← Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
Truth About AI, Work & Human Creativity ft. Andy Oliva | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby
00:49:12
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- [00:00]
A
Going from an employee to a founder is now you're responsible, right? Like the buck stops with you.
- [00:06]
B
Right?
- [00:06]
A
That's scary. Legitimately, you've got to make sure you dot your I's, you cross your T's. You can't let things come through. Like, now if I go and I implement like a voice AI system for a company, like, I've got to make sure that that thing is put together.
- [00:20]
B
Welcome to another episode of Call.
- [00:23]
A
Thank you very much.
- [00:24]
B
All right, Andy here. Give people a quick 2000 foot overview of what is Lucky Day Labs. What do you do? How are you changing the game in AI and how can they benefit from today's show?
- [00:35]
A
Oh, absolutely. Thank you. So we're a creative AI agency. And so what that means in really simple terms is let's say your company is trying to figure out what to do with AI. Where do I go? Who do I listen to? What's my path forward? So I help you figure that out. So I'll come in, I'll help you figure out your strategy, I'll help you filter the signal from the noise, and then on top of that, I can even build it out for you. So let's say you need a new piece of software for your business that's running on AI. It's much more efficient, right? I can build that for you. I can design it in a really nice, clean, optimal way for your needs. Let's say you want to build something like an AI voice agent that when somebody calls your business and AI picks up the phone and answers any concerns they have or routes them to the correct department, helps you schedule an appointment. It's another example. My philosophy with what I'm trying to do is not replace people with AI. I'm trying to augment them and complement them and make their jobs easier and hopefully take the work that, you know, they don't find very fun or fulfilling or meaningful. At least that's my guiding philosophy. We're going through such a transformational period right now, it's hard to predict exactly what's going to happen. But from what I can see and what my experience has been, I think. I think we're going through more of a transformational shift and less like a everything's going to go away sort of shift. I think if you're like, let's say a business and you want to replace somebody that has to babysit the phone all day and like answer the phone calls. If you, if you're a business and you replace that with an AI, the next question is like, what happens to that person? Right? Do you fire them? What do you do? So, like, if I'm going into your company, my recommendation to you is going to be like, look like, let's say you're paying 50k a year for that employee to basically just sit and monitor the phone, right? If you replace that with an AI, you can take that same employee and you can have them do other things. Like maybe if they don't have to spend their time and bandwidth manning the phones, then they can improve your customer experience like two, three, four times to what it is, and then that helps you get more clients. Right? So that's sort of my philosophy in, in it. So I would, I don't want to go into a company and say, hey, let's replace your entire team with voice AI, right? That's not what my general philosophy is. My general philosophy is how can we take and free up bandwidth for your team that you already have, and then how can we find new creative ways that you can increase your company's productivity or improve your experience for your customers with the existing employees that you have so that we don't get rid of, you know, all those employees that have jobs, that have lives, that need to pay their own bills, sort of things like that. So I know that was sort of a long answer.
- [03:45]
B
Right now the biggest concern with AI, and this is pretty, you know, everyone's pretty open about is everyone's concerned about AI replacing humans. Everybody talks about it, right? My philosophy is AI isn't replacing humans. AI is enhancing those that adopt AI. Yeah, AI is enhancing those people that adopt AI. And in my industry specifically, you know, mortgage loan originators, for instance, or real estate agents, if they're using AI, they're performing at a much higher level than absolutely those that are not. And as a CEO of a company, we're very tech heavy and we use a lot of AI, whether it's voice agents, whether it's AI calling, AI routing AI taking phone calls, AI helping with document preparation or document, you know, requesting documents, or, you know, following up with clients or milestones. The world of AI, we're just scratching the surface. This wasn't even like a word a couple years ago, right? And now it's. This is not just a buzzword, this is like, you know, the future.
- [04:57]
A
Yeah, I look like it is the future. Whether we agree with it or not, it's coming. And so my philosophy has been, I need to help people prepare for what's coming, because if they're not prepared for what's coming, then that's going to be really bad. Right. Then that is the situation where, like, they're, I don't know, the CEO of their company has to make a hard decision and say, you know, I've got 100 employees. They don't know how to use AI and the company is going to go bankrupt if I don't bring in employees that do. Right. I want to try and avoid that situation. I want to help those employees and those teams upskill and retrain as quickly as possible, as easily as possible to avoid like, situations like that. So however, we do have to be careful because there is a lot of, like, there is. I've seen a lot of noise in the past with like, just because, like a company puts AI on some. Like they say we did this AI thing. Like, people are burned out with like, hearing that as like, even though, like, I don't think it should be a buzzword, it has become that for like the layman person, there is genuine value and benefits to be gained in AI for like, the reason, like an example I just provided earlier. But just be careful. Just because a company has the word AI on it doesn't mean it's necessarily like, if you're a CEO of a company, just because somebody comes to you and they're like, hey, this is AI, you shouldn't like, just immediately adopt it. If they can provide you, like, meaningful value, kind of like how I did earlier, then that. Definitely. I think you should look into that. Seriously.
