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
Exploring AI's Role in Business with Abdul Masud
Navigating the Cloud with Abdul Masud: Personal and Technological Growth
In this episode of The Human Code, host Don Finley converses with Abdul Masud, a cloud solution architect who transitioned from a non-traditional background into the tech industry. Abdul shares his inspiring career journey and unique insights on the impact of technology on personal and professional development. They discuss the future of cloud computing, the role of AI in business efficiency, and the transformative potential of AI tools like Microsoft Copilot. The episode is packed with actionable insights for tech enthusiasts and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to understand the evolving landscape of AI and cloud solutions.
00:00 Introduction to The Human Code
00:49 Meet Abdul Masud: From Zero to Cloud Architect
01:23 The Future of Cloud Computing and AI
01:55 Abdul's Journey into Technology
05:23 AI in Real-World Applications
12:04 The Role of AI in Personal and Professional Growth
15:09 The Evolution and Future of AI
28:56 Preparing for an AI-Driven Future
30:19 Conclusion and Sponsor Message
Sponsored by FINdustries
Hosted by Don Finley
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 welcome Abdul missaid. A cloud solution architect who has had an inspiring career journey starting with no prior experience in tech Abdul worked his way through the industry to become a key player in cloud architecture. His unique perspective on technology's impact on both professional and personal growth is fascinating. Today, Abdul, and I will share how he transitioned into the tech industry from a non-traditional background. Proving that career pivots are achievable for anyone willing to put in the work. Insights into the future of cloud computing and its increasing role of AI in shaping business solutions. The way in which AI tools like Microsoft copilot are revolutionizing work efficiency, allowing individuals to focus on more meaningful tasks. Join us as we dive into these captivating topics with Abdul. This episode is packed with actionable insights for anyone looking to grow in the tech industry, or simply learn more about incredible ways. AI is shaping our future. You won't want to miss it. we're getting started on another episode. I have here today Abdul Massoud, and we are basically, we're going to start talking about a lot of personal development. I got to say that, Abdul, you shared your story about transitioning through like different careers or deciding something in college and then moving into something else. you went the technical side of this. I went from being a computer science major to then like running the business and it's just an interesting sort of dichotomy of where the paths cross and so what I would love to ask you to get started here is how did you get interested in that intersection between humanity and technology as well? You know they had
Abdul Masud:Yeah, that's a great question and thank you first and foremost for having me on here, Don. I really appreciate it. I think for me it was, it was just one of those things that, it was always interesting to me when I was growing up. I grew up obviously in Saudi Arabia and one of the things that I was doing is, so my dad owned a school. And as part of that school, they had a curriculum, they had, a lot of things that needed to be, pumped out for students because it was a new school and I knew how to type. So basically my dad was like, how about you're the lead typist and the publication assistant for the school moving forward. And so I think that was my first foray into all things technology related. And that was when I started realizing that there is so much you can do in order for the betterment of society. obviously, that was a first time. And this is. Very early on. That was the first time I got into Excel, Word, PowerPoint, understanding how that can be translated to an entire curriculum. and that was basically when the, interest, in technology and how it changes the world. It got ingrained into my head to the point where even after college, when I wanted to do a transition in my career, that's where that technology is where I wanted to focus on because that interested me the most.
Don Finley:That's incredible, because there's a lot of similarities in our stories. my passion for computers started when we got our first computer at 12 years old. And it was one of those experiences where you just you saw how much you could do and how much you could create. like fast forwarding into your career today, like you are diving headfirst into technology. You're a cloud architect who helps customers solve their needs and design the solutions that they desire. my big question for you then on that side is, do you see this going for us as well? what's that future or what's like the balance point that we can create?
Abdul Masud:great question. I think that's an excellent question. So here's what I'll, here's what I'll say. Five years ago, or I would say seven years ago now, when I was doing the transition, that was the first question I asked myself is, where is FINdustries? Where are we going, right? Where is technology going and how is it going to change the world and how can I be a relevant part of this huge, magnanimous, movement almost like that's taking place here and all the technology advances. at that time, seven years ago, the answer for me was cloud. People were moving to the cloud. People were asking about it. AWS was already. well on their way, Microsoft Azure was a big portion of it. Google was just getting into the market at that point. and so that was seven years ago. Now, when you ask me this question on what's going to happen, this is my true belief within the next four to five years, maybe even less, you're going to have a lot more automated systems and data and AI, quote, unquote, and would be the main focus of every single customer that's out there. And you're already seeing this. Every customer that I have, every client that I talk to on their lists is always, Hey, how can I include AI, automation, any sort of machine learning, any sort of algorithm that automates a lot of the systems that I have and the queries that I'm running in order to market myself better. So I truly believe within the next three to four to five years, that's where technology is going to the point where even I am now trying to specialize in that part. And because that's where I truly believe that the, that
Don Finley:are. Now what what are the use cases that you're seeing people want to implement AI in?
