, there are other things that they can do that maybe you've replaced one element of them with a generative AI solution. But they can do more for your organization. Empowered with Gen AI, they can probably do much more. So let's look at upskilling rather than just replacing. marketing is the area that I always think of with this. And I have, Always had, uh, this twinge of sympathy for graphic designers. I've known several, throughout my career, been good friends with several, and they really have had a rough go of it. so when I was in college, everybody wanted to be a graphic designer. that major was absolutely packed. And then when they graduated, they find out the market's saturated. They have trouble finding their place. now we're 20 years later and Gen AI tools, image generators. are going to replace what some graphic designers do. and when you think about, let's say small businesses or even medium sized businesses, maybe they don't spend a lot on marketing anyway. If you need a quick logo developed, or you need something to put on a brochure. You can use MidJourney or you can use DALI and essentially get results that are good enough right now. And those results are only going to get better as the tool continues to develop. graphic designers, again, are faced with what happens To our industry, what happens to our careers? And that's where I think we really need to be conscious of how we could disrupt, not just jobs, but entire career tracks and invest in upskilling, making sure that employees have a home when their jobs are disrupted by
Don Finley:I think that's a really good point to bring up because in any digital transformation, there's always this line item on the ROI that says the jobs reduced, we're no longer, you need X number of heads. Now, fortunately, every time that I've been part of those projects, nobody's ever been directly fired because of the project, everybody ended up moving on and taking on different, skills and challenges or like the work. That needed to be done was only 50 percent of it was getting done. So now they have more time to actually get the rest of the job done. and so like that, that usually works out, but I do feel it this time. It's a little different with Gen AI. Like you, you pointed out the call center one. We also look at Tyler Perry stopped an 800 million investment outside of Atlanta for a movie studio after seeing the demo of OpenAI Zora. And so you see these stories, but It also has a feeling of that industrial revolution coming by and like taking the job away from the seamstress. Yet at the same time, we end up with more different jobs. But with this current iteration, I feel that it's going to happen quickly.
Jesse Manning:AI. It will, and
Don Finley:Yeah,
Jesse Manning:I wish I had a good answer to what's next for those careers that will be disrupted by this. I don't have that answer, but that's why we need to. Continue having the conversation. and I earlier when we were talking, I compared this to, changes in the automotive industry in the seventies and eighties and how disrupted, that industry was. And those workers who found themselves without jobs, they were super skilled and maybe they'd had these jobs for 20, 30 years and then automation and offshoring replaced them. And what we can't do. is lie to people about what those futures look like. Now, every four years, when there's a presidential election, candidates will swoop into the rust belt and say, the factories are opening again and the jobs are coming back and we're going to mine coal. We're not going to do that. So let's be realistic about if we are replacing certain jobs or certain careers altogether. With AI tools, what is next for those individuals? And that's where I think the conversation about upskilling can be really helpful. how do we career track people when they get into an organization? How do we invest in them to make sure that if something does happen to their career and tools come out that can essentially do their job, where do they go next? We're investing in people. Not just happy to see the bottom line.
Don Finley:exactly. And in the end, everything that we do is for humans in all reality. Like it's for the planet, it's for, society, but when it comes down to it, we're here for each other. and I think it's a really powerful statement that you're making to say, we've got to look at how we're upscaling people, how we're taking that human creativity. let's say, we get to a point where a good majority of it could be done by AI. There's still that extra little spice that the human offers, and can be adaptable to different situations. And I think it's still there. a really interesting time that we are, participating in this world right now. what is the next thing that you want to see? what can't you do today that you would love to be able to do with technology?
Jesse Manning:there's probably two ways I could take this answer. And one would be, what do I want to see out of people? And there is a lot of hesitation about generative AI, especially outside of the tech industry. And a good example of that is a friend of mine who's a part time professor. he's retired, but he teaches part time at Fort Hayes State University in Kansas. he's an old school guy. He came to me via email and, this email said, Generative AI will destroy academia. I said, Andy, you have to give me a little more context than that. What's going on? He was grading some assignments and he teaches philosophy. He had given students, an assignment to find an article in a magazine or a newspaper and pick out ten propositions. Now, I didn't know what a proposition was. I went to perplexity to find out what a proposition was.