- [06:34]
B
Yeah. I mean, listen, there's a new AI application being created every second.
- [06:38]
A
Exactly.
- [06:39]
B
Yeah. And you say you come into companies and help them drain the noise. There's a lot of freaking noise, you know, around AI. What AI should I use? What AI? I mean, I don't know how many AI applications we got that we're paying for that we're subscribed to outside of chat, gb.
- [06:55]
A
Sure.
- [06:56]
B
Corporate chat, gbt, whatever difference that is than the general one. But we, we ourselves have, you know, several.
- [07:04]
A
Sure. And look, don't feel I've. I found people feel guilty. I'm not necessarily not saying you, but I've found people feel bad or they feel guilty or they feel ashamed about not being able to keep up with the pace of how fast things are going. Like all of these AI companies are releasing like groundbreaking products. It feels like almost every week, almost every day. Right. And even, even I have had trouble and like, just you mentioned, like having trouble keeping up with how fast things are moving. And I don't think we should be ashamed of that. I think we should try and just be honest and transparent and frank with each other about it and lean into it. When I was at OpenAI's developer conference a couple months ago for tech or a couple weeks? A few weeks ago for Tech Week, they had Sam Altman and Johnny I've. They were talking on stage. I don't know if you know who Jony I've is, right. For people, for listeners who may not know, he was the basically chief creative officer at Apple. He basically shaped Apple's products with Steve Jobs like we know them today. So big deal in the design world. He's joined OpenAI now. He mentioned that they're building a family of AI hardware products at OpenAI. So that's exciting. But the reason I'm telling this story is when he was talking to Sam Altman, even he mentioned that he's feeling overwhelmed with the pace of AI innovation. So if that guy is feeling overwhelmed, don't like, don't I tell people, don't feel guilty, don't feel bad. We can be honest with each other, right? And so once we're honest, right, then we can just start sharing our perspectives with each other, like you and I are doing right now. Like, I'm seeing this. Are you seeing this? What do you think of that? Have you used this? Have you tried that? We're not in this age right now where, like, we were maybe the past 10, 15 years where, like, technology, iPhones, apps were mature as an industry and so, like, the territory was mapped, so to speak, and you could just go to someone who had been doing something for five or 10 years and you could ask their opinion and they could give you the answer and that was good enough. We're not in that period right now. We're more in a period where, like, it's like an exploratory, like, exploring uncharted territory. There's, of course, a few, there's principles that still remain true. Right. And that are never going to change and have always been true. But there's a lot of things that are kind of unknown that we're going to have to figure out together.
- [09:19]
B
So let me ask you this. You know, we, we talk a lot about AI replacing workforces. Which workforce do you think is going to go first with AI innovation? I mean, you just said, I come in and I come in and I use voice agents. Is it the receptionist, Is it the programmer?
- [09:45]
A
It's nuanced, it's tricky. We're in shades of gray territory. I want to avoid being in black and white territory because, like, so Let me give you a couple examples. So like, there are scenarios where like, I could replace like a receptionist with an AI right now. My hope is that that receptionist will have, will find other more productive, more fun things to do.
- [10:07]
B
Yeah, right.
- [10:08]
A
That's my hope. Right. At the same time, there's going to be companies and industries that don't want to do a voice AI for their business because it doesn't match their brand, doesn't match their culture. Their customers won't be comfortable with it. Right. Like, and then there's going to be some industries where like, they love it. Like, it's a good thing for a company. Like if they pick up a phone and they call a company and it's like an AI or they're like, wow, this tech company, they, they're really like tech forward. Do you get what I'm saying?
- [10:35]
B
So, I mean, a lot of people are like, when I call Wells Fargo or BET my bank it's an AI agent, I hate it. Right? We don't have a voice AI agent answering phone calls. Maybe after hours, there could be like some something. But like, you call a finance company, you don't get a human, you're pissed.
- [10:51]
A
Well, there's the traditional, like phone tree systems that we've all used for the past, I don't know, two decades. The, the voice AIs are sort of different. It's more like you're talking with a natural conversation, like, almost like a human, not quite. So if you've used ChatGPT and you've like talked and had conversations with cheap ChatGPT or Grok, if you have a Tesla, you can use GROK in your car, right? That it's more like that now. So it's a much more rich, better quality experience, I believe, if it's done right. Like, and that's where I think having a good customer service background is really helpful. And that's kind of what my background is because, like, I've been on like those front lines, so to speak, of interacting with customers. And so I know the disconnect firsthand of like, okay, here's the BS of like, what management is trying to do in their meetings and here's what the customers are like, experiencing on the ground with the frontline employees and how to make that an experience that the customer will actually enjoy rather than like, sometimes what I see happen is I have to be careful here because I don't want to get myself in trouble. But sometimes what I see happen here is like, the management team will have an initiative, they'll hire their customer service team, they'll create all of their policies, they'll teach the customer service team, the customer service team will go out and do it, and then the customer service team will learn all of this information. They'll get feedback from customers, but then like the customer service representative, their hands are tied because they aren't making product decisions and they're afraid of telling the management team what they really think because they're afraid that they're going to get labeled as like super negative or not a team player or, or the manager will get mad at them, that sort of thing. And so that to me is a signal that the feedback isn't going up the chain of command like it should. And so my philosophy is that in a company, the managers should be fostering a culture of transparency and frankness in a kind and candid and respectful way so that when customers have an issue, that's where they're getting signal. Right. Ideally, their representatives are talking to the customers, acquiring all of the signal feedback of what should be done and how things should be improved. Those customer reps should have feel like they can carry that up the chain of command. And then the management has more information that's valid to go off of. So.