Abdul Masud:so you can, here's the thing about artificial intelligence. You can take AI and you can take the model that AI gives you. So let's take OpenAI as an example, that's where ChatGPT is built on. So OpenAI can be applied to, and any use case that's out
Don Finley:there.
Abdul Masud:So essentially what ChatGPT does is if you go to chatgpt. com, it takes a look, it takes the model of the OpenAI, and it takes a look at all the historical data that has been fed into that algorithm. what happens when I take that algorithm and I apply it to my own data set that I have? So an example that I have for you is, we have a customer here that was doing clinical trials. And they have a lot of data that was just based on clinical trials. And you can imagine this data is going all the way back to 2003, 2004. And so they index that, and then they basically put an OpenAI platform algorithm in front of it. And that. allowed them to basically, work and really increase their efficiency and output. So to answer your question, honestly, any use case you take, any company you take, any dataset you take, you can put a level of automation on top of that. It could be in a small factor or it could be huge and magnanimous like OpenAI, for example.
Don Finley:We're seeing success in some of our outbound marketing as well as like personalization of outbound
Abdul Masud:Yeah.
Don Finley:for both cold outreach and warm outreach. Additionally, we're seeing it in customer service settings. Now, most of our customers are doing deployments based on an internal type of agent. So a side by side augmenting the human in their work. and it's really showcasing some positive results. Like one of our clients got, I think it was a 40%, a increase in their first time resolution, a 25 percent increase in customer satisfaction because the support agent was basically just able to see. the necessary information like the AI was able to pull information together while listening to the phone call to help that. So the agent was able to focus directly on the customer themselves. I think we're going to see a lot more of that. you familiar? Are you working with like agentic AI as well?
Abdul Masud:what's, is that a, a type or a portion? I guess I'm not familiar
Don Finley:More like thinking of OpenAI and LLMs, they're answering questions for you. It's question and answer. It's kind of pairing you together. You have to be very explicit around Hey, here's what I'm looking for. Here's the output. I feel like agentic AI takes it a step back and goes Hey, here's what I'm trying to accomplish. and figure out how to do it one of the areas. the other area that we have is We're building agents to, basically fill, roles, we have a research, report preparation, flow that goes through, And research AIs that go out onto the web, find the information, collect it, process it. And then we have a writing AI. That actually looks at creating it the structure, but it utilizes the work from the previous agents and then we have a feedback loop that goes on with that one with the writing AI and a editor that kind of goes through and so like we're those flows to play through
Abdul Masud:yeah. so when we think of the word AI, we always think of just one aspect of AI that will be applied to every single use case out there, but as you explained, there's a lot more nuance to this than what meets the eye. There's, there's, there's, there's, there's Every single portion of your business and of your data stream or your flow has to go through an iteration of a different type of algorithm, a different type of compute that's being applied in order to get you the answers that you need. So you put it best, there, so I'll give you an example. we have a client out here that does crop evaluations, meaning they take a look at a soil data in a lot of these, rural areas of the United States. they put that into an algorithm and they try to figure out exactly what the crop yield is going to look like, what that crop is going to be, what they need to plant, and what's going to get them the most money at the end of the day. And that's all from just soil and a, bunch of developers that kind of put this together based off of their just knowledge and working with farmers. And it was a 10 year project that basically, erupted into a business. And so think about the applications of AI in that sense, where you're not only doing, you're not only you're not only focusing on what they're, what is out there, but it's also forecasting. on what can happen in the future in regards to whatever the business model you're in
Don Finley:Which is it's just fascinating because we're sitting at a point where we have people that do things really well We have computers that do very narrow tasks very well, and then you're talking about also the ability for the computer, the AI to allow and enable you to do things better in the future. So more of a directing the work in the future. And so we could essentially be interchanging humans and AI into different roles. like when I think about this myself, I'm looking at it from the standpoint of, yeah, there's tasks that I hate to do. and I would absolutely love to be handing that over to an AI to be taken care of. because it's easier to, for me to do it than to train somebody or to delegate or it's something necessary. And so if I had an AI that I would trust to do that. But then additionally, we'll use marketing as an example. That's not my expertise. So if I had an AI that could direct my work or ask me the questions in order for the marketing efforts to be, handled, that could be fantastic. I would love to be managed by something that had that like extra capability to it.