Don Finley:Yeah.
Jesse Manning:the students should have known. They'd been through the lecture. But he was reading their answers and he was convinced that it was, AI. And so I ran it through a checker. The first example that I ran through a checker came back 99. 97 percent probable that it was created by AI. And so I told him, Andy, you can go one of two ways. You can continue to be the old school professor and there's certainly merit In, in, in doing so, you can use your AI checker and anybody who's violating the rules that you set for them, you can grade them down, but they're going to find ways around it. The technology exists. You can't put the smoke back in. it's out there. So the alternative would be. Meet them on their battlefield. Embrace the technology. Why don't you create a GPT that asks them questions about propositions or that they have to upload an article to, and it gives them true or false. Here's a sentence. Is it a proposition or not? And that's the way you grade them or ask them to build a GPT. around, reading articles, put it back on them because they want to embrace the technology to make life easier. Sure. But we still have to learn in an academic environment. And that's really The two paths he has before him is, do I go the old school route and continue to fight it? Or do I embrace it? Continue to have these students learn what they need to learn, but do it in a way that they're going to embrace, people, people fought against computers in offices and they thought they were a joke. I remember when, Wikipedia was just derided by, my high school teachers and college professors and Wikipedia is not a source. today, Wikipedia is the source.
Don Finley:Yeah.
Jesse Manning:It's a source. very accurate. there's been studies done that it's more accurate than Britannica could have ever hoped to have been because of the crowdsource nature of the information. So one thing I would like to see is more of an embrace, by the general population and more thinking about how can I use this to my advantage. And how can I embrace it in my life? As far as the technology is concerned. I'm really looking forward to LLMs that do have more of an ability to search for real time information. I know that the databases, the knowledge bases that they're trained on are fantastic and they continue to update those over time, but even with the latest models, even if they have the ability to search the web, they don't tend to get a little bit lazy at times and they don't find the most up to date information. So from a research perspective, being able to be very accurate in finding up to date information, that's going to be a game changer for at least me, what I do for my clients. And I think it'll make a difference for a lot of people.
Don Finley:I think I'll piggyback on that one as well. Like I absolutely would love to see a more up to date model or one that could actually interface with the web. In a cleaner way of gathering that information. but that definitely comes along the lines of being able to accurately compose it. And I do feel like perplexity, is leading in that component, but then again, it's not as strong in some other areas as Gemini as GPT is as well. And so hopefully. This feels like a problem that may be coming close. And I also am in the point where are we hitting the actual, upper limit on what a transformer architecture can do? Or are we just going to see more amazing, emergent qualities coming from it? Because I know from when we went from like GPT 3 to GPT 4, we made a significant jump in the number of parameters.
Jesse Manning:Right.
Don Finley:What was amazing was that it wasn't a linear jump to the conclusions or the performance of the model as well. And so being able to see how logic And reasoning jumped out of existence just from going to, a couple hundred. parameters to almost a trillion parameters as
Jesse Manning:Yeah. conversational AI, I think that's a, that's another area that I'm excited to see develop. And I know there's tools out there that can essentially replicate a person. There's the AI girlfriends that, um, have been developed. But, the conversational ability in some of the most powerful models, it's there. But I think it has so much room to grow, and I'm excited for that as well. Seeing some of what OpenAI recently publicized with their mobile app. It hasn't been released yet, but it's conversational ability. Looks like that will be very powerful, and I think we can do some great things with it once it's released.
Don Finley:I'm waiting for that one with baited breath as well. Because the speed at which it can respond, you're now talking about having a conversation And even with, our home devices today, there's still that delay. That they seem to have gotten it to a point where it is just minimizing. So we're looking at conversational, we're looking at more accurate results, more real time, I think it's helping us to reduce that churn that comes in between tasks and collaboration. and that sounds really amazing.