- [13:24]
B
I see. Now let me ask you this. Where does, let's talk about where this all began. Where did you get the, the idea of starting Lucky Day Labs? And what problem were you trying to start really solve for?
- [13:38]
A
Sure, that's a good question. So, you know, I guess I never really. I always wanted to start a company. You know, my family, at different points before I was born, they were entrepreneurial as well. But it was just, it seemed like this thing that was super far off in the distance, like I could never really do it. That was for some other people to do, you know, that was just not something I was meant to do. But I think that in the age we're living now, it's never been easier to start a business. And I have this background in the tech space, like almost 10 years now at various different companies and startups and whatever. And people started coming to me and asking me sort of like my advice or my opinion or if I could do this or if I could do that. And it got to a point where I'm like, I just, I gotta just make this official at this point and start a company and then the rest is history, I guess you could say. But I mean, tech for me has always been fun, like ever since I was a little kid. Like my mom showed me like home videos And I was all, I was always like trying to figure things out. I don't know what it was, but like, I look at technology like that as well and I get frustrated when things don't work as they should from like a soft, like a customer experience. Like you've had, I'm sure you've had this, you call and you gotta like argue with maybe like a receptionist or whatever because of some policy that didn't go right or you use some app and like there might be bugs or whatever and it doesn't work. Like, I don't, I don't like that like that. I don't think it should be that way. And, and it's not to say the people that are making these systems aren't trying like they are trying to provide good experiences, but there's, there's always dynamics at play that might be limiting them and restricting them. And so ICAI is a way to kind of unshackle these teams and these companies that, you know, before they were held back by something and now what's icaid? Icai?
- [15:44]
B
Yeah. Oh, you said icai. Is that another acronym?
- [15:49]
A
Oh, did I? I don't know. Maybe I did.
- [15:52]
B
Yeah.
- [15:54]
A
I see AI. Do you see AI? Oh, no, no, I see.
- [15:56]
B
Oh, I thought I heard, I heard ici. You see AI as something.
- [16:00]
A
I see AI, yes. I see AI as something that can, you know, remove the traditional barriers that stopped these well intentioned people from wanting to create a good experience but weren't able to for, you know, whatever, pick your reason.
- [16:14]
B
Right, so got it. Yeah, man, so many acronyms with all these things. I'm just keeping up. Like is that a new company?
- [16:22]
A
I know, I know, right?
- [16:24]
B
Let me ask you this because you've worked with Apple, Sotheby Sirhant, and you were in the tech development space for all these organizations.
- [16:34]
A
So I, I've worked in, I worked in different companies as a representative that had partners with various companies. So like, I mean if you want to take Apple for instance, I was at the Genius Bar. So I was a, it was called a genius expert. And so I mean, you know what the Genius Bar is?
- [16:52]
B
Yeah.
- [16:53]
A
I worked at a company called Luxury Presence. Right. So I don't know if you've heard of them, but they basically help real estate agents with their online presence. Now they're doing AI automation. But I like realtors from all of these brokerages you mentioned would come to me as a part of that company and I would like design their websites for them and give them branding strategy and SEO strategy and Then I would actually design it and then launch it for them. Right. And I would support them and help them learn. Like, okay, why do you need to Google my business profiler? Or why does your website have to look this way versus that way? And like, why should your brand present itself as this? And who, who are your customers? And why would. Why are those your customers? All these sort of business strategy sort of things. And I, you know, I learned a lot and I did really well. I broke company records multiple times, I'm very proud to say, because early in my life, I was not that kind of, you know, overachiever person. I struggled in school, so it was just a really proud moment for me. I mean, you work out, right? So, like, when you go to the gym and you lift a weight, that's like, more than last time or last week, it feels really good.
- [18:09]
B
Yeah, right. I did actually, on Tuesday, I broke my PR for deadlifting 300 pounds.
- [18:14]
A
Congrats. Good for you. It feels good, right?
- [18:17]
B
Yeah.
- [18:17]
A
And even though, like, it might seem silly, like, to some people that don't work out, like, you can take that confidence and you can apply it to other areas of your life because it's something that you were able to improve on yourself, like just you working hard at something.