Abdul Masud:You brought up such a good point there, And because I think the first question that everyone asked when, the chat GPT took off last year on February January time frame was, is AI going to replace me? But I think what you said is how I see the world today is it's not coming here to replace what you already do. It's here to help along with the tasks that are already given to you, whether it's in your work life or whether it's in your personal life. And I think that, a lot of people, it escapes them and in terms of wait, really, is it, can you do it that way? I'm like, yes. So I'll give you an example, So like I said, I watch a lot of movies. I recently rewatched, Interstellar,
Don Finley:yes.
Abdul Masud:with Christopher Nolan, And there's a, there's a machine or a robot, quote unquote, and they're called TARS, right? And after watching it, after a couple of years, I was fascinated with this machine that Nolan had created because it's not only computing the, how long it's going to take you to, get from earth to Saturn. It's also evaluating, what you need to do. It's doing autopilot, It's, it's flying the ship when you're in, Saturn. Cryogenesis and on top of that at the end of the movie, spoiler by the way, it even is willing to, take the load off the ship and basically hurl itself towards a black hole, right? and quote unquote kill itself, in the process. and I think that's just that's the application of artificial intelligence that I see is that one machine, one robot, one assistant will be able to help you with all these different things, that are happening on a day to day basis. It's almost like a personal secretary that you have that can do a lot more than a human could ever do in their lifetime.
Don Finley:I think you're painting a picture that is really, as one of our other guests previously talked about it, it was the healing direction of like where AI can go, right? there's the dystopian side of it's taking all our jobs. and I was like, please,
Abdul Masud:All right.
Don Finley:if you look at job satisfaction reports, right? and people are miserable in their jobs for the most part. So. Why not take those? The other stat that I saw that was released by Microsoft in one of their reports was that people who are using AI in their jobs, 85 percent of people reported having higher job satisfaction because they were able to do it. And then additionally, they were seeing that they were able to focus on things that they saw as higher priority, and we're really just at the beginning of this. And so, like, what I love about the, the direction that this is going is, even if AI takes all the jobs, Then you'll be able to focus on the job that actually brings you joy.
Abdul Masud:Yes. Yeah.
Don Finley:you from my own self development cycle that like finding that purpose and finding those things that like bring you joy is those areas that is really helpful in our own development. just curious about like how, your interactions with technology have influenced, your own personal development path.
Abdul Masud:Yeah, I think of technology improvements as inventions Think about how a typical day for a person was 300 400 years ago. Maybe even before then now think about today, where you, we're speaking to each other through a monitor, through a webcam, through internet electricity that goes into the wall, that goes into the ground. There's an entire infrastructure that humanity has created. There's going to be technological advances in and out. and if I ask you right now, Hey, were we better off as a race than let's say we were 400, 500 years ago? Just think about it. Purely from a scientific standpoint. The answer will be of course like no question on that at all And so artificial intelligence is AI machine learning, That's that next step in a humanity technological advanced and that's typically how I tend to see it where All these invention inventions quote unquote that are taking place are benefiting humanity overall. We're already seeing it in clients. Every single client is implementing that in some form or fashion, whether you're financial, you're HR, you're legal, it's all included in, it's all increasing efficiency. Now you brought up a good point about, increasing efficiency for people that are using AI in their everyday day to day life. I'm one of those people, right? we use what is known as Microsoft Copilot. it was something that was introduced by Satya a couple of months ago. and basically what it does is it takes a look at all the office applications. that you are working on, for example, and then it provides you a level of efficiency that you can do to instill it. So for example, every day in the morning when I'm checking messages or emails, what, here's what I would do. I would open up Outlook. I would go through all my emails one by one. now I have copilot So I just say hey Can you give me a summary of all the emails and which ones are important which ones are not and because it knows my Clientele maybe hey Robert from so and so company asked for this You should probably get to it immediately because he flagged it as important and that just cut down my 20 minutes into 30 seconds
Don Finley:Ah.
Abdul Masud:So that makes me happy, So This is this so what's happening here is really good not just for society But I think for just the race our humanity as a race as a whole and that's the kind of how I see the bigger picture
Don Finley:And I, and I love that example because it's real. One, it's tangible, Like, we can clearly see it. But two, we're all inundated with information on a very, consistent basis. Whether it's social media, the news, emails, like getting, dumped on them, and finding that space where, A, you're not needing to, place your effort on sorting information, or categorizing it, or like making a decision of do I need to look at this newsletter right now, what is, out of the hundred emails that are in my inbox in this very moment, what are the five that I actually have to focus on? that is a really cool space to have, Copilot helping you out on.
