Transcript
A (0:04)
Welcome to the Practical AI Podcast, where we break down the real world applications of artificial intelligence and how it's shaping the way we live, work and create. Our goal is to help make AI technology practical, productive and accessible to everyone. Whether you're a developer, business leader, or just curious about the tech behind the buzz, you're in the right place. Be sure to connect with us on LinkedIn X or Bluesky to stay up to date with episode drops, behind the scenes and AI insights. You can learn more at PracticalAI FM. Now onto the show.
B (0:48)
Welcome to another episode of the Practical AI Podcast. This is Daniel Whitenack. I am CEO at Prediction Guard. I'm joined, as always by my co host, Chris Benson, who is a principal AI research engineer at Lockheed Martin. How you doing, Chris? Hey.
C (1:03)
Hey. I'm doing very well today. How's it going?
B (1:05)
It's going great. Wrapping up the year, reflecting over the past year. It's always a kind of time of the year to reflect and it's been a great year for the podcast and for business and for other things. So, yeah, just feeling, I think, feeling particularly blessed as we kind of head into the end of the year and I think also blessed to have made a bunch of good connections this year to people that are, that I'm learning from. One of those is our, is our guest today, Jason Butler, who is CEO at robosource. Welcome, Jason.
D (1:42)
Hey, thanks so much.
B (1:43)
Yeah, yeah, it's great to have met this year, I think from a variety of directions, a bunch of different connections. But you did also join us at the Midwest AI Summit, which was fun. Chris was there. I know that you have a particular passion for kind of thinking about the, the way that people work and helping them do good work and meaningful work, I guess.
D (2:13)
Yeah.
B (2:13)
Do you want to expand on that idea a little bit? Because I do think it's, it's interesting to think about that topic when people are grappling with, is AI taking over my job? What is my purpose at my job? What jobs are going to stick around? What jobs aren't going to stick around? From your perspective, what, what does that mean, like helping people do good work? Or from your perspective, what does that mean kind of in, in light of the current ecosystem in which we live?
D (2:43)
Yeah, well, I just think people wake up in the morning and they want their jobs to matter. They want to feel like they're making a difference and so they want, they want to build relationships, they want to build community, they want to, they want to know that what they're doing is having A strategic impact on the community. They're with the people, they're with the people they're spending their day to day with. And I think when that happens, you work different. I think my grandfather read this story, but he would tell it to me often when talking about he knew someone that worked at a factory and spent all their time working basically just doing the same thing over and over again, was happy as he's ever been. And a new guy had come in and was doing the same thing and just felt miserable the whole time and felt like it was meaningless and that what he was doing didn't really matter at all. And couldn't understand why this older guy was so thrilled. And he's like, all we're doing is putting the same screw into the same hole on all these different vehicles or whatnot. And the older guy goes, no, I'm protecting my kids, I'm protecting my children, I'm protecting the millions of families are going to buy this car because I put this thing on, right? So his version of meaningful work made him joyful about the day to day stuff that he was doing. So I got really passionate around that. I was like, how can we, how can we help people know that what they're doing matters and help give them some context around that. And so part of that is finding the things that feel meaningless and removing that. And that's really where our organization started almost 15 years ago now was how can we find things that people feel in their Day to day isn't important, isn't adding value, isn't adding meaning. And how can we move that aside so that they can focus on the stuff that that is unique to them that allows them to bring that value and that's different for everybody. It's not like again, the grandpa putting on the screw was happy as could be because he was making a difference and the 25 year old was feeling meaningless like they were doing the same job. So it's not the job you're doing, it's the impact that you can have when you are able to get the things out of your way that mentally keep you from being effective.