- [18:32]
B
I've gamified everything in my life. Every single variable in my life is like a game now. There's just not nothing I haven't gamified.
- [18:40]
A
Sure, sure. I mean, I hope we don't get into, like, the black mirror world, but I do think that it's helpful to, like, gamify stuff sometimes.
- [18:48]
B
I mean, because I'm always trying to get better at everything I do. And I'm. I'm 44. I'm in a basketball league. I'm still trying to get better at basketball.
- [18:55]
A
Sure. What do you think of competition?
- [18:57]
B
I love competition.
- [18:59]
A
Yeah.
- [18:59]
B
Yeah. Because that's part of gamification, right?
- [19:01]
A
Like competition with other people, competition with.
- [19:04]
B
Other people, competition with myself, Competition. You know, like, in my industry, we have all the mega companies. There's four competitors. I try to, like I. I discussed with you earlier, I try to distinguish myself from. From my, my top competition by, you know, a bunch of different things that are unique to me and my personal brand. We, We've gamified all of our top teams at our company, all of our top loan originators at our company, and kind of see where they're at with their production, and they could track what everyone's doing. So, you know, and I, I do that with pretty much everything in my life, whatever it is, you know, and same I, I, I instill that mentality, sadly in my kids. I don't know if it's sad or not, but I, they're always trying to get better at everything they're doing too.
- [19:54]
A
So. I know I'd love to kind of peel this onion with you a little bit and I want to hear what you think because I think it'll be useful to me. So. I don't like competition.
- [20:04]
B
Really?
- [20:05]
A
Yeah. I've never liked it. I don't know why there were people around me.
- [20:09]
B
And you're an athlete.
- [20:11]
A
I played soccer, but even then I wasn't really competitive. I was around people that were competitive.
- [20:19]
B
And you're okay with losing?
- [20:21]
A
No, no. I mean, I like winning too, but. Okay, so this is good. I like that we're unpacking this. So my thing is, the reason I always, I didn't like competition was because I felt like it was a distraction from whatever the goal I was trying to accomplish was.
- [20:39]
B
There's truth to that too. I mean, but to get to that goal faster, you need to have someone lighting a flame under your butt.
- [20:47]
A
True. I, I see that. My, so my thing is, is I don't like to compete with other people. I like to compete with the version of myself from yesterday.
- [20:56]
B
Yeah.
- [20:56]
A
And going back to what you mentioned earlier, where you try to do better every single day.
- [21:00]
B
Better every single day. There, there you at the end of the day. And that is true that you're only in competition with yourself. The only person you need to compete with is the guy in the mirror. That's the ultimate competitor yesterday. Yeah, but, but to get there, you need to have like benchmarks.
- [21:19]
A
Sure.
- [21:19]
B
You know, so I use my competitors now. There's things in my life where like I don't have competitors left, you know, like.
- [21:27]
A
Sure. So, so let me give you an example. Let me, I want to hear what you think about this. So like let's take. You broke your PR record. Right? Okay. That's you competing against your record yesterday. You set that bench for yourself. Right. You set that standard. You were self motivated to keep up with it and then you did it. But if I were going to say, okay, well, if you're competing with like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, like you're double that way. Right. You're never going to get. Exactly. So like if your goal is to compete with someone else, like you shouldn't, like you're not Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's okay. Like the reason Arnold Schwarzenegger is who he is, is because he's extraordinary and there's tons of other examples. And so what I, well, maybe I.
- [22:13]
B
Compete with him at this age he's at now.
- [22:16]
A
But I mean, look like 75, right?
- [22:19]
B
Well, we might be deadlifting the same way.
- [22:21]
A
Well, I don't know. He still looks pretty good for his age, don't you think?
- [22:24]
B
But you know, when you're 75, you can't deadlift 3, 300. I mean, he can, but 300 still pretty hard for him.
- [22:29]
A
Right? So I mean, look like for me the competition was a negative because I incorrectly, at a young age I tried to compare myself with like unrealistic standards of competition. And then it was like, well, why even get started? Like, why even try? Because I'm never going to be at that level. Do you get what I'm saying?
- [22:52]
B
And so, yeah, sometimes competition is debilitating. Like I'll never get to that level. Like, why even start, Right?
- [22:58]
A
But that's not true. Of course you should try. Of course we should start. We know this now. It makes sense, obvious when we say it. But you know, I worry. There's a lot of people that were like I was. Where they get discouraged and they don't even start. You know what I'm saying? But it shouldn't be that.
- [23:15]
B
One of my mentors says the hardest end. You know, obviously people Peter Till his book Zero to one zero.
- [23:20]
A
It's a great book.
- [23:21]
B
To one is the hardest thing to do. It's like after one it's easy zero to get to one. It's like that's all the effort is, is getting to the start and then from there it's just consistency.
- [23:38]
A
I agree. Have you read any of the, the books on like habits, like Power of Habit by Charles Duke Pig is the Atomic Habits similar thing. That book. I know people say this, that book legitimately changed my life, but I know no. A Power of Habit by Charles Du Hig.