Abdul Masud:Yeah. and I think, Obama said this where he basically would just pick clothing every morning. And Michelle asked him about, Hey, are you not going to give it some thought on what you want to wear today? And Obama basically said, Michelle, I have a lot of things to do. Today, as a president of the United States, I think this is the one of the easiest choices that I have to make in my entire day. So that's how artificial intelligence tends to do is like it takes care of all those smaller decisions that you're making on a day to day basis. And basically it giving you more room to work on bigger items and in bigger thought on bigger Projects that would require a lot more thought process and you don't even feel It just becomes reality and now it comes to a point where if you take copilot away from me I would be genuinely sad right because that has brought so much efficiency to the mix and that's just The new normal I would say that's it's all the flagpole is always being shifted You
Don Finley:And I love that, these are the things that, we talk about technology and we talk about how, it changes our lives, but going back to what it was, I've got a few years on you. And so I grew up, touching grass. I grew up like without the internet kind of thing. And the internet didn't really hit us until later in my high school, early in my college. but in the same token, I can't imagine a world without it, Like that, it is the, it's the new normal, but also just the benefit of having all that information right in front of us, right there available at any second. is incredibly important, but now we're getting to the point of actually like adding intelligence to that information processing. on your self growth path, on your personal development space, where do you see technology helping you and assisting you, or how would you like to see Copilot offering, its assistance into your life there?
Abdul Masud:Yeah, Copilot is just, I would say, one of the many, efficient, and every company, I would say, or a lot of the companies have their own iterations of what Copilot is. So Copilot is just the main one that we tend to use. and now because I'm a cloud architect, I spent a lot of my times in Azure data centers and just configuring networking environments, architectural environments. And now they're actually, Microsoft actually announced, it's in preview mode right now, a co pilot for Azure. So it's not just taking care of my day to day like small, medium admin tasks, but it's also going to be taking care of the bigger things that I'm working on. Hey, how do I set up a firewall in this virtual networking environment? This is the IP address, can you go ahead and set it up for me? That's amazing. I don't have to do 20 clicks and think about it and do research No, it's all in my, edge tab. The copilot is all in my edge tab It's just i'm just asking questions and giving me answers, right? So so that's in terms of to answer your question, you know in terms of personal growth, I think AI is going, artificial intelligence, just understanding, what's happening, and just historical analysis of the data and also forecasting what it, what you should be doing. That is going to, it's going to, it's going to change. It has changed my life already and it's definitely going to be the focus for me and pretty much everyone here moving forward. A hundred percent.
Don Finley:I think that's fantastic to hear. I'm like, I, and the thing that I love is just the back and forth with technology. Like we have this dance of how we play with it. And then we like learn, we grow. And one of the ideas that I was playing around with is we've got a very, we've got a level of human consciousness that we're going about, And you look at what you do with children, what you do with animals, we like guide their development. And in some cases we're like guiding the development of machine consciousness in some way, Like machine intelligence specifically right now. and with that, and it's almost I feel like we're getting to the point where we're now looking at like how everyday people are interacting with the machine and looking at that and using that feedback loop to both. help that person to a accomplish a task to help them grow. I'm seeing models now that can recognize emotion tonality within like the, with voice prompts as well. and we can utilize that to feedback loop to the human of saying Hey, you're the emotion that I'm reading here is anger. is there anything that you need to express or Like, how does it, can the machine then can help to walk you through like your emotional progression of it. but I'm also seeing that like humans are teaching the machine, there is that reflective loop of Hey, no, this is how we interact with the customer. This is how we interact with ourselves. Here's how we share information. I think that's an area that we are growing through and that kind of symbiotic, relationship is extending and It's the story of technology, Ever since we lit our first fire, we were tied at the hip with technology. and this is just the everlasting growth of it. What do you think of, there's a statement, you hear this every so often, but like that AI is like the final invention of man.
Abdul Masud:I have heard that before I wouldn't call it the final invention of man because so let's talk about what artificial intelligence is, It's a bunch of machine learning algorithms, and I think we talked about this, before, but you basically are getting an output of what you input into that system. So essentially what it is, it's a glorified computer that's running a set of, set of queries, set of triggers, Based off of the information that you input it. So if I give it a historical data of everything that happened in the last 100 years, and then I ask it about, let's say, I don't know, who was the president in 1980, It will basically take a look at that entire data set, and it's going to output something. So my outlook on this is that is just a machine, It's in, in the most literal sense,
Don Finley:statistical kind of allows us to, yeah.