Jesse Manning:And I tend to look at things through a professional lens. How is it going to help me at work? How is it going to help me with clients? there's a very personal side to it as well. And this is where I'm hoping more people realize the power of Gen AI and start to embrace the tools. Um, couple of years ago for, my sister bought my mother a subscription to, service called StoryWorth her an email once a week. It's a question about her childhood and she writes in, in return. And over the course of 52 weeks, she's put together 52 stories and they publish a book. And so it's a book about her childhood and she loves it. She loves to write. She has some great stories. So her first edition came out. She's working on our second edition now. My dad didn't want to do it. Because he doesn't like to write. He didn't want to sit there at the computer and try to think of things and type. He's still somebody that types with just two fingers. And I'm thinking a world where there is a conversational generative AI, I can build a simple GPT that can just talk to him. And he loves to talk. He loves to tell stories. And if I have a GPT that he can just talk to, I can similarly capture all of his stories without really narrowing him down to just a keyboard.
Don Finley:That's beautiful. the technology is meeting us where we can interact with it. And I share a similar, not disdain for writing as your father does, but I'm much more comfortable in this type of environment of communicating. And so even when I do a written interviews for some publications, I'll actually speak it out, have it transcribed by one AI and then use another AI. To rewrite it and clarify what I was looking to do, because how we speak is definitely different from how we communicate ideas in a written form. But what you're talking about is now we can actually reach out to not just the generation of people, but really just Anybody who has a preference for speaking over writing, or communicating in different forms that it can still be repurposed in different ways and going back to the business world, we can take these podcasts. We can take the transcripts of them and we can turn them into blog posts. We can turn them into different formats. And what we would have to do before is have somebody who would be listening to everything, rewriting it. And like the level of effort for a half an hour podcast would end up being, four or five hours of work for someone.
Jesse Manning:Right?
Don Finley:Whereas now we're talking it's 90 percent of the way there in minutes.
Jesse Manning:Yeah. and in a lot of ways, it's eliminating the Not altogether, but it is eliminating procrastination. there's times that I would wait on a major task because I just don't want to do that work. now if AI can take on even 50 percent of it, Hey, it's a lot easier to get started. So it's helped in the procrastination realm as well.
Don Finley:that's a great point because using it for helping you to get started, Helping you to break down a task, kicking out that procrastination and like actually getting the ball rolling for you is a great way to augment your own intelligence. Jesse, I got to say, thank you so much for spending the time with us today. I like really appreciate it. one question that I typically ask at the end, and I don't think it's even necessary because we've been discussing it the entire show is what do you think people should do to prepare themselves for, an AI focused career?
Jesse Manning:Sure. there is a mentality that I recommend to any of my clients that I work with. And this actually came from one of my clients that developed an entire philosophy around it. And it's the AI first mentality. Now it doesn't mean that you turn everything over to AI, but what it does mean is that. any task you do at your job, or maybe things that you're doing around the home, paying bills, writing letters, things like that, it could be very personal things. Always be thinking, can AI help me with this? And that's a way to start integrating it into your day to day. It makes it easier then to go out and do a little bit of research, maybe find that lightbulb moment where, Hey, I found something that's really going to help me, but we've always got to be thinking about it. Sometimes we get into a rut. We just keep doing the same task we've always done, the same way we've always done it. So the AI first mentality helps shift that. And for younger people that are just starting their careers, or early in their careers, some time doing research. Learn AI tools. It's going to be invaluable in the future. So to be able to have on your resume that you are an AI first person, that's going to be very helpful because more and more organizations are going to deploy these tools. It's going to be a necessary skill set in addition to just necessary tools in the world.
Don Finley:thank you so much. It's been a Pleasure to have you today.
Jesse Manning:Pleasure was mine. Thank you for having me.
Don Finley:Thank you for tuning into The Human Code, sponsored by FINdustries, where we harness AI to elevate your business. By improving operational efficiency and accelerating growth, we turn opportunities into reality. Let FINdustries be your guide to AI mastery, making success inevitable. Explore how at FINdustries. co.