- [23:55]
B
Do you like it more than Atomic Habits?
- [23:57]
A
I haven't read Atomic Habits because I was like, I, I looked at the summary, I'm like, this seems like the same, same thing. I don't know, maybe there's new information.
- [24:04]
B
But it's just a more modern version. Power of Habits is just older.
- [24:07]
A
Sure, but look, that, that book changed my life. And I know that's cliche to say that people say that about books, but legitimately, that book and Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, I don't know if you've heard of it, if you pair those two together or even Atomic Habits with thinking fast is slow. I think it'll help you a lot. It just sort of. It was this huge unlock for me in terms of, like, my personal development and, like, what was possible and what was not possible. Because there were all these things in my life that just sort of held me back, that, you know, there's this impression, like, you're. Some people are good at some things, other people are good at other things, and you're just born with the way you are and there's not much you can change. And those two books help me see there is a lot you can change. There's some things you can't change. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you're never going to lift as much as he did. Right. But there's a lot of things you can change. Right. Like, so I encourage anyone to go read those books if they can.
- [25:05]
B
Yeah.
- [25:05]
A
I mean, or just start with Chat GPT, like ask chatgpt, hey, what's this book about? And then start there and you can go buy the book if you. If it piques your interest.
- [25:14]
B
Now, when you started Lucky Day Labs, like, what were some of the bigger risks that you took to get this company off the floor? And, you know, what are some of the bigger risks you foresee coming in this world of AI?
- [25:29]
A
Look, I think starting a company is really risky because if you're an employee and you've worked as a company, there's this hidden thing that is taken care of for you.
- [25:36]
B
Yeah.
- [25:37]
A
And that hidden thing, I'm sure you're aware, is like liability. Right. When you work for an employee at another company, they're taking all of the liability and all of the risk. Right? So, like, if you, if you do something and somebody's directed you to do something, then that's not really your fault. That's the question. Company's fault. And then the company has to, like, pay for it or get lawyers for it or so on and so forth. Whereas if you're starting a company, the biggest risk is like going from an employee to a founder is now you're responsible.
- [26:09]
B
Right.
- [26:09]
A
Like, the buck stops with you. Right?
- [26:11]
B
Yeah.
- [26:12]
A
So that's scary legitimately, Right. You've got to make sure you dot your eyes, you cross your T's. You can't let things slip through. Like, now if I go and I implement like a voice AI system for a company, like, I've got to make sure that that thing is well put together, Right. I can't just be like, thank you, sir, have a good day. Right. Like, if you're working for someone else. Like, oh, that's their problem. Maybe some people think. Right. No, like, it's my problem. And I got to make sure that I'm not messing things up in their company. Right. Because if I mess things up in their company, they've got bills to pay, they've got vendors to pay. Like, they've got employees that have to have their own things to pay as well. Right. So, but look, we have. We have legal structures and things in place to help encourage entrepreneurs to be able to take that risk and get a little bit of shield, like LLCs and corporate structures and things like that, which is good. I'd like it to be easier. But the fact that we even have that, I think is a miracle. Genuinely.
- [27:15]
B
Yeah. Just some sort of corporate veil.
- [27:17]
A
Right. I. I'm constantly amazed at, like, working inside different companies. I'm sure. You know this. Like, you see working with other people, even just like, calling other companies, how many things go wrong? And I think it's a miracle that, like, society and civilization and culture exists the way that it does and more things don't go wrong.
- [27:41]
B
Yeah, you're right. A lot goes wrong. But we just sweep it under the rug or we just don't disclose it, so.
- [27:48]
A
Sure. And not that, like, I mean, look, we've got air conditioning. We've got, like, relative security.
- [27:54]
B
Right?
- [27:54]
A
Like, we've got, like, plumbing and food, and the planes take off and the cars drive. And I don't know, it's just like a kind of a miracle to me every day that if that's happening. So that's like my baseline, you know, I try to remind myself of.
- [28:12]
B
So, hey, that's. We got Thanksgiving coming up. So that. That spirit of thankfulness is always in the works. Let's, you know, let's talk how AI. Like, what. What do you think? What problem is Lucky Labs solving right now in a way that feels exciting, human and necessary?
- [28:32]
A
So two different things right now that are really on my radar and are bringing me the most amount of joy. Number one, doing things like this and having, like, really frank, candid conversations with people like you and other people to help them sort through the noise and kind of comfort their fears. I find a lot of enjoyment out of that. AI has been a really unique trend that's been different than any other technological trend that I've seen in my lifetime.
- [29:05]
B
Yeah.
- [29:06]
A
When I was growing up, there were these two camps of people. I felt like maybe this is true, maybe this was just anecdotal, but there were two camps of people. There were People that were wanting to adopt technology, and then there were the people that just wanted to keep things traditional, okay? And most of the trend was people wanting to adopt technology. That was the hottest thing. We had the Internet, we had computers, we had iPhones. Like, that was the cool thing to do when I was growing up. And for better or for worse, AI is the first time where even from people that are in technology and technology, like literate and work in tech, they were like, hating AI and they were only seeing like the negatives of, of what it could do. And it was a very like, fear and anxiety.