Abdul Masud:to, to going back to your question, I think there's still room for improvement, what do I mean by that? so I game a lot too. So there's this game called Detroit Become Human, which is basically about. a artificial intelligence system that has become sentient, And you play at that system and humans treat this artificial intelligence like crap, and so it really makes you think of And the idea of that entire game is to tell you that, Hey, maybe artificial intelligence can get to a point where they can become sentient as well, and they can have feelings as well, one of the scenes here is that a robot mother is catering to a child, and she's like hugging the child, she's like trying to save it from everything that's happening, from all the bullets that are coming in, because of some protests that are happening, which, Tells me that potentially might be where we're trying to go. Now, you can say that's an extension of AI But I would consider that to be much more separate from where we are,
Don Finley:I think from where we're at today, you're entirely right. Like we're basically sitting with a, a really strong statistical analysis of what's there. And if you look at what we have for training data, I don't see AI being able to make strong leaps outside of what that data is It may be able to piece the information together in a way that is, seems novel. additionally where if you look at it as like a circle, like all knowledge is a circle that we know of today, where all the training data is. If you take out like a pie from that and exclude it from the data. I'm curious if our current AI models would be able to fill in that gap.
Abdul Masud:so it's a hard question to answer and it's because like I mentioned right now, no, the answer is no, It's artificial intelligence is not smart enough to fill in those gaps like you mentioned, based off of, important complicated questions, one thing I think about, but we were talking about interest travelers that kind of came in my head is just space travel, So in, in terms of if I give it historical data, would it be, is it smart enough to understand, how long it's going to take to go from here to let's say Saturn, or, and what you need to do, what you need to build. No, it's not there yet, it only takes a little bit of historical data and because there's a lot of human element to the data that it's looking at, it's going to give you an answer that humans before it have uncovered, So it hasn't gone to a point where it's, thinking thousands of miles ahead, thousands of years ahead, now it's only looking at. And so it's not quite there yet in terms of filling in those gaps. But it's getting there is what I'll say. Yeah
Don Finley:And I think, our current models may not actually be what gets us there, right? we're talking AI today, and then I think the aspect of, AI being the only, the last thing that humans invent along the lines of, AGI. And that's a, a whole nother set of goalposts that will continue to move out we really see what these things are capable and saying, is this actually general intelligence or not? But then there's the next phase upon there where it's, Artificial Superintelligence, which is, I'm blanking on his name right now, but he left OpenAI to go found ASI, is the name of the company. and additionally, with That becomes a point where the AI is essentially able to create something new, create something novel, extend knowledge, and that creational aspect of what we know, and when it gets to that point, if it has the compute, if there is the silicon available to run that, and available as well as the water supply to go, or if it can possibly be. evolve itself to becoming more intelligent beyond what that human intelligence is there, anything outside of that human sensory. and so I, it's a fascinating thought to think about. I don't know if it's, five years from now, if it's 50 years from now, but we may, we definitely have at least, One iteration after GPT 4 and these foundational models, as far as we'll see. I don't know if the transformer will take us into, the models after that as well, or if we'll ground break in it to extend out that general intelligence. Plus when you look at it, humans are still Humans have an advantage in some capacity.
Abdul Masud:Yeah.
Don Finley:We are a lot more energy efficient than an AI model is today. We also get tired, And, that happens. we have family lives, we have other things that go around, but from the standpoint of we are a much more efficient energy as far as the intelligence, like per intelligent, quotient you want to use. but hey, I've absolutely loved having you on. It's been a blast talking with you today. big question for you though is what would you do to prepare for the future? what would your recommendation be for anybody preparing for either a new career or, really to get, into the adoption of AI?
Abdul Masud:very good question. So here's what I would, here's what would be my advice, right? You've got tons of information in the form of YouTube videos, in the form of certifications, in the form of actual mentors out there that are looking to help you understand and transition into this role. So we are living in a world of information, Like I said, if you had asked me this question 20 years ago, when internet was. 30, I guess 30 years ago when internet was coming up and coming thing My answer would have been different. But now I would almost say that if you want to go ahead and learn about Data artificial intelligence how data pipelines work how data streams work. You have no excuse you have everything given to you so I would also recommend picking a lane, for example, the way Microsoft does artificial intelligence is different than how Amazon does it, it's different than how Google does it, I would just focus on that one iteration, that you're, that you want to be familiar with. And that eventually that you want to get into and then just work your way up there and there's certifications Like I said, there's membership There's a lot of stuff over there that you can do to get started But obviously a lot of it comes from experience as well
Don Finley:nice. It's been an absolute pleasure, man. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
Abdul Masud:Thank you, Don. Really appreciate your time
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.