- [29:56]
B
I mean, software engineers are the biggest ones that hate it because they're like, right, it's. It can do my job, right?
- [30:03]
A
That shocked me. At first I thought it was just like on the surface, like it. There wasn't any depth to it. But everywhere I went I found that sentiment and I'm like, okay, I gotta do something about this, because I get where people are coming from. Everyone's afraid their jobs are gonna get replaced. This was like two years ago. Everyone was afraid their jobs are going to get replaced, so on and so forth. I get the fear, right? I, I was afraid.
- [30:27]
B
But isn't that kind of. I mean, Amazon had some of the biggest layoffs. Facebook had huge layoffs. All these big companies had big layoffs. I mean, was it AI the cause of those layoffs?
- [30:36]
A
That's tough to say. It's really tough to say, like why layoffs happen inside, inside of these big companies. Unless you know someone that made that decision, I really don't think we're ever going to know. We can all surmise and like, kind of guess, but I don't know if it will truly ever know the real reason. But look, I think a more accurate picture if I was going to take a shot in the dark would be the future is unpredictable right now because of the transformational moment we're going on. Not only just AI, but like, look, there's wars going on too, right? And so these companies are looking at the future and they can't make the same, like, sure decisions that they could have made maybe in the past decade. And so they're adjusting their risk mitigation strategies accordingly. So if that's just if I was going to take a shot in the dark, but look, like people were afraid they were going to, their, their jobs were going to get replaced with AI, What I'm actually seeing is that like the barrier to entry gets lowered because of AI, right? So like you gave an engineer example, right? So now, like you don't have to be an engineer to make an app with lovable or Claude or pick, take your pick of OpenAI's codecs, whatever it is. Right now anyone can make an app. So if you're a software engineer, you're sitting there and you're like, well, what am I going to do?
- [31:53]
B
Right?
- [31:54]
A
So that's where that fear comes from. And I get it. But it's true that it raised. It lowers the barrier to entry and makes the floor lower so more people can get in, but it also raises the ceiling of expectation at the same time. So it moves more like this or more like this, I guess you could say. So more is expected of that software engineer. So if you're a CEO, you want a prototype of an app in a day, not two weeks. Used to take two weeks. A week. Right. Depending on the situation. Now it takes a day, two days.
- [32:35]
B
Take months.
- [32:36]
A
Sure, sure. Right. So now that means if you're a CEO and you're sitting at your company, you're like, huh, I can do 10 prototypes in a quarter, which means I can potentially take two or three times as many products to market or features to market as I could before, which, which means now I need more engineers, not less engineers. Right. Or I can certainly keep the engineers that I have because now people's expectation from software, from customer experience is going to go up as well. Right. You're using this old phone tree system. You're not using like this AI that can just understand what I'm saying. I have to have these weird keywords that like, to get to the right person, what is that? That expectation is not acceptable anymore.
- [33:25]
B
Right.
- [33:25]
A
Because clients are interfacing with like give you an example, ChatGPT. If you've used voice mode in Chat GPT, you can have like a full conversation with it.
- [33:34]
B
Yeah.
- [33:34]
A
The expectation is not. Well, Siri. Why can't Siri do that? Siri's been around for like 10 years. Why can't I do that with Siri? Right. Some people say Siri's terrible. Right.
- [33:43]
B
And I don't know why we can't do that. Siri exactly like that now.
- [33:46]
A
Exactly.
- [33:46]
B
And you probably will be on version 18 and 19.
- [33:49]
A
We'll see. I. Look, I've heard Apple is making lots of different improvements. There's a whole controversy to that. So. But look like that's what I, that's what I mean. My expectations are raising, but it's also easier. So I, I frankly think that it's like one of the best times to be alive. If you can adopt this stuff. And the mo. What's exciting about this that's even different than the past is you can talk in plain English. Anyone can go to chat.com and talk to ChatGPT for free, just as they would talk to their parents or their siblings.
- [34:24]
B
Dot com.
- [34:25]
A
Both.
- [34:26]
B
Yeah. Oh, they have both sites, I think.
- [34:28]
A
I think OpenAI spent like millions of dollars to get chat.com. it's crazy.
- [34:33]
B
Yeah. That's cool.
- [34:34]
A
Yeah.
- [34:36]
B
Now, I want to talk about two things. One is, you are the forum leader for OpenAI. What is the forum leader job description? What do you do for OpenAI and how did you get that job?
- [34:51]
A
Sure. So I found a lot of people don't know this. So if you go to forum.OpenAI.com you'll find that they have a forum there. So they do virtual events. Right. So, like, there was a virtual event where they hosted a museum curator in Paris. And they talked about how they're using a AI to help educate museum guests as they go through the museum and inform them on, you know, different art pieces. Right. To we had, like, neuroscientists talking about how AI is helping them with their scientific research and helping move things along and increase the pace of research. And there's discussion forums where, like, someone can go and they can just have a discussion. Like the old school forum days, I guess you could say, or the classic forum days. Right. And so my responsibility as a forum leader is just to encourage AI adoption in local communities. So I'm in that. If you see you go into the discussion boards, you'll see me there. There's a virtual event, you'll see me, you know, helping encourage discussion there. I had the opportunity to go to an Education Guild summit at the office in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, and that was just to collect a bunch of educators from across the country to sort of figure out what does the future of education look like with AI. So all of these are sort of like what I like to call humanities based, artistic based, humanistic based approaches to kind of see how do we figure out this AI stuff together just by having conversations with each other and sharing what we're doing. So that's how I sort of see being a forum leader as. It's. So I had to go through an application process, but I consider it to be more of a honor. And it's a volunteer thing I do for fun. So it's not like I'm getting compensated for AI. It's still a tremendous privilege, at least in my mind, because, like, if Someone else tried to go and apply to be a forum leader, right? Now they couldn't write, they couldn't become a forum leader, right?
- [36:57]
B
So yeah, got it. Now let me ask you, you've hosted an AI film festival. What's an AI Film festival?
- [37:05]
A
Sure. So I'm sure, like for maybe your listeners that don't know, a film festival is where filmmakers will have their film. They'll showcase it to like a selected audience of people to sort of get their film feedback or share like what's happening on the forefront of filmmaking. Right? So like before a film goes to theaters, it'll be presented at a film festival. Like months and months before that, you know, a bunch of filmmakers and producers and directors will go to that film festival and they'll, you know, all sort of mingle and watch it and they're at the forefront of like filmmaking as an art form, right? So I thought, okay, how could this apply to AI? Right? AI is completely transforming how filmmaking is done. And so there's a lot of new creators that are adopting AI filmmaking tools. We were talking about Chapman earlier, right? They're leaning really heavily into AI. They have a really big storied film school at Chapman. Right. And so I, as a part of the forum, I started talking to a filmmaker there and you know, the rest is history. I wanted to showcase him and a few other filmmakers that were in the forum and just to sort of showcase, okay, what does the future of work look like? What does the future of creativity work like, look like in an AI world? In a way that was like non technical, that like everyone could understand in like a non complicated, like no jargon words sort of thing. Because again, like there was this controversy where people were afraid that AI was going to destroy art. It was destroying artists jobs and things like that. Now look, their fears are valid. Like I'm not, I don't want to gaslight people, right? Their fears are valid. But my philosophy again has been this is coming, so we have to prepare for it. So if you're an artist, you're a filmmaker, you're a creative, I want to try and help show you how to use AI in your existing creativity in a way that's still authentic to who, who you are as an artist and your perspective as an artist, that's true to you, right? Because if you don't do that, I think the options are just going to be limited. Like just frankly, again, whether I like this or not, like, I'm not even saying I necessarily want this to happen. I'm just saying it is going to happen. So I saw a film festival as an opportunity to just sort of bring people together in the community and talk about that, showcase their work. So these are, these AI filmmakers showed short films that they had made using AI. They talked about their process and how they did it and what their perspective is on the future and how it improved their creativity. Because the narrative at that time was that it was gonna, it was destroying artists, it was destroying creativities. I'm like, no, look, there's these artists, like real, like legit artists here that are using AI in unique creative ways that like neither I nor other people nor themselves could anticipate. Isn't that cool?
- [40:10]
B
I love that. That is amazing. That's cool that you are on the forefront of really shedding promise to people that are like, kind of like hopeless about it. And that's where I think people like you are imperative is educating society on the true benefits of, of how AI is going to help society, you know, really excel. Now you have thoughts that, you know, Elon Musk is all over the place with, with what he thinks the future looks like with AI and you know, and, and some of his stuff is just kind of scary with his thoughts. But you know, as long as I feel like people leverage AI to help them raise their standards and raise their bar of productivity, I think that we're going to be in a good place. The people that use AI just to get lazier, I mean, that's gonna, you know, which, which is because it's a double edged sword, is kind of a reality in some instances as well.
- [41:21]
A
Sure.
- [41:21]
B
I'm using AI to help me just multiply. That's good, you know, and I hope everyone has that mindset and those that do will dominate and those that don't will just fall by the wayside. Let me just close up with a couple questions here. Now, what's your leadership philosophy when it comes to building and empowering, you know, the, the various teams that you work with at the intersection of tech and art?
- [41:47]
A
Sure. I mean, at the, for the, the experience I have leading teams and when I've hired people for different things, and this is based off of my experience, like being led too. I think the single most important thing, especially now more than ever, my philosophy is to just lead transparently and with kind candor and foster that culture. Because if your teammate or this person you're leading doesn't feel like they can trust you to be honest with you, to tell you things that they're worried about or things that they're afraid of or things that they're seeing, then how are you supposed to lead? Right? So I think that's one of the most important things. And I think it's kind of tricky because I think working in corporate environments, some of us might have different experiences in different company cultures where, you know, the manager would, like, come into a meeting and they'd say, you know, tell me what you think. And everybody just sort of just sits there and they're like, well, I know he's saying I should tell him what I think, but. Or her what I think, but he doesn't really mean that because if I tell him what I think, he's probably going to fire me. Or, like, he won't. Maybe they won't fire me, but, like, they'll, like, maybe I won't get a promotion, right? Or, like, maybe they'll give me, like a really hard project, right? So there's all of these sort of in hidden incentives that are at work in a company's culture that I think as a leader, you just have to be aware of, like, just frankly, like explicit incentives and implicit incentives. Explicit incentive is like, I going to give you 100k a year as a salary. I'm going to give you X amount of dollars an hour. That's explicit, right? Implicit is if I tell, if I tell them what I think, you know, they're. They might not give me a promotion, right? It's not anything anybody said. It's not written anywhere. It's just implicit that people could protect, they could pick up on. Maybe it's not true. Like, maybe. But if they are afraid of that, then it's true to them, right? And it's going to alter their decisions when they're working with you as, as the leader. And when I say candor, I've heard people think that that means being rude. And this is sort of nuanced. We're in great territory here because different cultures, like, I mean, like country cultures, right? They. They take candor differently, right? And so if you're. You're working in a company, you've just got to be aware of, like, how things are in whatever culture or city or country you're working in. But, like, if you can, like I would say, try and teach your employees, at least in your company, to operate with kind candor and kind frankness and respectful frankness, right? Not just like blurting whatever comes out of your mouth, right? Because there's ways of saying things. We all know this. There's ways of saying things that are more respectful Less respectful, More rude. Less rude. Right. But I can still be direct with you and tell you what I'm thinking, just in a respectful way. Right. That's not rude to you, like, if you're the manager or the boss or whatever. Right. So.
- [45:16]
B
Love it. Love it. Couple last questions. What's the personal goal that you have for yourself and a business goal that you have for Lucky Labs?
- [45:26]
A
Good question. Look, my personal goal is to just try and leave things better than how I found them in life. I know that's sort of cheesy, but that's sort of the philosophy I like to lead with is whenever I get to a place, I'm like, okay, like, can this be better? How can I make this better? Like, I definitely don't want to leave things worse than how I got there. Right. So maybe move away from that. So for Lucky Day Labs, I hope that, you know, I can continue to do what I'm doing now and I can help do, as you said, right? Like, help educate people around what's coming and how to prepare for it and make. Make things better, like, legitimately. I think if everybody, like, imagine how cool it would be if everybody just went everywhere and they tried to make things better wherever they went, Right? I think that would be great. So, like, why not try that?
- [46:20]
B
Right?
- [46:21]
A
Like, let's see if we can make things better. Like, some things, like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? But the things that are broken, and I think there's a lot of things that are. That have been broken, why not try? So that's my hope that luckily Lucky Day Labs will be able to. To do that in some way.
- [46:41]
B
I love it. I love it. We'll ask question four for you when you're in front of the pearly gates. What do you think God's going to tell you?
- [46:48]
A
Interesting question. Well, look, I know people have different. I know people have different beliefs in terms of, like, heaven and. And so, so on and so forth. But, like, if I was just going to play with this, this framing, I don't know, what is God going to tell me? Or what am I going to ask God?
- [47:12]
B
Go both ways?
- [47:13]
A
I don't know. I'd probably ask him, like, hey, did I do a good job? What do you think?
- [47:22]
B
I don't know.
- [47:23]
A
That's probably what I'd ask him, but I don't know what he'd ask me. I guess I'll have to wait and see.
- [47:30]
B
Hey, you've been a pleasure to have on the show. People want to connect with you. How do they find you?
- [47:35]
A
So you can go to LuckyDayLabs AI and you can book a free call with me right there on the website or you can go to my LinkedIn Andy O. I will say part of that mission and that hope that I just mentioned to you, Lucky Day Labs is starting an academy called Lucky Day Labs Academy. We're going to teach people how to what it's called Vibe code with tools like lovable. And I found that people try like these AI tools make their own software code because they've dreamt of like making software their whole life, but they've never been able to do it. And now they try to do it, but then they would hit these roadblocks where they like there was like things they didn't even know they had to ask as like a question, right?
- [48:18]
B
Yeah.
- [48:19]
A
And so what I'm going to do with Lucky Day Academy is help guide people through that process. Right. So they'll be able to make their own software. They're going to be able to make their own app using these AI tools and teaching them like what the pitfalls are, like security. Right. Like so that users information doesn't get leaked in a database. Right. So you can find that at Academy. Lucky Day Labs SL waitlist.
- [48:44]
B
But wait. Thanks so much, Andy. You've been a pleasure to have on the show. Make sure to connect with Andy O. He is the man. God bless, guys. Thanks for tuning in. Sam.